Neo-liberal capitalism: The Shock Doctrine 2009

The Shock Doctrine 2009

 Uploaded by MrSaunders2020 on May 30, 2011

A documentary adaptation Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine. An investigation of disaster capitalism, based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism -- the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock -- did not begin with September 11, 2001.

The films traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.

New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, shock and awe warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Canada's Mining Corporations Exporting Death

This is a re-post of a piece on Facebook by Occupy Canada

Corporate governments of Stephen Harper and Jean Charest export death to the world.

"Two years ago the CBC aired a documentary showing bare-handed construction workers in India working with asbestos, their mouths covered only with bandanas — clearly demonstrating an awareness of possible lung damage and a lack of equipment to defend against such damage.

Compare that to the precautions taken in Canada in the handling of asbestos. From the Ottawa Business Journal, July 25, 2011: “Dressed like deep sea divers, workers from Inflector Environmental Services and Ashex Environmental Contractors will spend the next year removing the asbestos that pervades the West Block’s walls ... some asbestos types are so dangerous that contractors will require a separate air supply and decontamination while working.”

While 52 countries around the world have banned the use of asbestos, Canada continues to export it to those that have not — most notably India and China. The argument is that chrysotile asbestos will not damage lungs if proper precautions are taken. But what are the chances of Indian and Chinese workers being dressed up “like deep sea divers” and being provided with separate air supply and decontamination equipment? Anyone who has ever seen a construction site in the developing world knows the answer: zilch." - Colin Kenney, The Spec. -b

Asbestos gets a new lease on death:
http://www.thespec.com/opinion/columns/article/759801--asbestos-gets-a-new-lease-on-death

Public money should not prop up asbestos mining:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/public-money-should-not-prop-up-asbestos-mining-162689836.html

The asbestos bailout: your tax dollars, not well spent:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/asbestos+bailout+your+dollars+well+spent/6954088/story.html#ixzz227RyZpt4

Crime in Canada

In the case of the extreme right-wing, it's a choice between progressive or regressive, not liberal or conservative. Particularly when it comes to neoliberal neoconservatives.

Crime rates are dropping in Canada. He's claiming it is because it of their crime bill. However, before he pushed that monstrous bill down our throats, all the experts said it was unnecessary because crime rates had been trending down for some time. Some speculate that it may have to do with the baby-boomers getting too old to be criminals any more - a natural drop to a normal rate after their massive spike. There are likely many factors but an after-the-fact crime bill isn't one of them.

Crime rates were dropping before Harper's "get tough on crime" bill and they keep dropping.

Except among Harper's people. It keeps rising there.

Just the worth of the tree by the good or evil of its fruit.

We have to dig Harper out before he takes firm root.

Canadian Healthcare: Universal not Perfect

Canadian healthcare may not be perfect, but nothing is. However, it is, in my opinion, one of the best systems in the world. Can it be improved? Certainly, but not through privatization.

Like Canada itself, our system tends toward stability and reliability over cutting-edge technology. Canada is nice and boring. We don’t have yearly massacres. We don’t tend to get the worst of nature’s storms. We don’t tend to experience earthquakes or civil wars or anything that Chinese philosophers would have termed interesting. I like that.  And when we get sick, our healthcare system is there for us. I have no fear of not being able to access it when the need is great. I might have to wait if it’s not an emergency, but I will get treatment.

And it won’t cost me a dime at the time. I have no problem contributing my taxes when I’m healthy. It’s insurance for which there is no claim disallowing. It covers everyone. I think we get a great return on our investment: peace of mind.

It is very Canadian to work together to help the less fortunate and the ailing among us. Unlike the U.S., whose milder climate allowed for rugged individualism, if you don’t cooperate in Canada, you die. That’s why we tend to be less violent – mutual benefit. That and, when we do want to shoot someone, we can go yell about it in our vast wilderness. We can get away from one another, but we know we have to come back together to keep going. We try to make sure no one gets left out. We don’t succeed, but we try.

Our health system is focused on service provision, not technological and procedural innovation. That should be encouraged of course, but we tend to focus on that sort of thing in our universities (which also tend towards egalitarianism in their acceptance policies). I think we’d be well served by focusing on delivering basic and emergency treatment in a timely fashion, working on prevention, and creating research and innovation programs in the universities. I don’t care if I get the most advanced procedure, as long as I get the proper procedure when needed.

