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

The "Miracle of Chile" was a term used by free market Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman to describe liberal and free market reorientation of the economy of Chile in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and the purported benefits of his style of economic liberalism.

"In 1973, Chile had experienced hyperinflation that had hit 700 percent, at a time when the country, under high protectionist barriers, had no foreign reserves, and GDP was falling.[2] The economic reforms were originally drafted by Chilean economists known as the "Chicago Boys" because many of them had studied at the University of Chicago. The plan had three main objectives: economic liberalization, privatization of state owned companies, and stabilization of inflation."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703411304575093572032665414.html

What Chile did have was intellectual capital, thanks to an exchange program between its Catholic University and the economics department of the University of Chicago, then Friedman's academic home. Even before the 1973 coup, several of Chile's "Chicago Boys" had drafted a set of policy proposals which amounted to an off-the-shelf recipe for economic liberalization: sharp reductions to government spending and the money supply; privatization of state-owned companies; the elimination of obstacles to free enterprise and foreign investment, and so on."

In left-wing mythology—notably Naomi Klein's tedious 2007 screed "The Shock Doctrine"—the Chicago Boys weren't just strange bedfellows to Pinochet's dictatorship. They were complicit in its crimes. "If the pure Chicago economic theory can be carried out in Chile only at the price of repression, should its authors feel some responsibility?" wrote New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis in October 1975. In fact, Pinochet had been mostly indifferent to the Chicago Boys' advice until the continuing economic crisis forced him to look for some policy alternatives. In March 1975, he had a 45-minute meeting with Friedman and asked him to write a letter proposing some remedies. Friedman responded a month later with an eight-point proposal that largely mirrored the themes of the Chicago Boys.

For his trouble, Friedman would spend the rest of his life being defamed as an accomplice to evil: at his Nobel Prize ceremony the following year, he was met by protests and hecklers. Friedman himself couldn't decide whether to be amused or annoyed by the obloquies; he later wryly noted that he had given communist dictatorships the same advice he gave Pinochet, without raising leftist hackles.

As for Chile, Pinochet appointed a succession of Chicago Boys to senior economic posts. By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina stagnated. Pinochet's democratic successors—all of them nominally left-of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. Result: Chileans have become South America's richest people. They have the continent's lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line.

http://www.hacer.org/chile/?p=22

Naomi Klein’s disastrous yet popular polemic against the great free market economist.

In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is a risk that they will ask you why you support dictatorships, torture, and corporate welfare. The reason for the confusion will be Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

In a very short time, the book has become a 21st-century bible for anticapitalists. It has also drawn praise from mainstream reviewers: “There are very few books that really help us understand the present,” gushed The Guardian. “The Shock Doctrine is one of those books.” Writing in The New York Times, the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called it “a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries."

Klein’s basic argument is that economic liberalization is so unpopular that it can only win through deception or coercion. In particular, it relies on crises. During a natural disaster, a war, or a military coup, people are disoriented, confused, and preoccupied with their own immediate survival, allowing regimes to liberalize trade, to privatize, and to reduce public spending with little opposition. According to Klein, “neoliberal” economists have welcomed Hurricane Katrina, the Southeast Asian tsunami, the Iraq war, and the South American military coups of the 1970s as opportunities to introduce radical free market policies. The chief villain in her story is Milton Friedman, the economist who did more than anyone in the 20th century to popularize free market ideas.

To make her case, Klein exaggerates the market reforms in question, often ignoring central events and rewriting chronologies. She confuses libertarianism with the quite different concepts of corporatism and neoconservatism. And she subjects Milton Friedman to one of the most malevolent distortions of a thinker’s ideas in recent history.

*lies Friedman was a murderous thug.

Adding video to channels (Lies) - requested by dystopianfuturetoday.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

lies Friedman was a murderous thug.


You didn't even watch the video before downvoting it. Good one.

Today is the day I got blankfist to openly praise fascism. Opereration: Counter-Troll has succeeded.

Kind of like how counter-terrorism succeeded when you praised the illegal kill order on Osama?

[Drops the mic. Walks off stage]

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Interesting. Don't want to vote for any comments here - lest I instantly be branded anti-capitalist, or a neo-fascist. But, Dante said the hottest seats in hell are reserved for those who don't speak out in a crisis. So, here goes. You're BOTH pseudo-intellectual douche-bags.

