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About this quote

What does it mean?
Friedman claims that large business groups often undermine the free market they claim to support.
In plain terms
Big companies often hurt the free market system.
What can you take from it?
Business interests can harm free markets.

Where it applies

  • policy analysis
  • business ethics
  • economic history

Putting it to work

  • analyze corporate lobbying
  • assess market fairness

Questions to consider

  • Do businesses support or harm free markets?
  • Who benefits from regulation?

Another view

It overlooks businesses that actively defend free markets.

More from Milton Friedman

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  2. Every friend of freedom... must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casu…

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  3. Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant little to the wealthy. The rich in ancient Greece would have…

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