Could a unified theory of modern life really be this simple/scary? (quick vid) (naomiklein.org)
On the left side you'll notice an embedded YouTube video; it is about 6 minutes. I've watched it and although it is, to say the least, a bit propoganda-ish, at the same time something about the proposed thesis intuitively struck me as neatly explaining the mess that we've all collectively experienced over the last few decades in general and the last 7 years or so in particular.
It's almost like I sensed the thesis proposed, but I couldn't quite figure out how to quite express it.
Again, I haven't read the book yet, and so I hold no particular opinion on it either way, but if the book is anything like what I imagine it based on the YouTube video, at the very least it would be one of the more original things I've read in a while (I tend to read a lot).
I'd be interested on anybody's feedback if you care to invest 5-6 minutes to watch the video.
40 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 47.0 ms ] threadOn the left side you'll notice an embedded YouTube video; it is about 6 minutes. I've watched it and although it is, to say the least, a bit propoganda-ish, at the same time something about the proposed thesis intuitively struck me as neatly explaining the mess that we've all collectively experienced over the last few decades in general and the last 7 years or so in particular.
It's almost like I sensed the thesis proposed, but I couldn't quite figure out how to quite express it.
Again, I haven't read the book yet, and so I hold no particular opinion on it either way, but if the book is anything like what I imagine it based on the YouTube video, at the very least it would be one of the more original things I've read in a while.
I'd be interested on anybody's feedback if you care to invest 5-6 minutes to watch the video.
Naomi Klein (the author) is a respected and thoughtful academic. Her previous book ('No Logo') was well received around the world.
The ideas she presents here are obviously true:
Governments and corporations are colluding to exploit the poor and powerless by profiteering from disaters (natural or man made).
They get away with it by doing it at moments of national or global crisis, when the voting public has been shocked into momentary helplesness by disasters such as 9/11 or the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia.
I could be wrong, but from what you're saying / what I saw on the video there's a strong implication, I'm wondering - if you read the book, is it actually stated, inferred, hinted, ignored, etc.:
In other words, if it benefits policy-makers/corporations to have a disaster - political, natural, economic, etc. - as a prelude to shoving massive change that would otherwise be unnacceptable in nature or scope while people are too busy recovering from disaster, well, does that mean then that policy-makers/corporations would have a strong incentive to actually invest in the creation of the disasters?
In other words, since businesses are based on plans and plans are based on predictability, why wait for "nature to take her course?" when you could "push the hand" to setup disasters to get the scenario that would most likely benefit your company's particular "market solution"?
I didn't mean to be snobby, I meant to be very clear that I hope people don't submit this kind of thing to this site, be it left or right wing. I follow a lot of economics 'blogs', but pretty much refrain from posting them here. I think they're interesting, but off topic, and likely to lead to even more off topic discussions.
But I think this is on topic for the simple fact that most people here I would classify as being interested in working on or eventually starting a startup. Which I think they hope will either sell a product, or have an IPO or get bought out.
So whether you like it or not, your dream of a startup is dependent on the macro-system.
The reason I posted this is because I'm in the same boat. I've been trying to put together a startup, I've had training in economics, and I was sort of brainwashed to believe growing up that hard work = success and good idea = market adaption and people at the top = hard work and good ideas.
This view of the world that people at the top dominate certain market mechanisms and they do so because they take advantage of disaster and face no natural competition and opposition makes me pause and think about my own experience and I thought it might be food for thought for others.
For example, why should I work hard to present an idea that I hope will beat competition and be adopted democratically in a free market system because it's the better idea, when there's a good chance that the eventual winner will be a well-connected group that sneaks it's market entry in when I'm scared and distracted because, say, terrorists run amock in my city?
If that's the way the world works, then ALL free market endeavor is lost because the system will tend to collapse because there will be no motivation to compete in a system where winners don't compete but rather cause problems for their competition and sneak solutions while we're all distracted and putting out fires.
That affects everyone - including programmers.
Last week it was "Do you watch t.v." that was most popular. I suppose it's relevant for hackers, but then again t.v. gets in the way of everyone's productivity, so it's relevant for everyone.
Ås for the Castro debates, no I didn't watch them since I don't have closed-circuit cuban government controlled t.v.
