Milton Friedman's Free To Choose | Hacker News Reader

Milton Friedman's Free To Choose

freetochoose.tv

47 pointspinchyfingers11 comments

I hate sites that don't tell me what they are at first glance. I don't know what this is and I'm not going to watch a video to find out. I am an average user with a short attention span, and I'd give you advice on targeting people like me, only I'm not sure what it is you do and whether average users are your target audience.

Please. All it takes is a paragraph. Hell, you don't even have an "About" page.

Edit: I'm sorry that this sounds unnecessarily harsh, but it bugs me to hell that I have no idea about what I'm looking at. =]

Well probably the people who are interested on this know the name Milton Friedman very well, but I agree that for others an about page would be nice.

Just FYI: this is a television series from Friedmans book "Free to Choose", a classic book that advocates laissez-faire politics (free markets). Highly recommanded if you are interested in economics.

EDIT: Actually I checked and it seems that the book was written after the first TV-series, my bad.

The visual equivalent of reading a paragraph of text would be watching a short clip, so I don't see what's wrong with the site. While you prefer text to video, I think there is a sizeable chunk of the population that would prefer watching a small clip to reading text.

It's just personal preference, I think.

I think the issue is that (for some, at least) reading is much faster than watching the video, especially combined with the additional loading times.

Exactly. Right now I'm stuck on ~10 kilobytes per second (yes, in 2011). With the loading times, the time it takes me to decide whether or not something is pertinent to me and my goals is far greater with videos than with text.

Then again, I suppose I am an edge case. I mean, most people on HN wouldn't have such substandard connections.

Even with an arbitrarily fast internet connection, I can read a lot faster than anybody talks.

Uh, I'd think it speaks for itself. Milton Friedman is pretty well known - he was a leader of Chicago school economics. This is a TV series that he produced that explains the mechanics of the free market.

What is it you want as way of explanation? I figured Hacker News is a place where people might be interested in capitalism.

That would have been enough. I neither own a TV nor live in the USA (where I imagine he's more well-known?), and while I do spend the greater part of my life on the internet, I had never come across his name before.

Thanks for clearing that up. =]

I like how Friedman explains his logic in the first half of each video, then in the second half, invites 5 people with opposite opinions to his own and debates them. The older series is better.

This video (and also Commanding Heights shown on PBS) had a great impact on my economic views.

Nothing causes more harm than good intentions.

i like the simple site layout. i wish more sites were like this. easier on my eyes and brain and easier on my computer. one design suggestion I have is to add some kind of About blurb or page.

Awesome.

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