Our healthcare system may not be perfect. All systems are unending experiments toward unreachable perfection. But, as long as we fund it properly, it will continue to serve us well. America spends far more per capita on their healthcare system than we do. Vast numbers of people are completely cut out of their system (though Obama’s trying to fix that). Here it truly is universal. That’s a good start.

Healthcare will always be expensive. By isn't a life worth it? Mine is to me. It needs more investment, spent wiser, not privatization. Let private companies come up with the improvements and technologies if they like. Hell, give them research grants and university cooperation. But don’t let profit become the motive for providing care. Then people no longer factor into the equation except for the wealth produced by their misery. You have to have money to participate in a market. Healthcare delivery in Canada is not a market. It is an essential service that must be available to all.

Otherwise, your life becomes worth what the market forces you to pay.

Alberta's Deregulation Disaster

We know that neoliberal deregulation made the US airline industry the strongest, most efficient, most reliable, most comfortable, and most economically viable in the world, as Reagan predicted, right?

Maybe not.

NAFTA made Canada stronger, improved the economy and wasn't responsible for any plants moving to Mexico, driving down wages and eroding labour rights. Right, Mulroney? 

No?

Then let's try a more modern example. Surely they have it right by now. It's been thirty years since Thatcher and her two boyfriends began the neoliberal revolution.

Alberta's wise, neoliberal Progressive Conservatives, whose only plus is that they're not the neoconservative Wildrose Alliance, deregulated the electricity market in Alberta a few years back, promising better service, fairer rates and roses for everyone. What we got was a confusing mess of convoluted agreements, outrageous prices mixed with outright scams, extra fees, and no stability in the market or supply. When the heat caused a foreseeable usage spike, the system became overloaded and six plants went down, triggering rolling blackouts. This is because, unlike in a regulated system, there is no incentive to reserve capacity, you run at the limit all the time. And maintenance takes second priority to profit.

Deregulation has done what it always does, open the market up to exploitation, price fixing, and scams. The average consumer has to be part lawyer, part energy expert, part economist and part conman to understand the byzantine contracts and various rate programs, all with extra administration fees.
Isn't administration a company expense? What the hell am I doing paying their clerks?

There is no oversight or any protection for the customers, especially considering this is an essential service. There is no standard except profit and, because it's essential to modern life, the customer is at the tender mercies of electrical producers and distributors (which used to be one and the same - some efficiency, having two layers of companies charging you for the same power instead of one). That's what deregulation means, taking something everyone should have access to and restricting it as much as possible according to your financial capability.

They also want to deregulate health-care, and most other government services. You know, those things we can't do without, like air. That will be deregulated next.

Neoliberal conservatives believe government is a waste of their money because they claim they believe they got where they are in a universe of one, governments hamper their schemes, and, most importantly, they have the money to do without it. They are intent on making sure we have to do without as well. If profit controls essential services, instead of elected representative, we're at their mercy.

Just where the feudal lords want us.

This is just damn funny

LMFAO!!!

"New Apple Campaign Urges Consumers To Buy iPhone For Other Hand."

Full Story: http://onion.com/MaiGcY

The NRA: Cheerleaders for the Merchants of Death

Injustice Facts: Out of the top 10 corporations contracted by the U.S. government, 9 are weapon manufacturers.

I've heard a lot of people talking conspiracy theories about the Colorado shooting. If I were the paranoid type I would say the ones who had the most to gain from it, if there was anything to be gained from senseless death, would be the NRA. Gun sales have rocketed since the incident in what was a peaceful gun free area. I've heard it asked how the shooter could afford all that weaponry. More important, I think, is how easily – and likely cheaply – he was able to quickly build a private military arsenal through perfectly legal means in a supposedly peaceful country.

 

The rest of the world is wary of America because they are heavily armed.and becoming paranoid. Ready to kill at the slightest misunderstanding. And so many of them misunderstand so much.

I fear for them. It's always the innocent who ends up paying.

Real terrorists profit from acts of destruction and fear. They usually call it heroism and self-defence.

The Lower Classes: Heart of the Economy

The poor and the middle-class, not the rich and corporations, are the drivers of the economy and the source of a nation's health and wealth. They do they actual work that generates real wealth, not financial trades that generate nothing but commissions. They are also more likely to spend all that they earn, thus keeping the currency fluid and in action rather than collecting it into hoards and gambling it away on speculation, or wasting it on diamond-studded collars for dogs.

