[ch4s3]

Yeah, Friedman would clearly agree that you can't have perfect knowledge but he argues that bad business decisions are punished with losses and firms' owners will fire bad managers or they'll lose their investments.

You're actually touching on why he argues against efforts to regulate negative harms, because the government has an imperfect ability to predict the outcomes and there isn't a great feedback mechanism.

[AnimalMuppet]

So businesses have faster/better/more accurate feedback than government? That's probably true.

But history has shown that business feedback sometimes takes us to undesirable places, and government regulation is sometimes necessary.

[ch4s3]

Friedman doesn't argue against all kinds of government regulation, specifically he approves of regulating positive harms.

[therobot24]

ok i think i'm starting to get it a bit, the double edged sword is essentially the reason for focusing on emergent results which (i'm guessing in Friedman's mind) have more options for mechanisms for good results than a constrained market might.

[ch4s3]

I think that's a fair summary.