"In Santiago, things are very different now. The Chicago Boys have been put in charge of the economy [of Chile]. While Milton Friedman - their favourite guru - has even come to visit [Augusto] Pinochet, and even take a picture with this despicable dictator."
#EvgenyMorozov, 2023
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-santiago-boys/ep-8-of-condors-and-caravans-5_0lZzJ4pLF/
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#podcasts #ChoraMedia #TheSantiagoBoys #ChicagoBoys #MiltonFriedman
These Chicago Boys, who worked with the Pinochet regime, were intellectual fellow travellers of the people who took over the NZ economy in the 1980s. Their economic ideas and political strategies - remembered by many as "Rogernomics" and "Ruthenasia" - still have a lot of influence in political-economic thinking here. Particularly in the current government.
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Listening to Evgeny Morozov's description of General Pinochet's September 11 coup in Chile, and the accounts of some of the survivors he interviewed, I'm reminded of just how much worse anticommunist authoritarianism can get;
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-santiago-boys/ep-7-a-room-of-ones-own-PJcvitxhkV7/
Right now the intellectual descendants of the Chicago Boys are asset stripping the US federal government. But no one is being tortured or killed yet. Right?
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To be clear, I'm not saying we needn't worry about what's happening in the US. Rather I'm trying to put it into historical perspective. Things are bad there, but in theory, they could be much worse. There's still time to undo the creeping corruption planned by the Powell Memo, and restore government by civil deliberation.
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Strypey