[Rhodes22-list] Economics - TV Worth Watching

[Slim]

Ron,
Frankly, I'm insulted to be left off that list.
Enjoy the show.  Wish I was there.
Slim

On 2/1/07 8:29 AM, "Ronald Lipton" <rlipton at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Ed,
> 
>  Please don't tell me what kind of brain I have, What kind of
> traveller I am
> or how I feel about bureaucracy.  Please don't tell me who or what I
> think
> needs to be nurtured.   I am a liberal in most areas, proud of it, and
> feel that
> the ideas of equality and openness are at the core of what has made
> this a
> great country.  But my detailed beliefs are a result of my own thoughts,
> my family's heritage and background, and my understanding of the world
> and
> the nation.  It doesn't serve any purpose to categorize me on a range of
> issues due to a handful of postings to a sailing forumn. It may be
> representative
> of your own limited thought process and prejudices. At some point some
> of us may be insulted by your scattershot approach to personal and
> political
> name calling.
> 
> I am going to the sailboat show.
> 
> Ron
> 
> 
> On Feb 1, 2007, at 7:13 AM, Tootle wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Brother Bradley:
>> 
>>      You do not expect Dave L or Bill E or Ron L or the other fellow
>> travelers to read and embrace this concept do you.  You are just
>> pissing
>> into the wind.
>> 
>>       The first problem you encounter is that they have television
>> brains.
>> Just change the channel and instantly things will be fine.  Second,
>> they do
>> not believe that democracy needs to be nurtured.  That goes back to
>> their
>> television mentality where things will be instantly fine.  Third, they
>> believe that bureaucracies work, there is no place for free people and
>> individual responsibility.  Are you trying to create chaos or was that
>> Peter
>> Drucker?
>> 
>> Ed K
>> Greenville, SC, USA
>> Addendum:  "It is not by the consolidation of concentration of powers,
>> but
>> by  their distribution, that good government is affected." Thomas
>> Jefferson
>> 
>> 
>> Brad Haslett-2 wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> This is worthy of your time - check local listings.  Brad
>>> 
>>> *TV's Evangelist for Capitalism
>>> *The man behind "Free to Choose" with Milton Friedman.
>>> 
>>> *BY JOHN H. FUND*
>>> *Wednesday, January 31, 2007 12:01 a.m.*
>>> 
>>> Despite his renown as a Nobel Prize-winning economist and best-selling
>>> author, most people came to know the late Milton Friedman through
>>> television. His 10-part 1980 series, "Free to Choose," was so popular
>>> that
>>> it aired three times on public television and is even now adding fans
>>> via
>>> a
>>> free Internet video-stream (www.ideachannel.tv).
>>> 
>>> So it's fitting that the original team of producers for "Free to
>>> Choose"
>>> returned to PBS Monday (declared "Milton Friedman Day" in California
>>> by
>>> Gov.
>>> Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco) with a
>>> 90-minute intellectual biography called "The Power of Choice: The
>>> Life and
>>> Times of Milton Friedman." (Many public television stations are
>>> airing the
>>> program at other times this week; check local listings.)
>>> 
>>> The show ranges far and wide to show the influence of Friedman's
>>> thought.
>>> Former Prime Minister Mart Laar of Estonia, a former Soviet satellite
>>> that
>>> turned to free markets in desperation after independence, says that
>>> "the
>>> only book about economy what I read was 'Free to Choose,' but there
>>> was a
>>> lot of good ideas in there, and I introduced a big part of those."
>>> Such
>>> Friedmanite reforms as a 23% flat-rate income tax (soon to fall to
>>> 20%)
>>> have
>>> led the latest "Index of Economic Freedom" to list Estonia as the 12th
>>> most
>>> free economy in the world, ahead of Denmark and the Netherlands. The
>>> show
>>> is
>>> chock-full of tributes from figures as diverse as Alan Greenspan and
>>> Gov.
>>> Schwarzenegger.
>>> 
>>> As much as the show is a celebration of Friedman's life and work, it
>>> also
>>> showcases the remarkable entrepreneur who made it and "Free to Choose"
>>> possible. Bob Chitester produced the original series while serving as
>>> the
>>> only public-TV station manager in the country who didn't believe in
>>> government subsidies. A tireless promoter, he raised the equivalent
>>> of $8
>>> million today for the series--entirely from private sources, an
>>> achievement
>>> that delighted Friedman.
>>> 
>>>  Mr. Chitester came to the project with an unusual background. In
>>> 1966, he
>>> became the general manager of the PBS station in Erie, Pa., at age
>>> 29. An
>>> opponent of the Vietnam War, he handed out literature for George
>>> McGovern
>>> in
>>> 1972 and admits he knew nothing about economics. Then, in 1976, he met
>>> with
>>> economist W. Allen Wallis, who gave him a copy of Friedman's
>>> "Capitalism
>>> and
>>> Freedom." Mr. Chitester soaked it up, became a believer in markets,
