Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Thanks a million, Ayn Rand, for setting the greedy free

The trickle-down theory beloved of Greenspan and his ilk is less a philosophy than a handy excuse for avarice, says Naomi Klein

The tall graduate student, visiting the US from Sweden, would not be
satisfied with a quip. He wanted answers. “They cannot only be driven
by greed and power. They must be driven by something higher. What?”
Don’t knock power and greed, I tried to suggest - they have built
empires. But he wanted more. “What about a belief that they are
building a better world?”

Since I began touring with my book The
Shock Doctrine, I have had a number of exchanges like this, revolving
around the same basic question: when hard-right political leaders and
their advisers apply brutal economic shock therapy, do they honestly
believe the trickle-down effects will build equitable societies - or
are they just deliberately creating the conditions for yet another
corporate feeding frenzy? Put bluntly: has the world been transformed
over the past three decades by lofty ideology or by lowly greed? [Read on]