Naomi Klein'i kui ulmekirjanik

Naomi Klein'i on hakkama saanud järjekordse ulmakirjanduse klassikuga. Kahjuks võtab liiga palju inimesi seda lugu paralleel universumist, kus loogika on kõigest reaalsuse ebameeldiv kõrvanäht, mis ei ole kohustuslik, liiga tõsiselt.

Ma jään huviga ootama esimesi eestikeelseid arvustusi, mis peaksid ühtlasi olema päris heaks litmustestiks sellest, kui palju arvustuse kirjutaja teab majandusteadusest, majandusajaloost ja kui valmis on kriitiliselt kaasa mõtlema. Elveri postitus ei lähe kahjuks arvesse kuna on inglise keels.

Seniks seega arvustusi seitsme maa ja mere tagant.

Will Hutton, The Guardian - Her ranting obscures her reasoning:

Klein is so anxious to prove that all capitalism is bad, even, on occasion, relying on torture to get its way, that she never allows for the possibility that markets can deliver beneficial results. Or that the demand for markets comes from the bottom up, as it did in China between 1980 and 1983. Nor, in her account of the shock treatment of the former communist Eastern Europe, does she explain why some countries - the Baltic republics and the Czech Republic - have done so much better than others.

Tyler Cowen, The New York Sun - Shock Jock:

Most of the book is a button-pressing, emotionally laden, whirlwind tour of global events over the last 30 years: Katrina, the invasion of Iraq, torture in Chile, the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The book offers not so much an argument but rather a Dadaesque juxtaposition of themes and supposedly parallel developments in the global market. Above the excited recitation stands Milton Friedman as the überdemon of the march toward global tyranny and squalor.

Robert Fulford, National Post - A friend to Hezbollah, an enemy of logic:

If you can manage to read Klein, you need read no more. Learn her way of thinking and you'll not be required to think again. She delivers a packaged one-size-fits-all theory of history that shares just one attribute with Marxism: When you have absorbed Klein you will in future always know the answer before you know the question.

Joseph Stiglitz, majandusteadlane ja Nobeli preemia laureaat majandusteaduses, avaldas arvustuse Kleini raamatust New York Times'is, kuid see arvustus on hiljem saanud terava kriitika osaliseks ja andnud isegi põhjuse arvustuse arvustuse kirjutamiseks näiteks juuraprofessorile Geoffery Manne'ile:

There is not a single word of criticism in this review. Not one. At one point he does note that “she’s not an economist but a journalist,” and he similarly says that she “is not an academic and cannot be judged as one.” But one gets the powerful sense that these are actually compliments!

Eelnevalt juba mainimist leidnud Tyler Cowen'i arvustus sisaldab kriitikat Stiglitzi suunas, kuid eraldi mainib esile tõstmist Peter Boettke postitus, kus Stiglitzi poolt toetust leidnud müüdid saavad reaalsussüsti:

Stiglitz doesn't exactly endorse Klein's analysis, but he repeats without challenging her claim that Milton Friedman shares responsibility for Pinochet's crimes against humanity. Friedman (and Hayek for that matter) had no official advisory role in Chile and it is time that this false charge be dropped. Friedman's account can be found in Two Lucky People (p. 398ff). He went to Chile for 6 days for a series of talks given to representatives of the public, government officials, members of the military, students and faculty. The main topic was the problem of inflation and how to combat it, and only in talks to students and faculty did Friedman depart from the question of monetary policy to address broader themes of economic policy for a free society. He had one meeting where Pinochet was present, and it was conducted through an interpreter and lasted only 45 minutes. Friedman did not design any policies for Chile, nor was he a close advisor to the General. He spoke plain truth about monetary policy and the need to fight inflation, and he talked to students about the dangers of socialism and collectivism and the benefits of a free market economy.

Greg Mankiw leiab samuti, et Friedmani süüdistamine julmades diktaatorlike meetodite soovitamises, mida Pinochet kasutas kohalike represseerimiseks, on natuke palju ja pakub välja huvitava mõtteharjutuse:

As an update, let me be more pointed: You are a professor at Harvard Medical School and the world's expert of deadly disease X. The head of a nation experiencing an epidemic of a new disease similar to X calls you for advice. You know how to make a cheap vaccine for this new disease, and you are the only person in the world with this knowledge. Do you offer the secret recipe unconditionally? If not, what conditions have to be met? If the nation head is a tyrannical dictator, would you refuse to help, knowing that letting the epidemic run its course might cause more suffering than the dictator ever did?

Isegi Stiglitzile maailmavaateliselt märksa lähemal seisev Brad DeLong leiab, et Stiglitzi arvustus teeb pigem edasised arutelud sarnastel teemadel labasemaks:

Tyler is right: Stiglitz ought to know better, for degrading the level of the debate is in your long-run interest only if you are one of the bad guys. And we are not.

DeLong'ile ja Stiglitzi'le on maailmavaatelt üpris lähedal ka kolmas tunnustatud majandusteadlane, Dani Roderik, kes enda blogis andis nii Klein'i raamatule kui Stiglitzi arvustusele suht negatiivse hinnangu:

Bad books need to be trashed even if you are a fellow traveler, more or less. That is the main point made by Emmanuel in relation to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, which is a truly bad book. I am glad somebody else thinks so, because I was pretty disheartened by the kid gloves with which Joe Stiglitz handled the book in his own review.

