Difamando a Milton Friedman

Via Figarillo en feisbuck.

Oldie but goldie. Johan Norberg despedaza las mentiras y calumnias de Naomi Klein.

Klein's basic argument is that economic liberalization is so unpopular that it can only win through deception or coercion. In particular, it relies on crises. During a natural disaster, a war, or a military coup, people are disoriented, confused, and preoccupied with their own immediate survival, allowing regimes to liberalize trade, to privatize, and to reduce public spending with little opposition. According to Klein, "neoliberal" economists have welcomed Hurricane Katrina, the Southeast Asian tsunami, the Iraq war, and the South American military coups of the 1970s as opportunities to introduce radical free market policies. The chief villain in her story is Milton Friedman, the economist who did more than anyone in the 20th century to popularize free market ideas.

To make her case, Klein exaggerates the market reforms in question, often ignoring central events and rewriting chronologies. She confuses libertarianism with the quite different concepts of corporatism and neoconservatism. And she subjects Milton Friedman to one of the most malevolent distortions of a thinker's ideas in recent history.

Norberg, como siempre, imperdible. Tengo este artículo en la lista de mis traducciones pendientes... con que un chichipío latinoamericano lo lea y deje de repetir las mentiras de Klein, habrá valido la pena.