Wikipedia and Shock Therapy
I've always wanted to contribute to the main English Wikipedia. However, the majority of Wikipedia entries are pretty good. It's hard to figure out what I could add to any page. However, I always thought that, if an article came along and it happened to be something I knew about and I could improve it, then I'd try to.
As you know, I have a passing interest in economics, and sometimes I like reading up on certain pages on Wikipedia just to broaden my knowledge. I came across the article for shock therapy, which was so bad and so biased that I realised that even I could do something about it. So I decided that I should most definitely try.
This is the old version before I started, and this is the current one. Any comments are very welcome!
I must say, something that surprised me, is how doing this article has changed my view of economics and certain parts of world history. Growing up in this time, I had viewed that the biggest danger the world faced was from the idea of , and was proved right when the Credit Crunch hit. Among the unholy axis of evil formed by proponents of neoliberalism, shock therapy is pretty high up there in evil ideas that should never have been tried and that the world would be better off without.
The best thing about doing this is that it's given me lots of historical context. Nothing I've seen has changed my view that neoliberalism and shock therapy are evil ideas in modern day contexts. In fact, looking back has just strengthened that view. What has changed, though, is that I'm aware that the world was completely different some twenty to thirty years ago. Back then, governments weren't like ours were now, generally responsible about borrowing or about unnecessarily interfering in the economy in really stupid ways. Where now it's blindingly obvious that liberalising your economy doesn't work when you lack certain basic things (like law and order, land registries) but people remained blind until the Credit Crunch finally forced them to open their eyes, the same situation prevailed then with regards to getting into debt and printing money to get out. Just as people used some esoteric part of neoclassical economics to prove that Regulation Is Evil in modern times, people used esoteric Keynesian ideas to prove that Printing Lots of Money Doesn't Cause Hyperinflation, so it was ok to get into debt and print lots of money to get out. Just like shock therapy became to be considered the be all and end all of economic reform, gradualism (it's direct opposite) occupied that same spot some thirty years ago, so that no one was allowed to tackle any problem head on because it might do more harm then good. Ironically, the ideas that would have saved us from ourselves today were the ideas that were destroying us decades in the past, and the ideas that saved us in the past destroyed us now.
Having gotten all that historical context, I'm no longer quite so angry at what happened. Yes, it's clear that a lot of people jumped on the neoliberalism bandwagon without understanding it at all (I shudder every time I read the assumptions they used), just because it "proved" that the world they wanted to live in was The One True Way. By the end, the neoliberalism bandwagon was being pulled over the the writhing corpses of decent objections by a bunch of wailing fanatics with no sense of perspective or moderation. But before that, it was being pulled by a load of people trying to do the best they could in a situation where everyone was telling them that they couldn't make a better world, that it had always been as it was and always would be. This is something I want to remember.
In times like these, I think its very much worth remembering that the people who set the stage for the destruction of our modern system were as lost as we are now and trying to do the best they could in troubled times. They weren't the fanatics or the hopeless dreamers, they fought them instead. It's also a timely warning against excess and the dangers of ideology. It also makes me wonder, have we learned our lessons and will we repeat our mistakes by turning our back on neoliberalism and going to the other extreme? If not, what ideology will we create to take the place of neoliberalism and to break us all again?
As you know, I have a passing interest in economics, and sometimes I like reading up on certain pages on Wikipedia just to broaden my knowledge. I came across the article for shock therapy, which was so bad and so biased that I realised that even I could do something about it. So I decided that I should most definitely try.
This is the old version before I started, and this is the current one. Any comments are very welcome!
I must say, something that surprised me, is how doing this article has changed my view of economics and certain parts of world history. Growing up in this time, I had viewed that the biggest danger the world faced was from the idea of , and was proved right when the Credit Crunch hit. Among the unholy axis of evil formed by proponents of neoliberalism, shock therapy is pretty high up there in evil ideas that should never have been tried and that the world would be better off without.
The best thing about doing this is that it's given me lots of historical context. Nothing I've seen has changed my view that neoliberalism and shock therapy are evil ideas in modern day contexts. In fact, looking back has just strengthened that view. What has changed, though, is that I'm aware that the world was completely different some twenty to thirty years ago. Back then, governments weren't like ours were now, generally responsible about borrowing or about unnecessarily interfering in the economy in really stupid ways. Where now it's blindingly obvious that liberalising your economy doesn't work when you lack certain basic things (like law and order, land registries) but people remained blind until the Credit Crunch finally forced them to open their eyes, the same situation prevailed then with regards to getting into debt and printing money to get out. Just as people used some esoteric part of neoclassical economics to prove that Regulation Is Evil in modern times, people used esoteric Keynesian ideas to prove that Printing Lots of Money Doesn't Cause Hyperinflation, so it was ok to get into debt and print lots of money to get out. Just like shock therapy became to be considered the be all and end all of economic reform, gradualism (it's direct opposite) occupied that same spot some thirty years ago, so that no one was allowed to tackle any problem head on because it might do more harm then good. Ironically, the ideas that would have saved us from ourselves today were the ideas that were destroying us decades in the past, and the ideas that saved us in the past destroyed us now.
Having gotten all that historical context, I'm no longer quite so angry at what happened. Yes, it's clear that a lot of people jumped on the neoliberalism bandwagon without understanding it at all (I shudder every time I read the assumptions they used), just because it "proved" that the world they wanted to live in was The One True Way. By the end, the neoliberalism bandwagon was being pulled over the the writhing corpses of decent objections by a bunch of wailing fanatics with no sense of perspective or moderation. But before that, it was being pulled by a load of people trying to do the best they could in a situation where everyone was telling them that they couldn't make a better world, that it had always been as it was and always would be. This is something I want to remember.
In times like these, I think its very much worth remembering that the people who set the stage for the destruction of our modern system were as lost as we are now and trying to do the best they could in troubled times. They weren't the fanatics or the hopeless dreamers, they fought them instead. It's also a timely warning against excess and the dangers of ideology. It also makes me wonder, have we learned our lessons and will we repeat our mistakes by turning our back on neoliberalism and going to the other extreme? If not, what ideology will we create to take the place of neoliberalism and to break us all again?