Libertarianism in action: violence in Chile

From the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

“It’s well known how right-wing economists have long seen Chile as their personal playground to play out their fantasies of austerity politics backed by authoritarian violence. The Chicago Boys were the famed University of Chicago-trained economists who advised Augusto Pinochet during and after the 1973 coup.
[…]
The center of that shifted from Chicago to George Mason, which has become synonymous with bought academia of the New Gilded Age, funded by the Koch Brothers and other far-right extremists.”
[…]
When the histories of the New Gilded Age are written, the horrific impact of right-libertarians taking over various parts of George Mason is going to be a major part of those books.”

This is all spot on, of course. But what prompted this particular post at LGM was this incident involving an American libertarian, John Corbin, now living and championing 'neo-liberalism' in Chile. As the Washington Post explains:

“John Cobin, a U.S.-born economist and former member of a neo-Confederate group, is so passionate about a free market — and about Chile — that he has devoted the past two decades to marrying the two.
But Cobin’s unusual story took a violent turn this weekend, when he drove through one of the many crowds that have paralyzed Chile in recent weeks as they protest income inequality and a high cost of living.
The 56-year-old was arrested Sunday, police said, after he repeatedly fired a gun into a crowd in the beachside town of Reñaca, seriously injuring at least one person.
[…]
The shocking incident underscores the violence that Chilean protesters have been facing at the hands of their government, and occasionally other civilians. As of Friday, at least 20 people have been killed and about 1,600 have been injured, according to human rights observers, as crowds face water cannons and tear gas and pellets are shot in close range.
The protests erupted in mid-October, when student-led strikes against a metro fare increase quickly widened into massive anti-government demonstrations that blocked off streets and set subway stations aflame. Even as the Chilean government reshuffled its cabinet and increased taxes on the wealthy, crowds have continued to rail against decades of neoliberal economic policies, including the privatization of water, highways and the pension system.
It was those policies that first made Chile such an attractive destination for staunch free-market Americans like Cobin.
[…]
In countless interviews and letters to the editor, he also expressed a particular admiration for the anti-communist policies of Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s disgraced former military dictator.”

This lovely John Cobin fellow is like the Platonic form of a libertarian nutjob (but I repeat myself). It’s as though a caricature of a libertarian economist from a left-wing comic came alive and moved to Chile.

To paraphrase Nietzsche: “‘Libertarianism’ and ‘authoritarianism’—those rhyme, those more than rhyme.”