Disasterology

This is just fantastic. Naomi Klein has just written a book titled The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which argues, as Tyler Cowen summarizes in his New York Sun review, that…

…a right-wing conspiracy deliberately courts or looks for disaster, so it can impose unpopular free market ideas on an unwilling populace. For instance, Hurricane Katrina (supposedly) led to the privatization of New Orleans and was (supposedly) welcomed for this reason. Yet there’s not much evidence for active conspiracies, apart from a vague 1962 statement by Friedman: “Only a crisis produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

Cowen goes on to absolutely demolish the book:

It’s probably the most effective brand of emotional nonfiction to be published this year. But when it comes to the underlying message, and the standards of evidence used to support it, “The Shock Doctrine” is a true economics disaster.

Meanwhile, The Economist’s Free Exchange blog has a roundup of other reviews. Needless to say, economists — and, indeed, most anyone with a basic, reasonable appreciation for how it works — haven’t exactly been approving of its core ideas.