The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism | Naomi Klein

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism | Naomi Klein | The Shock Doctrine

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The Shock Doctrine...

	The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Naomi Klein Metropolitan Books, 2007 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 291 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The best non-fiction ever

I thought I understood how it all works. But I had no idea! If there is one non-fiction book you read in your life about the way of the world, this should be it. With exceptional cohesiveness and documentation, Naomi Klein has laid bare what makes the world go 'round. You will be just as shocked. Read it now!

The Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
True, up to date history, brilliantly presented.

Don't be a fan boy, just read the book and judge for yourself.

As I developed my political and economic ideology several years ago, I decided to be proactive and read people like Smith, Friedman, Hayek, and Rand rather than be spoon fed propaganda by government schools. The ideology espoused by those writers appealed to me very much. Their basic beliefs, as I understood them, held that in order for humanity to be free the state exists only to ensure that the life, liberty and property of its citizens are free of force, fraud and coercion.

Although I found that I agreed in principle with that ideology, as I got older I frequently discovered that when our government says "free market" they usually mean a market where business interests are protected by the state through force, fraud and coercion. In other words, I discovered that in spite of its rhetoric American politicians, especially conservative Republicans, are no advocate of free markets.

Since the beginning of 2008, I've been in the business of questioning previously held beliefs. Experience has shown that there is a large gulf between the rhetoric advanced by government and the reality of their policies. In keeping with that theme, I decided to read The Shock Doctrine to see exactly how these so-called "free market" policies were performing around the world.

The level of detail and amount of research that Naomi Klein has committed to this book is amazing. It is a complete catalog of "Chicago School" abuses throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. Although at times her personal sympathies are evidenced in the tone of her writing, she does not carry out a hit job designed to redefine Friedman based on fabrication. I wouldn't define The Shock Doctrine as a hit job or smear piece, but if that is how her work comes off it is simply because the facts are themselves and indictment of the Friedman and his followers in the "Chicago School."

A lot of criticism is leveled at this book by Friedman fan boys who are familiar with his published work, but not with the policies he advocated around the world. I was one of those people when I started reading The Shock Doctrine, but I am now ashamed of the fact that I once admired Friedman. Despite the fact that I still find myself in agreement with him on the basic principles of economic freedom, it is shocking to learn that he apologized for and advocated policies that are the antitheses of those he advocates in his published work. One need not be a savant to realize that absolute free markets completely free of government interference are a pipe dream and that they will inevitably lead to businesses using monopoly power and wealth to "un-free" the markets and insert fraud and coercion into the equation, but the fact that Friedman thought markets should be freed by force is a direct affront to his stated ideology.

Much of that criticism is also clearly leveled by people who have not read The Shock Doctrine. It appears to come from a group of Friedman fan boys who watched a few book club speeches by Klein and decided that represented the breadth of her case. I would suggest that those people go to the library and pick up this book to read her entire argument.

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Very scary book

This book does a tremendous job decribing the pain and suffering brought on the citizens of the world from corporate power at all cost. But, the book is not fairly written. It only presents one side of an argument.

For example, the reason that these countries needed such immediate attention was that they were suffering from hyperinflation with more than half of their citizens employed by corrupt inefficient governments. In a world of corporate corruption, it is hard to remember how corrupt and inefficient governments can be, but trust me, they will bankrupt a country quickly if given the chance.

It turns out when you look at the statistical evidence across all the countries of the world, that capitalist institutions create not only greater wealth for citizens, but surprisingly, this wealth and income is more fairly divided across all citizens. And democratic institutions go hand in hand with capitalism, they both try to create greater individual choice and freedom and academics have shown that greater democratic institutions like the vote, civil liberties and a free press encourage economic growth in a country.

Friedman's mistake was not in supporting capitalism as a method for developing countries to escape poverty, but in trusting big corporations to implement fair rules for capitalism. Instead they instituted monopoly power by industry, lobbying power to write legislation and governmental control to protect their established business positions. Friedman never saw that big American corporations were violating his ideal world of competitive capitalism just as much as his much hated labor unions and big government.

Just Klein's description of Iraq is worth the price of the book. Why has the war dragged on and on? Because defense and reconstruction contractors want it to so as to be able to soak the American taxpayer for as long as possible. Why do we fight wars that our people are against, because they are profitable.

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