“Most people would not be able to understand the complex economic analysis that won him a Nobel Prize, but people with no knowledge of economics had no trouble understanding his popular books like Free to Choose or the TV series of the same name.” Though also a Nobel Laureate economist, Friedman’s greatest talents, as Sowell notes, were in being a popularizer of right-wing and radical libertarian ideas. The conservative economist Thomas Sowell has written an appreciation of him here, as well. I knew Vidal considerably better, having jousted with him on numerous occasions over the years, which prompts me to consider their legacies on this week of their deaths.Ī lengthy explanation of Milton Friedman’s life’s work and extraordinary influence can be found here.
I got to know Friedman mostly through his work and from biographies of him, though I spent an enlightening week with him when we shared time on a cruise ship to Alaska in 1996. A different death in the news this week was that of the novelist, literary critic, and all-around troublemaker Gore Vidal, who has almost no political legacy, as he could not be bothered to take politics as seriously as he took literature. The conservative economist, Milton Friedman, who died in November 2006, would have been 100 years old on Tuesday. Two leading intellectuals of the 20th century now share a birth and a death date.
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