This is my understanding as well. It made me distrust Obama especially when Rahm Immanuel from Chicago spoke of not letting a "good disaster go to waste." Maybe it's in that lake water.
REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 12:13 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: Why Americans won't do dirty jobs - Business - US business - Bloomberg Businessweek - msnbc.com Ed wrote: > I read Shock Doctrine some years ago and wasn't impressed. It > argued essentially, if I recall, that every bad thing that had > happened in the economic world could be attributed to the teachings > of the Chicago School. It seemed more than a little far fetched. I think it would be more accurate to say that it argued that there has been a widespread deliberate strategy of exploiting social disasters, shocks and confusion to seize control of a society's assets and finances, to entrain anything that might operate in the public interest for private gain. And that evangelists for the Chicago School have been the salient troops in promulgating and implementing this strategy again and again. The underlying concept is nothing new. Someone who would otherwise be a more or less law-abiding citizen may loot the neighborhood liquor store once it's been trashed in a riot or a disaster; others less law-abiding may try to start a riot or a forest fire just so they can get in on the subsequent looting. What may seem new (because it's one of those not to be talked about things) is that (putatively) highly responsible, respectable people may do that to whole national economic and public service infrastructures, even to the point of fomenting a financial or political collapse in order to make it possible. It is not necessary that *all* such people be high-profile polemicists for the Chicago School. If a number of the more prominent of these miscreants are Friedman colleagues or acolytes and use CS dogmata to subvert and co-opt public water supplies, public services, public education or the public good in general, the Chicago School is, if you're paying attention to what's on the end of your fork, justifiably going to take a lot of the blame, the moreso to the extent that such piratical practices are overt doctrine of the School. FWIW, - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
