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The Business Press and Me: A Case of Unrequited Love
Finance journalists have attacked my book, but I remain devoted to their papers. After all, they supplied the facts I used
On a recent visit to Calgary, Alberta, I was taken aback to see my book on disaster capitalism selling briskly at the airport. Calgary is ground zero of North America's oil and gas boom, where business suits and cowboy hats are the de facto uniform. I had a sudden sinking feeling: did Calgary's business class think The Shock Doctrine was a how-to guide - a manual for making millions from catastrophe? Were they hoping for tips on landing no-bid contracts if the US bombs Iran?
When I get worried about inadvertently fueling the disaster complex, I take comfort in the response the book has elicited from the world's leading business journalists. That's where I learn that the very notion of disaster capitalism is my delusion - or, as Otto Reich, former adviser to President George Bush, told BBC Business Daily, it is the work "of a very confused person".
Many publications have seen fit to assign business journalists to review the book. And why not? They are the experts. Unabashed fans of the late free-market evangeliser Milton Friedman, these are our primary purveyors of the idea that ballooning corporate profits are on the verge of trickling down to the citizens of the world in the form of freedom and democracy.
So in the Times, for instance, the book was reviewed by Robert Cole, who writes the paper's personal investor column and is author of the volume Getting Started in Unit and Investment Trusts (Chapter 7 - Taxing Questions: Pepping up Your Prospects). Cole was none too pepped by The Shock Doctrine, which disappointed him as "too easy to dismiss as a leftist rant". In the New York Times, the task of explaining why "it's all a grand capitalist conspiracy" fell to Tom Redburn, author of its Economic View column. "That's a lot to lay on poor Milton," Redburn sniffed.
No one took it quite as hard as Terence Corcoran, the business editor of Canada's National Post. Disaster capitalism is apparently my "fevered creation". And how could I have said those things about Friedman, a man Corcoran has described as "the last great lion of free market economics"?
In the Financial Times, the unbiased dissection was carried out by John Willman, the paper's UK business editor (who, on the side, advocates shifting healthcare costs to families in Britain and tuition increases in Scotland). Willman declared the book "a polemic" and warned "impressionable readers" not to be fooled by my 60 pages of endnotes. While Cole claims I rely on "partisan contributions from the cuttings library", Willman accuses me of a far greater crime: relying on cuttings from the FT. "She quotes the Financial Times when it suits her, for example, but not when it would be inconvenient."
It's true. I do, in fact, quote the FT when it suits me. In The Shock Doctrine, I cite the paper 26 times. And this is what hurts most about the attacks from the world's business editors: even as they find new ways to dismiss me, I remain a devoted reader of their pages. Sure, financial editors have to do PR for capitalism. Their reporters, however, have a crucial market role. Investors require reliable information, and it's their job to supply it. Without this honest reporting, I would never have understood how economic shock therapy programmes relied on external disasters - the very disaster capitalism I now learn, from these same pages, does not exist.
It was from the FT that I learned of the so-called Davos Dilemma. Columnist Martin Wolf describes it as "the contrast between the world's favourable economics and troublesome politics". He explains that, in recent years, the economy has faced "a series of shocks" - from the dotcom crash to September 11 to chaos in the Middle East. And yet the market is in "a golden period of broadly shared growth".
A great deal of light is shed on the Davos Dilemma by the FT. For instance, it reported that Lockheed Martin - the biggest single winner from the economy of disaster - has begun "buying companies in the $1,000bn-a-year healthcare market". It's just one glimpse into the exploding economy of privatised disaster, with Lockheed poised to profit not only from making weapons but also from treating the people injured by them - a new era of morbid vertical integration.
The FT has long explored how politicians harness disasters to push through unwanted economic policies. In 1998, for instance, it published an article by Jeffrey Sachs outlining how the IMF took South Korea's democracy hostage, withholding a desperately needed loan until all presidential candidates committed in writing to a harsh austerity plan. Some months later, Hurricane Mitch swept Central America. I learned from the FT that, with countries still knee-deep in rubble, foreign lenders were demanding privatisations.
