Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The Shock Doctrine

I'm sure most of my readers have already heard about the book and seen this harrowing promotional film by Childern of Man director Alfonso CuarĂ³n, but just in case you've missed the media roll out:


I'll be picking up the book on payday. The current issue of Macleans has an interview where Klein more than holds her own against Kenneth Whyte, an interviewer who seems heavily committed to the 'everything's ducky and getting better all the time' narrative.

My favorite portion of the exchange:

Give me the attributes of fundamentalist capitalism.

They're almost the attributes of every fundamentalist: the desire for purity, a belief in a perfect balance, and every time there are problems identified they are attributed to perversions, distortions within what would otherwise be a perfect system. I think you see this from religious fundamentalists and from Marxist fundamentalists, and I would argue that [Austrian economist Friedrich] Hayek and [University of Chicago economist Milton] Friedman shared this dream of the pure system. These are brilliant mathematicians, in many cases, so it looks perfect in their modelling. But I think anyone who falls in love with a system is dangerous, because the world doesn't comply and then you get angry at the world.

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