MovieChat Forums > The Shock Doctrine (2010) Discussion > Man this thing was like a trip into the ...

Man this thing was like a trip into the Twilight Zone......

posted 13 years ago by ryan-anderson
3 replies | jump to latest

Nixon's price controls worked?! People like Thatcher and Reagan won elections based on [manufactured] crises? (Rather than the re-birth of their nation's economies on their watch.) Anything you say Ms. Klein.

Where it really got wild is when it made Iraq [at least the purpose behind it] look like some experiment in capitalism.....when in fact it was a idiotic decision (in part fueled by faulty Intel). They give the numbers of contractors in Iraq [in comparison with the numbers of military personnel] without mentioning the trouble the military has had recruiting people since the Iraq war began. (Thus necessitating the outside help.)

It's sort of like they have a thesis and they are taking [as examples to reinforce it] nations only a few years after the switch to capitalism and they expect everything to be rosy overnight. [For example they discuss Russia in the early 90's.] Sorry but Russia wasn't going to recover from 70 years of communism in 2 years......and Iraq obviously isn't going to recover from a devastating war overnight.

The other thing that struck me is the (almost) complete omission of the struggles of the economies of the USA & the UK in the late 1970's.....a point at which many economists believed that the Keynesian school had hit a wall (which led to the rise of the "Chicago Boys" to begin with....rather than (as the scenario in this movie claims) opportunist(s) [Friedman, et al] seeking out "disasters").

Strange movie.

Ignoring: GameBoyFan, ibestupid, Holiday_Hobo, sharon_18, TilaMoo, Okie-from-Muskogee/boo321, NorCalNik, Nullifidian, Ben_Doval

[–] matijaf 13 years ago

Completely agree with you. I think she is the once using this "shock doctrine" by making up some stories that aren't even true to make people believe in her ideology.

Talking about Friedman and his free market and connecting it to oligarchy in Russia which we all know is government made which is a complete opposite of what Friedman was teaching.

And about how America is privatizing military even though Friedman clearly stated every time that defense is the job of the government.

And mentioning the schooling system after Katrina and making it look like Friedman wanted to privatize everything... it is completely incorrect. What I'm afraid of is that she did this on purpose. The truth is that Friedman wanted to make the schooling system more competitive by using vouchers.

This simple facts make me doubt the rest of what she says in there. Facts she gives may not be true after all.

[–] ryan-anderson 13 years ago

Yeah, I took note of that too (with regards to Friedman): I don’t recall him advocating some of the things she was talking about either.

Something else that struck me as odd (that I didn’t mention before): when discussing the privatization of the nationally owned industries/utilities in the UK (under Thatcher), they forgot to mention the fact that several of these companies were [in many cases] literally falling apart (like much of the UK at the time). They were sometimes being operating at a [tax payer’s subsidized] loss and were unresponsive to consumer demands. Yet the writers made it sound like privatization was just some arbitrary decision.

Ignoring: GameBoyFan, ibestupid, Holiday_Hobo, sharon_18, TilaMoo, Okie-from-Muskogee/boo321, NorCalNik, Nullifidian, Ben_Doval

[–] drunkdaddy69 13 years ago

I'M glad some people can think for themselves and know some history. i just watched this and am so pissed off right now, i cant put into words.