Cripes, I'd forgotten about this thread. My bad netiquette.
And mine elsewhere.
As far as I know, I don't think Friedman ever avowed support for Pinochet — he went to the country and lectured...
At the very least least, he also wrote directly to Pinochet in 1975, according to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, who quotes from it on page 87, referencing Friedman's Two Lucky People: Memoirs. And further,
In March 1975, Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger flew to Santiago at the invitation of a major bank to help save the experiment.
Friedman was greeted by the junta-controlled press as something of a rock star, the guru of the new order. Each of his pronouncements made headlines, his academic lectures were broadcast on national television and he had the most important audience of all: a private meeting with General Pinochet.
Throughout his stay, Friedman hammered at a single theme: the junta was off to a good start, but it needed to embrace the free market with greater abandon. In speeches and interviews, he used a term that had never before been publicly applied to a real-world economic crisis: he called for "shock treatment." He said it was "the only medicine. Absolutely. There is no other...long-term solution." [ref: El Mercurio (Santiago), March 23, 1976]
It seems clear to me that Friedman, at best, believe that on a hierarchy of values, his version of capitalism trumped democracy if democracy would lead to a less "pure" version of capitalism.
As for why Chile returned to democracy (prior to Pinochet's coup, it had a 160 year history of democracy, 41 years uninterrupted), a major reason was that Pinochet's economic policies failed. Pure market economics did not lead greater wealth for the majority of the population. Quite the contrary.
As I think we're seeing now throughout the Western World following a decades-long experiment in deregulation in the name of market economics.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent
Re: On The (Relatively) Judicious Use of the Word "Evil"
Date: 2008-10-19 05:11 pm (UTC)And mine elsewhere.
As far as I know, I don't think Friedman ever avowed support for Pinochet — he went to the country and lectured...
At the very least least, he also wrote directly to Pinochet in 1975, according to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, who quotes from it on page 87, referencing Friedman's Two Lucky People: Memoirs. And further,
It seems clear to me that Friedman, at best, believe that on a hierarchy of values, his version of capitalism trumped democracy if democracy would lead to a less "pure" version of capitalism.
As for why Chile returned to democracy (prior to Pinochet's coup, it had a 160 year history of democracy, 41 years uninterrupted), a major reason was that Pinochet's economic policies failed. Pure market economics did not lead greater wealth for the majority of the population. Quite the contrary.
As I think we're seeing now throughout the Western World following a decades-long experiment in deregulation in the name of market economics.