Milton Friedman on Blogging

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Milton Friedman on Blogging

James Joyner | Saturday, February 24, 2007

I’m reading Milton Friedman’s 1962 classic Capitalism and Freedom, which I find simultaneously timeless in its argument and incredibly dated in its specifics (in many cases because of policy changes owing at least partly to his influence), and came across this caveat to a discussion of the monopolistic nature of intellectual property protection:

But this is a casual judgment on a subject on which there has been much detailed study and on which much more is needed. Hence, it is deserving of little confidence.

This perfectly describes most blog posts.

UPDATE: A few chapters later:

The judgment that follows is a personal, though I hope not utterly uninformed, opinion, stated, for sake of brevity, more dogmatically than the nature of the evidence justifies.

That, along with the previous quotation, could implied appendages to any blog post, or, indeed, virtually any analysis anywhere.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.

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