In The Bob Zadek Show, “freedom to choose” is the phrase Bob Zadek repeatedly borrows from Milton Friedman to name the core libertarian idea. Zadek introduces it as a definition — freedom means the freedom to choose — and then applies it as a test to whatever the week’s guest studies: tax policy, tariffs, work, cities, or war. The excerpts show the phrase doing two jobs at once: it is a slogan inherited from Friedman’s book and PBS series Free to Choose, and it is an analytical claim that individual decisions, aggregated in markets, outperform decisions made by officials.
The Friedman phrase and the marketplace
Zadek opens the March 2013 episode by crediting Milton Friedman: as Friedman said in his book and television series Free to Choose, freedom means the freedom to choose. Zadek lists what this covers — living where one wishes, buying what one wants, paying the price one wants or not, voting for whom one wants — and calls it no abstraction, because economists and political scientists determine whether a product or idea is wanted by letting the marketplace decide Where is Everyone Going? (2013). He attributes the pricing mechanism to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market,” arguing that value is set by millions of individual decisions and that this collective decision-making is a more accurate predictor of worth than a dictate from Washington, Sacramento or Albany.
The same episode extends the market metaphor to government itself. Zadek asks Travis Brown what the lessons of How Money Walks are for the political class in California, Texas, Florida, Maine and Nevada, describing state governments as competing in a marketplace for businesses and taxpayers Where is Everyone Going? (2013). Brown, the book’s author, answers that when you raise the price of work and make it harder to collect disposable income, you can expect to see less of it, and that taxpayers move to jurisdictions like Las Vegas and Phoenix in relatively large numbers. Zadek frames the movement as a direct result of punitive tax policies in the losing states and sound tax policies in the winning ones, and compares it to immigration — the same issue with country-to-country movement rather than state-to-state.
Tariffs as denial of choice
In the April 2018 episode with David Boaz, Zadek applies the phrase to trade policy. A tariff, he says, is a tax; raising the price of something means people buy less of it or change behavior. A tariff on Canadian newsprint therefore denies individuals and businesses the freedom to buy the cheaper, better product, for the benefit of a domestic newsprint industry — a denial of what he calls, using Friedman’s phrase, the freedom to choose David Boaz on the Libertarian Ethos (2018). Zadek concedes there are beneficiaries of such a tariff but argues the volume of benefit to the few is far outweighed by the collective detriment to the rest.
Boaz, identified by Zadek as Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, supplies the polling context. He says most Americans hold the libertarian view on many issues, and that when asked whether they would describe themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, 59% said yes. He attributes the public’s unfamiliarity with the word “libertarian” to journalists and cable television talking only about liberal and conservative, and notes that 40 years earlier libertarians were saying the military draft should end — and it did.
Work, licensing and the gig economy
The July 2020 episode turns the phrase against worker-protection laws. Zadek describes California’s AB 5 and similar measures as government protecting people from their freedom, because the decision about how to spend the workday is treated as too important to be left to the individual Terrible New Worker “Protection” Laws Threaten the Gig Economy (2020). He frames the show as being about protection from one’s own free choice about whom to work for, how to work, the hours worked, and what one does. The episode’s summary states that the discussion covers how such laws, often driven by union interests and a desire for tax revenue, strip millions of workers — particularly women and minorities — of the freedom to choose flexible work arrangements.
Freedom to choose where you live
In the June 2020 episode on the future of cities, Zadek argues that the virus is severing the mandated connection between where you live and where you work. Once that link is broken, he says, you pick where you want to live and what social life to have there, and the concept of where you work disappears — you add value by brain, skill and labor and are paid for it, and the value can be added from anywhere it works The Future of Cities (2020). He calls this enormous freedom for workers who previously had to live where the job was, says it gives him goosebumps, and predicts cities will always provide a cultural and social base and collaboration where needed, but the choice will be yours. He again credits the phrase to Milton Friedman.
Self-determination abroad
The June 2014 episode with Ivan Eland applies the phrase to foreign policy. Zadek says part of the American ethos and DNA is fervent lip service to a people’s right of self-determination — people can pick the form of government they choose to live under — and invokes, in his words, the Milton Friedman phrase, freedom to choose United Iraq Falls: Ivan Eland on Partitioning for Peace (2014). He then calls American policy in Iraq anti-self-determination, because the factions are forced to live under a government against their will and the Maliki government is given the arms to suppress those who want self-determination. Eland, the guest, argues that oil is not really a strategic commodity, that the market is the best means to get oil, and that the real reason troops remain in the Persian Gulf is to keep a thumb on everybody else’s oil, including that of allies and China.
Across episodes: the same phrase, different targets
The excerpts show no development in the concept itself: Zadek uses the identical Friedman attribution in 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2020, and the phrase’s meaning does not change between them. What changes is the target. Travis Brown supplies IRS-data evidence of tax-driven migration in 2013; David Boaz supplies polling and the observation that Americans hold libertarian views without knowing the word in 2018; Kim Kavin’s episode applies the phrase to AB 5 and independent contractors in 2020; Brent Orrell’s to remote work and cities in 2020; and Ivan Eland’s to Iraqi self-determination in 2014. Each guest advances the application in his or her own domain, but the definition stays Zadek’s.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state what How Money Walks concludes beyond the migration findings Brown describes, nor the outcome of any case or statute discussed. They do not give the text or provisions of AB 5, the PRO Act, or the tariff on Canadian newsprint, and they do not say what became of the migration trends or the gig-economy laws after the episodes aired. Several sections break off mid-sentence — Zadek’s monologue at 03:22 in the 2013 episode, his remarks at 19:53 and 46:11, and the opening of the 2018 episode — so the arguments that followed are not available here.