Quote from: lemonginger on July 28, 2011, 05:28:39 AM

you're comparing Chile under Allende to North Korea? hyperbole much? A democratically elected government to a megalomaniacal dictator?

Christ compare Allende - a democratically elected leader to Pinochet's reign of terror, torture, disappearances, and imprisonment of dissenters. Seriously, you do know that Chile is like something out of a capitalist horror show right? Military takes over greatly helped by the CIA, installs dictator, who rules by terror/murder and installs US technocrats and economists as consultants....

Hyperbole goes both ways I guess if you think the Pinochet era was A REIGN OF TERROR!!1. Sure, he rounded up and killed, tortured and imprisoned his enemies but that's no different than what happens now in the world. Do you consider the United States a reign of terror because the administration likes to kill a lot of muslims and torture them in Guantanamo?

Quote from: lemonginger on July 28, 2011, 05:28:39 AM

You do realize that the "pure" phase of reforms (arguably the most Austrian phase) was by and large a failure, not only because the only way it could be sustained was through massive authoritarian structures of terror but because there was little GDP growth (late 70s and early 80s) and a full scale collapse that pushed 50% of the population back under the poverty line in like 83 or 84.

Anyway, end thread derail, if someone wants to debate Chile let's do it elsewhere.

You should research more thoroughly to avoid looking like an idiot. Late 70's GDP growth was pretty high (10% on '77 and over 7% until the crash, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_chile) and '82 was a region wide crash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_debt_crisis) which struck Chile pretty hard because some idiots decided it was a good idea to peg the peso to the dollar, which appreciated real interest rates on loans to over 40% yearly (http://ideas.repec.org/p/chb/bcchwp/57.html page 18 of .pdf) while there was a huge amount of foreign capital flowing in. I don't need to tell you how anti Austrian is the pegging of currencies.