Milton Friedman on business

The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.

The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.

If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true.

The business of America is business.

Calvin Coolidge1872–1933Speech to the Society of American Newspaper Editors (1925).

• America

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Appendix A

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

Ronald Reagan1911–2004

• Government