31 ms·

Could a unified theory of modern life really be this simple/scary? (quick vid)

7 points by NSX2 19y ago

This is a the site of an author of a book. I am in no way affiliated with this site, the author or the publisher of the book. I have not read the book, it was just recommended to me and I came across the link when I Googled it. On the left side you'll notice an embedded YouTube video; it is about 6 minutes. I've watched it and although it is, to say the least, a bit propoganda-ish, at the same time something about the proposed thesis intuitively struck me as neatly explaining the mess that we've all collectively experienced over the last few decades in general and the last 7 years or so in particular. It's almost like I sensed the thesis proposed, but I couldn't quite figure out how to quite express it. Again, I haven't read the book yet, and so I hold no particular opinion on it either way, but if the book is anything like what I imagine it based on the YouTube video, at the very least it would be one of the more original things I've read in a while (I tend to read a lot). I'd be interested on anybody's feedback if you care to invest 5-6 minutes to watch the video.

NSX2 19y ago
This is the site of an author of a book. I am in no way affiliated with this site, the author or the publisher of the book. I have not read the book, it was just recommended to me and I came across the link when I Googled it. On the left side you'll notice an embedded YouTube video; it is about 6 minutes. I've watched it and although it is, to say the least, a bit propoganda-ish, at the same time something about the proposed thesis intuitively struck me as neatly explaining the mess that we've all collectively experienced over the last few decades in general and the last 7 years or so in particular. It's almost like I sensed the thesis proposed, but I couldn't quite figure out how to quite express it. Again, I haven't read the book yet, and so I hold no particular opinion on it either way, but if the book is anything like what I imagine it based on the YouTube video, at the very least it would be one of the more original things I've read in a while. I'd be interested on anybody's feedback if you care to invest 5-6 minutes to watch the video.
DavidBlack 19y ago
I've just watched the video. Naomi Klein (the author) is a respected and thoughtful academic. Her previous book ('No Logo') was well received around the world. The ideas she presents here are obviously true: Governments and corporations are colluding to exploit the poor and powerless by profiteering from disaters (natural or man made). They get away with it by doing it at moments of national or global crisis, when the voting public has been shocked into momentary helplesness by disasters such as 9/11 or the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia.
- NSX2 19y ago
  It seems you've read the book, then? I could be wrong, but from what you're saying / what I saw on the video there's a strong implication, I'm wondering - if you read the book, is it actually stated, inferred, hinted, ignored, etc.: In other words, if it benefits policy-makers/corporations to have a disaster - political, natural, economic, etc. - as a prelude to shoving massive change that would otherwise be unnacceptable in nature or scope while people are too busy recovering from disaster, well, does that mean then that policy-makers/corporations would have a strong incentive to actually invest in the creation of the disasters? In other words, since businesses are based on plans and plans are based on predictability, why wait for "nature to take her course?" when you could "push the hand" to setup disasters to get the scenario that would most likely benefit your company's particular "market solution"?
  - yters 19y ago
    They do this in Michael Crichton's "State of Fear."
- davidw 19y ago
  I'm pulling the emergency "send it back to reddit" handle on this story/thread!
  - NSX2 19y ago
    You know, for a guy whose post-history seems like a random sampling of Yahoo News and Economist articles, most of which have nothing to do with anything interesting, you're a bit snobby. If I had the power to "pull the emergency send it back to reddit" handle on your stories, well, your submissions would be reduced by 80%.
    - davidw 19y ago
      The difference being: most of my submissions are pretty easily classified as 'hacker news', rather than political polemics from the likes of Naomi Klein, Murray Rothbard, Karl Marx or Hayek, all of whom might have something to say that's interesting in some other context. I didn't mean to be snobby, I meant to be very clear that I hope people don't submit this kind of thing to this site, be it left or right wing. I follow a lot of economics 'blogs', but pretty much refrain from posting them here. I think they're interesting, but off topic, and likely to lead to even more off topic discussions.
joe24pack 19y ago
Anyone remember how quickly the gargantuan "Patriot Act" suddenly appeared just after the September 11th attacks? I know it sounds very tinfoil hat-ish, but I figure the "Patriot Act" was written long before those attacks that supposedly precipitated it.
- NSX2 19y ago
  Good point. A few years back I was keeping track of this site that kept track of all the "executive orders" that were being signed post 9.11. The first half year later they had a thorough analysis of each executive order. Soon so many executive orders, each more disturbing than the last, were being signed that they gave up analyzing them completley and just had quick summaries. Then soon they couldn't keep up and just listed them with links to info obtained by freedom of information orders. In 2004, they were "executive ordering" at the rate of about 30,000 new pieces of "emergency legislation" per year and the site just shut down, unable to keep up. NOW YOU JUST KNOW that dude from Texas isn't penning 30,000 pieces of legislation per year. Heck - with all the vacationing, it's a wonder he even gets to sign it all. Seems like you're right - all these things were prepared way in advance, just waiting for an opportunity.
- klein_waffle 19y ago
  It's not tinfoil-hatish at all! People in Washington would be very bad at their jobs if they waited for a favorable opportunity before writing up policies and laws. You never know, tomorrow there might be a presidential sex scandal and you can get your proposal funded in exchange for your steadfast support. The fact that the Patriot Act was drafted quickly proves that there is a security establishment, waiting to pounce on opportunity. It doesn't prove that 9-11 was somehow caused by such a group.
