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Jennifer Burns

@jennifer-burns · 20 positions · 0 changes of mind

Historian of ideas at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution, and the biographer of both Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand.

Jennifer Burns did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

  1. Our reading

    Milton Friedman won debates on cheerfulness and confidence rather than on argument, and Ayn Rand lost them because disagreement made her angry.

    Their wordsMilton Friedman, he also does tend to have friends who agree with him, yet he's always willing to debate his opponents, and he's willing to do so with a smile on his face. He's a happy warrior, and he actually will win a lot of debates simply by his emotional affect and his cheerfulness and his confidence, where Rand will lose debates because she gets so angry in the face of disagreement.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 0:04:35 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 1st of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  3. Our reading

    Ayn Rand believed she was doing rational philosophy, but the work that actually made her powerful was mythopoetic and psychological.

    Their wordsSo, she thought of herself as rational. She thought of rationality as what she was doing, but she was actually doing a kind of mythopoetic psychological work as well.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 0:10:24 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 2nd of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  5. Our reading

    Ayn Rand keeps returning to relevance in a way Milton Friedman does not, because she reached a universal human longing for independence and self-creation.

    Their wordsSo, I think she comes back in to relevancy in a different way than Friedman does, because I think in some ways she's tapped into a more universal human longing for independence and autonomy and self-creation and self-discovery.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 0:11:43 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 3rd of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  7. Our reading

    Friedman and Schwartz's account of the Great Depression became the Federal Reserve's permanent playbook, because no Fed chair wants to be the villain of the sequel.

    Their wordsFriedman and Schwartz becomes the playbook for the Federal Reserve. We have lived through this, the financial crisis. The Federal Reserve is ready to loan. Covid, the Federal Reserve does all kinds of new things, because no Federal Reserve chair wants to be in Friedman-Schwartz 2.0 that somebody writes, where they're the bad guy who let the economy meltdown.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 0:23:34 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 4th of 20 in this recording

    interest rates

    Interesting

  9. Our reading

    The Chicago School's radical Depression-era proposals were meant as emergency measures, never as a permanent renegotiation of the line between state and market.

    Their wordsWhat is important to note though is that they thought of all of those as emergency measures to get through the emergency not as permanent alterations in the state of what had to be and not permanent alterations between state and market
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 0:55:24 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 5th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  11. Our reading

    Milton Friedman would have backed the first rounds of coronavirus relief, because he treated an emergency as a category where his ordinary rules were suspended.

    Their wordsMilton Friedman is very open to doing things differently in a state of emergency. He will have different ideas during World War II than any other time and that's why I argue I think he would have been supportive of at least the first rounds of coronavirus relief because I think he would have put his emergency thinking hat on.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 0:56:17 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 6th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  13. Our reading

    Milton Friedman is almost single-handedly responsible for there being any political and ideological diversity in the field of economics at all.

    Their wordsAnd almost single-handedly, Friedman will introduce political and ideological diversity into the field of economics because, from his beachhead in Chicago, he will develop the theory of monetarism.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 1:01:26 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 7th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  15. Our reading

    How people feel about an economy is what actually matters, and no set of statistics will persuade someone who feels they are losing that they are winning.

    Their wordsAnd that's what matters, how people feel about it, how people perceive it, it matters. And we saw this recently, you can't just come out with a bunch of statistics and tell people you're winning in this game if they feel like they're losing.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 1:35:06 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 8th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  17. Our reading

    Money works only because everyone believes in it, which makes a currency a measure of social trust that fails when the trust does.

    Their wordsAnd to go back to thinking about money, money works because we all believe in it. It's a form of social trust, and it's a form of belief and faith in our society and in the other people in it. And when that breaks down, the money system will break down as well.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 1:37:19 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 9th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  19. Our reading

    Friedman's universal minimum income went nowhere precisely because it was pure and free of moral judgment, which made it beautiful and politically impossible.

    Their wordsAnd Friedman advanced a policy that was really abstract and really it was devoid of judgment. It was pure and beautiful in that way but utterly impractical.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 1:42:42 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 10th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  21. Our reading

    Americans and their elected representatives will not vote for a universal benefit, because they believe help must be morally earned and therefore targeted.

