FireDogLake Does a Bad Bad Thing...

Mona of Unqualified Offerings sends us to the usually-excellent FireDogLake, where Jane Hamsher does bad bad thing in introducing Naomi Klein. Jane writes:

Firedoglake: The political impulse to take advantage of social upheaval in order to implement unpopular policies that a citizenry would otherwise fight against seems to be throughout history a rather intuitive one. In The Shock Doctrine, however, Naomi Klein looks at how Milton Friedman and “The Chicago Boys” — fundamentalist free marketeers whose orthodoxy was incubated under Friedman at the University of Chicago — codified it into economic writ:

[Friedman] observed that “only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

Those who remember the hasty passage of the Patriot Act and wondered at how the government could suddenly disgorge a tome of civil rights-infringing legislation the size of the Manhattan phone book only weeks after 9/11 and then proceed to bludgeon members of Congress into voting for it in the name of combating terrorism will find the blueprint achingly familiar. If Ronald Reagan was the original White House prophet of Friedman’s views, George Bush has been its most devoted acolyte...

One would imagine from this that Milton Friedman approved of the Un-Patriot Act--which he most definitely did not. Unlike Hayek, Friedman believed in individual liberty and autonomy first, and order and hierarchy second if at all.

One would imagine from this that Milton Friedman approved of George W. Bush. Friedman did think that George W. Bush was a better president than almost any Democrat, but Friedman did spend much of his 90th birthday lunch at the White House telling Bush that his fiscal policy was a disaster.

I take the Friedman quote to be a totally unexceptionable statement of the duty of the intellectual. It is the duty of the intellectual to think and discuss and argue, so that when the crisis does come the plans that are picked up off the shelf and hastily implemented are not-stupid ones.

Comments

[Cranky Observer]

> One would imagine from this that Milton
> Friedman approved of George W. Bush.
> Friedman did think that George W. Bush was a
> better president than almost any Democrat,
> but Friedman did spend much of his 90th
> birthday lunch at the White House telling
> Bush that his fiscal policy was a disaster.

Wow - about 7 contradictions embedded in one short paragraph. Bush submits the Anti-Patriot Act to Congress, signs it, and implements an economic policy which Friedman thinks is a "disaster". But Friedman also thinks W was a better president than Gore or Bradley would have been. Um, yeah.

Cranky

[robertdfeinman]

Klein is a polemicist. They have a special set of rule that they play by. It's called "hitting the donkey with a 2x4 to get its attention".

Detailed accuracy isn't a priority, getting people outraged enough to actually get off their duffs is.

Does it work? Sometimes...

[lgm]

Hamsher and DeLong interpret the Friedman quote differently. Delong thinks it calls for contingency planning -- like disaster response protocols. If oil goes to $200/barrel, what emergency economic measures should we take?

Hamsher sees the quote as Machiavellian. In times of national crisis (earthquake, terrorist attach, ...), you can use the chaos to put in place unpopular policies that you could not get through in normal times. The Patriot Act illustrates Hamsher's point. The Bushies obviously had ready a collection of unpopular policy changes, including changes in the process of appointing US Attorneys, that were able to rush to Congress and get passes with little debate in the days after 9/11/01. The Bushies also used opportunity to push tax cuts for the rich ("supply side").

[lgm]

Hamsher and DeLong interpret the Friedman quote differently. Delong thinks it calls for contingency planning -- like disaster response protocols. If oil goes to $200/barrel, what emergency economic measures should we take?

Hamsher sees the quote as Machiavellian. In times of national crisis (earthquake, terrorist attach, ...), you can use the chaos to put in place unpopular policies that you could not get through in normal times. The Patriot Act illustrates Hamsher's point. The Bushies obviously had ready a collection of unpopular policy changes, including changes in the process of appointing US Attorneys, that were able to rush to Congress and get passes with little debate in the days after 9/11/01. The Bushies also used opportunity to push tax cuts for the rich ("supply side").

[Bloix]

"Friedman believed in individual liberty and autonomy first, and order and hierarchy second if at all." Which is why he refused to have anything to do with that fascistic dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Oh, wait...