If a nation is a body, then the economic system is its metabolic system, how it takes in input to produce energy and outputs. Currency, money, is the blood that circulates, nourishing the body and enabling it to repair damaged parts and grow. The lower classes, particularly the middle-class, are the heart, pumping currency throughout the nation. On the other hand, the rich are blood clots, blockages where blood flow stops and builds up, putting potentially deadly pressure on the whole system. And in this model, corporations play the role of viruses, invading bodies that hijack the body's resources to reproduce and grow at the body's expense. Again currency concentrates instead of flowing, starving the body of its ability to control, sustain, and repair. Government is supposed to be the brain, but the viruses and blood clots disrupt its function. The inevitable result is death.

Economic growth, like bodily growth, is useless if it doesn't benefit the entire body. Otherwise, at best, it is a skin tag, and at worst, cancer.

If there isn't a reasonable level of equality, capitalism becomes feudalism with those who labour to create wealth not sharing in it and a small number of well-protected rich ruling and taking the benefits. Gated communities are just modern castles, meant to keep out the peasants and protect the 'noble' lords.

The rich actually harm the economy, hoarding currency, driving up prices, lowering wages, and deregulating so they can gamble their fortunes away. They increase the demands on the system while lowering the amount of blood and its ability to flow, and then they give us all a nosebleed just to stress the system more. Their every action attempts to kill the body, so that nations may be returned to kingdoms and all those pesky rights done away with.

Although economic growth has been fairly steady for three decades, earnings of the poor and middle-class have stagnated, meaning that with inflation caused by the rich, earnings have actually decreased. There is no trickle coming down from our gracious masters. In fact they have been taking our water to overflow their bowls. Wages for the majority of people have stagnated. Is it really any surprise that economies, societies and entire nations have as well?

The rise of the middle-class was what lifted society out of feudalism toward democracy. Its demise will plunge us back.

This is the 'noble' goal of our neoliberal leaders. They want more than to just be rich, privileged citizens. They want to be royalty, otherwise known as violent slave-owning dictators.

Otherwise known as a national heart attack.
 

Workers are Investors not Hired Hands

These days, hired hands are literally robots.   

Workers should count toward the credit side of a balance sheet, not the debit, if investment capital is counted as a credit. Although a worker costs to employ, that worker creates or produces assets in the form of products, services, and getting them to the market. Workers are investors of time, creativity, energy, skill, talent, knowledge, and experience. Without them nothing gets done.

Nothing, that is, except stock trading and CEO bonuses.

Workers should be treated as stock holders, being paid from the price of their product or service according the amount they contributed, in an objective amount like how many parts you put in or how much time, like any investor. For the sake of argument, if you contributed 1% to the process of creating and getting the product to the market (within your company) and it sells for $200 per unit wholesale, then you should be paid $2 per unit that you were involved with.

I'd say that would be a pretty good incentive to make and sell more units more efficiently without reducing the workforce (including all levels of management) or raising prices. A decent slice of the pie keeps everyone from going hungry, so they can afford to buy what they make. Also, the larger the workforce, the more products you can pump out so it encourages hiring and keeps workers working hard happily. Slacking and corruption is then seen to be hurting everyone.

This doesn't make the arrangement a collective or cooperative; it makes it a fair return on investment.

It seems like that might be a way to grow an economy without it being on someone's back.

Economics is Not a Science

Economics is more akin to history than science. Like history, it makes use of science, but both are based on a large degree of interpretation beyond the objective facts, and few of the facts are completely objective. When it turns to prognostication both can make educated guesses based on perceived patterns in the available data of the past and present, but cannot predict with anything close to 99% certainty like true science.  If it is a science, like meteorology and climatology, it is in its infancy, starved for the moment of the technology that would make its data sets more complete and reliable. It's only true law is that of supply and demand, which really comes down to basic physics.

On a simpler level, if it were a science, economists would be called scientists.

Much too much of economics is expectation arising from theory based on speculation about assumptions. It's less accurate, on more than a simple level, than meteorology. Like history, it is always playing catch-up. At this stage, it’s like alchemy to chemistry or astrology to astronomy. Economics tries to be the study of everything, reducing everything to economic pressures and mechanics. One day, we may have such a universal science, but it isn't today.

Meteorology doesn't claim to be a perfect forecaster, so we don't base long-term behaviour solely on it. But we base national policy solely on economics. We don't do that with history, assuming that just because that's the way it was, it can't be done differently. We don't base a nation's future solely on its past. But we do it with economics.

We shouldn't be taking educated guesses as gospel truth and we shouldn't be treating it like physics. Even physics got it wrong a bunch of times before it became a true science, and it's still not perfect.

Economics certainly isn't.

Do we want let the phrenologists continue to guide us by the lumps they inflict on us?

