Milton Friedman

The idealized market of Friedman

‘’what keeps us oriented and alert and out of shock, is our history. A period of crisis, like the one we are in, is a very good time to think about history and think about continuity and think about roots. It is a good time to place ourselves in the longer human story of struggle.’’ Naomi Klein

The history, mentioned in the shock doctrine, takes us back to the 1950’s at the McGill University. At this university academic researchers found out that the main consequences of sensorial deprivation -shock doctrine- leads people to loss of critical capacity and thinking become less clear. This sensorial deprivation has been copied by the CIA and this method has been used in Guantanamo bay to create a psychological shock or paralysis so that prisoners behave better and cooperate. In other words, when a system is subjected to a shock, it is paralyzed and it can be restricted.

As history has shown, a shock into a system may also cause paralysis and the system will lose critical capacity and thinking becomes less clear, as with sensorial deprivation. A system which have been subjected to shocks, is the financial system. The reason of shocking the financial system is to exploit the crisis. This became known as the Chicago school revolution whose founder is Milton Friedman, he was a immense proponent of free market capitalism. The policy recommended by the Chicago school was remove price controls, sell of the state companies, remove import barriers and cut the government expenditures. This was also called as a shock treatment by Friedman. The shock is applied and spreads according to the policy of the Chicago school;

First shock of the Chicago school, the first shock have been started in Chili. At the beginning the shock started as war by killing thousands of people, jailing more than 100,000 people in concentration camps. Afterwards, the economic shock was applied. The result: the inflation was 375% per year and beneficial to the...