Cato's Johan Norberg has a detailed rebuttal on Naomi Klein's superficial claims about Milton Friedman and free-market policies made in her book, The shock doctrine. Here's a video of Norberg explaining how Ms Klein misrepresents what Friedman said:



Also see this follow up video.

I have leafed-through Klein's book. No one who has actually read Milton Friedman, will take Klein's claims seriously.

One of Klein's main ammunition is in from a out-of-context quote by Friedman, who said that real change happens on a crisis, and the ideas that are lying around at the time will be implemented. Friedman said this to emphasis the importance of working towards ideas which doesn't seem plausible right now, but might be when people are looking for new ideas, such as in a financial crisis. He didn't mean this in the sense of a natural disaster nor did he advocated disaster.

This is clearly an ideologically neutral statement. If in the current financial mess in the U.S., ideas of more regulation holds sway, that will be implemented. In the face of high commodity prices, if someone is able to convince policymakers. price-controls is a good way of handling the 'crisis' there is a chance for that to happen. The former is already sort of happening, the latter doesn't seem to be, thankfully.

It is also true that most important market-reforms did happen in a financial crisis, like that of Sri Lanka in 1977, when the economy was squeezed through central-planing by the previous socialist government, or in the reforms in India in the early '90's. Thanks to those reforms millions are out of poverty. But if a different set of ideas were on the table, things might have gone in another direction.

Obviously, the likes of Klein doesn't have the cognitive power needed to understand this. See Norberg's full rebuttal and also see, Tyler Cowen's take.