Shock Doctrine

rel="tag">Naomi Klein's href="http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine" rel="tag">Shock
Doctrine is a powerful piece of work.  I
became aware of it after a tip from a href="http://www.quirkynomads.com/wpt/">reader.
 I saw the video "trailer" for the book, and knew I had to
blog about it.  But it has taken some time to pull my thoughts
together.  



Ms. Klein has written a book about a theory of economic change, as
proposed by the free-market advocate href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman" rel="tag">Milton
Friedman in the 20^th
century.  She ties this theory to the US-backed
coup in Chile that led to the ascension of href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochet" rel="tag">Augusto
Pinochet in 1974, the takeover of Iraq in 2003, the
post-Boxing-Day tsunami recovery in 2004, and the
post-Katrina reconstruction efforts in 2005.  Along the way,
she coins the term, " href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?ex=1348804800&en=4f4ad4816d4bdab9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">disaster
capitalism."  The idea is that, in the
aftermath of a disaster,"  it is possible to remake the
economic system of the affected area.  Friedman proposed
remaking the system along the lines of free-market capitalism, although
others have imposed other systems using the same concept of " href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/17/1411235&mode=thread&tid=25">economic
shock treatment."  



 She makes use of a metaphor, which I find distasteful: she
compares the doctrine of economic shock treatment with the
analogously-named medical procedure, href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy"
rel="tag">ECT.  ECT used to be called
shock therapy, although now it is more properly known as
electroconvulsive therapy.



Ms. Klein also points out parallels between economic shock therapy and
various CIA interrogation techniques.  The interrogation
techniques were developed along the lines of a now-obsolete hypothesis
about how ECT was supposed to have worked: by erasing essential
elements of a person's personality, allowing new elements to be put in
place.

The film includes clips from movies of ECT done before the
introduction
of general anesthesia.  This makes for graphic images, but it
is an unfair representation of modern-day ECT.



It was the reference to a mental health treatment that made me want to
blog about this, so I will address that before moving on to a broader
treatment of her work.



ECT was developed around 1930, first as a proposed treatment for
schizophrenia.  (The href="http://www.ect.org/resources/history/abrams_history1.jpg">early
roots of the treatment date back to the work of Ladislaus von
Meduna and Leopold von Auenbrugger using camphor-induced
seizures in an effort to treat mania vivorum, whatever that was, in
1764.)  In
the 20^th century, using
electricity, it turned
out to be only marginally effective for schizophrenia.
 However, it subsequently was found to be effective for severe
depression, and remarkably effective for depression with psychotic
features.  Additionally, it was found to be effective in some
phases of bipolar disorder.



Early on, ECT was administered without anesthesia.  It is safe
and not controversial to say that ECT without anesthesia was
troublesome.  However, it is equally true, and equally
uninformative and uninteresting to say that having your leg amputated
without anesthesia, or having a root canal without anesthesia, was
troublesome.  So what?  A lot of invasive procedures
were troublesome when first developed, but later were refined.
 



Making reference to pre-anesthesia ECT is potentially misleading, as
many people these days still do not know how refined it has become, or
how
effective it is in properly-selected cases.  



This is all, admittedly, a rather minor complaint.  People
aren't going to read the book to get a primer on electroconvulsive
therapy.  They are going to read the book to find out why the
world is going all to hell, and perhaps to get some idea of what to do
to stop it, or at least to prevent similar catastrophes in the future.
 



Over the past few days I've watched several videos of interviews with
Ms. Klein, read several articles, book reviews, blog posts, comments,
and the like.  



The basic idea behind disaster capitalism is that radially free markets
are intrinsically good, but people often resist the changes that are
needed for their own good.  Therefore, it makes sense to wait
until they are disoriented or otherwise can't resist, then impose the
changes.  



Apparently this idea has been popular, because it has been tried many
times.  (Ms. Klein gives more examples that what I have listed
here.)



My thought is that the book does little to explain why the world is
falling apart now.  Yes, the means developed by the radical
free-market folks were used to create some of the problems that we now
face.  However, we always have had unscrupulous people, and
those unscrupulous people have always been opportunistic when they
sense that others are at a disadvantage.  The only thing
Friedman changed about that, is that he gave certain unscrupulous
people a kind of theoretical framework to use as an excuse to be
assholes.  If they had not used Friedman's excuse, they would
have used some other.



One thing I have noticed lately, is that people have no problem finding
excuses to be an asshole.  



As for the second issue (is there something that can be done to keep
this from happening again?), of course there are some things.
 First, make sure that people see what happens when you try to
force a radical free market in short order: Pinochet, Katrina, Iraq.
 The theory is not holding up very well, empirically.
 Next, make sure that we don't elect someone who is prone to
military adventurism.  Finally, change the process of writing
legislation, so that an economic impact analysis is required before the
bill can be debated.  



Basically, have a nonpartisan group assess the proposed legislation,
and spell out in  clear terms, who is going to get richer and
who is going to get poorer, if the bill passes.  After all,
that is what most legislation is really about.  May as well
make it explicit.