Better yet just ask him to name a successful NIC. South Korea? (Always a favorite because they get to contrast it to Commie NK.) Point out what a large percentage of their most effective industries were state owned; that they actually had lots of those libertarian-maligned "five-year plans," and were executing people for illegal capital export! Those Tiger Economies were not pursuing anything close to the free market policies which are now being thrust on the rest of the third-world.
Hong Kong? Singapore? They're mercantile city-states which since time immemorial have based their wealth on mediating trade between resource-rich countries in their region. It's absurd to compare them to what, say, Russia or Chile are dealing with.
As for Chile, as Ed Herman and others have noted (see _Triumph of the Market_): the poverty rate, which rose drastically under the dictatorship still hasn't dropped to the 1972 level. GNP growth from 61-71 was 4.6% a year, verus 2.6% a year 74-89 (and negative 74-89 on a per capita basis) (p. 52). Much of the vaunted growth of Chile in recent years has been inflated by starting the calculations in 1982, at the trough of a huge collapse.
The rapid privatizations under the dictatorship were followed by massive failures in the early 1980s, leading to renationalizations, then a further resale of the renationalized institutions once again at bargain basement prices. The bailout costs in Chile 82-88 amounted to one-third of GDP. All of this was of course a gross violation of the principles of free markets, but consistent with a system of elite privilege.
And let's of course not forget that Pinochet did a massive job of "class cleansing," destroying the labor and peasant movements, killing large numbers of activists and grass roots leaders, and keeping them down by a plain system of terror. Capital was meanwhile able to concentrate at will and take over public property, the media was further commercialized and concentrated, and foreign investment became more important. In short, a highly unlevel playing field was established to assure capital domination and rapid short term accumulation. As this terror and restructuring favorable to capital was loved by global capital, the small problematics (huge inequality, poverty levels greater than in the "poorer" Allende era, an absence of political options, impunity and continued power to mass murderers) are all glossed over in the mainstream media, who focus as hear on growth without regard to equity or justice.
...Really, debating free-market libertarians is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Maureen