The Shock Doctrine

In his book, Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs argues that the national government expands its power to deal with a crisis, and never shrinks back to its pre-crisis size once the crisis is solved. Every crisis leaves the national government bigger and more powerful than before.

The Shock Doctrine argues exactly the opposite thesis. Author Naomi Klein aims to demonstrate that capitalists use "disaster capitalism" to rapidly re-engineer societies reeling from shock, in a kind of capitalist blitzkrieg. If this were true, we should all be anarcho-capitalists by now. Goodness knows, there have been enough shocks.

Check out her video. Warning: it's disturbingly well-made.