… is from page 245 of Jennifer Burns’s 2023 Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative:
It was not so much a philosophical difference as an epistemological one. Friedman simply did not believe policy-makers could accurately grasp what was happening in the economy, respond in a timely fashion, and correctly anticipate the outcome. Instead, his countervailing vision focused on stable monetary growth as the government’s chief responsibility toward economic life. Beyond that, allocation and exchange should be governed by prices, pulsing through the economy as signals of countless faceless exchanges. Prices couldn’t play favorites. Prices couldn’t be lobbied.