Offering damages to people inconvenienced by you preventing them from “sin” would only provide incentive to sin more … in hopes of getting prevented and awarded damages.

First, the citations provided do not necessarily imply that Friedman’s view is a consequentialist one. Autor argues that if you knew with absolute certainty that what someone is doing is “wrong”, you wouldn’t be morally obliged to prevent him from doing so by virtue of not diminishing his free choice. But i ask, if you see a man about to murder a child, do you consider it morally acceptable to not prevent him doing it if you have the power to stop him? Not using one’s power to stop immoral act is itself immoral.

Off course, this whole argument is useless, because it is itself based on moral assumptions about “right” and “wrong”, ignoring the fact that these are only judgements done by humans, and as such cannot be absolute. Nonetheless, i think Friedman’s claim that if there were absolute moral knowledge it would imply autoritarian politics is correct.

I think Friedman was wise to avoid arguments based on moralistic beliefs precisely for this reason – it takes just different set of moral beliefs for such argument to be invalid. By building his arguments on facts and using purely rational approach, he ensured his argument will remain valid regardless of moral beliefs.