Monday November 28, 2016

It's The Economists, Stupid

(Kevin Coombs/Reuters)

Listen to Full Episode 53:59

Interest rates.  Unemployment. GDP.  Markets. Austerity measures.  Economists tell us what we, as societies, can and can't afford.  But how do they decide? What values are at play? IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell speaks with two economists about how modern mantras on the economy limit our choices and shut down civic debate. **This episode first aired September 9, 2015.

Participants in this episode: 

• Dr. Julie Nelson, Department Chair and Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Boston.
   
• Dr. Richard Denniss, Chief Economist, The Australia Institute, Canberra City, Australia.

As a group, economists don't have a great track record: they largely failed to predict the oil crisis of the 1970's, the dot-com bubble, the U.S. housing collapse.  Even the O.E.C.D. -- the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development -- admits its forecasts have been way off.  One of its staffers even conceded: "maybe we suffer from group think".  Little wonder that economics has been known as "the dismal science" since the 19th century.

John Kenneth Galbraith once explained that, "Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment… for economists".  However, there are deeper, more serious fissures.  Economists explain how the turbulence of housing markets, mortgage rates, inflation and income inequality affect us all.  But who are they speaking to and whom do they represent?

Julie Nelson

Feminist economist Julie Nelson believes most economists no longer represent the public good because they're operating out of self-importance and greed.  "You can find economists shilling for all kinds of groups.  If they're not consciously shilling, they're incredibly careerist."  The University of Massachusetts Department Chair and Economics professor thinks the media obsession with the state of financial markets doesn't tell us how we're doing as a society.  "Maybe we should be asking, who's eating and who's not."   Richard Denniss concurs.  He's Chief Economist for the independent think tank, The Australia Institute, and calls himself a "whistle-blower economist". He believes we've come to view markets as gods.  "The market does this, the market does that… as if it's something magical. It's really just a small group of people with a lot of money who are gambling on making more."   
 

Richard Denniss

Richard Denniss and Julie Nelson believe current economic group think produces a mantra that supports cutting taxes, reducing deficits, massive down-sizing, bloated CEO salaries, and "shrinking social programs till they scream".   Julie Nelson concludes these trends not only generate more poverty; they hollow out the middle-class, and that's bad for capitalism.  She says: "this was figured out a long time ago.  Henry Ford wanted to pay a wage to his workers that would allow them to buy the kinds of cars they were making.  And that makes a whole lot of sense.  If you want a market for your product, you have to have people who can afford to buy that product.  But that basic logic is drowned out by all the austerity rhetoric that we're hearing from industry and government these days".  
Reading List:

• Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough, by Richard Denniss and Clive Hamilton, Allen & Unwin, 2006. 

•  Economics for Humans, by Julie Nelson, University of Chicago Press, 2006.
   
• The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics, by Jonathan Aldred, Routledge, 2010.

Related Websites:

• The Australia Institute
   
• ​Spreadsheets of Power: How economic modelling is used to circumvent democracy and shut down debate by Richard Denniss
  ​
• Of Clowns and Treasures: Joe Hockey and the myth of Coalition economic management by Richard Denniss
   
• Friends, countrymen, lend me your ores, opinion column by Richard Denniss, Canberra Times

• Fearing Fear: Gender and Economic Discourse by Julie Nelson

• ​Really Radical Economics by Julie Nelson 

• Don't Listen to Economists by Julie Nelson
   
• Why a Well-Paid Nurse is a Better Nurse by Julie Nelson and Nancy Folbre 

**This episode was produced by Mary O'Connell

The Mark of a True Leader

A true leader leads by example and asks nothing of anyone that he wouldn't do himself. If he asks his people for sacrifice, then he is first to take the pain. If he wants to, let's say, change public pensions to be more restrictive and cost-effective, then he should do the same to his own, and other MPs', pensions first. If he's going to be tough on crime, then he should hold himself and his fellow representatives to a higher standard as well. Otherwise he's not a leader, just a hypocrite.

Right, Harper?

A leader convinces by reason and example, he does not dictate through policy. That's a dictator.

A leader does not play power games for his own benefit, or that of his accomplices, he puts the welfare of all his people first.

A leader does not exploit his people, he helps them improve themselves

A leader does not stifle or avoid dissenting points of view, he listens and learns. He tries to find common ground and use what works, not just his own ideas. He does not divide, he unites.

Right, Jack?

All these traits of course apply equally to female leaders. You don't have to me male to have a pair. You don't have to be a saint to have integrity. You just have to be human.

Real leaders are.