Wednesday, June 6, 2018

The Truth About Chile's Augusto Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet
Here's world traveler Doug Casey's take:
I’ve got to say that the best thing that’s happened to any country in South America in the last 50 years was Augusto Pinochet in Chile. However he’s a good news/bad news situation. The fact that Pinochet was a military dictator. That’s bad news.

But—strange for a general—he had
good economic instincts. That’s the good news. Before him, Chile was just a poor, isolated mining province. He took Chile from a backwater with some copper mines to the most successful country in Latin America. Now, everything works there. The average Chilean is, believe it or not, wealthier than the average American. One reason for that is their national Social Security funds are individually owned accounts, invested in their stock market. Argentina needs something like Pinochet.

Everybody says, “Oh, Pinochet, he killed a couple thousand people.” Yeah, he did. And that’s too bad, even though they were mostly communists. But you’ve got to remember that the Argentine generals killed 30,000 or 40,000 people. The Brazilian generals probably killed another 20,000 or 30,000 people. Even the Uruguayan generals killed a couple thousand people. And that’s Uruguay, which used to be called the Switzerland of South America.

Pinochet was mild by South American standards. The only reason that he was pilloried, brought to trial, and hated so much, is because he put economic reforms into effect. It wasn’t because he killed a couple thousand people. It’s because he was pro-capitalist. That’s why he was persecuted.
And here is a bonus take from Casey on New Zeland:

 The average voter, anywhere in the world, has no philosophical bearing whatsoever. Look at New Zealand. By the mid-1980s, the country had become the shallow end of the gene pool. Anybody with any sense and enough money to buy a ticket to Sydney, London, or LA was getting out.

Then, Roger Douglas, a reformed socialist, started deregulating the economy, cutting taxes, and privatizing. The place boomed. It became an extremely prosperous country in the ’90s, ’00s, and early teens. Everybody started doing well. The currency got strong, it doubled against the US dollar. Real estate prices tripled and quadrupled.

But what did the stupid Kiwi voters do after 30 years of good times? They elect a 37-year-old female, who’s a hardcore communist. Now New Zealand’s going downhill rapidly.




8 comments:

  1. I wonder exactly who would be endlessly kvetching about killing communists and then getting the state out of the market?

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  2. People who value competitive, free flowing ideas out of spontaneous order - not a violet CIA coup. If you want to champion that bullshit, please don't label yourself as a proponent of freedom.

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  3. Why are commies so much better at marketing than libertarians?

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    Replies
    1. They always promise free sh*t. Libertarians don't.

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    2. Gee I don't know...the paleo-libertarian types like to promise "free" border security and militaries

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  4. America could use an Augusto Pinochet. He could also push open border libertardians out of helicopters and do us all a great favor.

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  5. Libertarians will only be effective as economic advisors to right-wing strongmen like Pinochet now that Ron Paul's memory has faded.

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