ZadekpediaFree to Choose is a book and PBS television series by Milton Friedman, invoked repeatedly across episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as a statement of the principle that freedom means the freedom to choose. The excerpts do not give the book’s publication date, its contents, or its argument in detail; they show it functioning as a shared reference for host and guests alike.
The principle
In the 2013 episode on state tax migration, Bob Zadek introduced the work directly: he said Milton Friedman wrote and hosted Free to Choose, and that “freedom means the freedom to choose.” Bob set out the marketplace of ideas at length — that the way to determine whether an idea or product is what people want is to let the marketplace decide, that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market” sets prices and determines desirability, and that the pricing mechanism is set by millions of individual decisions rather than by a dictate from Washington, Sacramento or Albany Where is Everyone Going? (2013).
In the 2019 episode on healthcare, Bob described the series as a PBS series from the ’70s, still available on YouTube, and noted that its title pairs two words “near and dear to the heart of libertarians and other Americans.” He asked Sally Pipes how the choice factor — selecting a doctor, changing a doctor, getting a second opinion — plays into treatment under a single-payer system Sally Pipes on the High Cost of Free Stuff (2019).
Invocations by guests
Pipes, a healthcare scholar, called Milton Friedman and his wife Rose “the absolute best” and said Milton was her mentor. She said Friedman wrote the foreword to her first book, Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer, and that he was a fan of choice and competition, which she said work in most aspects of life but not in K-12 public education or the healthcare system Sally Pipes on the High Cost of Free Stuff (2019).
In the 2018 episode on charter cities, Dr. Mark Lutter said that Estonia, after breaking away from the Soviet Union following its collapse, embraced markets, and that legend holds its Prime Minister had read one book on economics — Free to Choose — and that the country had since become extremely successful with an e-government system he called the envy of the world The End of Nation-States? (2018).
In the 2022 episode on occupational licensing, Bob interrupted Dick Carpenter to note that Carpenter had mentioned both Milton Friedman and Free to Choose in the same hour, saying “you didn’t sneak that one by.” Carpenter’s account concerned the teeth whitening case: entrepreneurs using over-the-counter mild chemicals to whiten teeth in mall kiosks, dentists treating this as within their exclusive scope of practice, and the Supreme Court finding that the dental board was engaged in anti-competitive activity New data shows that occupational licensing does nothing to increase quality (2022).
Natural rights
In the 2019 episode with C. Bradley Thompson, Thompson argued that natural rights are not created by government and are not inherent in man in the sense that one could find them by opening a man up; they are, he said, a discovery made by examining human nature. He said rights recognize that man is a rational and volitional being, that it is necessary and right for man to be free to choose and pursue actions required to support his life, and that the concept was discovered by Enlightenment philosophers, most notably John Locke, and institutionalized first and most importantly by America’s founding fathers C. Bradley Thompson on America’s Revolutionary Mind (2019).
Across episodes
Two episodes from August 2022 — one dated August 7 and one dated August 10 — open with nearly identical introductions by Bob Zadek, both stating that in 1980 Milton Friedman wrote Free to Choose, describing it as the classic inquiry into the relationship between freedom and economics, noting the later PBS series hosted by Friedman, and applying it to public education and Arizona’s universal school choice legislation with Matt Beienburg of the Goldwater Institute Arizona’s School Choice Reform is a Model for the Nation (2022) Arizona’s School Choice Reform is a Model for the Nation (2022). The episodes otherwise show the work invoked in separate domains rather than a question argued and developed across episodes: tax migration in 2013, charter cities in 2018, healthcare and natural rights in 2019, school choice and occupational licensing in 2022.