asdflkj 19y ago
This is an ad hominem attack on the free market. "It wasn't born in freedom and democracy", therefore it must be bad. She makes the laughable assumption that the majority of people know what's good for them. 2004 election proves otherwise.
- NSX2 19y ago
  Ad hominem attack? How is it an ad hominem attack? An ad hominem attack means you can't argue with the thesis so you personally attack the person putting forth the thesis in attempt to discredit the logic of the arguement by attacking the credibility of the person making it. "It wasn't born in freedom and democracy, therefore it must be bad." That's nowhere near an ad hominem. And basica logic would tend to indicate that if there are 2 sets of mutually exclusive, bad and good value conditions, "not good set" would tend to leave "bad set" as the only remaining possibility. Also when you say, "She makes the laughable assumption thta the majority of people know what's good for them", you kind of tend to implicitly agree with her thesis. It's almost like you're suggesting that everybody is an idiot, therefore everyone needs a big-brother type group making problems and then exploiting the resulting panic to shove solutions down everyone's throat because left to their own devices, people don't know any better.
  - asdflkj 19y ago
    Her main thesis is that free market capitalism is bad. She doesn't try to disprove that free market capitalism is good. Instead, she attacks the character of famous proponents of it, by suggesting that they forced their will upon the unwilling populace. That's ad hominem. I neither agree nor disagree with her about this last part, because I don't know enough about it. But I give her the benefit of the doubt. The only way her argument could be not an ad hominem is if there was a causal link between the merit of the idea she is attacking and the populace's willingness to accept it. All I was trying to say is that there is no such link. I am not offering any solutions; just pointing out bad logic.
    - NSX2 19y ago
      >> Her main thesis is that free market capitalism is bad. Not really her thesis at all. Her main thesis is that we're not really even given a chance to experience free market capitalism, we're just told we're experiencing it by people who are force-feeding us "free market solutions" during times when we're not thinking clearly (after a disaster) and that these solutions would never actually be adopted by people through a legitimate free market system. I think she's not so much arguing against free market capitalism as saying that what passes for it is really a centrally-managed sham. >> Instead, she attacks the character of famous proponents >> of it, by suggesting that they forced their will upon >> the unwilling populace. That's ad hominem. She doesn't "suggest" that they forced their will upon an unwilling populace, she points to an actual, documented and verifiable economic doctrine of a person who advices presidents and Federal Reserve boards. If she implies it, that is an attack on their character. If they themselves have actually said that this is a good way to force development that would otherwise be impossible in face of free-market opposition, than they damn themselves - she's just saying, "Look at their own words and theories, and see if recent history seems to follow this pattern, if it does, then these people are doing it on purpose - and they even claim as much themselves." >> The only way her argument could be not an ad hominem is >> if there was a causal link between the merit of the >> idea she is attacking and the populace's willingness to >> accept it. I'm not sure, I wasn't there, but I doubt any of the people affected by the Asian Tsunami would have given up their beachfront property for chump change to major corporations in the hospitality business who wanted to build resorts BEFORE they were traumatized by natural disaste, like they did after. Or take domestic matters - how many people would have put up with all the domestic surveillance B.S. we have here now if no such thing like 9.11 happened? Or New Orleans - hospitals and such shut down to be torn down to make way for upscale property development - what resident would have agreed to that prior to Katrina? None. But after, they were in no position to agree/disagree with anything because most of them didn't even have a place to live. I think she's basically saying that what passes for "free market capitalism" is a sham perpetuated by people whose ideas/solutions would never be adopted in a free market system and so they rely on the irrational emotions produced by disaster to get otherwise weak ideas through the market mechanisms. In other words, if there were no disaster, many "free market solutions" that saw the light of day after disasters would never actually be accepted in a free market. This then leaves open a disturbing scenario: at what point do people whose economic contributions would never be adopted by others unless it was in a state of fear, panic, shock, emotion, etc., consider it useful to actually initiate disaster in order to have their ideas accepted more readily?
Tichy 19y ago
Bullshit! Of course politicians use certain tools to control the emotion of the people (start a war, raise the price of beer, whatever), but that has nothing to do with free markets. The movie just mixes together totally unrelated things and claims a connection - in that way actually doing the same thing it proposes: showing shocking pictures to make people believe anything. So who is Naomi Klein, a Super-Communist? I haven't read her books, and now I guess I never will.
- andreyf 19y ago
  but that has nothing to do with free markets The connection they make is that Milton Friedman was the one making the (for the authors) convenient connection between shock and change. The "crisis - real or perceived" quote sounds pretty condemning. You are right to point out that this is not an argument against his economic policies (which are assumed to be bad), but against how he suggested they be implemented.
  - Tichy 19y ago
