David Director Friedman (born February 12, 1945) is an American economist, physicist, legal scholar, and anarcho-capitalist theorist.[third-party source needed] Although his academic training was in chemistry and physics and not law or economics, he is known for his textbook writings on microeconomics and the libertarian theory of anarcho-capitalism, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom.[2] Described by Walter Block as a "free-market anarchist" theorist,[3] Friedman has also authored several other books and articles, including Price Theory: An Intermediate Text (1986), Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters (2000), Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (1996), and Future Imperfect (2008).[4]
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.[10]
Friedman is a longtime member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, where he is known as Duke Cariadoc of the Bow. He is known throughout the worldwide society for his articles on the philosophy of recreationism and practical historical recreations, especially those relating to the medieval Middle East.[13] His work is compiled in the popular Cariadoc's Miscellany.[14] He is sometimes credited with founding the largest and longest-running SCA event, the Pennsic War; as king of the Middle Kingdom he challenged the East Kingdom, and later as king of the East accepted the challenge and lost (to himself).[15]
He was a teenage wargamer who taught his school friend, Jack Radey, founder of People's War Games, how to play such wargames as Tactics II.[16] Radey relates how Friedman and himself wrote to Charles S. Roberts claiming that they had found a first turn winning strategy for each of the two sides. Roberts replied that their interpretation of the rules was valid.[16][better source needed]
He is a long-time science fiction fan, and has written three novels. Harald (Baen Books, 2006) is set in an invented world drawn from European history.[17]Salamander (2011) and its sequel Brothers (2020) are fantasy.
^"The Machinery of Freedom"(PDF). p. 124. Archived(PDF) from the original on 17 December 2013. Retrieved 25 November 2012. Much is made in libertarian circles of the division between 'Austrian' and 'Chicago' schools of economic theory, largely by people who understand neither. I am classified as 'Chicago'.