Ha ha ha, just kidding. (am I?) Anyway - (wipes tear of mirth from corner of eye) As usual with these things - the middle path is the answer. Thanks.

In all seriousness though, I think it's cool that you've come out of the closet as a fascist. No sense hiding it behind all that liberty BS, which few were buying into, anyway. Also, since fascism is so out of fashion, it really sets you apart from the herd. Very edgy and rebellious.

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by gwiz665.

I love how the ignorant try to relabel logical/rational thought as "leftist".

In terms of Chile, North America needs to stay the fuck out, how well the Chilean economy does has nothing to do with any of you pricks.

I like how we can have a conversation about economic reform in Chile without discussing the decade of torture and mass murder of its civilian population under the Pinochet regime. You can't separate the two. They are inextricably linked. Forever.

>> ^ghark:

In terms of Chile, North America needs to stay the fuck out, how well the Chilean economy does has nothing to do with any of you pricks.


I agree with you.

I remember going to Chile in 1994. One thing that impressed me in the shops was how many people they had working in them which led us to draw the conclusion they were being very creative in dealing with unemployment.

A typical example was this cake shop. We'd ask for a cake, the person would select it and bag it. Then we had to pay another person for the cake after which point we got the cake. There were lots of little quirky things like that going on but I was impressed with things generally and dining out was very reasonable.

I wouldn't mind going back one day.

^Chile has begun to bounce back, thanks to return to democracy, which prompted the dismantling of many of Friedman's edicts. However, there are still many scars left over from the Pinochet/Friedman days, such as income inequality.

(Trolling experiment completed: genuine comments from here on out)

When I put this in *lies, I wasn't doing it for fun.

Friedman was in on the coup from day one. He and his Chicago Boys drafted the economic edicts (in a document known as 'The Brick") before the coup even took place.

You don't have to take my word for in. Read it for yourself here:

wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chile#Background

Friedman was absolutely an advisor to Pinochet, and if you want to know what Friedman meant by "Shock Treatment", he was talking about the brutal torture and murder of anyone willing to stand in his way.

This Orwellian bullshit excuse for a documentary should be downvoted into oblivion.

If you want a perspective on this issue that doesn't come from the Milton Friedman appreciation society, here you go: http://videosift.com/video/USA-commits-911-attrocities-on-Chile

Adding video to channels (Lies) - requested by dystopianfuturetoday.

alot of history is currently targeted to be "rewritten"

it usually gets done by omitting alot of facts, as is done here

wonder if the stuff happening in Michigan and Wisconsin have anything to do with this suddenly becoming an issue on the sift...

This is a horrible glorification of Pinochet and dictatorship in general. Mthrfckr

Next blankfist is gonna praise Mussolini for making the trains run on time...

friedman was a soulless cunt.
the only group which friedman closely relates to:sociopaths

Don't worry guys. Friedman made up for it by saying he didn't care if Pinochet would be upset to lose his dictatorship around min 3:18. We're cool.

Oh and @blankfist
Like @peggedbea implied, I could never support this type of free market dogma considering all the bloodshed it's linked to.

I watched this video with my mother who didn't get a chance to leave Chile until '76.
Her mother, my uncles and her all had to flee after Pinochet's gestapo raided their house looking for my grandfather.

She was telling me how she remembered the food shortages & the awful unemployment.

So to watch Friedman accept that Peace Prize with the smug look on his face was more than a little bit insulting.

Sorry Blankie, but fuck the power elite.

lol

There aren't enough downvotes. My own country suffered a dictatorship not too long ago and sooner or later there are always people who show up saying:

"There were some minor problems but we were better with glorious leader."

"Then what about all the tortured people, the wars, the misery of so many, barely with enough to eat, no health, no education, no future?"

"Well, I was all good with it, so fuck you and your well documented suffering."

War On Democracy is great at exposing the kind of people that approve of this kind of regime. Entitled rich vampires that think the world was made for them and their family to shit on and distant armchair general intellectuals that imagine the whole world to be some kind of thought experiment made just to test their ridiculous ideas on.

Also, blankfist, I find it enormously hilarious that you think it's right and proper for the US to stay the fuck out but then conveniently forget that if not for interventionism, there would be no Pinochet to obey the dictates of the States, no so called "miracle". Chile would be Socialist and on Allende's path to provide jobs, health and education to the masses.

The title is pretty much the tipoff.
"free to choose"
the nightstick or the taser

Moving this video to blankfist's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.