WSJ claims that Milton Friedman saved hundreds of thousands of Chile earthquake victims

[brentspeak]

This is not something from the Onion. Some stooge from the WSJ op-ed staff really did pen a piece entitled http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703411304575093572032665414.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion">How Milton Friedman Saved Chile, making the bizarre claim that Milton Friedman's "free market" reforms -- as rammed through Chilean society via murder and torture by Friedman's most famous zealot, Gen Augusto Pinochet -- created the economic conditions necessary to implement and enforce Chile's building codes.

However, a professor of architecture at Universidad Catolica de Chile, Sebastian Gray, points out that most of Chile's buildings which withstood significant damage from last week's quake were http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/03/03/chicago_boys_and_the_chilean_earthquake_2">built in the 1950's and earlier. Gray, in fact, believes that the building codes actually deteriorated under Pinochet's regime.

Furthermore, Paul Krugman points out that http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/fantasies-of-the-chicago-boys">Milton Friedman actually disapproved of government mandated building codes.

[Warpy]

1. There are lots of stories there

about brand new buildings collapsing while 50 year old buildings nearby are mostly intact.

You bet your ass building standards deteriorated during and after Pinochet.

At least the editorial page of the WSJ is proving consistently wrong.

[Cleita]

2. I lived in Chile in the fifties and I remember new buildings and structures

being built then had to be built to strict specifications. Milton Friedman economics did open up receiving imports which were a problem then. The tariffs were so high that no imports were brought in, but there was little manufacturing for domestic goods done because there was no money to back enterprise. Most goods were sold by bootleggers who brought American and Asian made goods through the free ports. This was the only improvement in commerce with the Pinochet regime IMHO opinion. Everything else was downhill.

[Peace Patriot]

3. See long discussion of this in another GD forum, posted by Mika...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7832690

[zbdent]

4. Actually, I just read that there were building codes put in place

after a similar, higher Richter scale quake decades ago ...

hm ... building codes ... why do those sound like "government regulations"? Damn, I must be using my brain again ...