Excerpts from Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"

[Zorro]

For those justifiably concerned (like me) about the threats being made by Musk et. al. about what must happen to our market economy to bring it back in balance (and the "short term pain" that will cause), I thought it might be of interest to read about what happened in Chile when Pinochet took over and gave Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics unfettered reign...
...
"Pinochet held power for seventeen years, and during that time he changed political direction several times. The country’s period of steady growth that is held up as proof of its miraculous success did not begin until the mid-eighties – a full decade after the Chicago Boys implemented shock therapy and well after Pinochet was forced to make a radical course correction. That’s because in 1982, despite its strict adherence to Chicago doctrine, Chile’s economy crashed; its debt exploded, it faced hyperinflation once again and unemployment hit 30 percent – ten times higher than it was under Allende…

The situation was so unstable that Pinochet was forced to do exactly what Allende had done: he nationalized many of these companies…

It’s clear that Chile never was the laboratory of “pure” free markets that its cheerleaders claimed. Instead, it was a country where a small elite leapt from wealthy to super-rich in extremely short order – a highly profitable formula bankrolled by debt and heavily subsidized (then bailed out) with public funds. When the hype and salesmanship behind the miracle are stripped away, Chile under Pinochet and the Chicago boys was not a capitalist state featuring a liberated market but a corporatist one…

…What Chile pioneered under Pinochet was an evolution of corporatism: a mutually supporting alliance between a police state and large corporations, joining forces to wage all-out war on the third power sector – the workers – thereby drastically increasing the alliance’s share of the national wealth.

That war – what many Chileans understandably see as a war of the rich against the poor and middle class – is the real story of Chile’s economic “miracle”…

If that track record qualifies Chile as a miracle for Chicago school economists, perhaps shock treatment was never about jolting the economy into health. Perhaps it was meant to do exactly what it did – hoover wealth up to the top and shock much of the middle class out of existence."

[Lonestarblue]

1. Milton Friedman and his Chicago School of Economics had one goal--funnel all wealth yo the top 1%.

Friedman’s economic policies have caused enormous damage to thus country.

[yardwork]

2. And to the entire world.

[malaise]

3. THIS

Rec

[paulkienitz]

4. Economically, that's the definition of fascism

an economic system consisting of an alliance of corporations and their owners with a single-party authoritarian government. It's crony capitalism enforced by a police state.

To define fascism as a political movement is trickier, but as an economic system that's all there is to it, and it's now the system of both Russia and China.

[Hassler]

5. Anyone know where Friedman is buried?

I need to relieve myself.

[waterwatcher123]

6. You forgot to mention what Pinochet did with anyone who disagreed with these policies and the rampant inflation.

They were given a one-way ticket at night to go for a marathon swim in the Pacific Ocean.

This is an incredibly important book with lots of examples of how disaster capitalism has been employed in countries around the globe. We are about to get our first real example of how they plan to deploy it in the United States. The whole strategy is premised on a torture technique developed by two Canadians for the CIA (shock and awe) to get the population or individual to regress to the point where they accept highly unpopular ideas.

[rubbersole]

7. Stopping the wealth transfer to the top...

...appears to be on hold. Waiting for further instructions from President Musk.

[duhneece]

8. No book has scared me more

I read Stephen Pinker’s ‘Better Angels..’ as an antidote to the despair that book brought me.
Today I have no antidote…except hope in small doses and connections with other local Democrats and DU.

[Passages]

9. Naomi Klein is brilliant and I wish she was wrong.

Far from it.

[malaise]

11. I bought that book thanks to Recommendations from. DUers weeks after its

Last edited Mon Dec 2, 2024, 08:35 PM - Edit history (1)

Initial release.

[Magoo48]

10. For the foreseeable future, the billionaires and the rest of the one percent must

be shunned, boycotted, and resisted in ever possible way we can imagine. They and their man in the White House, and all their minions, have to be boxed in somehow and rendered irrelevant as can be. With or without Orangeina, this nation cannot be healthy with them and their crippling influence.

[ProfessorPlum]

12. this is THE most important book for understanding what is about to happen to the US

and everyone should read it and let it sink in. Especially the first chapter about electroshock therapy, the chapters on Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, and the final chapter about hope after shock therapy.