| “ | It is of interest to note that a disproportionately large fraction of the people involved apparently went into the most competitive sectors of the economy-small businesses, trade, farming-where the market approaches most closely the ideal free market. No one who buys bread knows whether the wheat from which it is made was grown by a Communist or a Republican, by a constitutionalist or a Fascist, or, for that matter, by a Negro or a white. This illustrates how an impersonal market separates economic activities from political views and protects men from being discriminated against in their economic activities for reasons that are irrelevant to their productivity-whether these reasons are associated with their views or their color.
As this example suggests, the groups in our society that have the most at stake in the preservation and strengthening of competitive capitalism are those minority groups which can most easily become the object of the distrust and enmity of the majority-the Negroes, the Jews, the foreign-born, to mention only the most obvious. Yet, paradoxically enough, the enemies of the free market-the Socialists and Communists-have been recruited in disproportionate measure from these groups. Instead of recognizing that the existence of the attitudes of their fellow countrymen, they mistakenly attribute the residual discrimination to the market. |
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| — Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006) Capitalism and Freedom , 1962 |
