Dagget,

I understand that not everyone knows what a quintile or a fifth is so I thought 20% might be an appropriate replacement.

Here is the direct quote

" Poverty and unemployment are lowest in countries with the most economic freedom. In the freest fifth of countries, poverty according to the United Nations is 15.7 percent, and in the rest of the world it is 29.8 percent. Unemployment in the freest quintile is 5.2 percent, which is less than half of what it is in the rest of the world. In the least economically free quintile, filled with the kinds of restrictions on private property, businesses, and trade that Klein claims are ways of helping the people against the powerful,poverty is 37.4 percent and unemployment is 13 percent."

To suggest Klein demolished the arguments of Norberg is simply preposterous. Among the weakest refutations I ever read. The best she could come up with to demonstrate Friedmans "support" of Pinochet is the letter he wrote to the dictator outlinig the economic reforms Chile should undertake.

There is NOTHING in that letter which suggests support for Pinochet or the coup. Friedman believed that the economic reforms he was proposing were in the best interests of ALL Chileans. He gave similar advice to Yugoslavia and the USSR. That didn't make him a communist supporter either.

It is a total slander to suggest that Friedman was behind the coup in Chile. Not only is the claim totally false but you have provided NO evidence to the contrary. The coup was carried out by the military. Friedman involvement was highly limited, confined to just one meeting and one letter to the dictator.

Belly,

I'm not trying to make the aluminium smelting industry out to be the bogyman in a 'them against us' scenario. It's just that it contributes seemingly very significantly to base load demand, because such smelters absolutely must be kept going 24/7. If some or all smelters were to be shut down, we might not have an impending 'peak shortage' problem.

Unless, however, some or all of those smelting operations are already on the brink of unviability and should close anyway, the only solution for NSW, and Australia at large, is to increase base load generating capacity. The only ways of doing that in Australia, in the absence of spectacular breakthroughs in electricity storage technology, is via nuclear, hot dry rock geothermal, solar pond collection and storage, posssibly wave power, natural gas fired, or coal fired generation. Of these the most proven and immediately expandable is coal fired, the current global warming bete noir!

In the uncertain regulatory climate now prevailing, what privatised operation is going to attempt to increase base load generating capacity without first having, if they are able, hiked prices through the roof?

Clearly, the continued intent of the present NSW government to sell off the retail business while retaining the generation side of it is indicative that it is to create the ability for unrestrained price-hiking in the privatised segment of the electricity supply industry that is the primary, if not sole object of the exercise.

I have absolutely no sympathy for the private investors who were prepared to take on the erstwhile public owned utilities with intent of participating in, and perhaps setting the prices in, a National Electricity Market the existence of which in its present form is effectively dependent upon the abdication by State governments of their Constitutionally preserved areas of freedom of action.

Indeed, the collusion of five States, and the Commonwealth, in effectively allowing one State, South Australia, to dictate the legislative framework for the NEM smacks of an attempt at evasion of the provisions of the Constitution.

They knew the people would not approve their plans!

In his article, 'Hot rock rocks', Kevin Cox (Fickle Pickle) makes the statement, in relation to funding hot dry rock geothermal electricity generation, that "To get $60 billion a year we need to increase the cost of energy by 4 cents per kilowatt hour."

Seems too easy.

My first question is: does that mean that the aluminium smelters pay 4 cents per KwH on top of however much (or little) they are presently paying for electricity, and if so, is that business still viable under those conditions? The same question applies to Sydney Water; instead of paying 5 cents per KwH, would they be paying 9 cents per KwH, and what would that do to the cost and consumption of water?

My second question is: if the consuming public are to be asked to pay this earmarked-for-investment extra component of electricity price, why should they not own outright the new enterprise they are 100% funding into existence?

Why would we first sell off all generation and sales business, then fund the development of an entirely new non-greenhouse contributing generation and transmission industry (at Inna-bloody-minka, for heaven's sake!) and allow it to be owned by private unaccountable interests? Why not strive to have that industry owned and run more like a co-operative business? The requirement to wean from coal-fired generation is now a 'force majeur' applying as much to existing utility owners as it does to us all as individual consumers. That being so, those owners may just have to accept that they may have made a real dud investment. Convert at their own expense, or go out backwards.

Paying the 4 cents investment levy, the NSW electricity consumers could fund the progressive conversion to a combination of Solar Pond collection and HDR geothermal generation, in the process progressively converting the existing coal mining output to the Fischer-Tropsch conversion of coal to liquid hydrocarbon fuels in a co-generation situation. The reaction is exothermic.

