明年将是米尔顿·弗里德曼诞辰100周年。弗里德曼是20世纪杰出经济学家之一，诺贝尔奖获得者，对货币政策和消费理论做出了巨大贡献。但是他主要是以一名为那个世纪后五十年的自由市场热衷者提供智力火药的幻想家，一名1980年之后发生的经济政策戏剧性变化的幕后操纵者，而被人们铭记在心。
在市场怀疑论盛行的时代，弗里德曼用清晰易懂的语言解释了私有企业是经济繁荣的基础。所有成功的经济都是建立在节俭、勤劳和个人首创精神上的。他抱怨政府管制牵累了企业、限制了市场。米尔顿·弗里德曼之于20世纪，诚如亚当·史密斯之于18世纪。
弗里德曼标志性的电视系列节目《自由选择》在1980年播出的时候，世界经济正处在奇特转型的阵痛中。受弗里德曼思想的启发，罗纳尔德·里根、玛格丽特·撒切尔以及其他许多政府领导人开始取消之前数十年间建立起来的政府限制和调控措施。
中国摒弃了中央计划，允许市场走向繁荣——开始是农产品，最后则包括工业品。拉美国家大幅削减贸易壁垒，对国有企业实行私有化。1989年柏林墙倒塌的时候，从前的指令性经济毫无疑问地选择了自由市场的方向。
但是弗里德曼也留下了一份不太恰当的遗产。在狂热推销市场魔力的同时，他对市场和政府的区分太过明显。实际上他把政府视为市场之敌。因此他让我们无视这样一个显而易见的事实：实际上所有成功的经济都是混合式的。不幸的是，很大程度上由于对金融市场放任自流而引发的金融危机爆发之后，人们还在对这种无视不停争论。
弗里德曼式的观点极大低估了市场制度性先决条件的重要性。让政府保障财产权和契约的执行，然后——变!——市场就会自己发挥作用了。事实上现代经济需要的市场并非是能够自我产生、自我约束、自我平衡或者自我合法化的类型。政府必须对交通和通讯网络进行投资；抵消信息不对称、外部效应和议价权不平等的消极作用；平抑金融恐慌和衰退，以及对大众安全体系和社会保险的要求作出回应。
市场经济的精华是市场，这就像柠檬水的精华是柠檬一样。纯柠檬汁仅仅能喝而已。要做出好的柠檬水就得加水和糖。当然要是放了太多的水你可就把柠檬水给毁了。诀窍是不要丢掉水跟糖，但是比例要把握对。被弗里德曼树为自由市场社会典范的香港仍然是这个混合式经济规则的例外，即便如此当地政府在为建房提供土地方面仍然扮演着相当重要的角色。
弗里德曼留给大多数人的印象是身材矮小、态度谦恭的教授微笑着在《自由选择》节目的镜头前手拿一只铅笔向人们阐释市场的魔力。弗里德曼说，做这只铅笔需要世界上成千的人合作才行：开采石墨、削割木材、组装配件，然后推销成品。没有一个中央政府统筹他们的行动；这个壮举是由自由市场和价格体系的魔力完成的。
30多年之后，铅笔的故事出现了一个有趣的尾声（事实上这是基于经济学家Leonard E. Read的一篇文章）。今天世界上大多数铅笔都是中国制造——其经济正是独特的私营企业与政府指导的混合体。
弗里德曼活在当代的话也许会问，众多国家中为何唯独中国能统治铅笔制造行业？墨西哥和韩国的石墨质量更佳，印尼和巴西的森林储备更丰富，德国和美国的技术更先进。中国有大量低成本劳动力，但是孟加拉、埃塞俄比亚和其他许多人口众多的低收入国家也是如此啊！
毫无疑问，成绩主要归于中国企业家和劳动者们的首创精神和勤劳工作。但是，如果不引述在技术和劳动培训方面进行了初始投资的中国国有企业，不引述使木材价格人为降低的宽松林业管理政策，不引述慷慨的出口补贴，不引述给中国制造商带来重大成本优势的、政府对货币市场所做的干预，那么今天的铅笔故事就不是完整的。中国政府对其企业进行补助、保护和激励，以确保快速的工业化进程，从而使全球劳动分工朝着有利于它的方向变化。
弗里德曼本人可能会对这些政府政策感到后悔。然而要不是政府对市场力量推上一把使这个产业腾飞的话，中国铅笔工厂雇佣的成千上万的工人最有可能还是贫穷的农民。鉴于中国经济取得的成功，很难否认政府工业化政策所作出的贡献。
自由市场的热衷者在经济思想史上的地位无可动摇。但是像弗里德曼一样的思想家们留下的遗产是模糊不清和令人困惑的，因为在经济史上已经取得成功的是干预主义者，而这才是真正重要的。
Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth. Friedman was one of the twentieth century’s leading economists, a Nobel Prize winner who made notable contributions to monetary policy and consumption theory. But he will be remembered primarily as the visionary who provided the intellectual firepower for free-market enthusiasts during the second half of the century, and as the éminence grise behind the dramatic shift in the economic policies that took place after 1980.
