The Rubble of Milton Friedman

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

The economic policies of Milton Friedman, imposed on Chile via the brutal military junta led by Pinochet, helped undermine the seismic integrity of the newest buildings in Chile, many of which were reduced to rubble in Saturday's 8.8 earthquake. Andrew Leonard at Salon.com nails it.

4 Comments:

At 4:12 PM, Anonymous said...: Have a look at this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/mar/03/chile-earthquake

it may change your mind...
At 5:06 PM, chuck goolsbee said...: It seems a stretch to blame *anyone* for damage sustained in a magnitude 8.8 quake. A structure may survive one quake unscathed and collapse in another. So much depends on the physics involved. How any given structure reacts will have far more to do with the nature of the quake,the physics of the ground and structure itself, and the quality of the materials used, than anything to do with what some politician or economist thought about building codes.

As the other linked article states, the codes used throughout the Pinochet era were instituted in Allende's time. Does it then make sense to blame it all on the Left? Of course not.

Blame will not help rebuild Chile. Nor will it help prevent the next quake or any damage resulting from it.
At 8:18 PM, Chileno said...: The building that collapsed in Concepcion was brand spanking new. Also, the privatized freeways are the ones that collapsed.

But you're right. Who really knows. Maybe it wasn't due to a relaxation of building codes, or substandard construction practices. Or corrupt contractors, etc.

You're kinda missing the point though: the Salon post I linked to was largely a rebuttal to a shameless WSJ editorial that claimed Milton Friedman's:

spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile in the early morning hours of Saturday. Thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse.

Exploiting the earthquake to advance the free market mythology. Far worse than assigning "blame", the WSJ is delusionally celebratory while over a 1,000 Chileans are still lying under rubble.

So, the WSJ started it. All Salon is doing is taking a second look and saying that it's just as possible that free market ideology made the country less safe.

What you call "blame", I call accountability. Now's of course the time for action, not review, but when the dust settles, individual and systemic mistakes need to be accounted for and corrected. Call me crazy..
At 3:58 PM, Prof. Juvenal said...: Tristes acontecimentos.