From Wikipedia, "The Miracle of Chile," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chilewhich comports with my own recollections:

"Immediately following the coup d'état in 1973, Pinochet was made aware of a confidential economic plan known as El Ladrillo (literally, "the brick"), so called because the report was "as thick as a brick". The plan had been quietly prepared in May 1973 by economists who opposed Allende's government, with the help from a group of economists which were called by the press, at that time, the Chicago Boys, because they were predominantly alumni of the University of Chicago. This document, El Ladrillo, was made available to the offices of the Chilean Armed Forces Generals on the very day after the coup, September 12th, 1973, and contained the backbone of what would later on become the Chilean neoliberal economic policy.

"Friedman did not personally support Pinochet, though he had given some lectures advocating free market economic policies in La Universidad Católica de Chile and met with Pinochet for 45 minutes, where the general "indicated very little indeed about his own or the government's feeling" and the president asked Friedman to write him a letter laying out what he thought Chile’s economic policies should be; Friedman did that. The New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis declared in 1975 that 'the Chilean junta’s economic policy is based on the ideas of Milton Friedman…and his Chicago School'."

This is a pretty good example of what Klein is talking about, isn't it? You could even make a case study out of it.

[christofay]

Friedman is a pet free marketeer for the conservatives, the Republican party, the saviors of western civilization, whatever it is they're calling themselves this afternoon. He talks and Bush shakes his head agreeing with everything even if what is being said is contradictory to what he's doing. My grandmother when she wanted to curse would stroke her red coral amulet and spit "deficits don't matter." Stiglitz on Bush's house banker, Greenspan, is more to the point today.

[christofay]

"only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change"

Isn't this the PNAC challenge? Now, we're in Iraq forever.

Quick, someone find a quote from Friedman saying we're in Iraq for the oil.

[Charles]

On this you're wrong, Brad. Sometimes freedom can be a zero sum game, and -- as Bloix suggests-- in Chile it was. Through free and fair elections, the Chilean people chose a Marxist as their leader. The Nixon government chose a dictator. You know which people was free and which was subservient. Friedman not only approved of the coup, he actively helped the dictatorship suppress Chilean resistance to it by proposing the policies that wrecked the safety net and exacerbated the polarization of wealth.

There is nothing contradictory between free market extremism and authoritarianism. The freedoms of the monied simply trump those of the average citizen. Whether Friedman approved the Patriot Act is, in my opinion, somewhat beside the point. He never regarded the freedom to speak freely, the freedom of association involved in unionization, or the freedom to select one's leaders as equivalent to the freedom to make money.

As Robert Feinman says, Klein is a polemicist. In this case, however, I think she's also right, as is Jane's framing. Why was the Patriot Act written before 911, if not because the Bush Administration was contingency planning for how they would like a crisis to evolve?

[Adams]

Thanks to Bloix & Charles for making my point better than I could have.

Brad's respect for MF as an economist is understandable.

Is MF's statement about planning or plotting? Depends on your POV.

But the role of Friedman's Chicago boys in supporting and enabling Pinochet's brutal, murderous overthrow of a democratically elected socialist government was not theoretic. Disappearances, torture, murder, and a regime of fear and violence. Sounds like freedom to me.

Perhaps this is another example of those of us who are not theoretically adept not getting "the big picture." Like free trade agreements hurting the little guy.

We are the little guy. It's not theoretic for us.

[anne]

There is an interesting thing about polemicists. A team of American women played bridge in China, and won a difficult international tournament. When the women were awarded the trophy, a modest sign was held up explaining that they had not voted for George Bush. Then, just to show the Chinese what freedom really means, the thuggish bridge authorities suspended the team from competition and began an investigation to find the real motive for the sign.

Me, I love such polemicists and I love Naomi Klein for being such a polemicist just when we need one.

I did not vote for George Bush. Punish me, and show the Chinese who we really are!

[anne]

"We did not lose the battles of ideas. We were not outsmarted and we were not out-argued. We lost because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks."

-- Naomi Klein

Love you, Naomi.

[Praxis]

It warms my heart that this thread didn't get to 10 comments before someone pointed out the involvement of Friedman and the Chicago boys in the U.S. backed anti-democratic coup in Chile and the replacement of an elected government with the murderous Augusto Pinochet.

