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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by: Naomi Klein List Price: £8.99 City Travel Guides Price: £4.86 You Save: £4.13 (46%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback EAN: 9780141024530 ISBN: 0141024534 Label: Penguin Books Ltd Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd Number Of Pages: 576 Publication Date: May 01, 2008 Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd Studio: Penguin Books Ltd Sales Rank: 231 Related Items:
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 Rating:  - YuckEven though it was valuable for me to learn what is really going on, I read this book with a mixture of revulsion and horror. And more information keeps showing up - only recently, "New Scientist" (23 July 2008) carried an article stating that, for each year of a country's involvement with the IMF, the TB death rate increased by four per cent on average. This was not because countries with worsening TB attract more IMF attention since the TB rates had been falling, or at least steady, before receiving IMF "help". Rating: - Complex, Compelling, Horrifying, an Important Book"The Shock Doctrine" is a thoroughly good read in which Naomi Klein sets out to illustrate the spread of the economic doctrine of the late economist Milton Friedman and of the Chicago School of Economics; to illustrate the use of force (backed by U.S government in a number of cases) by right-wing governments and exploitation of natural disaster and conflict to push through unpopular economic reforms (based on Friedman's doctrine), and how such governments are putting big business first to line their own pockets and those of the corporate sector, leaving the public sector to deteriorate and their nation to grow poorer and poorer. The book opens with an introduction of Milton Friedman's view of disaster as an opportunity for the ... Read More: Rating:  - Scandal: Sometimes people profit when bad things happen. Film at eleven!First, disclosure: I enjoyed No Logo a great deal, it informed a lot of the way I think about corporations and changed the way I bought clothes. I read the Guardian when I get a chance, and am addicted to the Daily Show. So please don't think that my review is based on having a radically different philosophy to Ms Klein. I didn't like this book. The main thrust of the book is that there are theorists who believe that you can only change things when a big shock to the system happens; an earthquake, 9/11, Katrina, etc. In the aftermath the populace are too shocked and confused to notice free marketers running in to privatize public assets like security or schools. Now in individual cases, I agree this is something to keep an eye on, ... Read More: Rating: - The second colonial pillage and the essence of dehumanizationNaomi Klein unveils in this hard-hitting book (naming names) extremely clearly the economic utopia and the shameful realities resulting from the neo-liberal policies of the Chicago School of Economics, also called `The Washington Consensus'. What Its defenders claim that the free market is a perfect scientific system, in which individuals acting on their own self-interested desire, create the maximum benefit for all. But, as no country or city wanted to implement deliberately their policies, its powerful fundamentalist defenders, together with their long arm, the IMF, used and created shocks (wars, military coups, political upheavals, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, epidemics, energy and resource shortages) to force ... Read More: Rating: - What's really going onRead and weep - Klein exposes the real power behind the world throne and the shoddy, extraordinary greed of the few who are happy to make money from the world's poor. Oh actually - BY making the rest of the world poor. The compelling story of how Milton Friedman's Chicago Boys realised that catastrophe gave them a vital window of opportunity in which to snatch and grab, in countries worldwide, starting with some "experiments" in Latin America. It's no news to economists, but it is to the rest of us - governments in "transition", such as Poland under Solidarity, were forced to seek help from the World Bank and IMF, only to be told that essential loans came with unbearable hardship and economic ruin for their citizens. Forced privatisations of state ... Read More: |
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