In the first months after the US "shock and awe" attack on Iraq, the FT reported on US envoy Paul Bremer's shock therapy programme. The paper stated his decrees "make Iraq one of the most open economies in the developing world and go beyond even legislation in many rich countries". It's a concise summary that I often draw upon.
But now, after all these years of fruitful (if one-way) collaboration, the FT calls my thesis "ultimately dishonest". Stinging as this may be, I stand behind the honesty of the FT's reporting, which has been so very helpful in the evolution of my world view.
I wish disaster capitalism were a product of my fevered imagination. I have recently, however, come across more evidence to support its existence. It comes from Paul B Farrell, author of publishing sensations such as The Millionaire Code and The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing. "Hot tip: Invest in 'disaster capitalism'," begins his review in Dow Jones Business News. Farrell acknowledges that an economy built on disaster "is a hot-button political issue. But for the moment, let's put aside partisan politics ... Let's look at this strictly as investors and briefly consider what may also be a guide for aggressive investors". Many unmentionable stock tips follow.
It is just as I had feared - The Shock Doctrine as a how-to-guide. At the end, however, Farrell shows some misgivings. "Is 'Disaster Capitalism' merely a hot short-term investment opportunity for you? Or is it a national 'crisis,' a warning bell, a 'shocking' call to ... rein in the 'military-industrial complex' mindset that's pushing America into a disastrous, self-destructive future?"
Moral confusion in the business pages? Where am I supposed to get my news now?
Naomi Klein is the author of many books, including her most recent, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which will be published in September. Visit Naomi's website at nologo.org.
© 2007 The Nation
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55 Comments so far
Show AllNaomi has them worried. Good for her!
Of course the economic elites have to make up a cover story for worldwide plunder, why it is really utilitarian, in order to convince the "losers" to go along. Otherwise, there would be more resistance, wouldn't there?
Quite true. FT is an excellent source if you're interested in how predatory capitalism works. I was pleased to see it so often cited in Klein's book.
Naomi neglects to mention that the best review of her work by an economist is Joe Stiglitz's "Bleakonomics," published in the NYT. You'd think that lesser commentators would take a hint from a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
On a positive note, the disaster capitalism that is global warming is pushing some investors into clean energy. And agribusiness food is pushing many into small scale organics. Can collective capitalism be near?
I'm one of those naive leftists. I read her book and was impressed with the thoroughness of her research and thought her arguments very convincing. It was an eye-opener for me and I HIGHLY recommend it.
It's true that after every disaster there must be repairs. And most of them cost the victims money, and those repairing the damage earn that money.
But what's so alarming about "disaster capitalism" is that those who intentionally cause the disaster, through direct action or indirect neglect that will bring about the disaster, are the ones who also rake in the money for repairing it.
Naomi, we're grateful for your research into this modern (?) phenomenon. Your conclusions based on information gleaned from articles published in the financial world press give shape to what's been obvious to many citizens during the war-reign of Bush and Cheney. They're the wrecking crew, and they and their buddies profit from repairing the wreck. Only it's industries and conglomerates who've gotten into the act.
The Financial Times publishes the information, and complains when someone draws a conclusion from it? It's a bit like reading a letter from someone who described sneaking into somebody's house and taking the silver home with them, and the letter-writer is indignant that you concluded they committed robbery!
KLEIN, COMPETITION AND CAPITALISM
Naomi Klein and the school of Public Choice Theory in economics are not that far apart. The latter asserts individuals in government will always act to manipulate resources towards their self interests, just like businesses do in the private sector with their own resources.
Under competition, when businesses do it, it turns out good for eveyone a la Adam Smith. But when government does it, it creates all sorts of serious problems, which is why the school of Public Choice despises most government of any sort, leaning heavily towards a libertarian view.
The problem is that genuine, effective competition has become rare these days due to all sorts of market power that ends up undermining it, whether from government or private origin.
When the business community attacks Klein, they are attacking her definition of competition and converting it to the usual anti-capitalist propaganda, largely because if most of them had to face effective competition, they'd fall flat on their face.
