David D. Friedman

For other people of the same name, see David Friedman (disambiguation).

David D. Friedman
File:Davidfriedmanatcato.jpg
Born	(1945-02-12) February 12, 1945
Nationality	American
Institution	Santa Clara University
Field	Economics, Law
School or tradition	Chicago School of Economics
Alma mater	Harvard University (BA) University of Chicago (PhD)
Influences	Ronald Coase, Friedrich Hayek, Robert A. Heinlein, Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman, Adam Smith, Richard Timberlake, Alfred Marshall
Influenced	Bryan Caplan, Patri Friedman, Peter Leeson, Edward Stringham
Contributions	The Machinery of Freedom
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

David Director Friedman (born February 12, 1945) is an American economist, physicist, legal scholar, and libertarian theorist. He is known for his writings in market anarchist theory, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom (1973, revised 1989 and 2014). He has authored several other books and articles, including Price Theory: An Intermediate Text (1986), Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters (2000), Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (1996), and Future Imperfect (2008).

Life and work

David Friedman is the son of economists Rose and Milton Friedman. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1965, with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics. He later earned a master's (1967) and a Ph.D. (1971) in theoretical physics from the University of Chicago. He was previously a Markle Senior Fellow at New America Foundation from 2000 to 2002. He is currently a professor of law at Santa Clara University, and a contributing editor for Liberty magazine. He is an atheist. His son, Patri Friedman, has also written about libertarian theory and market anarchism, particularly seasteading.

The Machinery of Freedom

In his book The Machinery of Freedom (1973), Friedman sketched a form of anarcho-capitalism where all goods and services including law itself can be produced by the free market. This differs from the version proposed by Murray Rothbard, where a legal code would first be consented to by the parties involved in setting up the anarcho-capitalist society. Friedman advocates an incrementalist approach to achieve anarcho-capitalism by gradual privatization of areas that government is involved in, ultimately privatizing law and order itself. In the book, he states his opposition to violent anarcho-capitalist revolution.

He advocates a consequentialist version of anarcho-capitalism, arguing for anarchism on a cost-benefit analysis of state versus no state. It is contrasted with the natural-rights approach as propounded most notably by economist and libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard.

Non-academic interests

Friedman is a longtime member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, where he is known as Duke Cariadoc of the Bow. He is known throughout the worldwide society for his articles on the philosophy of recreationism and practical historical recreations, especially those relating to the medieval Middle East. His work is compiled in the popular Cariadoc's Miscellany. He is sometimes credited with founding the largest and longest-running SCA event, the Pennsic War; as king of the Middle Kingdom he challenged the East Kingdom, and later as king of the East accepted the challenge...and lost.

He is a long-time science fiction fan, and has written two fantasy novels, Harald (Baen Books, 2006) and Salamander (2011).

Bibliography

Nonfiction

• 1988. Cariadoc's Miscellany.
• 1989 (1973). The Machinery of Freedom.
• 1990 (1986). Price Theory: An Intermediate Text. Southwestern Publishing.
• 1996. Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life.
• 2000. Law’s Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters. Princeton Univ. Press.
• 2005. "The Case for Privacy" in Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics. Wiley-Blackwell.
• 2008. Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World.

Encyclopedia

• – an economist's look at crime

Fiction

• Harald, 2006
• Salamander, 2011

External links

• Homepage
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• David D. Friedman speech at Authors@Google
• David D. Friedman at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• An interview with David Friedman on The Marketplace of Ideas
• An Interview with David D. Friedman on Free Market Mojo
• Booknotes interview with Friedman on Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, October 20, 1996.