[andres]

Looks like another Brad DeLong Smackdown festival. And he deserves it for writing naive comments like:

"I take the Friedman quote to be a totally unexceptionable statement of the duty of the intellectual. It is the duty of the intellectual to think and discuss and argue, so that when the crisis does come the plans that are picked up off the shelf and hastily implemented are not-stupid ones."

But the plan that was picked up off the shelf in 1973 Chile (El Ladrillo) was overwhelmingly stupid. It involved macroeconomic stabilization where the burdens of disinflation were borne almost entirely by Chile's blue collar middle class (ie the ones who lost their jobs) and where the combination of privatization and financial deregulation eventually cost Chilean taxpayers vast untold sums in order to rescue insolvent financial institutions.

This was not a set of policies that was laid out by intellectuals, if by intellectuals you mean people who are broad-minded enough to change their outlook in response to counterarguments or contradictory evidence. On the contrary, this was a set of policies laid out not by intellectuals but by ideologues turned policy entrepreneurs whose main concern was to find a political patron who was rich enough or powerful enough to implement their favored policies, and Pinochet fit the bill nicely.

Friedman's comment on the role of the intellectual is a (naive) ideal, but Chile under Pinochet is a much more realistic description of how drastic policy reform takes place in the real world.

[Nelson]

Yes, the Chile episode is heavily discussed in Klein's book, along with lots of other examples of economic change being imposed at the point of, well, a waterboard.

I also think Brad got this one wrong--the part of the quote that is different that the mandate of the intellectual is "... to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable." Klein's point, which seems to me very well-supported, is that Friedman's ideas cannot be implemented in a situation where people are actually free to choose for themselves.

That is, the Friedmanites cannot argue well enough to convince people in a democracy that their policies are in the people's interest, because their policies are not in the people's interest. Thus the "Chicago boys" need a traumatized and disoriented populace to make their changes.

[bob mcmanus]

Naw, Brad is correct in his phrasing and the rest of you are wrong. The important point is that Brad's ideas are not just his preferences or values or ideology, but the objectively best, scientifically proven ideas in time of crisis. The other side's ideas really suck.

So it isn't about taking political advantage of a crisis, but about implementing the wisest most rational policies. It is the other guy who wasn't scientific & rational.

And Friedman was a post-modern.

[John Emerson]

What Bloix said. Hayek and Friedman showed themselves very badly on Chile, and Pinochet libertarians are still easy to find. That streak of economics is the reason why some people, including me, will never completely trust any economist. It's not like those two guys were obscure figures, or isolated within their profession.

Klein has a lot to say about a lot of other things too, and Brad should read her book. He won't agree with most of it, but there will a lot of things he'll have to think about.

[derek]

This is just the "Boo hoo, you can't blame Barry Goldwater for the consequences of his revolution" applied to Friedman. Of *course* Friedman said he wanted freedom, prosperity, and fluffy bunny rabbits. Who doesn't?

Either ideas have consequences that the prophets who first revealed them must take some responsibility for, or Karl Marx is owed some big, big apologies from a queue of Americans 100 million long. Line starts here.

[MobiusKlein]

I view the quote in a cautionary sense.

There are authoritarians out there who will seize upon a crisis to implement their cockamamie ideas. Those kind of people learned from Friedman, no matter what he meant to teach.

Be ready, friends, for the next crisis. Ready your tomes of legislation, the time will come.

[Tuco]

"Is it against some economists' canon not to utter words against Milton Friedman?"

So true, especially here. Hedley, you have been paying attention, move to the head of the class.

[Nick Kaufman]

I don't understand the fuzz. What Friedman says about crises is accurate.

What is important in what Friedman says-which I agree with- is not the explicit mention about crises, but the implication about years of stability. People who want to change the world, or - to put it more concretely- want to change an ideological or policy paradigm can't do so during times of stability, because neither the incentives for politicians are there, nor public opinion wants to take any risks when there's no urgent reason for them . However, there is a merit in one trying to push his agenda, because crises are times which alert to different viewpoints and open unthinkable possibilities. But you have to make your point of view available before such a crisis emerge.