A couple of unrelated thoughts on things susceptible to "shock" opportunism.
Perhaps the institution with the greatest power in the United States to create political shock is our Supreme Court. Though President Bush appointed two guys who "will not legislate from the bench" and Rudy Giuliani promises more of the same, they're all at complete liberty (and planning to) "unlegislate" any number of your hard-won individual rights (by rejecting precedents) as opportunities present themselves in cases. What do you plan to "settle for" after that occurs?
Did you know that corporations, wealthy individuals and hedge funds are (thanks to tax cuts) sitting on record amounts of cash, waiting for opportunities to come along, quite possibly in the form of "shocks" in the financial system? Even Warren Buffet has 40-odd billion in cash in his Berkshire Hathaway holding company, waiting for situations to arise that allow the acquisition of businesses on the cheap. Do you appreciate that on any given day a derivative-choked world financial system can have a major hiccup (some sort of "shock") and expose your stock investments to losses that some very large vultures are perched to capitalize upon? Because, as President Bush says,
cash is better off in your (corporations') pocket than in the U.S. Treasury?
Can anyone agree that these are two reasons to have Democrats running your government from 2008 forward?
Jack London wrote over a hundred years ago in IRON HEEL: "You have forgotten the editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain. Their policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the established. The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it."
Hoa binh
Just finished The Shock Doctrine, and must send my undying devotion and heartfelt thanks to Naomi. I can only hope that we find a way to exhume the body of Milton Friedman and rebury it along with all his insane economic theories. Ms. Klein's findings show, without a doubt, that America's disaster of a president was right when he announced four years ago: "Mission Accomplished." The mission was endless chaos and control of oil. All those permanent bases weren't built by anyone planning on exiting soon. Great work Naomi. Keep up the good fight! The Shock Doctrine will fill the Christmas stockings of everyone on my list this year.
the reason that Klein's writings on "disaster capitalism" is such a threat to the purveyors of disaster capitalism is that they don't want everyone to see what they know. And that is they deserve to be hanged by the neck until dead on the toxic ground that used to be the world trade centre.
So many of us locked up, instiutionalized, cast out and tortured for naming, for resisting what Naomi Klein writes about, speaks of: SHOCK DOCTRINE, Invisible Fencing, shock control manipulation by many means to control and maintain. Did she scare them? You bet she scared the hell out of them and set a few free and saved some lives doing so.
What a job!
The prophets tortured, cast out, killed. The holy we want nothing to do with. The poor we hide. Why is this?
MORE SHOCK??
In October Mother Jones article on the Rotenberg Center (remember this one?) The School of Shock: electric shocks, withholding food and social isolation. Is this torture??? These children are able to shop at a store and given rewards based on behavior. One child has been shocked 5,000 times!! Torture? Don't ask. Obviously not much time at the store for him! Now there is the making of good capitalism/don't you think?? or rather disaster capitalism/don't think. Of course this is entirely up to you friend. In Peace, Margaret Bryant-Gainer www.wvpeace.org
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/school_of_shock.html
What Naomi has done is embarrass and shame the disaster capitalist investors and shown them for what they are, maggots and parasites scavenging the spoils of tragedy.
I guess no one has ever pointed out so clearly and explicitly how grotesque they are. And they are rejecting this accurate image of themselves in the form of criticism for the person who dared to reveal their disgusting practices.
B-Payne, you say that:
"government will always act to manipulate resources towards their self interests, just like businesses do in the private sector with their own resources."
You seem to think that governmental manipulation of resources is problematic and that private sector manipulation is great.
What rubbish! For starters, libertarians are simply NOT able to meaningfully differentiate between state and private power. Any political sophisticate worth spit will tell you that power centers, whether public or private, are problematic in the sense that policies most aligned with the general weal risk being trumped by the interests of the power center. Libertarians try to draw a line between the public and private by claiming that the government has certain "responsibilities" which must be seen to for the good of all, like national defense. (New responsibilities are added to an ever growing laundry list as bad results from private power are recognized). As far the GENERAL "worth" of policy brought about by public vs. private power, NOTHING meaningful can be said. Consequences will vary, and you've really just got to look at each individual case. What we call the "free market" is just a structure put in place in order to, in principle, make policy somewhat reflective of people's needs/desires. Note this is exactly what democracy might accomplish through the voting booth.
