Shock Doctrine: The Process Of Disaster Capitalism

One of the major social problems that are currently present but that reflect the great situations witnessed throughout history for hundreds of years is the struggle for power and the most direct means to access that power is politics which allows to maintain the full exercise of power for as long as desired. It is precisely one of the strong criticisms made by the writer Georges Orwell in his book Animal Farm. He shows as the desire or ambition to seize certain territories makes people go into politics and pass over all common interests to achieve their own.

“That citizen sinks further into apathy, anonymity, and depersonalization. The result is that he comes to depend on public authority and a state of civic-sclerosis sets in” (Alinsky, 1971). This statement perfectly describes what is happening to the people today. People are no longer concerned with what is happening around them. The world today is living in an individualization phase where there are more people who know more stuff about the celebrities, latest fashion and gadgets, rich lifestyle, etc. rather than the continuous welfare problems. Because the world has reached the technology era, people are blind and deaf to the oppression that is happening. In this world full of complex networks of problems, where should the people start?

Perhaps the most important priority in fixing the corruption and chaos from unregulated capitalism is giving the people their power back. This can be done through improving democracy and giving people a more direct control over what

Political structures are defined as the formal or informal political procedures through which decisions are made regarding the usage, production and distribution of resources in any given community. Formal political structures through its organizations can control processes such as election of leaders; parts and tasks of the executive and administration; organization of political representation (through political parties); and the obligation and oversight of the state. Informal and communal political structures, customs and rules can work within or together with the formal political organizations. In development, democratic political structures are seen to deliver prospects for all without discrimination (Scott & Mcloughlin, 2014).

The political structures that govern our society are not always easy to identify. The complex nature of legislature processes creates environments that are conducive to specialized and targeted means of acquiring power. There are many reasons why secret cabals of power have seemingly taken the effectiveness out of our democratic processes. Most of these reasons can be indentified through the phenomenon of special interest groups and the impact on law, society and economy that these forces exert.

In How Markets Fail: the Logic of Economic Calamities, the author, John Cassidy, details the growth of the free market ideology. This ideology, he argues, has become an over idealized utopian notion of a self-regulating market has been expanded upon over decades to become common rhetoric that influenced policy. This driving theory became accepted into global, but specifically the American context, and led to the financial collapse of 2008 due to lax policies which encouraged risky behaviour in the belief the market would simply sort itself out, which in the end it did not. Cassidy argues that the self-regulating market in essence is a fallacy and the solution to prevent further market failures can only be obtained through a hybrid of free-market and government supervision. Cassidy effectively argues his point by detailing the historical development of the self market theory which provides a framework to later explain the market failure of 2008. Convincingly, he argues that there should be a focus on rational economics which have existed for decades but have been pushed aside in favour of the utopian self regulating market.

What happens when the government that promised to protect you oppresses you instead? The king who forces death onto his own people. The officials that represent the people use them as tools instead. I’m here to tell you that there is no other solution other than to purge that kind of government. There is no hope for reform once corruption has enveloped the core of what made the country strong.

This is becoming the case more and more recently. When it comes to this, these are the elected officials that are pushing us to totalitarianism ways. The Freeman states “Further, when you strip off a dictator like removing a scab, what’s left underneath is often a factionalized people.” After the corrupt elected officials leave power, he or she is not effected, it is us, the people that are effected.

Political change is when there is a change in leadership or a change in policy of a government due to a significant disruption such as a social movement or revolution. If the citizens of a country feel that they are being treated unjustly by their rulers, and the rulers think that their ways of governing are satisfactory then a discord is struck and conflict arises between them (Study blue). The main causes of this discord are mostly social issues such as hunger, racism, climate change etc. and/or economic issues like unemployment, poverty, inflation (Study blue). The people frustrated by these social and economic issues trigger movements and revolutions which either influence the government to change their policies or replace the government thus bringing political change. By evaluating prominent and well-known instances of political change from the past, such as the American and French revolutions and the Civil Rights Movement, it becomes clear that political change cannot occur without social and economic upheaval.

Issues of time and speed are central to Unger’s proposed re-organization of political institutions in Democracy Realized. In basic terms, Unger wants to accelerate politics so that lawmaking can keep up with the now rapid speed of economic and cultural life. For Unger, slow political time, in the form of traditional constitutional governance, is a conservative impediment to progress and a recipe for low political participation. Progressivism requires institutional innovation to become more responsive to the rapid changes in the economy that might call for legislative changes. Much like how entrepreneurial firms of the vanguard have become smaller and more flexible, political institutions should, according to Unger, become open and more innovative.

This mini-paper will discuss strategies politicians use to obtain power. The mini-paper includes a discussion of politicians’ unrealistic ideologies. The three main ideologies are conservatism, liberalism and radicalism. What they believe is the right ideology. Furthermore, Bennie Sanders ideology, Feminism focuses; this mini paper also will discuss the assumptions about human nature, and last the perspective of social work.

The term the Shock Doctrine was created by journalist Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism which refers to the idea that economic liberalists formed an entire industry take advantage of disasters such as natural disasters or military coups and privatize everything they can get their hands on. The name of this industry is the Disaster Capitalism Complex and it is comprised of the corporations and organizations that see recently shocked areas as ripe for the emplacement of economically liberal policies and institutions. The term originated from an experiment that was funded, in part, by the CIA and took place in Canada where a doctor tested many different methods of shocking people such as electrodes,

Since the initiation of the Third Wave of Democracy, several countries have attempted to form a democratic system of governs. We take note that not all have succeeded. At the dawn of this era, democracy was being applied to countries with no prior history of a governing body that was place by the people for the people hence success of such a system could not be guaranteed because of the innumerous variables that existed in each country. People being the highlighted factor of variance, it may become easier to understand how countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria, both countries prior to the Wave had no local governing machinery. Pakistan further endured a partition from India which resulted in not only an instant religious and

According to Andrew Janos, “the price of economic progress has been political turmoil”. (Janos, pg. 21) If the Modernization Theory holds that countries tend to become more democratic the more they modernize, then political turmoil is to be expected in democracies. Certainly this can occur in both parliamentary and presidential systems: as Linz argues, the presidential system concentrates too much power on the president, resulting in “winner-take-all” politics (Linz, pg. 56) and the polarization of political parties. This is evident in the United States, where the president is elected separately and Congress is divided between the opposing Democrats and Republicans. Conversely, the parliamentary system in Britain, as well as that adapted by the former British colonies of Sri Lanka and Nigeria, has had its fair share of single-party hegemony and political abuse. (Horowitz, pg. 78) Democracy is therefore not a perfect form of government when put in practice, and much of its

The 2002 United Nations Human Development Report (UNHDR) is the result of many years’ study of international human progress and development. As declared in the first page of the report, "[This report] is about how political power and institutions, formal and informal, national and international, shape human progress". This statement outlines the principal theme of power dynamics and fragmentation (politics) on varying levels, public and private, rich and poor, male and female, etc. - that runs consistently throughout the work, analyzing global trends of political participation and democracy.