Assignment
Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine reveals how those who support free market economies use shock, or moments of urban disaster, to capitalize off the disaster and expand private economic interests. These disasters open new markets/investment opportunities, and those who capitalize off of these opportunities have unlimited funds to support their endeavors (such as using public taxpayer funds for private, free market expansion). This process isn't a question of a vast conspiracy. In most cases destructive events--or shocks--aren't being planned so they can be exploited (although it's been well documented how the War in Iraq was planned to create "shock and awe," and new capitalized markets were subsequently opened). There are in fact economic organizations who have plans private investment plans in place that can be easily utilized when a crisis just happens--such as replacing public school funding with school voucher systems (charters), privatization of what used to be public housing for low income urbanites, etc.
Here is a video of Klein discussing this phenomenon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG9CM_J00bw
There are a lot of videos of Klein on YouTube if you're interested in watching more.
"The vast infrastructure of the disaster industry, built up with taxpayers' money, is all privately controlled."
This is one of the isolated quotations from Naomi Klein's article "Disaster Capitalism" published in a 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine. Klein's purpose in this article is to demonstrate how city re-building after catastrophic events or "shocks"--such as natural disaster, war, or even urban decay--has become a major industry. The private sector, she has learned, takes advantage of the public funds channeled into restoring urban areas, gaining massive contracts and making huge profits off the loss and destruction. At the same time, these private companies work in concert with governments (local, state, even federal) to rebuild communities in a way that discourages those from low income and often multiracial backgrounds to remain.
Consider this section of the text:
"...disasters have become the preferred moments for advancing a vision of a ruthlessly divided world, one in which the very idea of a public sphere has no place at all. Call it disaster capitalism. Every time a new crisis hits--even when the crisis itself is the direct by-product of free-market ideology--the fear and disorientation that follow are harnessed for radical social and economic re-engineering. Each new shock is midwife to a new course of economic shock therapy. The end result is the same kind of unapologetic partition between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned..."
1. In your discussion post this week, begin by telling us what you think the title of Klein's article means and the main argument she's trying to relay in this article.
2. Then, provide a detailed example from the text of how disaster capitalism has worked to create divided or even homogenous cities. Focus on 1-2 cities and give specific examples of how this happened. You can use a quote from the text to support your point.
3. Thinking about tax money might not seem related to a class on urban theory. But as you know, your professor always believes in following the economic indicators to best understand how cities are really shaped and who they support. What is Klein's critique about the division between who obtains taxpayer money to rebuild urban communities and the lack of opportunity citizens (i.e. taxpayers) have to shape how their cities are rebuilt? Remember, taxpayers are typically middle to lower income--those with the most money have tons of lawyers to help them avoid paying their share of taxes based on income (this is the main reason people have asked to see Trump's tax records)!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/aw2rzuad7er5kip/Klein-Naomi-Disaster-Capitalism-Harpers-magazine.pdf?dl=0