Self-described Libertarians are about the dumbest people on the planet, maybe just a bit ahead of the fervently religious and surely behind most people suffering from serious head injuries. The libertarian message is always to somehow minimize government, the meaning being that when better consequences can be realized by relocating power to the private sector we should do so. Why not be a "governmentarian" instead, and hold that when better consequences can be realized by relocating power to the government sector we should do so? The positions could be identical! The only difference is the contextual one; a person spouting libertarian horseshit is understood as bashing public infringement on the celestial greatness of private sector business. Since systems are put in place for the purpose of deriving best consequences as their founders choose to define them, the questions which need concern thoughtful people have to do which whether the values a system is designed to promote are good values, and how well the consequences of system operations actually reflect these values.
To all libertarians: suck my balls.
"not to be fooled by my 60 pages of endnotes."
LMAO, do they really think people are that stupid?!
It's like I heard the other day, that someone was saying the media was to blame for anti war sentiment!! LMAO
PS. I have to laugh to keep from crying.
She rocks. And she's also a really wonderful speaker. Dynamo.
The Southern California wildfires currently in progress are the most recent episode of disaster capitalism. At the very least the housing bubble will be reinflated temporarily in that region.
In Southern California its all part of the business cycle...carpenter becomes unemployed...turns into arsonist...carpenter re-employed.
Naomi, you're too much. Keep writing!!
Ms. Klein,
I thought you were rather gentle with Greenspan on Democracy Now!
Thank you, Ms. Klein, for your dedication and brilliant work, The Shock Doctrine. I recently finished reading it and I must concur with one review that I've read: It's probably the most important piece of work to come along in the last 40 years.
Again, thank you for your perseverance, and for being a prophet during these dark and troubling times. Bless you, and peace to you always.
To Commondreams readers, The Shock Doctrine will continue to cause shockwaves in the conservative community around the world. It's a breath-of-fresh-air in the stale acidity we've been forced to inhale since the beginning of the 1980s. If you haven't already, make a point to read it. It's that important. I believe it'll prove to be ground-zero, in coming years, when historians point to what created the tipping-point allowing the recapture of our eroding freedoms and democracies, and the dismantling of the corporatist paradigm.
"Self-described Libertarians are about the dumbest people on the planet,"
Please describe why they are "dumb", and not instead honestly disagreeing with your opinions.
"To all libertarians: suck my balls."
Classy.
"To all libertarians: suck my balls."
Brave too, considering this place.
Naomi--You rock!
Your ability to not only see the patterns in chaos but make them obvious to the rest of us not paying as close attention is a priceless treasure--may the debates ands disputes over "Shock" keep going on and on because when it does there is light as well as heat generated.
GO LIBERTARIANS!
Except when they don't, like the rubbish about going back to the gold standard and such. Also true for most libertarians, the worst private monopolist is always better than the best government regulation - more rubbish.
But most libertarians are on the cutting edge of protecting civil liberties from the likes of Bush, whom they skewer regularly with pots of boiling water that can make CD look like a rehab unit for fallen Republicans.
Most libertarians stridently oppose the war on drugs, government surveillance, the Iraq War, empire building, unnecessary SWAT raids and copyright and patent abuse - and appear identical in position to postings on CD for the same issues.
One reason the issues Naomi Klein deals with rarely get resolved along the lines of "free markets" vs government control is because the details are complex and rarely surface to reveal what happened.
When a U.S. corporation expands into a country by effectively bribing government officials to extract a natural resource for pennies on the dollar, some call it "free trade and globalization" while Klein calls it "disaster capitalism".
Libertarians don't care about the details - if government was involved, it's bad. If not, it's ok. Republicans tend to want any deal versus no deal. Liberals are more careful about getting the best deal and will reject more deals.
How many libertarians does it take to screw in a light bulb? None, the free market will do it.
