Comment 14309

By highwater (registered) | Posted November 21, 2007 at 14:49:03

You should have been at her talk last night, Capitalist, then you would have heard her address that very subject.

If you knew anything about her work, you would know that she does not "rail against capitalism" when it is balanced with the public good through public institutions such as health care, education, social security, etc. What she opposes is Corporatism, the extreme form of capitalism promulgated by Milton Friedman, where state power centres on multi-national corporations and the government's role is reduced to policing the population victimized by Friedman's extreme economic measures. As you can imagine, this is a very unpopular form of government so it can't be imposed democratically and therefore relies on 'shocks' to the system such as economic crises, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters to foist itself on a frightened and disoriented populace. Friedman himself called this "shock treatment".

North Korea is a totalitarian state and is therefore anathema to the deep democracy that Klein calls for as an antidote to Corporatism.

I am currently reading the Shock Doctrine. I highly recommend that you do the same, then we could have a more informed discussion.

By the way, Klein used some of the 'wealth' (oh those wealthy authors!) created from the sale of No Logo to hire a team of researchers to help her with Shock Doctrine, which is why it is such an exhaustively researched, riveting read.

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