May I ask how the hell you saw them and know their contents living in Austria as you claim to do?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=118933
Sad. I pity such people then.
There is a world of things out there that is quite fascinating and interesting and very relevant. Indeed, that world is far, far larger than the slice of it that this site focuses on. So much larger, that if everyone were to bring their own personal interests, politics, economics, and so forth here, it might well wreck the community, as has happened elsewhere.
This does not mean that I or others are not concerned or interested in that world, it means that by choosing to focus on our common ground, it keeps the quality higher.
But since you'd get offended by such things being outside the immediate realm of programming, I'll refrain from posting it so people can concentrate on hacking while the world economy spirals out of control.
Of course, it will be hard to hack if economies collapse and the power grid goes off, but that's another off-topic discussion.
The first half year later they had a thorough analysis of each executive order.
Soon so many executive orders, each more disturbing than the last, were being signed that they gave up analyzing them completley and just had quick summaries.
Then soon they couldn't keep up and just listed them with links to info obtained by freedom of information orders.
In 2004, they were "executive ordering" at the rate of about 30,000 new pieces of "emergency legislation" per year and the site just shut down, unable to keep up.
NOW YOU JUST KNOW that dude from Texas isn't penning 30,000 pieces of legislation per year. Heck - with all the vacationing, it's a wonder he even gets to sign it all.
Seems like you're right - all these things were prepared way in advance, just waiting for an opportunity.
The fact that the Patriot Act was drafted quickly proves that there is a security establishment, waiting to pounce on opportunity. It doesn't prove that 9-11 was somehow caused by such a group.
"It wasn't born in freedom and democracy, therefore it must be bad."
That's nowhere near an ad hominem. And basica logic would tend to indicate that if there are 2 sets of mutually exclusive, bad and good value conditions, "not good set" would tend to leave "bad set" as the only remaining possibility.
Also when you say, "She makes the laughable assumption thta the majority of people know what's good for them", you kind of tend to implicitly agree with her thesis. It's almost like you're suggesting that everybody is an idiot, therefore everyone needs a big-brother type group making problems and then exploiting the resulting panic to shove solutions down everyone's throat because left to their own devices, people don't know any better.
I neither agree nor disagree with her about this last part, because I don't know enough about it. But I give her the benefit of the doubt.
The only way her argument could be not an ad hominem is if there was a causal link between the merit of the idea she is attacking and the populace's willingness to accept it. All I was trying to say is that there is no such link. I am not offering any solutions; just pointing out bad logic.
Not really her thesis at all. Her main thesis is that we're not really even given a chance to experience free market capitalism, we're just told we're experiencing it by people who are force-feeding us "free market solutions" during times when we're not thinking clearly (after a disaster) and that these solutions would never actually be adopted by people through a legitimate free market system.
I think she's not so much arguing against free market capitalism as saying that what passes for it is really a centrally-managed sham.
>> Instead, she attacks the character of famous proponents >> of it, by suggesting that they forced their will upon >> the unwilling populace. That's ad hominem.
She doesn't "suggest" that they forced their will upon an unwilling populace, she points to an actual, documented and verifiable economic doctrine of a person who advices presidents and Federal Reserve boards.
If she implies it, that is an attack on their character. If they themselves have actually said that this is a good way to force development that would otherwise be impossible in face of free-market opposition, than they damn themselves - she's just saying, "Look at their own words and theories, and see if recent history seems to follow this pattern, if it does, then these people are doing it on purpose - and they even claim as much themselves."
>> The only way her argument could be not an ad hominem is >> if there was a causal link between the merit of the >> idea she is attacking and the populace's willingness to >> accept it.
I'm not sure, I wasn't there, but I doubt any of the people affected by the Asian Tsunami would have given up their beachfront property for chump change to major corporations in the hospitality business who wanted to build resorts BEFORE they were traumatized by natural disaste, like they did after.
Or take domestic matters - how many people would have put up with all the domestic surveillance B.S. we have here now if no such thing like 9.11 happened?
Or New Orleans - hospitals and such shut down to be torn down to make way for upscale property development - what resident would have agreed to that prior to Katrina? None. But after, they were in no position to agree/disagree with anything because most of them didn't even have a place to live.
