That's mostly the kind of sleight-of-hand that the Kleins and Chomskys of the world dine out on. And hey, if I based my career on taking down economics, I'd be delighted that I could get Friedman and Pinochet into the same sentence, too. But the line of thinking breaks down when they try to go for any angle more ambitious than "Friedman advised Pinochet about economic policy" — ultimately, they can't accuse Friedman of ordering the death squads to march forward in the name of free markets or otherwise because, well, he didn't. He advised a dictator about economics, and that dictator turned out to be even worse than the average dictator. The blood's on Pinochet's hands.
Now, I do think there's an argument to be made that one shouldn't go around telling dictators how to improve aspects of their countries, because they're dictators and thus by definition on a moral level with hostage-takers. While I'd technically prefer to live in a dictatorship with functioning markets than one without, I'd really prefer that the outside world put a bullet in the guy whose thumb I'm under than tell him how to cripple the economy less. Also — and I don't know the extent to which this could have been foreseen, but still — it was a bit irresponsible to do economic reforms under a man as hated as Pinochet, since it's given economic reforms a bad name in Chile whose traces persist today.
If Friedman had taken over a country himself and then ordered those who disagreed with him executed in the name of the greater good of the free market, I'd be the first to put him in league with Lenin and Stalin — and if he held up Ayn Rand's teachings as his lodestone, Rand could go right in there with Marx. But he didn't, so I can't.
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dancing_serpent
Re: On The (Relatively) Judicious Use of the Word "Evil"
Date: 2008-09-23 03:43 pm (UTC)Now, I do think there's an argument to be made that one shouldn't go around telling dictators how to improve aspects of their countries, because they're dictators and thus by definition on a moral level with hostage-takers. While I'd technically prefer to live in a dictatorship with functioning markets than one without, I'd really prefer that the outside world put a bullet in the guy whose thumb I'm under than tell him how to cripple the economy less. Also — and I don't know the extent to which this could have been foreseen, but still — it was a bit irresponsible to do economic reforms under a man as hated as Pinochet, since it's given economic reforms a bad name in Chile whose traces persist today.
If Friedman had taken over a country himself and then ordered those who disagreed with him executed in the name of the greater good of the free market, I'd be the first to put him in league with Lenin and Stalin — and if he held up Ayn Rand's teachings as his lodestone, Rand could go right in there with Marx. But he didn't, so I can't.