The same best and brightest who still believe "1984" was a playbook can't stand looking in Naomi's mirror, eh? You know what else has never happened (unless you're a cuckooleftiesocialist?)
Neocons - never happened. PNAC, AEI, the dream of a "new Pearl Harbor" - all lies. "Shock and awe?" Hippie rumor. Massive transfer of our Treasury to the richest of the rich? Absolute conspiracy nut nonsense. Gitmo? You mean Club Med Cuba? Karl Rove, in fact, has never been to the White House. Crazy talk that is. There is no such a person named Dick Cheney in the known universe. And contrary to what the liberal anti-American media says, the safest place on Earth today is downtown Baghdad.
So take that, smart girl.
READ THIS BOOK!!!! I've been reading it for the last few weeks, and I'd call it the most important book of the year if you want to understand the world around you.
Read it, then you'll start to notice other little things like the recent story that the Federal firefighting response in San Diego has been hampered by the fact that firefighting has been privatised.
To the above discussion, for now Libertarians should be our friends.
Face it folks, we are involved in a vital struggle to reclaim our country and our democracy from people who've hijacked it for their own personal profit and power-grabs. We face a serious uphill fight against a foe that largely has the ability to control what many people in this country see and read and even think. In general, our candidates frequently get about 5% of the vote.
The Libertarians see the same threat and are as opposed to it as we are. So why the constant fighting with them? The key thing to do would be to declare an alliance for some limited goals that we can both agree on. Mainly, fixing our corrupt government and returning our nation to being a nation of the people, by the people and for the people.
Once we do that and we have a free and fair system of government, then I'd gladly debate the libertarians on the details of their policies and where I disagree. And I do disagree. But people, today we need every ally we could possibly get for what is going to be a long hard fight.
Maybe we should stop shooting at people who can be our allies and instead focus our fire on the real enemies. And if you read this book, you'll understand just how cruel, evil and efficient out real enemies can be.
I saw this article in the Guardian yesterday.
I must confess that I am terribly disappointed in the journalists of the so-called "free press".
I read Ms. Klein's book and found it meticulously researched and a powerful work.
The Greeks defined "courage" as not just the ability to endure pain, but also the ability to resist temptation. That today's journalists are so lacking in courage that they are unable to give an honest, objective analysis is disturbing.
Brace yourselves for the coming tsunami---as Chalmers Johnson writes in his brilliant book, "Nemesis": "...Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengence, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits for her meeting with us."
Naomi, love your work and will promote it far and wide. Thank you so much for being a voice of reason in this sillivization today. A song celebrating your work is on the way. Fantastic to know you're here, doing what you're doing.
COMarc's suggestion that "Libertarians should be our friends" is quite revealing.
Libertarians represent the postmodern extreme Right, wishing to give all power to those who already have power. They are the worst of the market fundamentalists, the most extreme exponents of the Friedmaniac pseudo-economics Naomi Klein rails against. They cheer when the shock doctrine is forced on Chile, Poland, Iraq, etc. They think it should be imposed on America.
Whose friends are they? Yours, COMarc? What do you have in common with them?
Well, you pretty much said it yourself. What you have in common with them is that you're cranks.
Speaking, apparently, of the Libertarians, Greens, and various Red parties, and people like Nader, you write that "In general, our candidates frequently get about 5% of the vote."
Well, actually, the Libertarians are the largest and wealthiest of the would-be third parties, and even with all their money (could you even dream of a think-tank HQ like the Cato Institute's gleaming glass cube?) they have not won a single seat in the US Congress, just one governor of Alaska to show for all their efforts.
Oh, but, there's Ron Paul, a Libertarian in drag as a Republican. That tells you something, too, about how progressives can win office: RUN AS DEMOCRATS.
Oh, but, "We face a serious uphill fight against a foe that largely has the ability to control what many people in this country see and read and even think." Gee, who would that be? Nancy Pelosi? Howard Dean? The Clintons, with Rahm Emmanuel riding shotgun?
