After a Tucker Carlson monologue, Ben Shapiro wrote an op-ed about his displeasure of Carlson sounded.
According to Shapiro, Carlson's opinion on Capitalism sounded, “far more like [Sen.] Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren(D-MA) than it does like Ronald Reagan or Milton Friedman.”
But this blog isn't about Shapiro and Carlson, for me this is just asshole on asshole crime. This blog is about the fact that of course, Ben Shapiro would be a Milton Friedman fan.
After the Chilean General Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende of the Popular Unity Party, Pinochet implemented Friedman and a group of economists who were called the "Chicago Boys" economic system known as the "Shock Doctrine."
Back in 1976, Orlando Letelier, Allende's "right-hand man" wrote about his disgust of elites condemning Pinochet's human rights violations, but praising him for implementing the "Chicago Boys" economic system.
"What frustrated Letelier, a trained economist, was that, even as the world gasped in horror at reports of summary executions in the national stadium and the pervasive use of electroshock in prisons, most critics were silent when it came to Chile’s economic shock therapy," wrote Naomi Klein, 40 years after Letelier wrote his piece in The Nation. "The brutal methods used by the 'Chicago Boys' to turn Chile into the very first laboratory for Milton Friedman’s fundamentalist version of capitalism."
As Letelier pointed out, despite the acknowledgment by U.S. elites that Pinochet is torturing his critics, the World Bank gave Pinochet a $33 million dollar loan. That although Pinochet's actions were "incomprehensible," the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury praised Pinochet for bringing the people of Chile "economic freedom."
Letelier's main point was that it was absurd to think that a countries economical
"It would seem to be a common-sensical sort of observation that economic policies are conditioned by and at the same time modify the social and political situation where they are put into practice," wrote Letelier. "Economic policies, therefore, are introduced in order to alter social structures."
Separating the political from the economical situation of Chile was ludicrous, but it was Friedman himself who was a main beneficiary of this separating of the two by America's elite in government and the media.
As Letelier wrote, "The usefulness of the distinction has been particularly appreciated by those who have generated the economic policies now being carried out in Chile."
Letelier then quoted Friedman who was allowed to write on op-ed for Newsweek, in which he wrote: “In spite of my profound disagreement with the authoritarian political system of Chile, I do not consider it as evil for an economist to render technical economic advice to the Chilean Government, any more than I would regard it as evil for a physician to give technical medical advice to the Chilean Government to help end a medical plague.”
"It is curious that the man who wrote a book, Capitalism and Freedom," Letelier noted, "to drive home the argument that only classical economic liberalism can support political democracy can now so easily disentangle economics from politics when the economic theories he advocates coincide with an absolute restriction of every type of democratic freedom."
"One would logically expect that if those who curtail private enterprise are held responsible for the effects of their measures in the political sphere, those who impose unrestrained 'economic freedom' would also be held responsible when the imposition of this policy is inevitably accompanied by massive repression, hunger, unemployment and the permanence of a brutal police state."
Not only did Letelier point out the irony that part of the "Chicago Boys" economic paper was funded by the CIA, but that the idea that Chile had free competition was "preposterous."
Letelier: "It is preposterous to speak about free competition in Chile. The economy there is highly monopolized. An academic study, made during President Frei’s regime, pointed out that in 1966 '284 enterprises controlled each and every one of the subdivisions of Chilean economic activities. In the industrial sector, 144 enterprises controlled each and every one of the subsectors. In turn, within each of ‘these 144 manufacturing enterprises which constituted the core of the industrial sector, a few shareholders controlled management: in more than 50 percent of the enterprises, the ten largest shareholders owned between 90 and 100 percent of the capital.'"
"There are many other examples to show that, as far as competition goes, Mr. Friedman’s prescription does not yield the economic effects implicit in his theoretical model," wrote Letelier. "In the first half of 1975, as part of the process of lifting regulations from the economy, the price of milk was exempted from control. With what result? The price to the consumer rose 40 percent and the price paid to the producer dropped 22 percent. There are more than 10,000 milk producers in Chile but only two milk processing companies, which control the market."
"Three years have passed since this experiment began in Chile and sufficient information is available to conclude that Friedman’s Chilean disciples failed—at least in their avowed and measurable objectives—and particularly in their attempts .to control inflation," Letelier notes to the lack of success of Friedman's economic experiment.
"But they have succeeded, at least temporarily, in their broader purpose: to secure the economic and political power of a small dominant class by effecting a massive transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes to a select group of monopolists and financial speculators."
Letelier points that under the Popular Unity Party of Salvador Allende, the lives of the working class in Chile were improving, but the supporters of the coup, "counterrevolutionaries," wanted the money to be placed back into the hands of the few.
Letelier (emphasis mine): "The economic policies of the Chilean junta and its results have to be placed in the context of a wide counter revolutionary process that aims to restore to a small minority the economic, social and political control it gradually lost over the last thirty years, and particularly in the years of the Popular Unity Government.
"Until September 11, 1973, the date of the coup, Chilean society had been characterized by the increasing participation of the working class and its political parties in economic and social decision making. Since about 1900, employing the mechanisms of representative democracy, workers had steadily gained new economic, social and political power. The election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile was the culmination of this process. For the first time in history a society attempted to build socialism by peaceful means. During Allende’s time in office, there was a marked improvement in the conditions of employment, health, housing, land tenure and education of the masses. And as this occurred, the privileged domestic groups and the dominant foreign interests perceived themselves to be seriously threatened."
Milton Friedman is a hero to conservatives who claim that Milton Friedman was some vanguard to the ideals of capitalism. In reality, Friedman was nothing but a mouthpiece for oligarchs who wanted to maintain their place of economic and political power.
That Ben Shapiro is a Milton Friedman fan comes as no surprise to me. He's a Milton Friedman-like character in the media.
His job is to promote the idea that the best thing for the American people is that the elite get all the money while the workers get the crumbs and scraps.....
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