Liberty. It’s a simple idea, but it’s also the linchpin of a complex system of values and practices: justice, prosperity, responsibility, toleration, cooperation, and peace. Many people believe that liberty is the core political value of modern civilization itself, the one that gives substance and form to all the other values of social life. They’re called libertarians.
Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science, was one of the most recognizable and influential proponents of liberty and markets in the 20th century, and leader of the Chicago School of economics.
Many believe greater political participation is the path to both prosperity and virtue. But they’re wrong. Increasing the sphere of politics instead leads to bad policy and increased vice.
Noting that “wordsmith intellectuals” are disproportionately likely to lean left, Nozick attributes their animosity towards capitalism to the difference in value judgments and reward structure between formal schools and capitalist society at large.