    I don't know much about Milton Friedman, but I can't imagine his main suggestion was to push things into a crisis to bring about change. You don't become one of the most economists with such a thesis. Rather, I suspect that the quote was taken out of context or blown out of proportion. You can find something weird to quote from anyone. I am sure you could find a quote by Paul Graham and work it into that video to replace the Miltion Friedman quote, for example.
    - NSX2 19y ago
      Well, I don't think he ever EXPLICITLY stated that an effort should be made to "push" things into a state of crisis, he just EXPLICITLY said that a crisis should be exploited when people are emotional and irrational to push forward "free market" developments that, ironically, would never actually see the light of day in an actual, bona fide free market system. Milton seemed to have a strange, incongruous view of life, namely, that democratic, free-market developments AS HE SAW FIT were the best thing for people at large, and such developments as he saw fit should be adopted by the people at large regardless of whether they actually want to adapt it. His economic argument in ways mirrors bush's political doctrine of "liberating" iraq and "spreading democracy" through military force, whether people want it or not. Same thing happened in Vietnam, where a "free market system" democratically chose to organize itself according to decentralized communist structures and washington flew in a fit of rage and assumed that no way a democratic free market would ever democratically vote anything other than what washington saw as proper, so there must be something wrong and so intervention was necessary. Same thing happened when Palestinians were pressured into having democratic elections, they democratically elected Hamas, and washington declared the elections invalid simply because the outcome, left to a bona fide democratic free market process, turned out different than expected. I think what you're saying is simply implied in her thesis, ie, if they explicitly state that crisis should be exploited to bypass natural populist resistance to "free market solutions" that would never be accepted in a bona fide free market, then economic theory would suggest that the prime actors behind these sub-par economic solutions would EVENTUALLY find it in their self-interest to either initiate the crisis or invest in other actors to do so by proxy. But she never actually says this, it's just implied. As for Milton Friedman's quote taken out of context, it actually isn't taken out of context at all. He wrote TONS of op-ed pieces for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, and they were almost all related to tragedies experience over the last decade or so. South-Korean economy crash, BCCI scandal, dot-com crash, 9-11, war in Afghanistan, Palestinian conflict, war in Iraq, Asian tsunami, Katrina, etc. He follows the same pattern predictably: Horrible disaster, followed by his op-ed pieces, usually along these lines: "This event (whatever) is a horrible, horrible tragedy and millions are suffering. But it's also a wonderful new opportunity to try some ideas I've been trying to get adopted for years." The question is, why does he see tragedy as a wonderful new opportunity? According to Klein, no suggestion is ever offered other than that after a tragedy, people are too week and child-like and desperate to offer resistance. If this mechanism is prevalent (and she provides evidenct that it is, at least enough), then that leads us to conclude that most "free market" solutions are nothing of the sort and are instead centrally managed exploitations by people whose ideas would never actually be successful in a free market. Now, to the extent that such people have had success in times of crisis, and to the extent that you think that it is in their interest to initiate crisis, well - that would be a plausible connection, but to the best of my knowledge she never explicitly states that. But it's interesting to consider that you and I have both jumped to that scenario, ie, "But wait a minute - that would mean that ..." And we're not even beneficiaries of such a mechanism. If we can think that, isn't it plausible that people who have hundreds of billions of dollars at stake might think that also? No? Why not? Because the super rich and politically powerful are all wonderful, ethical people who have our best interests in mind and they would never stoop so low as to prosper at the expense of those economically and politically weaker than they are? Please.
mercurio 19y ago
No.
Excedrin 19y ago
The style of this video reminded me of Adam Curtis' The Century Of The Self and The Trap - What Happened to our Dream of Freedom perhaps with a little Michael Moore sensationalism mixed in, but I'm not sure if that's enough of a reason to buy and read the book.
klein_waffle 19y ago
I think the analogy to torture is a little bit stretched but there's nothing controversial about the underlying facts. 1) there is a consensus among the global business elite, and some of the government elite, about how things ought to be run: Western-style democracy with the flow of goods and capital as unrestricted as possible. 1b) Partially this is self-interest, and partially it's a belief in a near-Randian libertarianism that has become dogma in the American right, despite it never having been really tried. (Because they can't get their agenda implemented in stable democracies). In this philosophy, government is a parasite that first feeds off of, and then strangles, the true activity of free people: business. 2) But almost no country believes in doctrinaire free markets, especially poor ones struggling to develop a mixed economy. 3) When great crises arise, these government and business elites are needed to funnel money and talent. They use the opportunity to advance their agenda. 3b) In certain cases, they don't mind making crises, and will even make them worse, in the belief that the world will then reorder itself to the state they deem to be natural and good, where markets rule. The extreme version of this is Iraq, where planners seemed less concerned about providing stability than free markets. An even more insidious form: see the documentary "Our Brand is Crisis". You will see American consultants considered to be left-wing, like James Carville, manipulating a crisis in a Third World country to elect a leader whose faith in the market is not shared by the public. This is all caused by people who are good and nice and believe they are helping the countries involved. No conspiracy theory required.

