Comments on: Video Fisking

By: jason

jason — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:28:21 +0000

Grigsby,
Hmm … your assertion that “liberalizing the economy undermined Pinochet’s rule” is quite intriguing, but it’s bound to be controversial as well. China comes to mind as a plausible counter-example. I believe James Fallows has argued that economic liberalization there is not likely by itself to produce political change. Could you provide a bit more detail on your take?

There’s a separate issue worth stacking up against yours. Klein’s book suggests that Pinochet’s violence needed to be severe precisely because the extreme, rapid liberalization policies he implemented were so unpopular. If this is true, Friedman’s choice does not seem to have been the better part of wisdom.

By: Grigsby

Grigsby — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 05:26:52 +0000

I agree with Jason, but only to an extent. The bottom line with regards to Friedman and Pinochet (the classic example) is this: Pinochet was a bad man. He was going to use force and kill people no matter what. If he had put in place more economic restrictions, he would’ve killed to do it. If he decided to liberalize the economy, he would’ve killed to do it. If he decided to just keep the status quo, he would have killed for that, too. So from the perspective of Friedman, if X people would die at Pinochet’s hand no matter what, do we want to give the people more freedom or less? Another matter is the fact that liberalizing the economy undermined Pinochet’s rule. So are we going to have Pinochet kill to create more restrictions and solidify his power, so he can kill ever more people, or are we going to give Pinochet sound economic advice that would eventually lead to his downfall and the full liberation of his people?

That being said, American gov’t intervention in Latin America has been bullshit through-and-through, and should stop.

By: jason

jason — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:40:28 +0000

Julian,
I would be willing to consider “tendentious,” but “obnoxious” and “annoying” are really not to my eyes proven by this clip. The commenter, however, in addition to being nasty in tone, as you’ve acknowledged, really makes no effort to engage with the book’s ideas. One need not have even read it to appreciate that as much as it’s about economics, it’s equally or more about the unacknowledged history of (often US-promoted) deception, secrecy, and state violence in Latin America and elsewhere—not merely relatively gentle forms of violence like the threat of incarceration, given with notice and according to democratically decided rules, for not paying taxes, but kidnapping, torture, a military’s opening fire on crowds of demonstrators exercising their right to protest government policy—deployed to implement Chicago School-inspired ideas. No, a close viewing of the video is sufficient to get most of that. A libertarian should be able to disagree with Klein’s economic prescriptions while respecting her book’s discussion of the massive use of force against citizens with whom governments disagreed (to protect and advance certain ideological trends). Thanks.

By: Micha Ghertner

Micha Ghertner — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:16:35 +0000

Did Rush Limbaugh make this video?

By: Matthew B.

Matthew B. — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:23:00 +0000

What Tim said. Klein might have been equally annoying, for all I know; I turned it off before she showed up.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:02:48 +0000

The comments in that video on what Klein and Olbermann said were indeed obnoxious, annoying and tendentious.