Stephen Dubner

Or were they true believers and focused on what resonated most and just didn't really engage too much with the rest?

But the fact is that the Chicago economists, George Stigler and especially Milton Friedman, did promote Adam Smith as a sort of superhero of economic thought.

Glory Liu again.

Here, for instance, is Milton Friedman as host of the public television show Free to Choose.

This seemingly magical phenomenon, Friedman said, was driven by what is called the price mechanism.

Glory Liu likes to call this invisible hand waving.

In other words, if markets can organize themselves so well and so efficiently via the price mechanism, you certainly don't want the government mucking things up with unnecessary rules and regulations or, God forbid, with price controls.

Precisely.

Here is maybe your harshest indictment of Friedman and his colleagues at Chicago.

You write, perhaps the greatest consequence of the Chicago Smith, Adam Smith, was that it served to reframe the problems of modern American capitalism and modern society as problems that stemmed from government rather than the market itself.

What's your best evidence that the market itself is responsible for these problems of modern American capitalism?

But the version of Adam Smith that was promoted by Milton Friedman and others at the University of Chicago would resonate well beyond academia.

Politicians in the US and the UK began looking to Smith to shake up their struggling economies.

Coming up after the break, how one true believer brought Smith back to Britain just in time for a new revolution.

This is Freakonomics Radio.

We'll be right back.

In July of 2022, facing a fragile economy and a stream of personal scandals, Boris Johnson resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

The next prime minister chosen by the conservatives was Liz Truss, who had previously served as foreign secretary and international trade secretary.

Truss was an avowed fan of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In her agenda, cutting taxes and trimming government itself, this held considerable appeal for the Thatcherite wing of the Conservative Party.