In this sense, the examples of Chile and the Patriot act are similar, but not appropriate . In order to follow Friedman's prescription, Chilean free-marketeers or American conservatives should have pushed for their prescription long before the crisis.

A more appropriate example of what Friedman meant is the 1970s: Conservative academics like Friedman in his 1968 address pushed for alternative explanations of popular phenomena, new think tanks with a conservative bent appeared and politicians like Reagan challenged the orthodoxy of their party. These people didn't score political victories in the 70s however, but in the 80s when a prolonged economic crisis made people alert to alternative explanations.

To a lesser extent this is what Keynes did before the great depression. He offered an heterodox view about dealing with such crises which was eventually adopted when competing approaches had failed miserably.

Whether one is right is irrelevant. The tactic isn't immoral and the substance doesn't reflect on it and vice-versa. Friedman's point is not only correct, but emminently non-ideological and tactical in nature; a point that can be applied by any group of people, on any sort of political system authoritarian or democratic.

So, there's no there there. I also feel sorry that people are carried away by a second rate crank like Klein, but that's me.

PS The point about Chile is utter BS btw. The real brain behind the Chilean reforms was another Chicago professor whose name escapes me; Chilean reforms were correct to a large extent because they intervened in the micronomic structures of an economy which had suffered by wrong policies for 20 years and the amateurs clowns of the Allende sect. What severely damaged Chile's economy in 1982 was an irrational attachment to the peg with a dollar that precluded her from devaluing in time. That of course had nothing to do with Friedman who was never an advocate of such policies.

[Nick Kaufman]

On second thought, let me retract the line about Naomi Klein. Not because I changed my mind about her, but because it's not kind to people most of the times I agree with and I like. ;) I am sorry.

[christofay]

The disciplines of Friedman finally got a chance to put theory into practice; they control the presidency, the supreme court, held the congress for a while, the central bank, and the media. They had so much marketeering control they could sell shit to the honey wagon driver.

One of their first steps was after discovering a fundamentalist Arab plot to attack the United States to let it happen so they could have their crisis. The PNAC plan is to prepare for a Pearl Harbor. They started freedom curtailing legislature before the attack.

Their brave free marketeering initiative was to sell more govt central power.

They went prospectin' all right, but with 150,000 U. S. soldiers, an unlimited budget and went into another country.

Rather than "spending is taxation" they practiced "deficits don't matter." The central banker that they kept on a short lease, Greenspan, muttered something that put him on both sides of the fence. The only side of the fence that matters is the side with the consequences. "Deficits don't matter" wins. The greatest ever central planner goes on to write a book "The Age of my Flatulence." In celebration of the book publishing the Goldberg central banking he practiced for the Rubes collapses.

What is the term for an idol with lots of admirers and no practitioners?

The practitioners are called Americans but what's the term for the idol?

[John Emerson]

"I don't understand the fuzz. What Friedman says about crises is accurate."

Sure. During a crisis you can often subvert and overthrow the established government. institute an authoritarian regime, and push through changes which you can call necessary reforms. Friedman was not the first to say that. That's not what Keynes said, though.

Friedman (and Hayek) were unnecessarily friendly to Pinochet.

As far as I know, most Chicago School economists initially supported Bush, and for all I know, most of them still do.

[jnickens]

Kaufman: Were the Chilean reforms which involved tossing live human beings out of helicopters over the sea correct also?

[Barry]

"But the plan that was picked up off the shelf in 1973 Chile (El Ladrillo) was overwhelmingly stupid. It involved macroeconomic stabilization where the burdens of disinflation were borne almost entirely by Chile's blue collar middle class (ie the ones who lost their jobs) and where the combination of privatization and financial deregulation eventually cost Chilean taxpayers vast untold sums in order to rescue insolvent financial institutions. "

The whole point of Klein's book, and of the criticism's of Friedman's 'preparations' strategy, is that this policy was not dumb. It was pure, deliberate evil.

[Barry]

"Kaufman: Were the Chilean reforms which involved tossing live human beings out of helicopters over the sea correct also? "

Posted by: jnickens

Consideirng that Karufman can recite garbage like: "Chilean reforms were correct to a large extent because they intervened in the micronomic structures of an economy which had suffered by wrong policies for 20 years and the amateurs clowns of the Allende sect. ", I'd say that he does approve of that. Of course, he'll never say so; that's a side of the 'free market' which Chicago Boyz don't like to admit.

