Chicago Boys openly deemed authoritarian coercion necessary for austerity

Evidence

Pinochet’s dictatorship killed, tortured, and detained over forty thousand people. When asked about these events in 2015, Chilean economist Rolf Lüders, a Chicago Boy and Pinochet’s finance minister, reasoned that the regime’s political coercion was necessary to carry out their austerity plan: “And if you ask me if you justify the human rights violations? No, I find them awful. But it seems to me that it would not have been possible to make the change that was made in Chile without an authoritarian regime.” — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 357

Categorization

• XREF: Links to standard accounts of neoliberalism’s ‘shock doctrine’; the economist’s candor here is a direct, falsifiable piece of evidence for that thesis. — connects to: Chilean Chicago Boys saw authoritarianism as safeguarding market freedom from politics. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 327; Chicago neoliberalism recoded freedom so no economic transaction could count as coercive — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 777

Broader Connections

• Chilean Chicago Boys saw authoritarianism as safeguarding market freedom from politics. #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 327
• Chicago neoliberalism recoded freedom so no economic transaction could count as coercive #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 777