Friedman Facts.com

Although Swedish writer Johan Norberg has done an excellent job of discrediting the idea that Milton Friedman and his scholarship were responsible for Chilean violence, both in print and video, we can also see what Friedman himself said about Chile in this PBS interview:

INTERVIEWER: So you envisaged, therefore, that the free markets ultimately would undermine Pinochet?

MILTON FRIEDMAN: Oh, absolutely. The emphasis of that talk was that free markets would undermine political centralization and political control. And incidentally, I should say that I was not in Chile as a guest of the government. I was in Chile as the guest of a private organization.

…

INTERVIEWER: In the end, the Chilean [economy] did quite well, didn’t it?

MILTON FRIEDMAN: Oh, very well. Extremely well. The Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society.

Read the entire interview here.