Posts Tagged ‘the shock doctrine’
Hi.
So, I am currently reading a book called “the Shock Doctrine: rise of disaster capitalism” by Naomi Klein. I have not read all of it, I am currently lost somewhere in the third chapter. But it is sufficient that i feel the need to point at Milton Friedman, the guru of right-wing contra-revolution and laugh.
He is basically the guy who started the ideological movement of rightwing fanatics from University in Chicago, a group of dumbfucks that figure if you cause enough trauma to a country, you will subsequently have the opportunity to introduce a sort of *shock-capitalism* to said country because whatever opposition will be distracted by the trauma of war, invasion, ethnic cleansing, genocide, you name it. So then you have the window to introduce the ultimate free market, with deregulated toll barriers, tax cuts, privatization and the works.
So, this theory was first and foremost a theory, one of those “on-paper-only” “food-for-discussion” things. Until the coup in Chile 1973. Salvador Allende had been ruling the country for some time, democratically chosen and socialistic. Nationalisation, developmentarism, you name it. It was great. He got killed by Augusto Pinochet and his followers. The contra-revolution had started.
And the country which had been at a steady 3% unemployment got, thanks to Freidmans policy, as high as 30%. People got poor and had to spend (calculated) 74% of their paychecks on bread alone, something which before this capitalistic contra-revolution was less than 14% of their income due to price regulations. Over the course of 10 years, Freidman and his friends argued for more shock, more capitalism, less state interferance, saying it would fix everything. It didn’t. For everytime that puppet Pinochet deregulated and privatized, the people got worse off. Chile went from a stable planned economy in which its people flourished, to the laughing stock of the economical world. 307% Inflation, bitches!
Not until Pinochet got his mind twisted somewhat in the right direction and started nationalizing shit, Chiles economy got a little better.
So the point of this history lesson? It is to collectively (the best way) laugh at how the contra-revolution failed to do what it was supposed to, through free markets and privatization make the economy stable and the country rich, and instead it ruined the country completely.
No wait, that’s not funny, it’s infuriating and pathetic. Suppose we’re gonna have to keep fighting, then.
