"Shock Doctrine" economics ruining America

"Shock Doctrine" economics ruining America

By Stephen L. Goldstein
May 6, 2011


WARNING: Reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" will disturb your sleep and haunt your waking hours. If you're a real American, it will make you want to scream — and do something to put "the bad guys" in their place. Everyone — especially Milton-Friedman, free-market lovers like Kingsley Guy — should read "Shock." If enough people do so, it could save the country. If they don't, our democratic/representative government and capitalism will be permanently replaced by the un-American, corporate-socialist state that has already taken hold — and it will be our own fault.

For 50 years, laissez-faire economist Friedman and his apostles at the University of Chicago have spread a doctrine based upon "the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending," according to Klein. Even worse is how they do it: For Friedman and his minions, widespread disasters (natural and man-made) are opportunities to make money. While victims are really or figuratively bleeding, too shocked to realize what's happening, in cahoots with lapdog governments, they impose "deregulation, privatization, and cutbacks" on economies as the formula for recovery. Promising prosperity for all, they deliver widespread poverty and oppression.

From Chile in 1973 to Sri Lanka after the 2005 tsunami, Russia after the Soviet Union collapse, South Africa after apartheid — in country after country, Klein "rips away the 'free-trade' and globalization ideologies that disguise a conspiracy to privatize war and disaster and grab public property for the rich few," says Chalmers Johnson. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/fl-sgcol-shock-doctrine-goldstein-05020110506,0,1601514.column

One of the most important books of our time.

I think the electroshock analogy is a little forced at times, but otherwise I am really enjoying it.

nt

Howard Zinn wrote one of the others.

United States" by Zinn and "The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", IMO ARE the two most important books published in my adult life and maybe in my WHOLE life. And yes, that covers a lot of time. I'll be 60 this year.

I have it and I haven't finished reading it. It's a hard one to take in.

"We are nothing to them."

I stopped about half way through.

pushing their great theory?

(U oF C school mathmatics project)that confuses the hell out me , let alone my 3rd grader for one.
My husband said how would you learn anything from this type of math? I said maybe that is the point dumber is better for the worker bees who won't understand math or economics ever. She is an A student but we tutor her on our own-have to now days in many subjects. This is a public not private/charter

some reviews from the below link include:
>ranks Everyday Mathematics a distant last. About Everyday Math 2nd grade he writes: "In normal classrooms with normal teachers, I would characterize these materials as `dangerous.'

>The overall evaluation of this program is mediocre, but that is far from telling the whole story. It is unusual in that some topics, such as perimeter and measurement, are covered quite well while other topics, notably addition and subtraction of whole numbers and to a lessor extent the work with time, are given a fairly weak treatment.

http://www.nychold.com/em.html

calculator. Which means they are not teaching them to think independently.

We recognize and acknowledge it.

What are some concrete steps we can take to reverse it

On Edit:

This is one of many articles offering very grassroots ways to shift things from the bottom up:

http://www.onthecommons.org/make-shift-finding-job-crafting-livelihood

The Shift Guide offers a no-cost group process for exploring possibilities for meaningful work that will generate both income and community benefits. Based on the experience of a pilot group in the Twin Cities, the guide goes step-by-step through an orientation and seven meeting, four month process that can be adapted by any community group or adult education/workforce development program.

Participants brainstorm ideas for products and services stemming from current demographic and market trends . Members form teams to research the feasibility of business concepts based on the ideas. Some go on to develop business plans. Others say simply that they have garnered some useful ideas and professional relationships while having fun and connecting with interesting people.


I've created a Group at Wishadoo! to brainstorm -- and implement -- similar grassroots efforts, for anyone interested:

http://www.wishadoo.org/group/wishadoo-think-tank-1/

... that we could reverse or even halt this was shattered once I saw that Obama was as in bed with these folks as anyone else.

Nothing is going to change until the people rise up and demand it, and it remains to be seen if they ever will. Things out there are already much much worse than the news is letting on and nothing is really happening, America is going down with a whimper, not a bang.

if you've yet to read it your missing the game-plan unfolding before our very eyes.

I've been ranting...er, recommending the documentaries Adam Curtis produced for the BBC. Especially these two:

"The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom" - Wikipedia thumbnail: All these (crackpot economic) theories tended to support the beliefs of economists such as Friedrich von Hayek, whose economic models left no room for altruism, but depended purely on self-interest, leading to the formation of public choice theory.

In an interview, the economist James M. Buchanan decries the notion of the "public interest", asking what it is and suggesting that it consists purely of the self-interest of the governing bureaucrats. Buchanan also proposes that organisations should employ managers who are motivated only by money. He describes those who are motivated by other factors—such as job satisfaction or a sense of public duty—as "zealots".

...Curtis shows that it was this belief that allowed the theories of Hayek to look credible, and underpinned the free-market beliefs of Margaret Thatcher, who sincerely believed that by dismantling as much of the British state as possible—and placing former national institutions into the hands of public shareholders—a form of social equilibrium would be reached. (Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentary_series)

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" - very pertinent, with what happened last week in Pakistan. Shows the similarities between America's neo-con religious right and Islamic fundamentalists...which is probably why PBS refused to run this documentary in the USA, saying it was "too inflammatory."

Curtis' overall argument is that once upon a time, politicians offered hope (FDR, early LBJ, etc.) But in the recent past, they've learned that controlling the masses thru FEAR!!!! is easier and cheaper.

Wikipedia thumbnail: The films compare the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries — and particularly American Neo-Conservatives — in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares

The US.

everything Klein wrote several years ago has been borne out increasingly by events ever since

read Griftopia by Matt Taibbi.

If you have relatives who think that Shock Doctrine is not true or think that it is not being applied in our country, have them read Griftopia and then Shock Doctrine.

Crooks and con artists howl about "catastrophe" if we don't do as they wish, and 99.9% of the time it's epic BS.

It's sad that "the people" opposed the financial market bail out in the form it was passed by 100:1, and it still was approved by our government as is.

Now we've got the GOP working hard to delay the Dodd Frank reform.