I think she's basically saying that what passes for "free market capitalism" is a sham perpetuated by people whose ideas/solutions would never be adopted in a free market system and so they rely on the irrational emotions produced by disaster to get otherwise weak ideas through the market mechanisms.
In other words, if there were no disaster, many "free market solutions" that saw the light of day after disasters would never actually be accepted in a free market.
This then leaves open a disturbing scenario: at what point do people whose economic contributions would never be adopted by others unless it was in a state of fear, panic, shock, emotion, etc., consider it useful to actually initiate disaster in order to have their ideas accepted more readily?
I'll read the book. Maybe it's not as bombastic as this video. Still, from what I've heard about it, I have little hope.
Now THAT'S an ad hominem attack. I can see people's eyebrows furrowing, "Oh, she's one of those new-fangled, "Western socialists" I see now."
Whatever she is, at the very least the idea put forth is original, and, to the extent its true, disturbing, and, to the extent that it's true enough to allow us to predict, then it's useful to.
Think about it: let's say some "horrible thing" happens some time over the next year.
According to her view, first we'll see politicians on t.v. assuring us that "everything will be alright" and that "help is on the way." although no specific help is mentioned.
Then while we're huddled together scared and confused, wall street, major corporations and washington PACs will rush to put together deals that will wind up turning into some scandal 3 years from now.
Then three years later, we'll all look at the headlines and wonder, "They did what? When the hell did they put that together? I don't recall reading about that! Oh - wait - that was when XYZ disaster happened - that's right - I was too busy calling my relatives in the area to see if they were alright to be busy worrying what kind of business deals walls street was putting together."
Seriously - say a disaster happens - do you expect anything BUT that scenario to happen?
Here's a quick test for you: bush's family has had affiliations with Exxon all the way back to when it was called Standard Oil.
All the global instability caused by bush in the last 8 years has driven oil up to sky high prices.
Exxon corporation, during bush's reign, has more than doubled in market valuation, on the basis of nothing more than rise in oil prices, to over half a TRILLION dollars.
Did you know that? Like most people, I bet not. You were too busy trying to figure out how to survive the current market crisis, ie, you're too busy trying to refinance your home, negotiate with whatever credit company just jacked your rates up because they're losing money on defaults, etc.
See how that works? You're busy trying to keep your head above water, the fat cats are making hundreds of billions in ways that don't benefit you and are often at your expense. If you weren't dealing with all the problems you are in life, would you agree to that? No, of course you wouldn't. Ergo, the fatcats have an economic incentive to keep causing you problems so you never have enough free time / mental energy to figure out how they're screwing you.
Of course politicians use certain tools to control the emotion of the people (start a war, raise the price of beer, whatever), but that has nothing to do with free markets. The movie just mixes together totally unrelated things and claims a connection - in that way actually doing the same thing it proposes: showing shocking pictures to make people believe anything.
So who is Naomi Klein, a Super-Communist? I haven't read her books, and now I guess I never will.
The connection they make is that Milton Friedman was the one making the (for the authors) convenient connection between shock and change. The "crisis - real or perceived" quote sounds pretty condemning.
You are right to point out that this is not an argument against his economic policies (which are assumed to be bad), but against how he suggested they be implemented.
Rather, I suspect that the quote was taken out of context or blown out of proportion. You can find something weird to quote from anyone. I am sure you could find a quote by Paul Graham and work it into that video to replace the Miltion Friedman quote, for example.
Milton seemed to have a strange, incongruous view of life, namely, that democratic, free-market developments AS HE SAW FIT were the best thing for people at large, and such developments as he saw fit should be adopted by the people at large regardless of whether they actually want to adapt it.
His economic argument in ways mirrors bush's political doctrine of "liberating" iraq and "spreading democracy" through military force, whether people want it or not.
Same thing happened in Vietnam, where a "free market system" democratically chose to organize itself according to decentralized communist structures and washington flew in a fit of rage and assumed that no way a democratic free market would ever democratically vote anything other than what washington saw as proper, so there must be something wrong and so intervention was necessary.
Same thing happened when Palestinians were pressured into having democratic elections, they democratically elected Hamas, and washington declared the elections invalid simply because the outcome, left to a bona fide democratic free market process, turned out different than expected.
