662 pages
English language
Published Feb. 5, 2007 by A.A. Knopf Canada.
An introduction to "disaster capitalism" argues that the global free market has exploited crises, violence, and shock in the past three decades to promote radical privatization that benefits large corporations and powerful interest groups.
Deeply thoughtful book, which makes clear how Chicago school economics has completely screwed over so much of the world and for what? The origins of free-market economics is something everyone in the tech industry should read to truly understand the extent of some of those dreams.
C'est un peu étrange de lire ce livre 15 ans après sa sortie et de voir rien que rien n'a vraiment changé. Que le capitalisme par corporatisme est toujours là, qu'on nous vend encore de la théorie du ruissellement et que les subventions au privé se fait toujours au détriment de la fonction publique (éducation, sécurité sociale, hôpital, retraite...). Toute ressemblance avec la politique française actuelle... non. Rien. Bref, déprimant quand on voit qu'il faut 20-30 ans aux pays ayant eu le droit à un traitement de choc pour commencer à croire que quelque chose d'autre est possible.
Relentlessly bleak, very well written.
I have to say that the whole bit at the start with the chapter just on the history of torture felt unrelated to the rest of the book, except to change what people might have thought of shock therapy.
To be honest, a lot of it reads as the paranoid ravings of a conspiracy theorist, but it's hard to deny the tactics of disaster capitalism given the countless examples deployed over decades and decades of Friedmanism gone wild, wreaking havoc in its wake in the name of unfettered free-market trade.
This was a very interesting, but incredibly difficult to read, book. On the one hand I'm glad to have become aware of all these hideous crimes US economists have perpetrated - or at least aided and abetted - since the 70s; on the other, I see what the author wrote in 2007 and look at what has happened since, and I still see that the corporations are winning and the people are losing.
It's been awhile since I've read this, but the history and thesis is interesting. It cannot be denied that the current version of capitalism sees the rich benefit off of disaster. Recessions come and go and the rich get richer from them, the poor poorer. More recently, we've seen episodes such as Texan companies during the current freeze making money while utterly failing at their jobs. (As example, see here: www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/jerry-jones-profits-from-texas-power-outages-as-gas-prices-skyrocket/ar-BB1dNoj1)
The primary critique one might level at this work is that capitalism is supposed to be about free markets, and so one may try to argue this isn't 'really' capitalism. This ignores that capitalism has many different definitions, and frankly the one that sees the most usage today is the simple, straight-forward one you'd expect: a system devoted to the pursuit of capital. This also ignores that the hypocrisy started on the other side: people talked about …
It's been awhile since I've read this, but the history and thesis is interesting. It cannot be denied that the current version of capitalism sees the rich benefit off of disaster. Recessions come and go and the rich get richer from them, the poor poorer. More recently, we've seen episodes such as Texan companies during the current freeze making money while utterly failing at their jobs. (As example, see here: www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/jerry-jones-profits-from-texas-power-outages-as-gas-prices-skyrocket/ar-BB1dNoj1)
The primary critique one might level at this work is that capitalism is supposed to be about free markets, and so one may try to argue this isn't 'really' capitalism. This ignores that capitalism has many different definitions, and frankly the one that sees the most usage today is the simple, straight-forward one you'd expect: a system devoted to the pursuit of capital. This also ignores that the hypocrisy started on the other side: people talked about how much they love free markets and separation of government from the market, but then they do things to undermine them, such as demanding corporations be treated 'as people' and be able to dump as much money into lobbying government for their interests above everyone else as they want.
I only got about ¼ into this. I don't like the shifty way Klein argues her points. I felt like I was being propagandized rather than educated.
Much of her main “shock doctrine” argument seems to be just sort of a tightly-woven set of linguistic parallels that are meant to suggest causation. Something like: Hitler had the autobahn built. The autobahn allowed drivers to finally race where they wanted to go. Hitler crafted what he thought of as the final solution to a race problem. So you see, highway systems are part and parcel of genocide.
You see, electroshock is a mostly-discredited method of treating mental illness that results in profound disorientation and amnesia. Electric shocks are also used to torture people in despotic regimes. People recommending against gradual economic reforms have used the metaphor of “shock treatment” to describe rapid, all-at-once changes. Ergo, these sorts of …
I only got about ¼ into this. I don't like the shifty way Klein argues her points. I felt like I was being propagandized rather than educated.
Much of her main “shock doctrine” argument seems to be just sort of a tightly-woven set of linguistic parallels that are meant to suggest causation. Something like: Hitler had the autobahn built. The autobahn allowed drivers to finally race where they wanted to go. Hitler crafted what he thought of as the final solution to a race problem. So you see, highway systems are part and parcel of genocide.
You see, electroshock is a mostly-discredited method of treating mental illness that results in profound disorientation and amnesia. Electric shocks are also used to torture people in despotic regimes. People recommending against gradual economic reforms have used the metaphor of “shock treatment” to describe rapid, all-at-once changes. Ergo, these sorts of economists are like torturers trying to mess with our minds.
She also uses the term “free market” — the bête noire of her book — to cover just about any economic circumstance she doesn’t like, whether there’s anything free about it or not.
On the one hand, the free market villains swoop in after disasters to inflict their “three trademark demands — privatization, government deregulation, and deep cuts in social spending” and on the other hand, this more often than not gets illustrated with examples like the U.S. paying huge sums of money to such corporations as those who provide various contracting services in Iraq. You can call that bad, but don’t call it “privatization, government deregulation, and deep cuts in social spending.” And certainly don’t call it “free market” anything.
