TYLER COWEN'S review of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" suggested to me the thought that Ms Klein is to serious social thought what a dog is to dancing: it's pathetic but it's hard to look away. As Mr Cowen puts it, the book is

probably the most effective brand of emotional nonfiction to be published this year. But when it comes to the underlying message, and the standards of evidence used to support it, "The Shock Doctrine" is a true economics disaster.

And not only an economics disaster. Emmanuel of the International Political Economy Zone blog is likewise unimpressed by Ms Klein's mode of creative historical argumentation:

I would not hesitate to give any paper based on the idea that the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands was done in order to spur neoliberal reforms in Britain or one that suggested Tiananmen spurred China's turn to the market a failing mark. That such faulty logic could be extended to 500+ pages beggars belief.

[...] 

Klein's Procrustean bed is sample selection bias at its worst. Select those cases where money, power, and occasional violence (the subtitle of my blog) come together and use them to make a wholesale indictment of "the market," never mind that the pieces don't fit the (incoherent) shock doctrine thesis. Sorry, but I don't do conspiracy theories.

For my money, Steve Horwitz, an economics professor at St Lawrence University, has the beefiest reply yet, largely contained in the two (long) questions, excerpted here, he would ask Ms Klein if provided the chance:

1. ... How do you reconcile the main thesis of your book with the historical evidence that government has grown and markets have been made less free in almost every crisis of the 20th century? Moreover, wasn't FDR's attempt to pack the court and his signing legislation that was later found to be unconstitutional evidence that he tried to force policies on the country by subverting the democratic process?

2. ... How do you reconcile the left's claim that [the] Bush Administration has [post-9/11] engaged in a fascist expansion of government power hitherto unseen in US history with the claim that crises lead to undemocratic free market reforms? Those would seem to be utterly at odds with each other. ... It certainly seems like crises produce a lot more government and a lot less free market reform.

Should we expect satisfactory answers to these sensible queries? I wouldn't wait up. As this magazine wrote about a half-decade ago:

Ms Klein's harshest critics must allow that, for an angry adolescent, she writes rather well. It takes journalistic skill of a high order to write page after page of engaging blather, so totally devoid of substance. What a pity she has turned her talents as a writer to a cause that can only harm the people she claims to care most about. But perhaps it is just a phase.

Apparently it is not.