>>> and
>>> immediately began pursuing Friedman to do a series that would provide
>>> a
>>> counterpoint to one by liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith that
>>> PBS
>>> was
>>> airing.
>>> 
>>> After all these years, Mr. Chitester is still surprised by how easily
>>> Friedman's cooperation came. "I was a bearded, leather-jacketed,
>>> small-town
>>> TV executive, yet he treated me as competent and honorable, as he did
>>> everyone he met, until you proved otherwise," he recalls.
>>> 
>>> Surprisingly, Friedman insisted on not writing a script in advance of
>>> filming. The points that would be made in each scene were discussed,
>>> but
>>> his
>>> commentary was extemporaneous. This resulted in such gems as the
>>> economist
>>> sitting in a sweatshop in New York's Chinatown, where he recalled the
>>> days
>>> when his mother worked in a similar environment. "Life was hard,"
>>> Friedman
>>> noted, "but opportunity was real." He then transports the audience to
>>> a
>>> junk
>>> floating in the harbor of Hong Kong, "the freest market in the world,"
>>> where
>>> Friedman discusses how the then-British colony's leaders refused to
>>> collect
>>> some economic statistics because they feared they would be used as an
>>> excuse
>>> for government intervention in the booming economy.
>>> 
>>> Since the success of "Free to Choose," Mr. Chitester has gone on to
>>> produce
>>> programs that range across time and space, from a dramatization of
>>> how the
>>> Pilgrims realized the importance of private property to a series on
>>> private
>>> space exploration. He has produced five teaching kits based on John
>>> Stossel's ABC News TV specials that have been used in 84,000
>>> classrooms to
>>> encourage more rigorous thinking about science and economics.
>>> 
>>> Today, Mr. Chitester is most excited about a two-hour program he is
>>> producing featuring Hernando de Soto. A Peruvian economist, Mr. de
>>> Soto
>>> has
>>> been the target of murder attempts by drug barons and Marxist
>>> terrorists
>>> who
>>> fear his message that the poor in developing nations need true
>>> capitalism--property rights, markets and the rule of law. Time
>>> magazine
>>> recently named him one of the five leading Latin American innovators
>>> of
>>> the
>>> century.
>>> 
>>> Mr. de Soto warns that capitalism isn't working for the majority of
>>> the
>>> world's people. This is largely because economic elites use their
>>> power to
>>> restrict competition, limit access to capital and promote their vested
>>> interests over those less fortunate. That, in turn, undermines the
>>> potential
>>> of free markets to spread wealth and opportunity in the same way that
>>> has
>>> made developed nations so successful. "The poor are not the problem;
>>> they
>>> are the solution," Mr. de Soto says. "Give them access to land titles
>>> that
>>> can be used for collateral, the rule of law, a responsive bureaucracy
>>> and
>>> streamlined tools of business, and you will see creativity and
>>> entrepreneurial self-reliance flourish."
>>> 
>>> The program being planned for Mr. de Soto will take him from an
>>> Albanian
>>> village, where ancient disputes over who owns what land are prompting
>>> young
>>> people to leave the country, to the office of a Tanzanian banker who
>>> has
>>> tried in vain for 12 years to get a mortgage. Increasingly, Mr. de
>>> Soto
>>> says
>>> Americans need to appreciate how much developing nations are
>>> dominated by
>>> an
>>> extralegal economy that must be brought into the mainstream. "What
>>> Bob is
>>> proposing is an eye-opening look at how to finally make poor countries
>>> wealthy by empowering their people," says Ed Crane, president of the
>>> Cato
>>> Institute.
>>> 
>>> But TV's evangelist for capitalism has other projects, too. He has
>>> storyboards done for a series on Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish scientist
>>> who
>>> has
>>> gathered Nobel laureates together to agree on where money should be
>>> spent
>>> to
>>> safeguard human life. (Hint: global-warming curbs are far down the
>>> list.)
>>> A
>>> program on the life of former Secretary of State George Shultz is in
>>> the
>>> works.
>>> 
>>>  This week's PBS special pays tribute to the many achievements of
>>> Milton
>>> Friedman. One that is often underappreciated is the extent to which he
>>> demonstrated how visual images could influence and shape public
>>> debate. As
>>> his most ardent electronic disciple, Bob Chitester deserves the
>>> free-market
>>> community's equivalent of an Oscar.
>>> 
>>> *Mr. Fund is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com.*
>>> __________________________________________________
>>> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> --  
>> View this message in context:
>> http://www.nabble.com/Economics---TV-Worth-Watching-
>> tf3154218.html#a8747915
>> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>> 
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