Libertarians...Quite Possibly the Stupidest People in the World....

And I am a libertarian by the way and am in no way one of the stupidest people in the world. I think though that the real problem is that big L Libertarians are MORE concerned with the free market than with freedom of the people including the freedom to CHOOSE a socialist collectivist government. This enables many to look past the fact that people only had to be tortured and kidnapped and disappeared for about 25 years for the free market to take affect and the people to vote Pinochet's party out of power. Friedman should have said that his style of market reforms NEVER justify totalitarianism to implement them. He should have gone to Chile and denounced Pinochet or should have at least denounced him the same way he denounced government that engaged in Centralist Socialist totalitarian controls.
 
I can't even read this anymore. It's amazing how intellectually dishonest people are to themselves. A mans Ideas has helped BILLIONS of people get out of poverty and people still bash him.
 
RStringfield said:
None. Show us where Friedman said it was or advocated such actions? Show us where he said Pinochet was OK?

Friedman offered advice to collectivist socialist totalitarians. He no more approved of Pinochet than he did them and nobody promoting this stupid smear has offered anything to show that he did.
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This is really just living in denial, like the whole ron Paul isn't a racist thing.

There is no point in arguing with you about either of those subjects, becasue the truth is so obvious, and you can't see it because you dont' want to know.

It's silly. It can get very frustrating, but when you step back and look at it for a moment, it's just plain goofy.
 
Socrtease said:
And I am a libertarian by the way and am in no way one of the stupidest people in the world. I think though that the real problem is that big L Libertarians are MORE concerned with the free market than with freedom of the people including the freedom to CHOOSE a socialist collectivist government. This enables many to look past the fact that people only had to be tortured and kidnapped and disappeared for about 25 years for the free market to take affect and the people to vote Pinochet's party out of power. Friedman should have said that his style of market reforms NEVER justify totalitarianism to implement them. He should have gone to Chile and denounced Pinochet or should have at least denounced him the same way he denounced government that engaged in Centralist Socialist totalitarian controls.
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I think it's that they believe that free markets are the same thing as freedom, and that is what enables them to look past it.
 
Watermark said:
Friedman wasn't very involved with the Pinochet regime. He talked to Pinochet for about 45 minutes and sent the man a letter of economic advice whenever the dictator requested it. That was the extent of their involvement with each other.
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And when he spoke in Chile he was there at the request of a private entity, not the government.
 
Darla said:
This is really just living in denial, like the whole ron Paul isn't a racist thing.

There is no point in arguing with you about either of those subjects, becasue the truth is so obvious, and you can't see it because you dont' want to know.

It's silly. It can get very frustrating, but when you step back and look at it for a moment, it's just plain goofy.
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translation:

"I cannot back up a thing I said on this thread, thus I will act as though everyone else is beneath me and not capable of understanding such an "obvious truth". One so obvious I cannot even provide one piece of evidence to support it."
 
RString

Your too honest and smart to waste time on Darla and BAC. I hope you at least get some enjoyment out of it. It would drive me nuts. Like explaining water to a fish.
 
Darla said:
This is really just living in denial, like the whole ron Paul isn't a racist thing.

There is no point in arguing with you about either of those subjects, becasue the truth is so obvious, and you can't see it because you dont' want to know.

It's silly. It can get very frustrating, but when you step back and look at it for a moment, it's just plain goofy.
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There is no point because you cannot muster one bit of proof for your position. He met with Pinochet for under an hour and gave anti-totalitarian lectures at a private school. That does not amount to endorsement of Pinochet. And it certainly does not make him a murderer. To contend otherwise is goofy.
 
Let me state once more... I don't really care much for Friedman. I am pretty close to Rothbard on my opinion of him. But to call him a murderer is absurd.
 
RStringfield said:
Let me state once more... I don't really care much for Friedman. I am pretty close to Rothbard on my opinion of him. But to call him a murderer is absurd.
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No I believe that someone who is aware that murders happen on account of their own policies, and does nothing, but lies about it, is a murderer. I do not believe you have to actually wield the weapon to be a murderer.
 
blackascoal said:
Perhaps this can help answer your question and give you a clearer reading of that history .. a history that sounds incredibly familiar to current events.