7 points by NSX2 19y ago

NSX2 19y ago

This is the site of an author of a book. I am in no way affiliated with this site, the author or the publisher of the book. I have not read the book, it was just recommended to me and I came across the link when I Googled it. On the left side you'll notice an embedded YouTube video; it is about 6 minutes. I've watched it and although it is, to say the least, a bit propoganda-ish, at the same time something about the proposed thesis intuitively struck me as neatly explaining the mess that we've all collectively experienced over the last few decades in general and the last 7 years or so in particular. It's almost like I sensed the thesis proposed, but I couldn't quite figure out how to quite express it. Again, I haven't read the book yet, and so I hold no particular opinion on it either way, but if the book is anything like what I imagine it based on the YouTube video, at the very least it would be one of the more original things I've read in a while. I'd be interested on anybody's feedback if you care to invest 5-6 minutes to watch the video.

DavidBlack 19y ago

I've just watched the video. Naomi Klein (the author) is a respected and thoughtful academic. Her previous book ('No Logo') was well received around the world. The ideas she presents here are obviously true: Governments and corporations are colluding to exploit the poor and powerless by profiteering from disaters (natural or man made). They get away with it by doing it at moments of national or global crisis, when the voting public has been shocked into momentary helplesness by disasters such as 9/11 or the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia.

