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Overview

Have you ever thought of why the media focuses so much on natural disasters, conflicts, and economic crises?

Disasters sell newspapers because people want to know what’s going on and they’re interested in the details of the crisis. However, there are other reasons why disasters sell papers. For example, wealthy individuals can use crises to their advantage by creating new laws that benefit them or taking over failing companies during a crisis and turning around those companies for huge profits.

In this article, you’ll learn how economic interventions and electroshock therapy have something in common. You’ll also discover that free-market economics turned Chile into one of the most unequal countries in the world. Furthermore, you will see how the Iraqi government was essentially robbed of 95% of its revenues.

Big Idea #1: In their interrogations, the CIA used psychological shock treatments designed to “recreate” the individual.

Throughout history, scientists have tried to figure out how to treat psychological disorders. By the mid-twentieth century, most of them focused on fixing the damage done by those disorders. However, Dr. Ewen Cameron took a different approach: recreating people with psychological problems through shock therapy. With CIA funding for his work, he experimented extensively with electro shock treatment and induced seizures in patients.

One doctor noticed that his patients would first act like children, then completely lose the ability to function.

Cameron believed that he could help the patients by making them forget their past and create new identities. Cameron tried to do this, but it didn’t work because he couldn’t recreate their old personalities. So instead of changing his approach, he decided to make the treatments worse. He used methods similar to torture: months-long sensory deprivation and isolation, intentional confusion, electric shocks and mega-doses of psychedelic drugs.

Meanwhile, the CIA realized that Cameron’s extreme shock therapy could also be used for other purposes. For example, it could be used to pacify people and make them more trusting of authority figures. It was very effective at confusing people in such a way that they were unable to understand what had happened or why. The CIA later made use of this technique when interrogating prisoners by using isolation and time distortion on them so they would be less resistant to questioning.

In the 1950s, Dr. Ewen Cameron isolated his patients from their sense of sight and sound by putting them in a sensory deprivation tank. He would then bombard them with loud music and flashing lights to further disorient them, which made it easier for him to push his own ideas into their minds.

The CIA had developed a document called the Kubark Manual to help interrogators. It was later used as a guideline for torture techniques, which were eventually deemed illegal and outlawed by presidential order.

Big Idea #2: Free-market economists developed “economic shock therapy” to force through painful economic reforms in times of crisis.

The idea of creating a new order out of the ruins of an old one is not novel. What’s new, however, is the idea that we can intentionally destroy economies to completely restructure them.

Some economists were inspired by shock therapy and used it to enact painful reforms.

The Chicago Boys believed that the government which governs best, governs least. This philosophy can easily be applied to markets.

The Chicago Boys believed that the free market could help create a democracy, and they were also interested in achieving peace. They wanted to have an economy that was as close to being completely free of government intervention as possible.