I think what you're saying is simply implied in her thesis, ie, if they explicitly state that crisis should be exploited to bypass natural populist resistance to "free market solutions" that would never be accepted in a bona fide free market, then economic theory would suggest that the prime actors behind these sub-par economic solutions would EVENTUALLY find it in their self-interest to either initiate the crisis or invest in other actors to do so by proxy.
But she never actually says this, it's just implied.
As for Milton Friedman's quote taken out of context, it actually isn't taken out of context at all. He wrote TONS of op-ed pieces for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, and they were almost all related to tragedies experience over the last decade or so.
South-Korean economy crash, BCCI scandal, dot-com crash, 9-11, war in Afghanistan, Palestinian conflict, war in Iraq, Asian tsunami, Katrina, etc.
He follows the same pattern predictably: Horrible disaster, followed by his op-ed pieces, usually along these lines: "This event (whatever) is a horrible, horrible tragedy and millions are suffering. But it's also a wonderful new opportunity to try some ideas I've been trying to get adopted for years."
The question is, why does he see tragedy as a wonderful new opportunity? According to Klein, no suggestion is ever offered other than that after a tragedy, people are too week and child-like and desperate to offer resistance.
If this mechanism is prevalent (and she provides evidenct that it is, at least enough), then that leads us to conclude that most "free market" solutions are nothing of the sort and are instead centrally managed exploitations by people whose ideas would never actually be successful in a free market.
Now, to the extent that such people have had success in times of crisis, and to the extent that you think that it is in their interest to initiate crisis, well - that would be a plausible connection, but to the best of my knowledge she never explicitly states that.
But it's interesting to consider that you and I have both jumped to that scenario, ie, "But wait a minute - that would mean that ..."
And we're not even beneficiaries of such a mechanism.
If we can think that, isn't it plausible that people who have hundreds of billions of dollars at stake might think that also?
No? Why not? Because the super rich and politically powerful are all wonderful, ethical people who have our best interests in mind and they would never stoop so low as to prosper at the expense of those economically and politi...
Again, I don't really know Friedman, but could it not simply be that his work was motivated by trying to improve human lives? It is pretty natural to consider in the face of disaster what might have caused it and what might have prevented it.
To make things clear, I was among the ones who would have no problem believing that 09/11 was staged. It happens all the time, in fact, it is standard practice when starting wars to fake some attack of the enemy to be first. That is not what we are discussing, though.
Also, let's think the other way round. Naomi seems to claim that people don't want free markets because the evil power people have to force it on them. But could it not be the other way round, people would actually want them, and the evil power people are actually trying to prevent it? The "evidence" could be interpreted in both ways.
When did people voluntarily decide against free markets, anyway? Which communist regime did not turn into a dictatorship in no time? The only reason people might think they would prefer communism is because they don't really understand economics, and don't understand what it would mean for them.
But that's the thing. He SAYS he believes in the free market, which means, in my mind, put up an idea and see who takes to it, but in PRACTICE he basically means, "People are too stupid to know what's good for them - so we'll shove changes down their throats when they least suspect it and are the most distracted."
The thing that may distrub you (I'm a bit more familiar with friedman) is that his "solutions" have nothing to do with the crisis itself, or, as you say, preventing it. He has said numerous times that "free market solutions" are the best way to lift people out of poverty en masse.
Yet, his particular suggestions are not aimed at "solutions" for most people but rather opportunities for a select few.
The fact that they have to be slipped in sneakily while nobody's paying attention because they're too scared and trying to survive makes me suspicious - if all the things that he advocates should be quietly sneaked in while we're too traumatized from disaster to pay attention were as good for us as he claims, why then do they have to be snuck in quietly while we're all reduced to fear an panic and can't think straight?
In other words, why not let his suggestion actually be put to the test of a real democratic free market - why does he insist that "free market solutions" are best introduced during times of fear and panic and by using stealth and secrecy and decption?
Could it be that none of his "free market solutions" would ever actually be successful in a properly functioning free market?
If so, could it be that the people at the top of the food chain don't really want a properly functioning free market where people make rational decisions based on self-interest?
>> It happens all the time, in fact, it is standard practice when starting wars to fake some attack of the enemy to be first. That is not what we are discussing, though.
