David Friedman on his father Milton

When my parents got married, they decided that there were certain things that were difficult to say and should therefore be replaced by numbers. Only one survived in actual usage. In their family  “number two” meant, in my family still means, “You were right and I was wrong.”

One reason is that it is shorter, so easier to say. A second reason is that using the number reminds speaker and audience that admitting error is a difficult and virtuous thing to do, which makes it easier to do it. A third reason is that using a family code reminds the speaker that he is speaking to people who love him, so are unlikely to take advantage of the confession of error to put him down.

My father used to be fond of the phrase “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” sometimes abbreviated TANSTAAFL. He eventually stopped using it on the grounds that it was not true, that both consumer and producer surplus are, in effect, free lunches. He replaced it with “Always look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Phrases he continued to use included “A bad carpenter blames his tools,” “It is a capital mistake to make the best the enemy of the good” and Cromwell’s “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” He referred to my carrying too many logs in from the woodshed to the fireplace in order to do it in fewer trips as a lazy man’s load.

Here is the full Substack post.