zonder,
Re: pinochet was better for chile than allende
Actually, Pinochet improved with age, just like any fine wine. While his reign of terror was a disaster for Chile in the period from 1973-1981, he mended his ways after that time.
His "Boys from Chicago", acolytes of Milton Friedman, had completely destroyed the Chilean economy by 1981. At that point, Pinochet reversed course and started instituting the sort of progressive reforms in the economy that Allende had been assassinated for. The real economic success of the Pinochet period was dated from the 1980's, when he adapted a progressive populist approach that resembles the politics of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez or Brazil's Lulu, and ironically, Salvadore Allende.
The "free market" experiment that was the creation of a lunatic fringe of ivory tower ideologues in Chicago, Illinois, engaged in an unsophisticated and sycophantic mis-application of the "Austrian School" wasn't able to completely destroy the Chilean economy before the mysticism was rejected. Unfortunately, the lessons to be learned from the collapse of the Chilean economy during the 1970's were lost on later mystics like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who sacked their own country's public infrastructure for the sake of privateers during the 1980's. Destroying wonderful institutions like the railroad system in England and the savings & loan industry in the U.S. for the sake of bribes paid to them by unscrupulous pirates. |
