It's my attempt at a German joke, right ? Not one about The War that shall not be mentioned. I mean "Klein is Gross", or, "Little is Big".
For a laugh, and to help me move on from a disappointing relationship with a BBC journalist, I actually spent some money (gasp !) on a book (phew !).
I was blown away by Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine about 4 seconds after starting to read Page 2.
From a Climate Change point of view, she is hinting (bigly) that Climate Change-aggravated disasters will be used by the State-Corporation dyads to completely privatise the functions of State. "Disaster Capitalism" she calls it.
The only things she doesn't tackle are these :-
(a) Doesn't she think that Climate Change-related disasters will remain UNATTRIBUTED for a while yet ? People already strongly deny that Katrina was aided and abetted by Global Warming. People are already denying that Nargis in Burma was in any way related to Global Warming. And nobody dares mention Global Warming in relation to the recent twister strikes in the USA.
(b) Free-market corporatists/capitalists are fond of privatising the functions of State, but she doesn't provide a rationale, a motivation, a meaning behind their beliefs. Why is it that Milton Friedman wanted to turn New Orleans schools over to a fee-paying system ? Did he truly believe they would work better ? Was he just convinced of the need to have private support for public enterprise ?
Is there anything evil in the motivations of people who practice libertarian neo-liberal/neo-conservative, whatever they are policies ? A lot of lefties and hard lefties accuse righties of being evil, of wanting to destroy social benefits. But even right-wing people love their grannies and want them to be looked after well.
What drives George Bush and his millionaire officers of State to undermine national health services (a la Michael Moore's Sicko) ? It's not only about obscene profit-making. I mean, every corporation wants to make a profit so as to benefit their investors who are often representing savings of those who are planning for retirement (= pensions).
Do people in the British Labour Government truly believe that the PFI method of funding new hospitals is efficient ? Probably.
What can be fairly said is that the Environmental Ministers, and those who pronounce on Climate Change in the ruling Labour Party believe that corporate activities hold the major keys for Carbon Cuts.
But look : Shell drops its 33% stake in the London Array Wind Farm. And the electricity generators that have to stay within the national allocation for Carbon Permits or buy in Carbon : they just pass the costs on to their consumers, and don't make any changes in their emissions.
It's time Labour understood : CORPORATIONS ARE INEFFICIENT AT CARBON CONTROL unless they are lead strongly from the top, and by regulation. When a company can ship foodstuffs to another country for re-packaging and then flying them back in for sale, you can see that Energy is too cheap, and that Carbon Emissions are too cheap...
