Which will end up having shorter reign: soviet style communism or Friedman's free market extremism?

[yurbud]

Poll question: Which will end up having shorter reign: soviet style communism or Friedman's free market extremism?

I'm reading THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, and the ''free market'' scam of forced debt, privatization, deregulation, and the elimination of government services looks scarcely less destructive than what Bush is doing with bombs and bullets in Iraq.

I'm no fan of communism. I think the Keynesian balance between business and government is good enough though Euro social democracy would be even better.

What the corporate elite have done to the rest of the world the last couple of decades and has finally tried to turn on the US in full force after 9/11 has more in common with Mao's Great Leap Forward or Pol Pot chasing everybody out of the cities into the fields in Vietnam than it does with any rebalancing of the business/government relationship in the West.

So how long will this last compared to the Soviet model's 70-ish years?

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/17/the_shock_doctrine_naomi_klein_on">THE SHOCK DOCTRINE

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2007/08/must-read-economic-democracy-crushed-by.html">FREE MARKETS BY FORCE

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376|A good brief summary of neoliberalism>

http://www.johnperkins.org/Preface.htm|How ''economic hit men'' set it up and enforce it>

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-oil-war-resources.html|How Bush is plundering Iraq's OIL>

http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html|Klein on the plunder of Iraq>

[Angela Shelley]

1. I´m reading the book too, slowly but surely,

not too much at a time, it´s bad for the stomach.

[yurbud]

4. the three that really haunt me are Poland, Russia, and South Africa

Because each had that moment of hope and triumph of democracy and that victory was snatched away from them by these free market extremists.

In the case of Russia, they not only crushed the hopes of those people, they destabilized and antagonized a nuclear power, keeping the possibility of a nuclear holocaust alive.

All so a very, very few could profit.

They deserve their own circle of hell, wiping the asses of other moral filth.

[Wednesdays]

2. Well, the Soviet Union lasted 74 years...

So, figure from there.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

3. We'll consume ourselves up much faster under laissez fare capitalism. nt

[yurbud]

7. how can we consume when all the wealth is horded at the top?

[WHAT]

5. "a simple twist of fate"...

can lay all and sundry to waste...

it's not information, but conclusions...

a common sense conclusion, something less contrived than "branding"...and if propaganda/advertising can be construed as "advertising" in the sense of a "public service announcement" we are already in the end zone...in the sense of having a service economy...who is servicing whom...or vice versa.

guess...facts will over-take promotion (there is only so much a twisted intestine can accomplish...)
guess...the world will be gobsmacked by expediency...and the 398 billionaires in the US aren't worth the effort is easy.
guess...any profound change in agriculture, transportation, health, (anything) which is bound to happen will upset the applecart I look for it.

there are no safe ports in the storm I'm betting on agility contrived will fall flat on its' face

[yurbud]

6. ag--seed patenting, transport--blocking oil alternatives to gouge us more, health--high premiums for

insurance that can capriciously decide not to pay...

They are creating the crisis themselves.

[mdmc]

8. x