[stillsut]

Milton Firedman's most famous work is Capitalism and Freedom and yet within that work, he completely rejects Hollywood blacklists (or "boycotts" if you prefer). If you consider his main point is that under communism, people are un-free, it seems odd that he would sympathize with avowed members of American communist party, who would ultimately like to bring communism to the US, and in Friedman's eyes, result in societal catastrophe. Doubly so given the power of persuasion that Hollywood writers wield. So why does he reject the ability of studio execs to simply exercise their freedom of association, and not contract with blacklisted writers?

The problem in Friedman's eyes is that this boycott reduces to collusion. And under collusion, the benfits of free market dry up: for example, in the free market you can shop your script, no matter who you are, and if your product is good, you could make a living out of it. When firms collude to establish acceptable political beleifs as a pre-condition to an economic exchange, you have reduced the economic freedom of everyone who is not wealthy enough to establish a movie studio for themselves. In effect, you have by-passed democracy ("one person, one vote") and moved to [benevolent] oligarchy ("one chairman, one vote"). As the old saying goes - you're freedom to swing your elbows ends where my nose begins, and so too with economic association. If you would starve a man until he renounced his political preferences - even if you deem them antithetical to the good of society - you're no better than Stalin.