But in a way it is. Once you accept the possibility that people are willing to exploit tragedy to push their agendas on a weakened populace, then the next step in the economic model is to make "progress" of that sort more efficient and business like by being able to predict and prepare for such scenarios in advance - and the only way to have the sufficient knowledge necessary to do this is to somehow have asymetric distrubtion of knowledge of such events a priori, which suggests that people who have such knowledge would be colluding with the people who cause the disasters.
> Also, let's think the other way round. Naomi seems to > claim that people don't want free markets because the > evil power people have to force it on them. But could it > not be the other way round, people would actually want > them, and the evil power people are actually trying to > prevent it? The "evidence" could be interpreted in both > ways.
I actually agree with you 100% on this.
And how would you propose to "let his suggestion actually be put to the test of a real democratic free market" - where would you find such a real democratic free market?
By coincidence, a ton of companies were just formed to do just that - build and setup private schools.
The residents got the vouchers, they gave them to the companies that would have built the schools.
Only problem is that the residents are mostly still displaced or living in trailer-parks surrounded by "privatized security forces" which make them seem more like they're quarantined, and the companies that said they wanted to build the private schools took the money but no building was ever started.
It seems you can't build fancy private schools and just have poor displaced people whose kids haven't gone to school in a year or so. No sir - you need some affluent people in the mix as well.
And affluent people don't like to live in New-Orleans type of shambles - they want luxury coops and private, gated communities of newly constructed townhouses, and malls and shopping centers and business districts, etc.
Wouldn't you know it, by some coincidence tons of new partnerships and LPs and LLCs were setup JUST RECENTLY to develop all these ritzy things so that the upscale private schools would feel more comforatable in their surroundings.
So the government transferred rebuilding money to private companies which either rebuilt nothing yet or are planning to build things that the people the rebuilding money was designated for could never afford.
So milton suggested change after tragedy, but his change benefited the rich and politically well connected, not the people affected by the tragedy - even though that's what it was initially passed off as.
>> And how would you propose to "let his suggestion actually be put to the test of a real democratic free market" - where would you find such a real democratic free market?
Well, easy. Take the people affected by Katrina - let the shock wear off so they can think clearly, then simply ask them: instead of building you guys public schools and hospitals and such, the government wants to take tax money and give private contracts to companies that want to build upscale private schools and malls and gated communities and such - you know, stuff you could never afford to live in yourselves.
How bout it? Also, would you like to sell your land off really cheap to these new luxury developers? Oh, wait - you don't have a choice because the government declared it a federal disaster zone.
So - for rebuilding purposes, the government declares the area a disaster zone, no rebuilding will take place.
But if you and I started a LLC and declared an intention to build upscale gated communities, maybe a corporate headquarters complex or two, etc., all of a sudden, the government not only lets us but even GRANTS us tax money to do just that.
What resident of New Orleans do you think would have thought this arrangement to be a good idea in their self interest?
I'm guessing none.
Also, I don't think Friedman has any political power - was the government really following his suggestions? It sounds as if no schools were built after all (public or private), which is surely not what he suggested?
In any case I see his point, after Katrina it seems to have been a good opportunity to start over with something new.
I don't think she is "attacking free markets" ... free markets suggest a democratic adaption of free market solutions. I think she's basically saying, in one way or another, that recent economic developments/failed developments are anything BUT free market developments; they are, as presented here, things that would never actually work in a free market society but rather have been shoved down everyone's throats while they were too busy trying to survive a disaster to actually participate in a free market.
So I don't see it as an attack on the free market system as much as a suggestion that much of what is heralded as free market solutions are anything but - rather they are force-fed solutions imposed undemocratically by a small cross-section of society which stands to benefit from whatever "solution" they offer to a crisis.
In other words, I think she's saying that most "free market" cheerleaders don't really seem to believe in free markets themselves and instead seem to believe that a small, centrally-organized group should centrally manage market systems (ie, communism) by exploiting people's weakness, fear, trauma, insecurities after a disaster.
"The movie just mixes togetehr totally unrelated things and claims a connection."
Not really. It proposes a hypothesis based on a verifiable doctrine proposed by a very influential person and then looks at the last few decades of history and tries to see if it can fit that hypothesis, which it seems to do very well, then it suggests that this doctrine is, in effect, an unspoken aspect of modern life.
To the extent that it can PREDICT economic phenomena, then that connection is very real.
