Wow!
A
piece on Democracy Now took me someplace this morning that I had no intention
of going – but I must.
Amy
Goodman was interviewing two influential people in the student uprisings in
Chile - a movement that doesn’t get any press in the United States and without her report
I would not have moved to the next level of my research.
The
Chilean educational system is run on an ALEC model – privatized. Chile is/was run totally and completely for decades on an ALEC
free market privatization model – fascism – and authoritarianism. More on that later.
But
the snips that I am about to introduce is way too familiar in today’s USA
and because of it – very scary.
The snips below are everyday life for Chileans. This is not some hypothetical crap being spewed by ALEC legislators - it is the example of destruction of a country caused by free market thinking.
We have to use the experience and knowledge gained from the Chilean free market experiment to stop the free market experiment from advancing in the US.
A
few snips from the short Democracy Now interview (my emphasis):
And all of this is obviously
because something is not working with this extremely privatized educational
system.
NOAM TITELMAN: … very special educational system, which was imposed during the 1980s
during the Pinochet
dictatorship, which has one basic principle, and it’s that the market always works. And we
found out that, obviously, it’s not that way always. And what we’ve seen is that,
for example, while our public education is dying, we have only 36 percent of students going to public
schools. Here in the States, it’s almost 90 percent. It’s really a
very special example of how privatized can a state become. And all of this
started accumulating a lot of problems, a lot of inequalities.
CAMILA VALLEJO: [translated] And
that these circumstances would end in the privatization
of basic rights and of basic goods, and that families would have to become
indebted to procure these basic things, and that’s what led, really, in Chile to these
massive protests.
And
another person from the US was there during the student protest and made these comments in an entry online (my emphasis).
Chile is a heaven for
multinationals seeking to invest in a country where the government doesn’t
intervene in their affairs. It doesn’t matter whether they are from mining,
forestry, fishery, agriculture or any other industry; multinationals manage the
entire Chilean economy to their desire. And because the government has zero
involvement, this has major consequences in the country’s social welfare. Chileans live at the mercy of the free
market! Thus health care, housing or education have little to no support from
the state.
The
ALEC model
I soon realized I was witnessing a
major social and political upheaval against the current economic system in
Chile. … : it was time to end an educational system
based on profits. This demand was leading them to question the entire economic
model — one based on the neoliberal philosophy of free market approach to
everything
Chile is the only country in
the entire world that has left education up to the market. The current
educational system is Pinochet’s legacy. He
imposed a system in which schools and universities are driven profits; he ended
of the involvement of the state on the education system. Each municipality
is charged with running its schools now. This
system created educational apartheid among Chileans.
Any change in the Chilean
constitution means a change in how the
free market controls the lives of millions of Chileans who have no say about
anything. It means rethinking how the state should be involved in
protecting basic human needs.
Educational apartheid
36% of Chiliean students going to public schools
Privatization of basic rights
“families would have to become indebted to procure these
basic things,”
Well …
That made me want to find out more!
A little about Pinochet/Fascism/Free-Market
Chile
He, and "the Chicago Boys" -- a
group of free- market economists -- thought what had restricted Chile's growth
was government intervention in the economy -- which reduced competition,
artificially increased wages, and led to inflation.
Sound
familiar?
Chile used the free-market model espoused by the American Legislative Exchange
Council and it has been disastrous on their citizenry (kinda, the rich came out okay)!
The results?
In other words, after nearly 15 years of free
market capitalism, real wages had still not exceeded their 1970 levels.
Thus the wealth created by the relatively
high economic growth Chile experienced in the mid to late 1980s did not
"trickle down" to the working class (as claimed would happen by
"free market" capitalist dogma) but instead accumulated in the hands
of the rich.
Per capita health care spending was more than
halved from 1973 to 1985, setting off explosive growth in poverty-related
diseases such as typhoid, diabetes and viral hepatitis.
The experiment with free market capitalism
also had serious impacts for Chile's environment. The capital city of Santiago
became one of "the most polluted cities in the world" due the free
reign of market forces. [Nathanial Nash, cited by Noam Chomsky, Year 501, p.
190] With no environmental regulation there is general environmental ruin and
water supplies have severe pollution problems.
So, for all but the tiny elite at the top,
the Pinochet regime of "economic liberty" was a nightmare. Economic
"liberty" only seemed to benefit one group in society, an obvious
"miracle." For the vast majority, the "miracle" of economic
"liberty" resulted, as it usually does, in increased poverty,
pollution, crime and social alienation. The irony is that many right-wing
"libertarians" point to it as a model of the benefits of the free
market.
FreeMarkets
Fascism
The
Chilean model of overall free-market economy is CHILLING!
The
Chilean model of overall free-market economy PROVES what we are sensing – that it
is rigged for the 1% and screws the 99%.
We
must look more closely at the free market history of Chile – cause based on what I’ve read so far – it does
not work and it has been proven it does not work – and we have to make sure
that it is not implemented in the USA.
… left to themselves, people will inevitably
tend to pursue their interests through collective action - in trade unions,
tenants' associations, community organisations and local government. Only the
pretty ruthless exercise of central power can defeat these tendencies: hence
the common association between individualism and authoritarianism, well
exemplified in the fact that the countries held up as models by the
free-marketers are, without exception, authoritarian regimes." ["The
Continuing Relevance of Socialism", in Thatcherism, edited Robert Skidelsky, p. 146]
Chile
is revolting - actively, not literally!
They are setting the example for the US.
The Chilean activists are showing us what our future could be if we do not take action.
We must take notice.
We
have to stop the USA free-market slide into hell, before it gets any stronger.
The main way to do that is to GET RID OF ALEC!
We MUST
Make sure
That ALL ALEC members
ARE NOT
Elected or re-elected
At the state and federal level.
No comments:
Post a Comment