Milton Friedman saw concentrated corporate power as a social problem in 1947

Evidence

At one meeting in early January 1947, Friedman proposed that the FMS should devote time and resources to investigating the issue of the separation of corporate ownership and corporate control, mainly because of the social problems that stemmed from this divergence of interest. He stated: “[The] separation of ownership from control has important social disadvantages. It encourages utilization of resources for purposes other than maximization of their return; greatly facilitates the securing of monopoly positions; and gives rise to private economies of scale that are not matched by social economies.” Friedman’s proposed remedy was to increase the ownership interest of the corporate directors. “By identifying ownership with control,” he believed, “the proposal would eliminate many of the present abuses of the corporate form. It would immediately eliminate holding companies … it would make mergers more difficult; … These effects would themselves retard the tendency (if it exists) toward increasingly large and monopolistic organizations and stimulate the breakdown of existing giant corporations.” Thus, in 1947 Friedman advanced a standard premise of classical liberalism: large corporations and monopolies posed a serious social problem that had to be addressed by public policy. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1103

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the popular image of Friedman/Chicago as pro-monopoly or indifferent to corporate concentration — links to reader’s intellectual-history focus on how the network’s early positions shifted.