"A month after Friedman's visit, the Chilean junta announced that inflation would be stopped "at any cost." The regime cut government spending twenty-seven percent, practically shuttered the national mint, and set fire to bundles of escudos. The state divested from the banking system and deregulated finance, including interest rates. It slashed import tariffs, freed prices on over 2000 products, and removed restrictions against foreign investments. Pinochet pulled Chile out of a number of alliances with neighboring countries intended to promote regional industrialization, turning his country into a gateway for the introduction of cheap goods into Latin America.

Tens of thousands of public workers lost their jobs as the government auctioned off, in what amounted to a spectacular transfer of wealth to the private sector, over four hundred state industries. Multinationals were not only granted the right to repatriate one hundred percent of their profits, but were given guaranteed exchange rates to help them do so. In order to build investor confidence, the escudo was fixed to the dollar. Within four years, nearly thirty percent of all property expropriated not just under Allende but under a previous Alliance for Progress land reform was returned to previous owners. New laws treated labor like any other "free" commodity, sweeping away four decades of progressive union legislation. Health care was privatized, as was the public pension fund.

GNP plummeted thirteen percent, industrial production fell 28 percent, and purchasing power collapsed to forty percent of its 1970 level. One national business after another went bankrupt. Unemployment soared.

Yet by 1978 the economy rebounded, expanding thirty-two percent between 1978 and 1981. Though salary levels remained close to twenty percent below what they were a decade previously, per capita income began to climb again. Perhaps even a better indicator of progress, torture and extrajudicial executions began to taper off. With hindsight, however, it is now clear that the Chicago economists, despite the credit they received for three years of economic growth, had set Chile on the road to near collapse.

The rebound of the economy was a function of the liberalization of the financial system and massive foreign investment. That investment, it turns out, led to a speculative binge, monopolization of the banking system, and heavy borrowing. The deluge of foreign capital did allow the fixed exchange rate to be maintained for a short period. But sharp increases in private debt * rising from $2 billion in 1978 to over $14 billion in 1982 -- put unsustainable pressure on Chile's currency. Pegged as it was to the appreciating US dollar, the value of the escudo was kept artificially high, leading to a flood of cheap imports. While consumers took advantage of liberalized credit to purchase TVs, cars, and other high-ticket items, savings shrank, debt increased, exports fell, and the trade deficit ballooned.

In 1982 things fell apart. Copper prices plummeted, accelerating Chile's balance of trade deficit. GDP plunged fifteen percent, while industrial production rapidly contracted. Bankruptcies tripled and unemployment hit 30 percent. Despite his pledge to hold firm, Pinochet devalued the escudo, devastating poor Chileans who had either availed themselves to liberalized credit to borrow in dollars or who held their savings in escudos. The Central Bank lost forty-five percent of its reserves, while the private banking system collapsed. The crisis forced the state, dusting off laws still on the books from the Allende period, to take over nearly seventy percent of the banking system and reimpose controls on finance, industry, prices and wages. Turning to the IMF for a bailout, Pinochet extended a public guarantee to repay foreign creditors and banks.

---

Today, Pinochet is under house arrest for his brand of "shock therapy," and Friedman is dead. But the world they helped usher in survives, in increasingly grotesque form. What was considered extreme in Chile in 1975 has now become the norm in the US today: a society where the market defines the totality of human fulfillment, and a government that tortures in the name of freedom."
http://www.counterpunch.org/grandin11172006.html

You really should read the entire article.

There is your "free market"
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Great stuff. Thanks again. I had no idea how deep this Friedman's claws were into that Pinochet crap. It's their ideology, man. Its fundamentally flawed, and in some ways, evil to the core.
 
Warren said:
Wow Darla continues to prove that she should never debate economic policy.
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This isn't about economic policy, it's about history and historical events, and who is responsible for them'

That you couldn't even make that out? Makes you look really dumb, not cool, the way you think it makes you look.
 
Darla said:
No I believe that someone who is aware that murders happen on account of their own policies, and does nothing, but lies about it, is a murderer. I do not believe you have to actually wield the weapon to be a murderer.
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So your beloved Gore is thus a murderer. Along with the Clintons. For their policy with regards to Rwanda led to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people.
 
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