Johan Norberg vs. Naomi Klein and The Shock Doctrine

Swedish author Johan Norberg sits down with reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan to discuss Naomi Klein's diastrous yet popular polemic against the great free market economist Milton Friedman.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• doctrine
• johan
• klein
• michael
• moynihan
• naomi
• norberg
• reasontv
• shock

[janc71]

It’s true that Pinochet employed some of the econ. policies Friedman had been advocating for decades, that some of Pinochet’s advisors had studied economics at the Un.of Chicago, and that Friedman subsequently cited the success of those policies. But just as Michael Moore’s endorsement of Cuba’s health care system doesn’t constitute endorsement of Castro’s dictatorial rule, so Friedman’s endorsement for Chilean tax or pension policies don’t constitute an endorsement of coups, purges, or torture.

[janc71]

(cont) The essence of the talk was that freedom was a very fragile thing and that what destroyed it more than anything else was central control; that in order to maintain freedom, you had to have free markets, and that free markets would work best if you had political freedom. So it was essentially an anti-totalitarian talk."

[janc71]

Milton Friedman: "While I was in Santiago, Chile, I gave a talk at the Catholic University of Chile. Now, I should explain that the University of Chicago had had an arrangement for years with the Catholic University of Chile, whereby they send students to us and we send people down there to help them reorganize their economics department. And I gave a talk at the Catholic University of Chile under the title “The Fragility of Freedom.” (cont)

[zdrux]

@zdrux But you know who DOES do all the bad things I mentioned to me?.. the government. Nobody polices the government, they steal my labour and time from me, they inprison me if I don't want to go along with their taxes, they censor my radio and TV, they are not accountable to anyone, and they are the only ones with the guns, bombs, army, police, and the prisons. Now tell me who is screwing the shit out of us again?

[zdrux]

@eovid You police yourself quite fine, so do I and everyone I know when they deal with other people.. so do the local businesses and stores, so do the corporations where I buy my coffee and electronics from. They don't rob me, they dont yell at me, they don't steal from me, they don't cheat me. It's generally bad to do those things to your customers, so yes, they do police themselves.

[chapaev36]

@thetrueprometheus I think we're in agreement here. At least in theory. It reality, this is what governments tend to do much of the time.

[thetrueprometheus]

@chapaev36 The function of Government is to democratically represent the people who vote for or against them. It is not to facilitate the desires of finance capitalists nor to to facilitiate the requirements of corporations. It never was and it never will be.

I wonder why that is all they ever do?

[chapaev36]

@thetrueprometheus Governments intervene to clean up their own messes.

[chapaev36]

@thetrueprometheus Good lord. No, Friedman never ever made such an assumption. I can't imagine where you got this.

[chapaev36]

@lauralino82 Just because she cites references does not mean that she does a good job of supporting her claims.