David D. Friedman

Life and work

David Director Friedman is the son of economists Rose and Milton Friedman. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1965, with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics. He later earned a master's in 1967, and a PhD in 1971 in theoretical physics from the University of Chicago. Despite his later career, he never took a class for credit in either economics or law. He was a professor of law at Santa Clara University from 2005 to 2017, and a contributing editor for Liberty magazine. He is currently a professor emeritus. He is an atheist. His son, Patri Friedman, has also written about libertarian theory and market anarchism, particularly seasteading.

The Machinery of Freedom

In his book The Machinery of Freedom (1973), Friedman sketched a form of anarcho-capitalism where all goods and services including law itself can be produced by the free market. Friedman advocates an incrementalist approach to achieve anarcho-capitalism by gradual privatization of areas that government is involved in, ultimately privatizing the law itself. In the book, he states his opposition to violent anarcho-capitalist revolution.

He advocates a consequentialist version of anarcho-capitalism, arguing for it on a cost–benefit analysis of state versus no state. It is contrasted with the natural-rights approach as propounded most notably by economist and libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard.