In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
[very disorganized and the tangents need to be re-planted elsewhere but there's good stuff here]
An unabashed Milton Friedman acolyte made the point (a quotation?) that as long as exchanges are freely made between people, the net benefit has to be positive by definition.
Yes-- exactly-- but-- and there is a huge but-- there's little practical difference between a force-coerced exchange and an economic-coerced exchange. Indeed, it's the history and present of inequality to use force to back up the imposition of economic injustice.