[dsquared]

Hang on, no, Brad. I really don't think you can support that claim. In an interview with David Asman in 2004, Friedman did basically support the introduction of the Patriot Act, with only the caveat that it ought to be a temporary measure:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,230045,00.html

War vs. Freedom

DA: In a time of war, how do we maintain our freedom?

MF: We don’t. We invariably reduce our freedom. But that doesn’t mean it’s a permanent reduction. As long as we really keep in mind what we’re doing, that we keep it temporary, we need not destroy our freedom.

DA: Are you concerned that some of the measures we’re taking now to fight the war, like the Patriot Act, may be more than just temporary?

MF: It’s not clear. The Patriot Act is a very complicated issue, and I’m not going to get involved in that. But I think that on the whole, this war is small enough relative to our economy that it is not going to be a serious impediment to our freedom. But the sooner we can get rid of it and out of it, the better.

DA: Do you agree with President Bush that the actions in Iraq were necessary as a part of our war on terrorism?

MF: I think you can argue either side of that. Where I do feel strongly, is that having gone into it, whether we should have or not, we must see it through.

DA: Even if it costs some of our freedoms?

MF: There’s no way to avoid a burden on your freedom. The costs themselves are a burden on your freedom. The restrictions that are necessary in order to get rid of the terrorists are a burden to your freedom. So there’s no way in the short run to avoid a restriction on your freedom. But if we’re going to avoid a permanent reduction in freedom, we have to see this war through.

[Ponzi Q. Globalization]

"MF: ...But if we’re going to avoid a permanent reduction in freedom, we have to see this war through."

Does Asman then ask Friedman exactly what Friedman means by this?

"DA: In a time of war, how do we maintain our freedom?

MF: We don’t. We invariably reduce our freedom. But that doesn’t mean it’s a permanent reduction. As long as we really keep in mind what we’re doing, that we keep it temporary, we need not destroy our freedom."

Who determines when this 'war' is over? The very same men and women who gain power from the continuance of the war. Was Friedman really this naive? Maybe he should have read more some Orwell...

"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship."

This bullsh*t 'war' will never end. Communism, Saddam, drugs, humanitarianism, and, now, Islamofascism. Same old thing in brand new drag. One justification for huge military expenditures after another.

Albright asked: "What is the point of having this wonderful military if you don't use it?"

She should have asked the somewhat different question: "If you don't use the wonderful military, won't people see that there's no point in having it?"

Friedman should have realized that we are always at war and understood why.

[Nick Kaufman]

Christofay: The disciples (not disciplines) of Friedman had nothing to do with neoconservative adventurism.

Barry: The whole point of Klein's book that it was evil is overhyped paranoia. I explained why.

jnickens: Of course, I do not approve of throwing people over a helicopter. However, this whole guilt by association pushed on Friedman is propaganda.

Galbraith visited Moscow in 1984 and wrote that "the communist system has made progress in recent years". He visited China right after and said :"Dissidents are brought firmly into line . . . but one suspects with great politeness." Obviously, the Russian and the Chinese systems were far more immoral than the Chilean one and destroyed far more people's lives.

And yet, I don't seem to find people who every time Galbraith's name is mentioned refuse to even seriously discuss his work or his ideas because he expressed support for immoral regimes.

Dear Barry: Free market reforms can be implemented without a dictatorship you know. And one can judge the success or failure of an economic policy without taking into account whether there's political repression or not.

If we do start taking into account accompanying political regimes and start running around like headless chicken when morally impure ones are mentioned, then there will be only a few economic policies we could discuss, mostly in Europe.

There would be no discussion of the Asian tigers like South Korea, Taiwan, no discussion of controlled economic liberalization under communist oversight like China, no discussion of archaic communism like Cuba, no discussion of rentier countries like Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, no discussion of failed nationalist/socialist regimes like Egypt and Algeria no nothing. Failure or success of the economic policy on its own terms would be taboo regardless of the fact that each country has produced different economic results...

