Imagine what could have been.

When thinking of the late Milton Friedman, one surely recalls his contributions in forging the "Chicago School" of economics, the group of influential free-market academics at the University of Chicago who rocketed to international acclaim during the middle parts of the 20th century.

Before that, though, Mr. Friedman called the University of Wisconsin home. Most folks around here probably don't know that, and it's hard to blame them — Mr. Friedman spent only one year in Madison.

Unfortunately, it was not a banner tour of duty. In a 1991 interview in Stanford, Calif., he called his stay in Wisconsin "the most traumatic event" of his formative years as an economist.

The year was 1940, and Mr. Friedman had been lured to UW by an arts and sciences dean seeking to bolster the economics department. Equipped with a high salary and tenured position, the fledgling economist soon drew hostility from his colleagues, who viewed him as a cocky east coaster being forced upon them by the dean. Relationships were also strained by Mr. Friedman's outspoken advocacy in favor of the United States entering World War II, which did not sit well with many in the department. Several people in the department were even strong German sympathizers.

Furthermore, Mr. Friedman became embroiled in a heated interdepartmental feud. At the time, the school of business was trying to take over the economics department. The business school resented the dean's attempts to keep the department an autonomous unit — such as through the hiring of Mr. Friedman. Add shades of anti-Semitism to the mix, and it became too much for the economist. He left UW after one year.

That Mr. Friedman, the 20th century's greatest opponent of government interference in the market, was forced out of Wisconsin in part because of the business school's meddling in others' affairs is a great irony. And Chicago capitalized on it, landing Mr. Friedman a few years later. The rest is history.

Of course, a Friedman-led "Wisconsin School" of economics was probably never in the offing anyway. He didn't even obtain his PhD until several years after his stint at UW. Madison was a temporary stop en route to bigger and better things.

But then, who knows? If treated better, maybe he would have stuck around the Badger State. What could have been?

Today, Mr. Friedman's views can seem less than revolutionary. His support of laissez-faire capitalism, control of inflation through the money supply and other ideas have become so ingrained in modern economic thought that it is hard to conceive of how groundbreaking they were decades ago.

Quite importantly, Mr. Friedman refused to let his ideas be confined solely to the realm of academia. He brought his support of personal freedom and free-market solutions to the masses in a Newsweek column during the 1960s, '70s and '80s. His was a simple message that people could easily latch onto, backed by hard empirical evidence from the time; he had predicted (though not coined the term of) stagflation, the combination of high price inflation and a stagnating economy with rising unemployment that reared its head in the '70s.

His monetarist views earned him a Nobel Prize, and he argued the Great Depression could have been lessened considerably if the Federal Reserve had known what to do with the money supply. He argued that there is a "natural rate of unemployment," and that inflation will occur if the government artificially attempts to go below it.

Sadly, people in Madison just didn't have any need for him in the '40s. Some probably don't today, either. Dave Zweiful of The Capital Times recently commemorated Mr. Friedman's death by decrying him as a corporate shill bent on screwing poor people. He remarkably bemoaned Mr. Friedman's insistence on letting people — and not the government — control their own destinies.

Alas, Milton Friedman's destiny was not in Wisconsin. Now that's something I'll bemoan.

Ryan Masse ([email protected]) is the editorial board chairman of The Badger Herald.