It’s shocking to me as a Scandinavian to read how many of these new democracies wanted to become social democracies (modeled on Scandinavian countries) and how they were deliberately sabotaged by this economic mindset backed by the US and the IMF. And often pushed into brutal regimes or never ending payments on debt accrued by their former dictatorships.
We don’t know where the road not taken would’ve led us, but these countries should’ve had the chance, and international support, to shape their own future.
These men ran all over the freaking planet to talk people out of creating just societies, and when that didn’t work, force them, and when than didn’t work, oust them.
And when I say “these men”, I mean a literal group of named men.
Economics is practically a religious movement, where their core belief system is based on economic models that they think up and discuss with each other at conferences. But the way they model is so extremely simplistic, and they infuse their models with mythology, with ideas of an intrinsic drive towards what is Good and Right. People. This is a religion. This isn’t anything that should steer politics.
This is not people we should take seriously.
Unfortunately, they have already created a web which is so tightly integrated into our societies now. I am unsure how to remove it.
If you ever think that one person can’t really make a difference, then think of Milton Friedman. He managed to wreak havoc on democracy on a global scale.
Another thing that is important about this bit, is that this Shock Doctrine involved DOING IT ALL AT ONCE. So if/when we see it play out in our countries it might be extremely sudden and everything at the same time. The basic idea was to daze the population. https://social.vivaldi.net/@Patricia/112656795524375437
It has bothered me that it seems like voting often ends up choosing between two “different” shades of off-white. In so many instances these governments are practically indistinguishable in actual delivered politics. But it makes sense now. They’re both into the same economic theory. “Politics” becomes just different shades of off-white paint on the same chair.
This was maybe 2001/2002, they were teaching us Waterfall as the epitome of system development. I think the Agile Manifesto had been published, but I hadn’t heard about it and wouldn’t for a few years still. https://agilemanifesto.org/
This is interesting (I’m still linking to tech, I guess I can’t turn it off), because it reminds me of one my of top 10 favorite lectures at university.
A guy came in (from industry, no recollection of name or affiliation) and talked about a project that had utterly failed. The system was some sort of public sector case management system. They had spent 10 years building it. They had (I assume) built it to spec. This was early 2000s so this was “normal” then. And when it was “finished” they had rolled it out to the users.
And they hated it. Refused to use it. And kept on using some previous system with homemade addon processes.
It was a complete shock. Absolute bewilderment.
The fascinating bit was that they ended up sending the devs out to all of the user offices to sit with the users and make what they needed and it was an unmitigated success.
Remember this was pre agile movement.
I asked him if they would’ve been allowed to do this before the previous disaster and he was convinced that it would’ve been impossible.