This event information is posted as a courtesy to Northwood University.
Many business and government decisions have unintended byproducts, both positive and negative, which are known as externalities. Join us as Dr. David Friedman discusses a variety of government policies which stem from the existence of externalities and their effects on our daily lives.
The Northwood University Freedom Seminar is an annual symposium on the free-enterprise system led by distinguished academic and business leaders. The purpose of the seminar is to investigate topics of utmost interest to local, national, and global audiences.
The focus for this year’s Freedom Seminar is on economic freedom and development. A global trend toward increasing economic freedom in the first part of this century has lifted millions out of poverty. It led to improvements in health, education, civil rights, and self-reported life satisfaction.
Unfortunately, the trend toward increasing economic freedom has been reversed since 2020. There is reason to believe that this is not a mere interruption in response to the Covid pandemic, but a more permanent trend due to changing values and priorities of political and corporate elites. This year’s speakers will describe the relation between economic freedom and development, as well as the potential long-run consequences of — and the ethical issues related to — current business practices and government policies that threaten both.
There are two ways to participate in the freedom seminar. As a non-credit participant, you may register to one or more of the presentations of your choice or for access to the entire event. You may join in person or online. See below for the registration link through Northwood University.
Thursday, March 16, 2023
5:00 p.m. to 6:15 p.m.
Northwood University
McNair Center
4000 Whiting Dr.
Midland, MI 48640
Call our Events office at
For more information and to register visit https://www.northwood.edu/freedom-seminar
David Friedman is an academic economist with a doctorate in physics retired from twenty-three years teaching in a law school. His first book, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, was published in 1973 and includes a description of how a society with property rights and without government might function. There as elsewhere, he offers a consequentialist defense of libertarianism. His most recent non-fiction book is Legal Systems Very Different from Ours, covering systems from Periclean Athens through modern Amish and Romany. He is also the author of three novels, one commercially published and two self-published, and, with his wife, a self-published medieval and renaissance cookbook and a larger self-published book related to their hobby of historical recreation. Much of his published work, including journal articles, essays, drafts of forthcoming work and the full text of several books, can be read on his web page: www.daviddfriedman.com.
