01hr:19m “the individual might not be able to change the system, but they can change themselves. If we are not offered proper education, we must begin our own”

Despite lumping Milton Friedman into an demonization of “neoclassical economics”, the documentary could have done well by checking out milton’s book and/or series “Free To Choose” here’s a link to the 10 part series.

The Library of Economics and Liberty states the following three assumptions about Neoclassical theory:

1. People have rational preferences among outcomes. 2. Individuals maximize utility and firms maximize profits. 3. People act independently on the basis of full and relevant information.
   http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NeoclassicalEconomics.html

I would say based on these three positions as well as having seen Milton’s program, there is a merit to the theory. Just as the film out lines in the above quote by endorsing the same principle of self determinations as defined by neoclassical theory. The issue lies with the execution of those ideas.

According to the assumptions outlined above, an economy can self regulate without gross government intervention; the government in this case being an amalgam of wealthy firms controlling legislation to benefit themselves- a plutocracy.

As an example, the film discusses the installation of Pinochet, again sighting Friedman’s “neoclassical” economic theories as being at fault. Pinochet’s government was a US backed dictatorship - a dictatorship is not the same as a free market economy. The film rightly identifies that United States interventionism through the perpetuation of the military industrial complex fuels a “plutocracy”, but conflates free market economics with flawed governmental policy.

As noted on Democracy Now’s piece on the “40 Years after Chile’s 9/11”

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/40_years_after_chiles_9_11

Economic growth could be attributed to the marginalization of US economic intervention when the Chicago Boys garnered sufficient political prominence with the Chilean government.

1hr:22m:23s
They advocate a consumption tax just as Friedman did. https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/friedman-consumption-tax-best-but-unlikely.

I would argue that in a plutocracy there is no truly free market, but an embodiment of the unfeeling landlord as outlined in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments:

“The proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest …”

The difference being that it consumption or the hegemonic control is not imaginary. In a world of finite resources those who control most of those finite resources are not “obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/audio/2011/oct/06/big-ideas-podcast-adam-smith-audio

At any rate this is a solid documentary both for its central thesis - every bit as relevant 4 years later for its forward - looking perspective as it is for its inclusion of prominent thinkers who articulate the severe potential of an unchecked, asymptotic- hyper-regulated western economy. Check it out.