[tom f]

Nick Kaufman:

Yes, you can discuss economic policies -more or less quantitatively- without necessarily considering politics.

But what you can NOT do is discuss economists or economic intentions without discussing politics. Any profession of class disinterest is disingenuous. It is in this sense that the separation of economics from politics is only apparent.

Put another way, economic ideology is an expression of the will to power.

[Ponzi Q. Globalization]

"And one can judge the success or failure of an economic policy without taking into account whether there's political repression or not."

In the real world, the economic and the political are entwined to such a degree that analysis of one without the other is futile. The economic influences the political and vice-versa.

The type and level of political repression is partially dependent on the economic system. If under an economic system such as Soviet style communism there is a great deal of repression, then people see the dependency. However, many people seem to be blind to repression that can be tied to capitalist economic systems such as our own.

"Yes, you can discuss economic policies -more or less quantitatively- without necessarily considering politics."

At best, economics without politics is a useless game. At worst, it is an attempt to give objective & scientific sounding justifications for policies that bolster some groups at the expense of others.

[tom f]

Ponzi Q G

"At best, economics without politics is a useless game."

You certainly will not find sympathy amongst many of our ideological allies here. Many is the instance where left wing economists will want to appeal to economic data divorced from strict political context.

For instance, consider the Asian tigers mentioned above. Some have argued that these countries provide sound examples of planned economies: states that have developed with out regard to liberal capitalist ideology. Apart from the political repression often having occurred, we can see _measurable_ increases in wealth particulary in comparison to nations that followed more of a liberal, US-promoted development strategy.

Thus, in this analysis, we want to tease out economic data and say "In spite of the political repression of 70's S. Korea, we see a workable model of non-liberal economic development that can be used as an argument for democratic economic policy."

This is just the sort of argument right wingers want to make in Chile. They want to say "In spite of Chile's political repression, we can see a workable model of liberal economic development". The wingers aren't at fault for their method of anaysis, they're at fault in the substance of it.

Certainly you can accept that economics, while unable to produce the theories of the physical sciences, is more than "game playing".

[Chris Brown]

Did Milton Friedman support the "individual liberty" of individuals deciding to cooperatively provide, through their government, such things as government administered universal health care or pensions?

I think not, though I am admittedly not well versed on the subject.

[John Emerson]

Mr. Kaufman: Would the US itself benefit from Pinochet liberalism? Should we be preparing ourselves for it? Do you look forward to it? Do you plan to do well once it has been put into effect? Because I actually fear it. I think that it's a real possibility, and I expect to fare badly if it arrives.

[jnickens]

Kaufman: I never mentioned Friedman. I never got misty-eyed about Pinochet either. I also don't pretend that abstract economic details are more important than the reality of people's everyday lives.

[Walt]

Nick, are you even paying attention to what we're discussing, or do you have this little Friedman speech just saved up? Naomi Klein wrote a book about (among other things) the connection between Chicago School economics and Chile. If you're not willing to stand for discussing the connection between Friedman and Chile while discussing a book about the connection between Friedman and Chile, then when are you willing to stand for it?

[Nick Kaufman]

Chris Brown: No, Milton Friedman did not support universal health care. But that does not make him immoral, nor a part of an evil conspiracy, does it?

Jim Emerson: Politics wise, of course there isn't anything for the US to copy for her benefit.

Economics wise, the US had already benefited from the kind of policies Pinochet implemented. I don't think that people understand that the policies which were at stake in Latin America at the time were policies which all of us take for granted. Allende wanted to nationalize a good chunk of an economy where the state already intervened too much. Pinochet pushed free market policies which are uncontroversial here, but were very controversial at the time there. Moreover, most of us get bananas over Bush profligacies. The Bush deficits have ranged from 2 to 5% of the GDP. Allende in a span of two years pushed Chilean deficits to 27% of the GDP! This is a ginormous-astronomical-unfathomable-unsustainable amount. Pinochet paid it off with policies which inevitably caused a great deal of social costs, but which were over the long run beneficial.

Then there's the privatization of Chilean social security, which is not comparable with the US case, because Pinochet financed the transition costs with the sale of the nickel mines. In any case, to me is a secondary issue when examining the Chilean main problems.