    Their wordsI think it's always going to be hard to pull off because I think Americans and their elected representatives don't want to provide a universal benefit. They want to provide a targeted benefit because they believe there's a moral component here.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 1:42:42 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 11th of 20 in this recording

    America

    Interesting

  23. Our reading

    Politics now runs mood first and ideas second, the reverse of how argument worked for most of the twentieth century.

    Their wordsIt seems we're driven much more quickly by moods rather than thought-through ideas. Right now, it seems the ideas they follow the political mood and try to put together the underpinning of it where it really was the opposite for much of the 20th century.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 1:49:14 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 12th of 20 in this recording

    politics

    Interesting

  25. Our reading

    The return of inflation is what made Donald Trump's second presidency possible, and therefore what makes everything that presidency changes possible.

    Their wordsAnd so my argument is, that has now opened the door to the presidency of Donald Trump, which is potentially a deeply transformative moment that will change the size and shape of government, that may change our foreign policy profoundly, that may change our immigration policy, that may change the demographics of our country, all of that, and my thesis is that that's all been made possible by inflation.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 1:55:58 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 13th of 20 in this recording

    inflationimmigrationgovernmentdemographics

    Interesting

  27. Our reading

    The great mistake of recent decades was forgetting that inflation built the last political order, and underestimating what its return would do to this one.

    Their wordsAnd so the great mistake of the past years was to forget how fundamental inflation was to the rise of the last political order and to profoundly underestimate how much inflation would change the current political order.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 1:57:12 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 14th of 20 in this recording

    inflation

    Interesting

  29. Our reading

    Milton Friedman's body of work rests on his collaborations with women, and without Anna Schwartz and Rose Friedman his resume would be far thinner than it is.

    Their wordsBut she shared many of his ideas and when I think of Friedman, if you take away Anna Schwartz, if you take away Rose Friedman, if you take away the other woman who collaborated with him, you have a much thinner resume than the one he actually has.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 2:33:21 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 15th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  31. Our reading

    Ayn Rand's strangeness was both her strength and her undoing, because she used herself as the model of humanity and never grasped how unlike other people she was.

    Their wordsThat was her strength because she's so unusual, but it was also her downfall because she looked to herself as a model or to get insight about humanity, and she never quite processed how different she was from other people.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 2:39:01 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 16th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  33. Our reading

    Objectivism's fundamental flaw is that it is justified by a fictional world rather than the real one, which makes it useless for understanding where we actually live.

    Their wordsThe big flaw is that it's justified through a fictional world. It's not justified through reference to the real world. It's not empirical in a way. It's not... Rand herself would say this. She's not writing about things how they are, but how they should be. That idealism just really undermines it as a mechanism to understand where we're actually living.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 2:50:19 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 17th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  35. Our reading

    The circle around Ayn Rand became totally conformist because its members held that rationality was the only way to decide anything and that being rational meant agreeing with her.

    Their wordsOver time, they all come to share Ayn Rand's views and opinions on everything, from music to art, to clothes. She gets a dining room table and a bunch of them get the same dining room table, and it becomes incredibly conformist, because they've all believed they're acting rationally. And they believe that to act rationally is to agree with Ayn Rand and they believe there's no other way to make decisions than rationality. To disagree with her is to be irrational.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 2:51:44 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 18th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  37. Our reading

    Popular postmodernism has turned into the opposite of what it began as, re-inscribing the binaries it set out to dissolve as oppressor and oppressed.

    Their wordsPostmodernism started about disrupting binaries. We're going to be fluid. We're going to go beyond the border. We're going to disrupt the binary. And it's devolved in its popular forms to the re-inscribing of many different binaries. Oppressor and oppressed has become this paradigmatic set of glasses you put on to understand the world.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 3:19:31 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 19th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting

  39. Our reading

    A genuinely original thought is nearly impossible, because everyone is born into traditions of thinking that most people never notice, let alone question.

    Their wordsSo I do think it's really hard to have an original thought. We are social creatures. We encounter the same situations again and again. And so it's really hard. You're born into these traditions of thinking and being and knowing. And most people are never going to question them, and most people are never going to become aware of them.
    spoken · official transcript hear it at 3:34:56 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Economics, Capitalism, Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #457youtube.com 20th of 20 in this recording

    Interesting