At 03:28 PM 11/16/2006, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>On 11/16/06, boddi satva <<mailto:lbo.boddi at gmail.com>lbo.boddi at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>Now come on - this is unreasonable.
>
>Milton Friedman is a genocidal murderer?
>
>Please, that's silly.
>
>
>
>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>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_.
>
>Jerry
>
>
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