[Nick Kaufman]

jnickens: Abstract economic ideas have over the long term an enormous impact to daily people's lives. I do not get misty-eyed about Pinochet.

Walt: Well, perhaps I have attention deficit disorder, but when I look at the original post, I see an abstract quote of Friedman's which is used by Klein as an evidence of an evil political approach which was used to push the Patriot act. It was after this that a commenter brought up the example of economic reforms in Chile.

So to recap:

The original quote by Friedman is not immoral, it's uncontroversial. If I may add it's banal. Humanity didn't expect Friedman to add this particular piece of wisdom. By extension Bush needn't have read Friedman in order to know that politicians can take advantage of crises in order to push their agenda. There's a small but crucial difference, but what Friedman says doesn't apply to what Bush did, unless you want to believe that Bush had an evil plan to push the Patriot act before he took over office. I hate Bush as much as anyone, but I think that the Patriot act was a product of overreaction not premeditation.

Chile isn't also an illustration of what Friedman said. Friedman didn't say " go manufacture a political crisis that would lead to a coup d'etat, upon which time, push neoliberal reforms." To imply that Friedman or his acolytes are responsible for what Pinochet did to Chilean democracy is to establish a specious connection. That's the implication I think that bothers me.

I think that bigger point here is that what matters is not the tactic, but the substance of the policy. Right-wingers don't have a monopoly in trying to take advantage of crises. All politicians of all stripes do. What matters is that they do so within the rules of the democratic game; and they better be right, or else they and us would have to live with the results of a disastrous policy.

Corrections: Of course it's John Emerson. It was the copper -not nickel- mines. The deficit was 25% not 27% of GDP. I am sorry for these mistakes, I am always reliant on the editing function which here doesn't exist.

[Adams]

Nick Kaufman,

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." Burke

"That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” - Milton Friedman

"I didn't mean to." - Albert Speer

The bigger point here is not the tactic, or the substance of the policy. It is how, in whose service, and with what results the policy (or theory) is applied.

Milton Friedman chose to remain passive while his theories were applied by his disciples and students to actively support and enable a murderous, anti-democratic, self-serving tyrant.

There was nothing "politically inevitable" about that.

[wood turtle]

Well, despite being the shining star of the Chicago School of Economic Meanness, he did live to be 90 years old, but couldn't he think of any other way to spend his birthday?

[John Emerson]

I can conclude that Nick thinks that Pinochet was unproblematic, and that the answer to my question is yes.

Klein believes that Pinochet liberalism will eventually come to the US, and that Bush has set it up. The coercive powers of government have steadily been increased over the last 15 years (including Clinton), the restraints on government's coercive powers have been relaxed, and Bush's deficits, trade deficits and back-loaded tax cuts seem disigned to bring a fiscal crisis a few years down the road.

Enter America's Pinochet.

[Chris Brown]

"Chris Brown: No, Milton Friedman did not support universal health care. But that does not make him immoral, nor a part of an evil conspiracy, does it?"

Having a bit of a cognitive problem Kaufman?

Please show me where I indicated that Friedman was "immoral...[or] a part of an evil conspiracy".

Perhaps if you restrain your jerking knee you will be better able to understand what is said.

[Barry]

Returning a bit late (I encountered D-Squared's original post):

Brad says: "One would imagine from this that Milton Friedman approved of the Un-Patriot Act--which he most definitely did not. Unlike Hayek, Friedman believed in individual liberty and autonomy first, and order and hierarchy second if at all."

At this point it's D-Squared 1, Brad -1 (factual error - D-Squares's quote is utterly d*mning to Friedman).

Brad also says: "One would imagine from this that Milton Friedman approved of George W. Bush. Friedman did think that George W. Bush was a better president than almost any Democrat,..."

That might not be technically approval, but it'd certainly do until 24-carat approval shows up. It also says that Friedman would go with the worst of the GOP rather than the best of the Democratic Party - not a libertarian at all.

[josh]

"Any profession of class disinterest is disingenuous. It is in this sense that the separation of economics from politics is only apparent.

Put another way, economic ideology is an expression of the will to power."

well, I'm convinced by your strong assertion. I guess this case is closed.