CommentsAt a time when skepticism about markets ran rampant, Friedman explained in clear, accessible language that private enterprise is the foundation of economic prosperity. All successful economies are built on thrift, hard work, and individual initiative. He railed against government regulations that encumber entrepreneurship and restrict markets. What Adam Smith was to the eighteenth century, Milton Friedman was to the twentieth.
CommentsAs Friedman’s landmark television series “Free to Choose” was being broadcast in 1980, the world economy stood in the throes of a singular transformation. Inspired by Friedman’s ideas, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and many other government leaders began to dismantle the government restrictions and regulations that had been built up over the preceding decades.
CommentsChina moved away from central planning and allowed markets to flourish – first in agricultural products and, eventually, in industrial goods. Latin America sharply reduced its trade barriers and privatized its state-owned firms. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, there was no doubt as to which direction the former command economies would take: towards free markets.
CommentsBut Friedman also produced a less felicitous legacy. In his zeal to promote the power of markets, he drew too sharp a distinction between the market and the state. In effect, he presented government as the enemy of the market. He therefore blinded us to the evident reality that all successful economies are, in fact, mixed. Unfortunately, the world economy is still contending with that blindness in the aftermath of a financial crisis that resulted, in no small part, from letting financial markets run too free.
CommentsThe Friedmanite perspective greatly underestimates the institutional prerequisites of markets. Let the government simply enforce property rights and contracts, and – presto! – markets can work their magic. In fact, the kind of markets that modern economies need are not self-creating, self-regulating, self-stabilizing, or self-legitimizing. Governments must invest in transport and communication networks; counteract asymmetric information, externalities, and unequal bargaining power; moderate financial panics and recessions; and respond to popular demands for safety nets and social insurance.
CommentsMarkets are the essence of a market economy in the same sense that lemons are the essence of lemonade. Pure lemon juice is barely drinkable. To make good lemonade, you need to mix it with water and sugar. Of course, if you put too much water in the mix, you ruin the lemonade, just as too much government meddling can make markets dysfunctional. The trick is not to discard the water and the sugar, but to get the proportions right. Hong Kong, which Friedman held up as the exemplar of a free-market society, remains the exception to the mixed-economy rule – and even there the government has played a large role in providing land for housing.
CommentsThe image most people will retain of Friedman is the smiling, diminutive, unassuming professor holding up a pencil in front of the cameras in “Free to Choose” to illustrate the power of markets. It took thousands of people all over the world to make this pencil, Friedman said – to mine the graphite, cut the wood, assemble the components, and market the final product. No single central authority coordinated their actions; that feat was accomplished by the magic of free markets and the price system.
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CommentsMore than 30 years later, there is an interesting coda to the pencil story (which in fact was based on an article by the economist Leonard E. Read). Today, most of the world’s pencils are produced in China – an economy that is a peculiar mix of private entrepreneurship and state direction.
CommentsA modern-day Friedman might want to ask how China has come to dominate the pencil industry, as it has so many others. There are better sources of graphite in Mexico and South Korea. Forest reserves are more plentiful in Indonesia and Brazil. Germany and the United States have better technology. China has lots of low-cost labor, but so does Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and many other populous low-income countries.
CommentsUndoubtedly, most of the credit belongs to the initiative and hard work Chinese entrepreneurs and laborers. But the present-day pencil story would be incomplete without citing China’s state-owned firms, which made the initial investments in technology and labor training; lax forest management policies, which kept wood artificially cheap; generous export subsidies; and government intervention in currency markets, which gives Chinese producers a significant cost advantage. China’s government has subsidized, protected, and goaded its firms to ensure rapid industrialization, thereby altering the global division of labor in its favor.
CommentsFriedman himself would have rued these government policies. Yet the tens of thousands of workers that pencil factories in China employ would most likely have remained poor farmers if the government had not given market forces a nudge to get the industry off the ground. Given China’s economic success, it is hard to deny the contribution made by the government’s industrialization policies.
CommentsFree-market enthusiasts’ place in the history of economic thought will remain secure. But thinkers like Friedman leave an ambiguous and puzzling legacy, because it is the interventionists who have succeeded in economic history, where it really matters.
