Heh. Too good a line of argument to be David, but bad enough I was surprised it was Milton. Not that I know any other Friedmans than those two, but still.
[EDIT] Guess I should explain what's wrong with it. There are two chief problems:
1) It's not entirely clear which of these is going on without more context, but he's definitely either very wrong about a bunch of stuff or is operating, selectively on a definition of greed that is far too broad. I suspect the latter. This is what lets you pull tricks like "proving" that greed (extremely broad sense) is what makes the world run and then conclude "greed is good" like Michael Gecko (but you mean, specifically, the more narrow, generally-considered-a-vice kind—"huh, maybe not all greed is good" yeah, exactly my point, we have the word "greed" to describe the bad kind, it is all it describes). This and similar tricks are a favorite in... a certain crowd, let's say. You see it again with "This the world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests." Well... sure, if you do some tap-dancing with words you can make this seem true, but you're just playing games with semantics. "This world runs on individual cells pursuing their separate self-interests". I mean... yes, and also very much no.
2) This argument displays some major blind spots about the role of government in making markets function well, and in the nature of firms, such that several of his examples fall apart as soon as you think for half a second and some of his points should also apply to firms, but he refrains from taking that step, presumably because it would ruin the appealing simplicity of his argument. Again, pretty common error and/or deliberate trick to encounter in a certain category of writing.
[EDIT] Guess I should explain what's wrong with it. There are two chief problems:
1) It's not entirely clear which of these is going on without more context, but he's definitely either very wrong about a bunch of stuff or is operating, selectively on a definition of greed that is far too broad. I suspect the latter. This is what lets you pull tricks like "proving" that greed (extremely broad sense) is what makes the world run and then conclude "greed is good" like Michael Gecko (but you mean, specifically, the more narrow, generally-considered-a-vice kind—"huh, maybe not all greed is good" yeah, exactly my point, we have the word "greed" to describe the bad kind, it is all it describes). This and similar tricks are a favorite in... a certain crowd, let's say. You see it again with "This the world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests." Well... sure, if you do some tap-dancing with words you can make this seem true, but you're just playing games with semantics. "This world runs on individual cells pursuing their separate self-interests". I mean... yes, and also very much no.
2) This argument displays some major blind spots about the role of government in making markets function well, and in the nature of firms, such that several of his examples fall apart as soon as you think for half a second and some of his points should also apply to firms, but he refrains from taking that step, presumably because it would ruin the appealing simplicity of his argument. Again, pretty common error and/or deliberate trick to encounter in a certain category of writing.