Well it depends. I at least think it is arguable. If he takes moral responsibility for the policies his students instituted and he supported in places like Pinochet's Chili. Miltie was not a war criminal in the same way as Henry Kissinger and he was not a murderous dictator in the same was Pinochet, but he and his students were advisers, supporters, and props to war criminals and murderous dictators. And they were props to the atrocities that the dictators instituted in order to enforce "shock" economics.
It is _not_ unreasonable to think of nice little Uncle Miltie as a supporter of mass murder and if you think it is then you should look into what he and the Chicago Boys were doing through the 1970s and the 1980s.
Now, I can understand why anyone would like that little clip referred to on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbRcmKRv-zo
But look at what he says. He has done no research on the "pencil" in the example. That is because details don't matter to him. He is making a general point about the fact that "no one person can make the pencil" and it is all because of the "pricing system" of capitalism.
He says "for all I know" the wood to make the tree was cut down in the state of Washington. Well he doesn't know. Does he ever take the time in what he writes to see exactly what the economic policies are that "allow" for the cutting of that wood. Is it the miracle of the "pricing system" or is it the fact that public lands are "leased" to companies and that these companies have to pay very little back to repair the damage that they do, the damage that we are left to live with.
He says that the graphite in the pencil comes from somewhere, he knows not where, but he "thinks" it might be mines in South America. And his point again is that it is the "pricing system" that brought the people together to make this pencil. Does he tell you about the miners in South America who were murdered because they tried to form unions or who die as soon as they go into mines because the policies he and his Chicago Boys helped to keep in place run counter to mine safe? No. Those details, like the details of where the graphite actually comes from, are too sordid for the likes of the nice Uncle Miltie to deal with.
He says, "Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil." But I could say the same about a cotton shirt made in 1833 in England, even though the cotton was picked by the "cooperation" of the slaves. It doesn't matter how the cooperation came about in his view. It is cooperation if it conforms to the pricing system. It is cooperation that conforms to the "pricing system" of "capitalism" even if in every detail it is highly subsidized by government and everybody but the people responsible are left to clean up the mess. That is Uncle Miltie.
Jerry
Friedman was wrong about a lot of things, right about a lot of things
> and certainly added positively to the debate about economics. I didn't
> care for his views as a political figure, but so what?
To Jesse Jesse Lemisch to lbo-talk show details
2:54 pm (14 minutes ago) Jerry Monaco says:
"The U of C[hicago] in my day... If you stayed away from the B-school and the Law School as an undergrad you were pretty safe from the coarse ideologies and then you only had to deal with the Maoists or the Sparts in the quad, for your quota of ideology. "
JL What about the Straussians in the College, infesting Soc I, Ralph Lerner, etc.? As junior faculty and then fired, I had as much difficulty with these people as with Boorstin et al in the History Dept. And there was a strange alliance between Straussians and Hutchinsonians, both happy to study ideas in a vacuum (as in The People Shall Judge
Jerry: I was an undergrad in the mid to late 70s. The experience of a wide-eyed undergrad is bound to be different than that of a young academic trying to get a foot hold. So as an undergrad having Eric Cochrane or Leonard Olsen for a core subject was a revelation to this small town boy. I didn't mind the Straussian's because I was pretty much un-seduceable. And truly you could avoid these people if you picked your classes right. But for a young guy or gal trying to make tenure or establish a foot-hold I expect that the likes of the Straussians and others were pretty much unavoidable. I did like the few Thomists who seemed to be left over from an earlier time and the Marxists who seemed to be gathered in odd nooks and crannies, including the divinity school.
Doug Wrote: To quote Miss Kittin on Frank Sinatra, "He's dead. Hehehehe. Dead."
JM: Now that is going too far! I am shocked, shocked! One of the great artists of the 20th century and no matter what the degeneration of his politics we should regret his loss in the same way I regretted the deaths of Louis Armstrong and Jean-Paul Sartre, long after their times had past.
Doug, you are hereby condemned to five hours of deep blackness and you must sink deep into sexual despair by listening very closely to _Frank Sinatra Sings For Only the Lonely_, _The Wee Small Hours of the Morning_, _Where are You_ and _No One Cares_.
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