NSX2 19y ago
It seems you've read the book, then? I could be wrong, but from what you're saying / what I saw on the video there's a strong implication, I'm wondering - if you read the book, is it actually stated, inferred, hinted, ignored, etc.: In other words, if it benefits policy-makers/corporations to have a disaster - political, natural, economic, etc. - as a prelude to shoving massive change that would otherwise be unnacceptable in nature or scope while people are too busy recovering from disaster, well, does that mean then that policy-makers/corporations would have a strong incentive to actually invest in the creation of the disasters? In other words, since businesses are based on plans and plans are based on predictability, why wait for "nature to take her course?" when you could "push the hand" to setup disasters to get the scenario that would most likely benefit your company's particular "market solution"?
- yters 19y ago
  They do this in Michael Crichton's "State of Fear."
davidw 19y ago
I'm pulling the emergency "send it back to reddit" handle on this story/thread!
- NSX2 19y ago
  You know, for a guy whose post-history seems like a random sampling of Yahoo News and Economist articles, most of which have nothing to do with anything interesting, you're a bit snobby. If I had the power to "pull the emergency send it back to reddit" handle on your stories, well, your submissions would be reduced by 80%.
  - davidw 19y ago
    The difference being: most of my submissions are pretty easily classified as 'hacker news', rather than political polemics from the likes of Naomi Klein, Murray Rothbard, Karl Marx or Hayek, all of whom might have something to say that's interesting in some other context. I didn't mean to be snobby, I meant to be very clear that I hope people don't submit this kind of thing to this site, be it left or right wing. I follow a lot of economics 'blogs', but pretty much refrain from posting them here. I think they're interesting, but off topic, and likely to lead to even more off topic discussions.

joe24pack 19y ago

Anyone remember how quickly the gargantuan "Patriot Act" suddenly appeared just after the September 11th attacks? I know it sounds very tinfoil hat-ish, but I figure the "Patriot Act" was written long before those attacks that supposedly precipitated it.

NSX2 19y ago
Good point. A few years back I was keeping track of this site that kept track of all the "executive orders" that were being signed post 9.11. The first half year later they had a thorough analysis of each executive order. Soon so many executive orders, each more disturbing than the last, were being signed that they gave up analyzing them completley and just had quick summaries. Then soon they couldn't keep up and just listed them with links to info obtained by freedom of information orders. In 2004, they were "executive ordering" at the rate of about 30,000 new pieces of "emergency legislation" per year and the site just shut down, unable to keep up. NOW YOU JUST KNOW that dude from Texas isn't penning 30,000 pieces of legislation per year. Heck - with all the vacationing, it's a wonder he even gets to sign it all. Seems like you're right - all these things were prepared way in advance, just waiting for an opportunity.
klein_waffle 19y ago
It's not tinfoil-hatish at all! People in Washington would be very bad at their jobs if they waited for a favorable opportunity before writing up policies and laws. You never know, tomorrow there might be a presidential sex scandal and you can get your proposal funded in exchange for your steadfast support. The fact that the Patriot Act was drafted quickly proves that there is a security establishment, waiting to pounce on opportunity. It doesn't prove that 9-11 was somehow caused by such a group.

asdflkj 19y ago

This is an ad hominem attack on the free market. "It wasn't born in freedom and democracy", therefore it must be bad. She makes the laughable assumption that the majority of people know what's good for them. 2004 election proves otherwise.

