It's been sitting on my shelf since the fall and i finally go around to reading this. It's by Naomi Klein, author of No Logo. Anyways I'd recommend it to anyone. Had alot of information on free market theorists in charge of the world bank and IMF for past 40 years and the policies forced on countries around the world in exchange for loans. It also details the killings and tortures and subversion of democracy that followed these unpopular policies. And her take on Iraq and the occupation are particularly interesting. Heres part of the New York Times review and some short film preview of the book by the Children of Men director.

"One of the world’s most famous antiglobalization activists and the author of the best seller “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies,” Klein provides a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries, and of the human toll. She paints a disturbing portrait of hubris, not only on the part of Friedman but also of those who adopted his doctrines, sometimes to pursue more corporatist objectives. It is striking to be reminded how many of the people involved in the Iraq war were involved earlier in other shameful episodes in United States foreign policy history. She draws a clear line from the torture in Latin America in the 1970s to that at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay.

Klein is not an academic and cannot be judged as one. There are many places in her book where she oversimplifies. But Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification, basing their belief in the perfection of market economies on models that assumed perfect information, perfect competition, perfect risk markets. Indeed, the case against these policies is even stronger than the one Klein makes. They were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets — for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always. "

Sorry, I'll read something by someone who is qualified to write on the matter, like, say, an economist or a historian.

watched the video. that looks interesting.

well that was one of the points of the book. she quotes many economists autobiographies where they glance over or never mention the deep popular unrest and means that were needed to keep their policies in place. Its an "alternate version" of the history those policies because as its told now they are largely divorced from the unpopularity and ramifications they caused and the dictators and fear needed to keep them in place. And the fact that millions of people were undemocratically forced into poverty is ignored.

This is the problem with her argument. She's thought of a few examples of forceful implementation of quasi-free markets in the name of economic libertarianism, but she points to that itself as a failure of free market economics, even though those markets are never truly free, and the force in itself is not a free market policy by any means. She uses modern military/political policies to criticize Milton Friedman's economic theories, but his version of a free market has never been implemented. Really, I don't see anything of value here. We have people who oppress in the name of capitalism, but we also have people who oppress using other means as well. Spreading capitalism using "shock doctrines" is in itself NOT a free market policy, so I don't see how it could be seen as a failure of free market policies.

Honestly, she would be much better off leaving the economics aside. If she said that the U.S. has a tendency to take advantage of disasters, etc. in order to spread its influence, she would have a fair point. But using it as an anti-capitalist vehicle comes across as a little ridiculous. It's essentially the (sorry about the Godwin analogy ) argument that because Hitler built freeways, they must be bad. Yeah, some people who have spread their doctrines in forceful ways have done it in the name of capitalism, but people have done the same thing in the name of socialism, too.

Thats the thing, these friedman students and disciples advised dictators on these free market experiments or forced or forced goverments to betray their electorate through the IMF in attempts to set up free market economies. These wildly unpopular free market policies were forced on the people. They are linked, the policies couldn't have been brough through without betraying the people, coups, martial law, killings, etc.

When any free market experiment fails the friedmanites always say that the markets weren't free enough, or there were "distortions". Well there will always be distortions as large populations of people see no benefit in totally free markets. So the governments kept in power by force and the economists used the same force to push their policies. The only way you're going to get close to a "free market" is through force, political betrayal and disinformation because its not int he best interests of most people.

See, this entire argument is a giant staw man. You even mentioned "friedman students and disciples. How the policies are instituted is no reflection whatsoever on the policies themselves. You could forcefully institute a policy of charity on an unwilling population, and it would have the exact same effect, but that doesn't mean charity is a bad policy. It just means either the people aren't fit for that policy and/or you're going about instituting it in the wrong way.



This is utter bunk. All you need to do is protect property rights and institute modest antitrust laws and, voila, you have a free market. If anything, it's impossible to institute a free market through force, political betrayal, and disinformation. And by definition, it's in the best interest of most people--"best interest" is what fuels a free market and free exchange.