Milton Friedman

For Tom Friedman to Win His Bet, Friedmanism Must Go

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Gershom Gorenberg

Sometimes when I read Tom Friedman, I’m so taken by his bubbly optimism, I want to drink whatever he’s been sipping. Especially when he’s bubbling about Israel, as in “People vs. Dinosaurs” . Says Tom: In contrast to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who thinks that Israel is in its last days, zillionnaire investor Warren Buffett is putting lots of money on Israel’s rosy future. And Tom is betting with Buffet.

In principle, I’d agree. But for Buffet to hit the jackpot, Israel’s government will have to reject Friedmanism – all of Milton Friedmanism, and some of Tom Friedmanism.

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Missing the Bus, or Milton Friedman’s Legacy

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It’s Pesah, and the kids wanted to liberate Mom and Dad from their keyboards for a day of hiking, perhaps an overnight. We all have to leave our personal Egypts, after all. Nonetheless, I went back to screen, to check bus routes at the Egged bus site . Our family is among the holdouts, still living without a car. Once this was a normal Israeli lifestyle. Now it’s as strange as – say – being Orthodox and dovish. One might as well be Martian, or lack a cell phone. In town we walk, or take buses or cabs. I ride a bike. Occasionally, we rent a car for vacation, but to do that on Pesah, I would have to make a reservation before the tourists did, and pay way too much.

I thought of taking a hike I used to take with the kids, from Haifa University to Kibbutz Beit Oren in the middle of the Carmel forests and then down to the coast. My wife would have needed to skip the second half to get back to work. Once there was a bus from Beit Oren to Haifa. No longer,

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