That way, the co-operative would go some way toward addressing 'peak oil'.

Is all this too hard?

Forrest I can not find a word in your posts I do not agree with.
However on one point I have concerns ,smelters, they provide a great number of well paying jobs and I would wish to see them stay.
Once we as tax payers via our government owned a great deal more than we do now.
Power can only be sold to private enterprise if it has value to them, profits.
Why can we not spend borrowed money to keep the profits and price under our control?
What can be behind a government over turning its own party machine to press on with the sale?
I am one of a minority in my party on Nuclear power, I think we one day will use it, and that we should.
On one side we say coal is too dirty yet stand against a cleaner fuel so much of the world is committed to using.
I am not a socialist, but we can not forever build a world that values money more than people.
I know of few businesses that do operate for much other than profit and wonder how much we will be paying for power in ten years, and how much new poverty will be the result.

I don't think Naomi Klein or I claimed that Friedman was personally behind the coup, although a good many disciples of Friedman trained at the Chicago School of economics were. If that impression was gained from my use of the term "Friedman's Chicago Boys" then I apologise.

I think people need to see for themselves the letter written by Milton Friedman to General Pinochet on 21 April 1975 at http://wwww.naomiklein.org/files/resources/pdfs/friedman-pinochet-letters.pdf

It begins:

"Dear Mr President,

"During our visit with you on Friday, March 21, to discuss the
economic situation in Chile, you asked me to convey to you my
opinions about Chile's economic situation and policies after
I had completed my visit. This letter is in response to that
request.

"May I first say how grateful my wife and I are for the warm
hospitality that was showered onus by so many Chileans during
our visit. We were made to feel very much at home. The Chileans
we met were all aware of the serious problems your country faces;
all realised that the immediate future was going to be difficult;
but all displayed a determination to surmount those difficulties
and a dedication to working toward a happier future."

... presumably by continuing to jail, torture and murder Chileans who had repeatedly and emphatically rejected Milton Friedman's economic prescriptions at the ballot box, and by assassinating outspoken exiled critics of the regime including Orlando Letelier who had denounced Friedman as a moral accomplice to Pinochet's crimes (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2052&page=0#44052).

Clearly Paul.L has not read "The Shock Doctrine". If he had he would understand that Klein accounts for the differences in policies in the early days to those in 1975, and the fact that some of the Generals merely wanted to return Chile to the way it was before Allende's election in 1970. In fact, there was a second coup, in which those elements that Paul.L referred to as "corporatist and paternalist" (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2052&page=0#44210) were ousted in a second later coup.

Policies carried out in the wake of the coup were what were prescribed by his Chicago School advisers:

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"For the first year and a half Pinochet faithfully followed the Chicago rules: he privatised some, although not all, state-owned companies (including several banks); he allowed cutting-edge new forms of speculative finance; he flung open the border to foreign imports, tearing down the barriers that had long protected Chilean manufacturers; and he cut government spending by 10%---except the military, which received a significant increase. He also eliminated price controls--a radical move in a country that had been regulating the costs of necessities for decades.

"The Chicago Boys had confidently assured Pinochet that if he suddenly withdrew government in all areas at once, the 'natural' laws of economics would rediscover their equilibrium, and inflation---which they viewed as a kind of economic fever indicating the presence of unhealthy organisms in the market---would magically go down. They were mistaken. ..."

Paul.L wrote of Naomi Klein's article at http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/09/response-attacks "Among the weakest refutations I ever read."

Of course, Paul.L would say, that, wouldn't he?. I suggest that those who prefer not to accept Paul.L's verdict as the final word, read Naomi Klein's words for themselves. And I would suggest that it would be well worth their time and definitely well worth the RRP of either AU$32.95 or AU$28.95 (from my recollecting) for the latest penguin edition. As another initially skeptical person wrote:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2052&page=0#42987
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/03/20/weekend-reflections-rudd-edition-2-2-2-3/#comment-208523
"I’ve just finished reading Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’, which Daggett has been ceaselessly recommending on this blog lately. Now I remember being somewhat underwhelmed by the heavily-hyped ‘No Logo’ circa 2000, but this new book is of a totally different calibre. Get it and read it, it will knock you flat." 20 March 2008

As for the stastitcs of the supposed superior economic performance of 'free' economies over 'non-free' economies, which Paul.L has attempted to use a sweeping trump card to answer every possible objection to 'free market' economic policies, he has built an extremely shaky edifice.

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