About halfway through The Shock Doctrine

[cpxbrex]

I started reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein a couple of days ago and it's gonna be rough going. Not because I disagree with her, and I think I do disagree with her about some things which I'll talk about after I'm through with the whole book, but because she really goes after Milton Friedman

Comments

[autopope]

Then, a few years ago, I read a paper he wrote about the ideal system of law enforcement.

I think you're confusing the father (Milton Friedman) with the son (David Friedman).

Milton Friedman is a famous dead Nobel-prize-winning economist and heavyweight in the Chicago school.

David Friedman is still alive, and a crankish libertarian. Also an economist, but not a Nobel-prize-winning one, nor likely to be. (Writes fantasy novels for Baen as a hobby, natch.) And he's definitely written about decentralized/libertarian law enforcement (including a book titled, IIRC, "The Machinery of Freedom").

NB: this doesn't make Milton Friedman's economic doctrines any more palatable -- just that they're somewhat less extreme than the lunatical dystopia his son built on top of them.

[cpxbrex]

Could be. Like I said, the site where I read the article no longer exists. I believe it was Milton and not David - and I'm aware of David Friedman, too, and even appreciate the work he's done helping to get 14th century Andalusian cookbooks from Arabic to English and the general anarcho-capitalist insanity that he pushes - but I'm relying on memory, here, like I said.

But part of the reason I mentioned the article about how cops should be wholly independent is because Friedman was definitely for a totally independent central bank, something that Klein goes on about at some length, which seems of a piece with the idea that law enforcement should be equally freed from government control. I mean, if you're willing to push for a central bank that's free of all government control, why not cops?

But, like I said, could be. It's certainly easy enough to find David Friedman's nut job fuckery about anarcho-capitalism.

[cpxbrex]

Phew. By which I mean that I appreciate his 14th century Andalusian cookbook and am aware, and deeply disapprove, of his nutjob anarcho-capitalism. Sloppy writing there. ;)

[athelind]

I really shouldn't link this story right before bedtime.

[cpxbrex]

*snickers* You know how to hurt a guy!

But while I wasn't aware of this specific story, one of the main motivations of my sci-fi writing has been a general awareness of the extent to which law enforcement is becoming privatized and what that means when, y'know, instead of citizens we are law enforcement consumers.

Still . . . these people are SY-KO.