No, dumbo, it's the CORPORATE MEDIA. And the Libertarians are all for letting it get as monolithic as it may, all for privatizing the internet and abolishing the FCC. You want to make an alliance with them? It'll be an alliance of small-time fakers. I see a national conference of alternative politics. Party on!
Wall Street Democrats vs. Main Street Democrats
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=wall_street_democrats_vs_main_street_democrats
A man in debt is so far a slave.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
O Naomi, forget them that will never requite your love and instead bestrew your affection on one humble fellow such as I... oops, I forgot you're married ;-) Seriously though, thank you for all your great reporting. You go!
Naomi makes a good contribution to what the capitalists are really doing, but there are ways she doesn't go quite far enough - there's more to be found here, in a book called 'They're Building a Box - and You're In It' - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box-intro.html
The Greens are the largest and fastest growing third party.
Ir's an amazing pattern. For example, Michael Moore documents the underside of capitalism and millions pay to engage with his features. And we observe the same with Ms Klein.
Here comes the dichotomy.
Millions on millions buy access to their end products. At the same time, the establishment press and pundits smear the realities they explore. Lastly, the Democrats dismiss or ignore them.
It is this increasing dichotomy between the official economic dogmas and popular perceptions that fuels anger, angst, frustration and hopelessness among many US citizens.
I live in a small Florida town. Today, my wife was spending time in the dentist's waiting room. She overheard two elderly ladies discussing and criticising Bush's veto of the S-CHIPS, the vast sums wasted on the Iraq occupation, the non-responsiveness to the home mortgage debacle, and so on.
At the end, one said that Bush would go down in history as the America's worst President. The other chimed in describing how anxious she felt because the US was being led to nowhere.
Remember, these were two very conservative older ladies who normally don't discuss politics or current events; they are especially not critical of conservative politicians or programs.
I think it starting to register for many US citizens; we live in a Banana Republic in which oligarchical forms of elite democracy barely note and never act to progressively deal with their deepest economic concerns.
Like Banana Republics, huge private bureaucratic corporations call the shots in elections. A large military directs much policy behind the scenes.
The big differences of course are in average income per capita and the obvious US pop cultural and military presence throughout the world.
However, when a nation takes on the political and economic structure of a Banana Republic, the constant lowering of income per capita plus always increasing inequality between social classes is not far behind.
We've had another SHOCK in California this week, as most of the nation has noticed by now. Seems that the area closest to the proposed Blackwater/West project was possibly an arsonist caused fire.
Gee...with all those protesting neighbors burned out, will it be easier now for Eric Prince to set up his mercenary training center in our backyard???
After Naomi's book, one can never be too paranoid!!! They really are after us.
###
Eric Prince of Blackwater considers himself a Libertarian.
Is he someone we can make common cause with, CoMarc?
from his interview on Charlie Rose, 10/16/07:
Charlie Rose: When people say that you are more libertarian than Republican, would you say yes, no?
Erik Prince: Absolutely.
Charlie Rose: You are more libertarian?
Erik Prince: Yes, sir.
Charlie Rose: Believing what about government?
Erik Prince: Limited government is best.
Charlie Rose: How about military?
Erik Prince: I'm a strong supporter of the military....
(he supported Pat Buchanan over Bush Senior)
It's a problem because so many corporatists try to disguise themselves as libertarians.
I prefer the libertarians who focus on repealing drug laws (so they can get high) rather than economics. They're less likely to cause real harm.
One should give credit,where credit is do..Thank you Ms.Klein for pulling the wool from my eyes in detail.
As for the terrible fires in California..I wonder how many of those homes that have been lost,were facing forclosure?
Just a thought.
And So It Goes !
California Fire: Firefighting helicopters and planes were kept on the ground for the first 24 hours of the fire. Many firefighting planes had not been equipped with the proper tanks. But, that´s ok! Arnie and George W. did a great job.
Naomi Klein wrote a wonderful book explaining the process and why Iraq is not going to go away until everyone has reaped maximum profits. I could only read five pages at a time because I am so angry with the fact: that my tax dollars have been used to kill 1.2 million Iraqi Citizens (New British Study) that my tax dollars have been used to send over 4 million Iraqi citizens into refugee camps in nearby countries, that billions of dollars were stolen by American companies while in Iraq and they were immunized from prosecution,and that over 4.000 Americans have lost their lives fighting to steal another country´s oil.
