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Shock Therapy

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Shocks To The World The world is always changing in ways that both harm and hurt society. This has happened for generations and will continue to happen forever. In recent history a new change has occurred through Milton Friedman’s discovery and a passion for total free market capitalism. This extreme theory of economics is not widely accepted by the world though, so Friedman and his followers called, The Chicago boys, had to discover a way to implement this theory. They developed a strategy called Shock Therapy. This term in a medical sense is to cause “healing” damage to the brain, but in an economic sense it is used to shock the public and then implement your radical ideas upon them without their consent. This has happened and across the globe …show more content…

It is widely believed that the United States of America had a huge influence over instigating the coup (Friedman 1). Salvador Allende, the then president of Chile, mysteriously committed suicide as troops surrounded him in his home. President Allende was a very socialist leader which scared the more right-winged individuals in power at Washington D.C. This lead to many believing the United States of America was involved in staging the coup (1). After the shock of the coup, General Augusto Pinochet took control of the country. This allowed Friedman and his Chicago boys to take advantage of the shock and implement their radical economic principles into society. These ideas of privatization, and free markets greatly devastated Chile’s economy and only made the rich more rich. People you objected to these principles were disappeared and either killed or hidden from the public (Schemo 1). This destroyed Chilean ways of life and greatly changed their society. Even today many of Chile’s citizens still see and feel signs of what happened with Shock therapy economics

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