The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

The book has a few different theses that it jumbles together. The "shock doctrine" is the idea that big government changes can be made when there is significant shock to the system. The Great Depression and World War II helped allow social security and other welfare programs to be pushed through. Even though it mentions these left-wing changes in passing, it focuses exclusively on shocks used to push through right-wing changes.

This brings up a second topic of government forcing in right-wing regimes, possible at the expense of democratically elected governments. There are numerous cases in South America where the US has supported right-wing dictators over democratically elected left wingers. There may be problems with some of these countries, but problems seem to be fairly equal-opportunity. Venezuela is basket case with a strong left-wing government. Argentina has got itself into messes with dictators, left-wingers and right-wingers.

A third topic of concern is people getting rich at the government's expense. In some countries, the dictator simply pockets the country's money or take bribes. In the US there tended to be more layers of indirection. Some people would go back and forth between government and private sector and use their influence to get contracts. Others would bill the government excessive amounts and then farm out work to subcontractors. The author criticized the right wing "outsourcing" of government to private groups. Alas, government contracting graft tends to be equal opportunity.

And finally there was a fourth topic of torture. This was generally done in clandestine fashion. There were also psychology experiments to "wipe" somebody's brain to put in a blank slate. This was also attempted on a country level. It never seemed to work well.

These disparate topics were all pieced together in an attempt to piece together a narrative. The examples from Iraq, Russia and Katrina were all covered in detail. There was a lot of examples of things gone wrong with people naively thinking they could implement what they wanted. 

The book jumbled a lot of things together and seemed to intent on criticizing figures from the Bush administration. The argument just rang hollow. The end totally flipped it on the head. The Katrina survivors took a cue from Thailand and decided that they would fix things up themselves rather than wait for government help. This seems to be exactly what the right wing goal would be. Government is no capable, so people will do it themselves. This would be the end result of government hands-off activitiy.