Milton Friedman has died

This is only just filtering onto the wires but it would appear that Milton Friedman died during last night at the age of 94. He was a truly brilliant man and all thinking people will miss his towering presence.

My first experience of his work was reading his account of the Great Depression; it was as much of a revelation to me as it was to the literature when it was first published. It has the mark of truly great thought in that it was never dogma and has not prevented other thinkers moving on but in being surpassed it has not been eclipsed.

I think, in the end, the best tribute to Friedman is in his work. Free to choose is a decent place to start. Unfortunately, the full version of free to choose that was on Google Video, and contained the look into Hong Kong and the association of economic and political freedom, appears to have dissapeared but there is still this wonderful extract available on YouTube:



Also, this from the end of the series:



Update: David Friedman's response is so much more eloquent than mine.