We need better ideas lying around.

[phantom power]

Milton Friedman understood the utility of crisis. And this is a quote—you know, I use it a lot, but I’ll use it now again, because I think it’s important—which he has at the beginning of the 1982 edition of Capitalism and Freedom: "Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

Now, because I’ve been studying the utility of crisis for this free market project, which I consider to be very anti-democratic, it’s really attuned me to looking for the ideas that are lying around. And I’ve been paying really close attention to people like Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, the Republican Study Committee, these past few weeks. And I have an “ideas lying around” file, which are the ideas that they are floating right now in the midst of this economic crisis. And a lot of them are familiar, but the point is is that they’re being repackaged now as the way out of this economic crisis. So, it’s suspending the capital gains tax, getting rid of the post-Enron regulations, getting rid of mark-to-market accounting. In other words, more deregulation and less money in the public coffers. And it is interesting that the way in which this bill—the way the senators were trying to get the bailout bill through the Senate, after it had failed to go through Congress, was by adding tax cuts, a package of $118 billion worth of tax cuts. Some of them are good, some of them are not. But it’s a deepening of this crisis.

So, we know that the crisis is coming, and the question is, how are we going to respond? I think there needs to be better ideas lying around. I think the Milton Friedman Institute is about keeping the same old ideas that have been recycled so many times, that actually make these public crises worse, making sure that they are the ones that are ready and available whenever the next crisis hits. I think that is what—at its core, that’s what so many of the right-wing think tanks are for, and that’s what the Institute is for. And I think that is a waste of the fine minds at this university. I think it is a waste of your minds, your creativity, because all of these crises—climate change, the casino that is contemporary capitalism—all of these crises do demand answers, do demand actions. They are messages, telling us that the system is broken. And instead of actual solutions, we’re throwing ideology, very profitable ideology, at these problems. So we need better ideas lying around.

We need better ideas responding to what a Barack Obama presidency would absolutely face. As soon as he comes to office, “Yes, you can” turns into “No, you can’t; we’re broke.” No green jobs, no alternative energy, no healthcare for everyone. You know, his plan for—to give healthcare to every child in America costs $80 billion. Bailing out AIG cost $85 billion. They’re spending that money. They’re spending those promises. So, the people who are going to say, “No, you can’t,” who are going to use this crisis to shut down hope, to shut down possibility, are ready.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/6/naomi_klein