Milton Friedman etc   I really dont know what Ive done or said to produce the attitude youre taking You can disagree with what I say although I personally fail to see how any argument can in the end prevent Kleins inclusion in the Friedman article and I can be mistaken as I was in my first reading of the Norberg link but I dont see how you can take things much beyond that Nothing in my behaviour has necessitated the kind of personal unprovoked insults with which youve decided to base this discourse You do know Im sure that personal attacks are entirely against wikipedia policy and their especially bad form when done repetively and without just cause You seem to take things fair to literally or at least bizarrely you have decided to take that approach I dont mean literally that people regard Friedman as a god and having to explain that feels rather odd but Ive decided to assume good faith as opposed to the more likely probability that you decided just to be awkward and provocative in your discourse It is simply that a large number of economists and rightwingers regard Friedman as something similiar to god infallible and above normal human standards If its not Friedman than its classical economics as a whole which is apparently beyond any external critique That I believe explains much of the absense of any proper criticism of Friedman on what in other respects is a fairly extensive article  Regarding Klein you simply dont have a point here its as basic as that It it not the place of Wikipedia to judge what is right in any particular set of affairs but to record those opinions which are notable Klein is a bestselling and wellregarded writer with a reputation for fairly good research her book was generally fairly widely praised and her criticism of Friedman is one of the most wellknown in the contemporary world It also covers far far more than Chile That cannot be dismissed because just because Friedmans supports or for example a paper by an institute that is itself the target of criticism from her book As such the rights and wrongs of Norbergs critique are fairly irrelevent Although it could of course be included as a counter to Kleins criticism within the Friedman article there is no case for using it to justify the actual exclusion of Kleins views Now I know that a lot of FriedmaniteFriedmanesque etc economists like to believe that there laws of economics are a watertight and natural science and as such they are immune to any criticism that isnt likewise scientificic and that presumably hold the same assumptions but most people disagree  Just to keep you happy Ill discuss it briefly here It has some very good points for example Norberg convincingly shows there was a freemarket trend towards the end of the century that goes beyond Kleins explanations although the actual area of discussionof Kleins book were the far rarer radical fundamentalist reforms of the period but more on that in a minute he convincingly argues against Kleins account of events in Argentina and mea culpa China his ridicule of Kleins ShockShockShock metaphor which I myself found unconvincing as opposed to most her narrative and arguments is fairly accurate and he makes a strong defence in many cases of Friedman But his page article is itselfcontains so many of of its semiaccuracies disingenuous argument and nearfalsehoods as to make any suggestion that it proves Klein wrong or even significantly weakens much of her basic arguments completely ludicrous Ill just list in no propersome of them since I dont have the time to do anything much else  He says she portrays the Chicago School as a place that brainwashed its students as opposed to it actually being famously open to discussion whereas actually she gives quite a significant account of its openness to disussion  This ones just basic commone sense he says Kleins Friedman crisis quote isnt from any important paper but a preface to Capitalism and Freedom the preface to the guysmost important book he defining manifesto isnt significant Tell that to Friedrich Engels  He says that Friedman gave the same advice to the Soviet Union China and Yugoslavia yet nobody would claim he was a communist well Klein mentioned this herself not claiming he was a communist but using it as an additional example of his somewhat undemocratic outlook His suggestion that the military was in control of the economy at the beginnning and the Chicago Boys didnt have control  until later on is simply false While Pinochet accelerating his reforms as things went along while the military held ministerial positions and while some statist tendencies naturally held on some level as they always will Norberg is really here just selecting any facts he can that might appear disprove Kleins account The coup was indeed a neoliberal one orchestrated by US and internal Chilean economic interests with the prior support of the Chicago Boys From the start the Chicago Boys served as the juntas economic advisors despite being at the intellectual fringes at the time having lost as Klein describes the intellectual argument of the Chile very much contrary to the Chicago myth and Pinochet was implementing radical free market reforms  Norberg makes a passionate argument for the good name of Milton Friedman portraying him as a democrat who cared deeply about peoples lives While naturally ther are quotes likely to be found in which he expresses concern for peoples suffering and makes a strong defence of democracy he would be unlikely to get very far in liberaldemocratic cultures without doing this it is simply the case that Friedman put the fundamentals ahead of democracy or at the very least shortterm human wellbeing In one Friedman quote from Kleins book that Norberg chooses not to dissect he describes Hong Kong as freer than the United States even though it has no political freedom clearly showing that he regarded economic freedom as preeminent Additionally Friedman was extremely well aware that the economic policies he pushed would cause and cause immense suffering among elements of any population regardless of whether he cared for them or not Norberg also fails to mention Friedmans response of sily question to a Chilean press question regarding the social effects of his policies  His statistics claiming to show that freemarket countries are more democratic than others or that people support freemarket economics for example the Freedom House Comparisons and Pew Research Poll somewhat misses the point Put simply hes completely simplifying matters  Nowhere does Klein dispute that dictatorships are often likely to be interventionist for a start that helps corrupt politicians increase their power and wealth and communism as Klein herself points out relies on dictatorship even more than radical free market economics As for the Pew poll well its findings are absolutely to have been expected Free market is a very ambiguous term and often interpreted as some form of capitalist economy to which there is a general popular consensus and Klein herself supports a capitalist economy of sorm form all be it a socialdemocratic one The point is that people have resisted radical free market reforms of the kind Friedman advocated which are only properly introduced through coercion or crisis And incidentally on the narrower scale of market liberal democracies the less economical free ones eg Scandinavia have the highest democracy and general freedom ratings As a second leg of this point Norberg says Klein doesnt talk about liberalization in democracies like Iceland Ireland Estonia Australia or the United States during the s and that her discussion of the liberalization in the UK under Thatcher doesnt stand up to scrutiny Well for a start it is true that there has been an intriguing rightward trend among the western populations in recent decades that goes far deeper than economics eg far more radical changes on attitudes to things like crime and immigration and in the US though not elsewhere religion Norberg also neglects to see that many of these examples either werent as radical as he suggests or that it doesnt fit in with Kleins thesis As Klein herself points out in the very first chapter none of these reform was capable of being anything like as radical as for example Pinochets were Thatcher and Reagan for all their freemarket zeal were unable to significantly attack the states role in things like education healthcare and social security Many of these governments were elected in spite of their liberal economic policy and John Howard for example had to modify his economic positions to get elected in  and was defeated last year largely because his economic policies went too far though still not as far as Friedman would advise Irelands transformation in the sense described by Norberg didnt even happen all that happened was that it never developed a proper welfare state to begin with because it didnt industrialise with the rest of Europe Estonia was undergoing the same transition as every other postcommunist country and fits with the shock doctrine The US does somewhat to Reagan having been elected despite serious concerns people had about him personally and some of his policies in a specific period of crisis in the US regarding its economy but more importantly its international strength and security Regarding Thatcher he fails to mention that she deliberately encouraged and manipulated the Falklands crisis that the miners strikes were initiatated by provocative government actions and that public opinion was played by one of the most atrocious examples of widespread media