NSX2 19y ago
Ad hominem attack? How is it an ad hominem attack? An ad hominem attack means you can't argue with the thesis so you personally attack the person putting forth the thesis in attempt to discredit the logic of the arguement by attacking the credibility of the person making it. "It wasn't born in freedom and democracy, therefore it must be bad." That's nowhere near an ad hominem. And basica logic would tend to indicate that if there are 2 sets of mutually exclusive, bad and good value conditions, "not good set" would tend to leave "bad set" as the only remaining possibility. Also when you say, "She makes the laughable assumption thta the majority of people know what's good for them", you kind of tend to implicitly agree with her thesis. It's almost like you're suggesting that everybody is an idiot, therefore everyone needs a big-brother type group making problems and then exploiting the resulting panic to shove solutions down everyone's throat because left to their own devices, people don't know any better.
- asdflkj 19y ago
  Her main thesis is that free market capitalism is bad. She doesn't try to disprove that free market capitalism is good. Instead, she attacks the character of famous proponents of it, by suggesting that they forced their will upon the unwilling populace. That's ad hominem. I neither agree nor disagree with her about this last part, because I don't know enough about it. But I give her the benefit of the doubt. The only way her argument could be not an ad hominem is if there was a causal link between the merit of the idea she is attacking and the populace's willingness to accept it. All I was trying to say is that there is no such link. I am not offering any solutions; just pointing out bad logic.
  - NSX2 19y ago
    >> Her main thesis is that free market capitalism is bad. Not really her thesis at all. Her main thesis is that we're not really even given a chance to experience free market capitalism, we're just told we're experiencing it by people who are force-feeding us "free market solutions" during times when we're not thinking clearly (after a disaster) and that these solutions would never actually be adopted by people through a legitimate free market system. I think she's not so much arguing against free market capitalism as saying that what passes for it is really a centrally-managed sham. >> Instead, she attacks the character of famous proponents >> of it, by suggesting that they forced their will upon >> the unwilling populace. That's ad hominem. She doesn't "suggest" that they forced their will upon an unwilling populace, she points to an actual, documented and verifiable economic doctrine of a person who advices presidents and Federal Reserve boards. If she implies it, that is an attack on their character. If they themselves have actually said that this is a good way to force development that would otherwise be impossible in face of free-market opposition, than they damn themselves - she's just saying, "Look at their own words and theories, and see if recent history seems to follow this pattern, if it does, then these people are doing it on purpose - and they even claim as much themselves." >> The only way her argument could be not an ad hominem is >> if there was a causal link between the merit of the >> idea she is attacking and the populace's willingness to >> accept it. I'm not sure, I wasn't there, but I doubt any of the people affected by the Asian Tsunami would have given up their beachfront property for chump change to major corporations in the hospitality business who wanted to build resorts BEFORE they were traumatized by natural disaste, like they did after. Or take domestic matters - how many people would have put up with all the domestic surveillance B.S. we have here now if no such thing like 9.11 happened? Or New Orleans - hospitals and such shut down to be torn down to make way for upscale property development - what resident would have agreed to that prior to Katrina? None. But after, they were in no position to agree/disagree with anything because most of them didn't even have a place to live. I think she's basically saying that what passes for "free market capitalism" is a sham perpetuated by people whose ideas/solutions would never be adopted in a free market system and so they rely on the irrational emotions produced by disaster to get otherwise weak ideas through the market mechanisms. In other words, if there were no disaster, many "free market solutions" that saw the light of day after disasters would never actually be accepted in a free market. This then leaves open a disturbing scenario: at what point do people whose economic contributions would never be adopted by others unless it was in a state of fear, panic, shock, emotion, etc., consider it useful to actually initiate disaster in order to have their ideas accepted more readily?

Tichy 19y ago

Bullshit! Of course politicians use certain tools to control the emotion of the people (start a war, raise the price of beer, whatever), but that has nothing to do with free markets. The movie just mixes together totally unrelated things and claims a connection - in that way actually doing the same thing it proposes: showing shocking pictures to make people believe anything. So who is Naomi Klein, a Super-Communist? I haven't read her books, and now I guess I never will.

