The first video in the video case assignment was Milton Friedman – Population and Ecology. The video was from a 1977 Q and A session where Professor Friedman takes on an environmental query. The first question Dr. Friedman was asked was; in light of the pressures from the ecology and population, how should this alter the economic policies of our country? Dr. Friedman replied that the U.S. is under populated by the standards of almost any place in the world. What is desirable is a system in which parents, people who choose to have children, bear the costs and the full responsibility of those children. If we have a system of this kind under which you do not artificially encourage population or artificially discourage population, then you will end up with the right population. The figment of Malthusianism is real in some parts of the world, but it has not been real in the advanced countries of the world. Dr. Friedman says, the rate of population growth has been slowing down in the United States. Most of the country now has fewer people per acre than it did 100 years ago. This is because people have voluntarily chosen to move to bigger cities.
Dr. Friedman says the only reason we have so much more attention to ecology and population today than we did 50 or 75 years ago, is because we are rich enough to be able to afford the luxury. The water is cleaner and safer to drink today than it was 100 years ago. Not only is the water cleaner in the U.S., but it is cleaner all over the world. The air today is cleaner than it was in the past and the automobile has been a source of less pollution, not more.
Dr. Friedman says we should not create more myths that somehow or other we have been destroying an untroubled continent. Today, we have more acres of woods growing due to a very profitable lumber industry. The greatest measure to protect wildlife has not come from government,