Lõpetuseks väike tsitaat mõne aasta tagant Economistist:

Ms Klein's harshest critics must allow that, for an angry adolescent, she writes rather well. It takes journalistic skill of a high order to write page after page of engaging blather, so totally devoid of substance. What a pity she has turned her talents as a writer to a cause that can only harm the people she claims to care most about. But perhaps it is just a phase.

Mnjah, kahjuks pärineb see tsitaat aastast 2002.

Lihtsalt 5 huvitavat postitust siit ja sealt

1. Milton Friedman eelistas elada loodussõbralikus keskkonnas ja hindas kõrgelt loodussõbralikust enda elumaja asukohas ja arhitektuuris. Samas blogis on muide üleval ka postitus George W. Bush'i farmi loodussõbralikkusest ja arhitektist, mis võib niimõndagi inimest üllatada.

2. Kui paljud eestlased teavad, et Europarlamendis toimub hääletamine jätkuvalt mitte elektrooniliselt, milleks on kõik eeldused muide olemas, vaid käega märku andes? EU Referendum vahendab hüperbürokraatia inertsust:

Graham Booth, one of the remaining UKIP MEPs, who avers that the well documented inaccuracies of the "show of hands" voting system in the European Parliament led him to make a call, last year, for full electronic voting, since the equipment is already in situ. That request, he says, was dismissed out of hand.
. . .
During voting on a report by Mr. Kaczmarek on "EU partnership in the Horn of Africa", amendment No. 5 was declared "Rejected" by the chairman Vidal Quadras, having assessed the show of hands "for" and "against" the amendment.

An electronic check then revealed that it had actually been APPROVED by no less than 567 votes to 17 (with 18 abstentions). Quadras blamed the MEPs for "not holding their hands high enough".

See oleks naljakas, kui see poleks nii masendavalt nõme!

3. Hiljuti avaldas Jerusalem Post ülevaatliku artikli Harvardis tehtud uurimusest The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict , mille autorid väidavad, et hiljutise Liibanoni ja Iisreali vahel peetud sõja - informatsiooni sõja - võitis Hizbullah:

"An open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness," Marvin Kalb and Dr. Carol Saivetz of the Shorenstein Center of Harvard University concluded in their research paper, "The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict."

"A closed sect, Hizbullah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda," manipulating its image to the world.

Uurimus ei jäta tähelepanuta ka ajakirjanike tendentslikust ja valmisolekut lavastustes kaasa mängida selle nimel, et tulevikus oleks tagatud ligipääs infojagajate juurde. Kui teema huvitab, siis Richard North on natuke täpsemalt (nii 75 leheküljel) lahanud eelnevalt mainitud konflikti meediakajastust (PDF).

Eestlastele võiks antud teema huvi pakkuda juba ainuüksi sellepärast, et Eesti puhul on tegu avatud ühiskonnaga, kus meediat ei ole lihtne mingitest piirkondadest või sündmustest eemal hoida, samas kui Venemaal on meedia keskvalitsuse kontrolli all ja (välis)ajakirjaniku eemale jätmine Venemaal toimuvast võib tähendada olulisi piiranguid uudistele, mida ta saab kajastada ja seega tema võimele enda tööd teha.

4. Shaolini kung-fu kui zen budismi väljendus:

"If you're practicing Shaolin kung fu properly, it is a form of meditation," he said.

"It's just fast and hard meditation, instead of slow or sitting. And that's why many of those moves seem so strange -- because they're actually moves that were developed for meditation purposes as well as self-defense and not purely self-defense purposes."

Huvitav segu reportaazist, uurivast ajakirjandusest ja kultuuride segunemisest USAs.

5. Alati üllatavast Wikipediast võib leida ka vastuse - vähemalt vastuse alguse - küsimusele, kui kaua läheks ahvidel vaja aega, et hakkama saada mõne Shakespeare'i teosega:

One computer program run by Dan Oliver of Scottsdale, Arizona, according to an article in The New Yorker, came up with a result on August 4, 2004: After the group had worked for 42,162,500,000 billion billion years, one of the "monkeys" typed, “VALENTINE. Cease toIdor:eFLP0FRjWK78aXzVOwm)-‘;8.t . . ." The first 19 letters of this sequence can be found in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". Other teams have reproduced 18 characters from "Timon of Athens", 17 from "Troilus and Cressida", and 16 from "Richard II".

A website entitled The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator, launched on July 1, 2003, contained a Java applet that simulates a large population of monkeys typing randomly, with the stated intention of seeing how long it takes the virtual monkeys to produce a complete Shakespearean play from beginning to end. For example, it produced this partial line from Henry IV, Part 2, reporting that it took "2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years" to reach 24 matching characters:
RUMOUR. Open your ears; 9r"5j5&?OWTY Z0d…

Ja loomulikult on arvuti klaviatuur antud ka ahvidele, et näha, mis siis tegelikult juhtuma hakkab. Tulemused on võib-olla isegi ennustatavad:

Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, the lead male began by "bashing the hell out of" the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. The zoo's scientific officer remarked that the experiment had "little scientific value, except to show that the 'infinite monkey' theory is flawed". Phillips said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned "an awful lot" from it.

Vot!