The Shock Doctrine
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of "shock therapy". This centers on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or upheavals) to establish controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are too distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an adequate response, and resist effectively. The book advances the idea that some man-made events, such as the Iraq War, were undertaken with the intention of pushing through such unpopular policies in their wake. Some reviewers criticized the book for making what they viewed as simplifications of political phenomena, while others lauded it as a compelling and important work. The book served as the main source of a 2009 documentary feature film with the same title directed by Michael Winterbottom. )
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What Hacker News says
- I haven't listened to the talk but read Mobiot's book when it came out last year :)
On the same vein, I'd recommend "Capitalist Realism" by Mark Fisher, Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine", and even the original "A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto" by Charles Peters to understand how the term is slippery and diverged a lot from the original manifesto.
And I'm not an anti-market, full-blown communism person. The feeling I have is that all the aftermath from the dogmatic implementation of an unsound ideology has brought much of our contemporary malaise, the allowance of finance to take over the real economy, the productive economy, has just eroded any semblance of a good market-driven society. I'm against that, the supremacy of finance over all other economical activity, it's a cancer that festers on every single big corporation.
- Two books have summed it up for me perfectly over the decades:
Susan Sontag -- Regarding the Pain of Others
Naomi Klein -- The Shock Doctrine
https://www.amazon.com/Regarding-Pain-Others-Susan-Sontag/dp... https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitali...
- Everyone should read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.
- Required reading: "Shock Doctrine" - the repeated disastrous implementation of Friedman's ideas, and the Chicago school of economics / the "Chicago Boys," often to stop inflation. See also the "Berkeley Mafia."
- Read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. It basically lays out the idea that there are groups with legislation like this already prepared just waiting for an opportunity to get it pushed through. It's pretty shitty behaviour but doesn't require a conspiracy to explain it.
- Never waste a good crisis when it comes to politics → read this book [The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine)