I for one think the next time there is a natural disaster like a tsunami or something, people suffering the most will most likely be ignored while governments and corporations will rush to make development deals for luxury high rises, hotels, shopping malls, casinos, etc with no opposition from people too busy trying to survive to put up opposition.
"So who is Naomi Klein, a Super-Communist?"
It's funny you say that when all she's basically saying is that most people in the public eye cheerleading capitalism are actually behaving more like communists themselves ...
You saw all that in a five minute video? I didn't see much science in it. 90% was just showing pictures of torture videos or war bombings. If you think that amounts to verifying a hypothesis, I don't know what else to say (where is the example of societies that didn't change without a crisis?). It is exactly what I hate about that kind of videos: they exploit a weakness of the mind to connect unrelated things, to make you believe that connections exists where they don't. TV and videos are doing that all the time, but the case here was one of the more extreme ones.
As I said, of course politicians and power people are playing their game, and exploiting psychology is surely a part of it. I just don't see any connection to free markets, that is what I take issue with.
But she never says, "Free markets are bad." She seems to be saying instead that many of the things we are told are "democratic free market solutions" are not because they are "slipped in" when people are in a state of shock and not thinking clearly. So many "free market solutions" are not actually, according to her, even put to the test of a democratic free market but rather sneaked in when nobody's paying attention because they're too busy trying to survive a disaster.
>>You saw all that in a five minute video?
Yes. She points to an influential man (Friedman) who advises corproations, the federal reserve and presidents, she points to a documented theory of his (shock precedes change because people are too weak to oppose the change), and she shows "pictures" as you say of events in recent history which fit into the following thesis: disaster is exploited, and possibly caused (that's my inference, she never says that) by people who want to introduce changes that would never actually work in a real democratic free market system.
The pictures of the torture and the cia training manual excerpts are there to demonstrate that the state of mind of regression that happens after a shock is no accident and that the cia, a nexus between government and corporate america, has been interested in inducing this state on purpose for about half a century.
Fast forward to recent history and the film shows pictures of natural and artificially created disasters, then it indicates how governments and major corporations rushed to close deals right after the disaster while the people such deals would effect were too busy trying to survive the aftermath to figure out how they were getting screwed.
I think her main point is, not so much, "the populist, democratic free market is bad" but rather "if the populist, democratic free market is good" as friedman says it is, why then do friedman and the nexus between washington and corporate america rely so much not on the free market itself but rather disasters that suspend the free market? Why are their "free market solutions" pushed through when the market is at it's worst after a disaster? Could it be that their ideas would never pass muster in a free market?
IN OTHER WORDS, HER IMPORTANT POINT IS: A free market is a system where parties trade when both see a payoff benefit to the transaction. If one party suggests something that is too exploitive, in a free market the transaction would not happen. BUT IF I TAKE A BAT AND SMACK YOUR HEAD AROUND and cause you to fear your very life, well then you'd pretty much sign anything I put in front of you.
That's not a free market system of rational people making decisions in their best interests. That's a mafia system. The 'ol "Hello, I'm your new partner - you'll be sharing 80% of your profits with me because I says so."
1) there is a consensus among the global business elite, and some of the government elite, about how things ought to be run: Western-style democracy with the flow of goods and capital as unrestricted as possible.
1b) Partially this is self-interest, and partially it's a belief in a near-Randian libertarianism that has become dogma in the American right, despite it never having been really tried. (Because they can't get their agenda implemented in stable democracies). In this philosophy, government is a parasite that first feeds off of, and then strangles, the true activity of free people: business.
2) But almost no country believes in doctrinaire free markets, especially poor ones struggling to develop a mixed economy.
3) When great crises arise, these government and business elites are needed to funnel money and talent. They use the opportunity to advance their agenda.
3b) In certain cases, they don't mind making crises, and will even make them worse, in the belief that the world will then reorder itself to the state they deem to be natural and good, where markets rule.
The extreme version of this is Iraq, where planners seemed less concerned about providing stability than free markets.
An even more insidious form: see the documentary "Our Brand is Crisis". You will see American consultants considered to be left-wing, like James Carville, manipulating a crisis in a Third World country to elect a leader whose faith in the market is not shared by the public.
This is all caused by people who are good and nice and believe they are helping the countries involved. No conspiracy theory required.