Every year the Capitalists meet for a reunion. Naomi Klein did not mention "The Club Bilderberg" that is directed by Henry Kissinger. If you were to read "Club Bilderberg" by Daniel Estulin and "La CIA y 11 de Septiembre" by Andreas Von Bulow, you would come to those disurbing conclusions that Naomi Klein came to......Blackwater is nothing more than a CIA "Off Book Operation" (My belief) because the former director of CIA Counter terrorism, Cofer Black, is its vice chairman.........
Klein is always worth reading, but this one phrase made this article especially so: "a new era of morbid vertical integration" referring to Lockheed's profiting from the bombs, and from the treatment of its victims. It's truly a mad world...
"Eric Prince of Blackwater considers himself a Libertarian."
Association Fallacy. Doesn't matter if you think Prince is a good or bad guy. Dismissed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
durgaya
It's sort of like a physician making someone ill so he can profit from treating them, isn't it?
I think there is something deeper going on here. Humanity is not as nefarious as we "liberals" imagine it to be, notwithstanding a few Cheney-Kissinger types.
Psychology research proves that people are no good. Or at least that people are no good at seeing reality. We tend to see what we want to see, both in the literal sense and the physical. This is precisely why optical illusions work so well. If the mind can even fool the eyes, imagine what it can do to our less rational faculties!
The Disaster Capitalists that Naomi exposes fool themselves into moralizing wealth from disasters because it is in the natural order of a free market system that was developed by the "chosen nation's chosen culture". That is the kind of horse manure they chat about over martinis. Trust me.
In other words, I personally know a bunch of rich CEO types who need to drink themselves to sleep every night because otherwise, their moral subconscious would be chastising them in their sleep.
In general, however, they are not proud of their unholy wealth, so they donate some of it to local charities. Nevertheless, it is better for God's chosen ones to seize the day than the likes of Hugo Chavez or Putin or worse yet, the Iranian president, who has been delightfully renamed: Mahmoud I'm-a-dinner-jacket.
Dr. Seuss' "Onceler" character in The Lorax nailed the disaster capitalist's mentality: "Yes, but if I didn't do it then someone else would!" This mentality allows people to be complacent with or even participate in disaster capitalism in incredibly mean ways. For this reason I believe nationalism and politics often make people's hearts grow cold.
Humanity needs more ways to warm the hearts of all people regardless of political bias, religion, race, gender, etc.
At any rate, Naomi is inspirational in her ability to fight through the cultural bias, to see America as it really is, and more importantly, to stand up to America's growing army of Onclers!
Right now I am working on a falsification of Thomas Friedman's 10 flatteners from his best-selling book The World Is Flat. I lived in Central Africa for four years, and although the world is becoming a tiny bit flatter every year, technology aint making people any nicer.
I heard a beautiful quote recently: "Be ashamed to die before you have won some small victory for humanity." Mann
And if each one teaches one, maybe love will go viral?
I see Liberatarians as naive. They have no understanding of the definition of a "natural monopoly"... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
You can't have duplicate infrastructure for roads, communications, electricity etc... so letting any corporation claim ownership of critical infrastructure gives them a monopoly, and lets them charge whatever they want. Since Libertarians won't regulate or use price controls, and won't take infrastructure away from the corporations that claim to own it, they have no way of stopping Enron or some other company from completely defrauding consumers.
Not only infrastructure is a problem, but in any industry where a company profits from a necessity. For example, people need health-care. I haven't seen a real Libertarian solution to the current health-care crisis... how do they plan to stop insurance companies from making 30% on every health-care dollar spent? How do they stop drug-companies with exclusive patents from marking up drugs? What about for-profit hospitals and insurance companies causing countless Americans and businesses to go bankrupt? Is their plan to let people who can't afford health-care to die on the streets?
The only tool Libertarian politicians seem to have at their disposal is competition. So I guess they advocate people choosing their own hospitals? Well, how the hell do you choose a hospital if you are knocked unconscious and the ambulance takes you to the emergency room?
