is Milton Friedman a geo-libertarian?

[FrankChodorov]

Here's an excerpt from an interview of Milton Friedman by Hillsdale
College's president, Larry Arndt. The full text can be found at:

http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/

~~~~
LA: Let me ask you about demographic trends. Columnist Mark Steyn
writes that in ten years, 40 percent of young men in the world are
going to be living in oppressed Muslim countries. What do you think
the effect of that is going to be?

MF: What happens will depend on whether we succeed in bringing some
element of greater economic freedom to those Muslim countries. Just as
India in 1955 had great but unrealized potential, I think the Middle
East is in a similar situation today. In part this is because of the
curse of oil. Oil has been a blessing from one point of view, but a
curse from another. Almost every country in the Middle East that is
rich in oil is a despotism.

LA: Why do you think that is so?

MF: One reason, and one reason onlythe oil is owned by the
governments in question. If that oil were privately owned and thus
someone's private property, the political outcome would be freedom
rather than tyranny. This is why I believe the first step following
the 2003 invasion of Iraq should have been the privatization of the
oil fields. If the government had given every individual over 21 years
of age equal shares in a corporation that had the right and
responsibility to make appropriate arrangements with foreign oil
companies for the purpose of discovering and developing Iraq's oil
reserves, the oil income would have flowed in the form of dividends to
the peoplethe shareholdersrather than into government coffers. This
would have provided an income to the whole people of Iraq and thereby
prevented the current disputes over oil between the Sunnis, Shiites
and Kurds, because oil income would have been distributed on an
individual rather than a group basis.

[d_goddard]

Milton is a hell of a good guy.

[dalebert]

A friend suggested something similar-- that each family get a portion of oil profits in a socialist manner. I suggested as an alternative pretty much exactly what Friedman suggested, or pretty close. I would have allowed distribution of shares in the oil company based on existing family size of the citizens at a certain point in time. Basically like a one-time homesteading. You people are here right now as Iraq is becoming a free country and you all own some of it.

That's crucial for the plan to work so that it's not just an alternate form of socialism. That way a family isn't encouraged to have 20 kids to get more loot and foreigners aren't enticed to move there and suddenly get benefits from the oil. The family owns what it owns and having more kids will mean a smaller inheritance for each. Of course the shares can split as the company grows and such and people can then buy and sell it as they wish and invest in other markets or use the capital to start their own businesses. Without that sort of individual control and opportunity, it won't get the true benefit of the free market.

[FrankChodorov]

That way a family isn't encouraged to have 20 kids to get more loot

just limit it to age of majority...