Friedman’s anti-politics drew directly on Buchanan and Stigler’s public choice economics.

Evidence

The choice between resorting to government and relying on the market was, in Friedman’s terms, one between “bureaucratic democracy” and “participatory democracy.” The act of participation required choices that, he believed, were lost to the individual who consigned fi nal authority to a politician rather than the market. Friedman’s preference for adjudication through market prices rather than po liti cal structures was based, in part, on arguments developed by two colleagues in the Mont Pèlerin Society who also received graduate educations at the University of Chicago. Relying on recent scholarship from James Buchanan and George Stigler, Friedman concluded that politicians are led, through the pursuit of their own interests, to advocate policies that are injurious to the public good. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 481

Categorization

• XREF: Maps the intellectual lineage from Chicago colleagues Buchanan and Stigler (public choice, regulatory capture) into Friedman’s market-vs-state framing — useful adjacent history. — connects to: Chilean neoliberalism drew on Hayek and Buchanan, not only Chicago monetarists. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 162; George Stigler, not Friedman, was the key neoliberal theorist of the marketplace of ideas

Broader Connections

• Chilean neoliberalism drew on Hayek and Buchanan, not only Chicago monetarists. #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 162
• George Stigler, not Friedman, was the key neoliberal theorist of the marketplace of ideas #qualifies (0.72)