I actually read Ron Paul's ideas because I was curious... tax credits and lessen medical malpractice suits. That's his solution... http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul339.html
So Libertarians are basically living in a fantasy world. Tax-credits aren't going to do shit when confronted with a bill for a $50,000 life-saving operation, and would barely dent the money needed for drugs if someone has a terminal disease.
It's easy to criticize Libertarians, but I still believe they aren't as bad as neo-cons. Libertarians don't start foreign wars, they won't feed the disaster capitalism complex, and they actually believe in freedom and democracy. They've just been brain-washed about the "Almighty free-market" to see their solutions aren't practical. Keynesian economics is what made America strong after the Great Depression, and hopefully Libertarians will eventually come to see that.
"I see Liberatarians as naive. They have no understanding of the definition of a "natural monopoly"…"
Ho can you make such a sweeping generalization about what you think a group of people do not understand?
Room 101,
Ron Paul would not agree with Eric Prince,
Just because some jerk considers himself a certain label of belief is no reason to collectively blame any group. I have learned much from this discussion from the links to the Encyclopedia and all the different views within every label you can identify.
The shocks of life have always been the catalyst for change and it is logical that the Ruling Class would take advantage of that.
Just the fact that we all grew up with the "Left" label and 90 percent of the people are right handed, while the mind works with associations, we have such an uphill struggle on the Psychological Frame to overcome... we are doin pretty good considering. Imagine the Common Folks advantage if the rulers would have taken the "Left" label instead... Then people could claim that the Right is usually right.
Instead we are left with the unfair playing field and the irony of "The Left is usually right".
But Irony doesn't win elections!
Do we have a challenge or what?
"Of course the economic elites have to make up a cover story ... Otherwise, there would be more resistance, wouldn't there?"
'Resistance has been Futile...'
During the early 20th c., a major left-wing libertarian social movement energed within the US -the IWW.
This movement was the closest thing the US had that was a leftist mass movement.
However, it was anti-capitalist. Instead of developing the left-hand of the state (that hand that redistributes benefits back to the working class), it promoted the organizational idea of ONE BIG UNION.
In other worlds, the movement promoted the cooperative, communal and communitarian aspects of making investment, productive and rule-making decisions.
The IWW emerged from the reality of frontier living. People had to work together for security, planting and harvesting crops, schooling, etc...in other words, town meetings and the "bees": quilting, cornhusking, barn-raising, spelling, and all the other bees.
The IWW libertarianism was the opposite of right-wing libertarianism based on an atomistic individualism based on possession of material objects: possessive individualism. I am what I own.
The right-wing libertarianism emerged out of a post-war US in which humans were converted from productive and low-paid worker citizens to paper producing, well-paid employee consumers living off the fat of the Empire.
Atomistic individualism has no ideas concerning how people make rules, produce and distribute goods, educate the young and cultivate people within a society.
Their individual is an entity that relates to others via an economically rational contract.
The state has one duty: police, secure and adjudicate these millions of contracts. In other words, they follow corporate capitalists in that they support the right-hand of the state: the state as policeman and judge.
Moreover, the right-wing libertarian is not concerned with how deal with unequal economic power: corporations vs. individuals (either consumers or workers).
Their solution is to economic inequality is the free market. And as we know, "The Free Market is the weapon of the economically powerful" (Bismarck).
In addition, the libertarian Right has no answer for splitting state power from economic power. Those with concentrated and organized economic power ALWAYS invest in policies, politicians, political parties and dictators because they expect a return on their investment (hierarchy of interest satisfaction).
Oh well. All those who believe in the divine right of markets built on individual contracts actually support corporate rule.
But there IS money to be made from catastrophe. From short selling to war profiteering "smart money" is aaalways the first to see the silver lining. And considering that disater seems to be the only way to keep making any it only goes to show the business press` willful ignorance of the facts that they aren`t passing shock doctrine onto their best clients.
Great piece by Naomi Klein! I would say she settled the matter and got the last laugh. LOL