andreyf 19y ago
but that has nothing to do with free markets The connection they make is that Milton Friedman was the one making the (for the authors) convenient connection between shock and change. The "crisis - real or perceived" quote sounds pretty condemning. You are right to point out that this is not an argument against his economic policies (which are assumed to be bad), but against how he suggested they be implemented.
- Tichy 19y ago
  I don't know much about Milton Friedman, but I can't imagine his main suggestion was to push things into a crisis to bring about change. You don't become one of the most economists with such a thesis. Rather, I suspect that the quote was taken out of context or blown out of proportion. You can find something weird to quote from anyone. I am sure you could find a quote by Paul Graham and work it into that video to replace the Miltion Friedman quote, for example.
  - NSX2 19y ago
    Well, I don't think he ever EXPLICITLY stated that an effort should be made to "push" things into a state of crisis, he just EXPLICITLY said that a crisis should be exploited when people are emotional and irrational to push forward "free market" developments that, ironically, would never actually see the light of day in an actual, bona fide free market system. Milton seemed to have a strange, incongruous view of life, namely, that democratic, free-market developments AS HE SAW FIT were the best thing for people at large, and such developments as he saw fit should be adopted by the people at large regardless of whether they actually want to adapt it. His economic argument in ways mirrors bush's political doctrine of "liberating" iraq and "spreading democracy" through military force, whether people want it or not. Same thing happened in Vietnam, where a "free market system" democratically chose to organize itself according to decentralized communist structures and washington flew in a fit of rage and assumed that no way a democratic free market would ever democratically vote anything other than what washington saw as proper, so there must be something wrong and so intervention was necessary. Same thing happened when Palestinians were pressured into having democratic elections, they democratically elected Hamas, and washington declared the elections invalid simply because the outcome, left to a bona fide democratic free market process, turned out different than expected. I think what you're saying is simply implied in her thesis, ie, if they explicitly state that crisis should be exploited to bypass natural populist resistance to "free market solutions" that would never be accepted in a bona fide free market, then economic theory would suggest that the prime actors behind these sub-par economic solutions would EVENTUALLY find it in their self-interest to either initiate the crisis or invest in other actors to do so by proxy. But she never actually says this, it's just implied. As for Milton Friedman's quote taken out of context, it actually isn't taken out of context at all. He wrote TONS of op-ed pieces for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, and they were almost all related to tragedies experience over the last decade or so. South-Korean economy crash, BCCI scandal, dot-com crash, 9-11, war in Afghanistan, Palestinian conflict, war in Iraq, Asian tsunami, Katrina, etc. He follows the same pattern predictably: Horrible disaster, followed by his op-ed pieces, usually along these lines: "This event (whatever) is a horrible, horrible tragedy and millions are suffering. But it's also a wonderful new opportunity to try some ideas I've been trying to get adopted for years." The question is, why does he see tragedy as a wonderful new opportunity? According to Klein, no suggestion is ever offered other than that after a tragedy, people are too week and child-like and desperate to offer resistance. If this mechanism is prevalent (and she provides evidenct that it is, at least enough), then that leads us to conclude that most "free market" solutions are nothing of the sort and are instead centrally managed exploitations by people whose ideas would never actually be successful in a free market. Now, to the extent that such people have had success in times of crisis, and to the extent that you think that it is in their interest to initiate crisis, well - that would be a plausible connection, but to the best of my knowledge she never explicitly states that. But it's interesting to consider that you and I have both jumped to that scenario, ie, "But wait a minute - that would mean that ..." And we're not even beneficiaries of such a mechanism. If we can think that, isn't it plausible that people who have hundreds of billions of dollars at stake might think that also? No? Why not? Because the super rich and politically powerful are all wonderful, ethical people who have our best interests in mind and they would never stoop so low as to prosper at the expense of those economically and politically weaker than they are? Please.

mercurio 19y ago

No.

Excedrin 19y ago

The style of this video reminded me of Adam Curtis' The Century Of The Self and The Trap - What Happened to our Dream of Freedom perhaps with a little Michael Moore sensationalism mixed in, but I'm not sure if that's enough of a reason to buy and read the book.

klein_waffle 19y ago

I think the analogy to torture is a little bit stretched but there's nothing controversial about the underlying facts. 1) there is a consensus among the global business elite, and some of the government elite, about how things ought to be run: Western-style democracy with the flow of goods and capital as unrestricted as possible. 1b) Partially this is self-interest, and partially it's a belief in a near-Randian libertarianism that has become dogma in the American right, despite it never having been really tried. (Because they can't get their agenda implemented in stable democracies). In this philosophy, government is a parasite that first feeds off of, and then strangles, the true activity of free people: business. 2) But almost no country believes in doctrinaire free markets, especially poor ones struggling to develop a mixed economy. 3) When great crises arise, these government and business elites are needed to funnel money and talent. They use the opportunity to advance their agenda. 3b) In certain cases, they don't mind making crises, and will even make them worse, in the belief that the world will then reorder itself to the state they deem to be natural and good, where markets rule. The extreme version of this is Iraq, where planners seemed less concerned about providing stability than free markets. An even more insidious form: see the documentary "Our Brand is Crisis". You will see American consultants considered to be left-wing, like James Carville, manipulating a crisis in a Third World country to elect a leader whose faith in the market is not shared by the public. This is all caused by people who are good and nice and believe they are helping the countries involved. No conspiracy theory required.