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Comment by spindritf | Hacker News Reader

> This found its reductio in Bryan Caplan, who suggested that voters are rationally ignorant of politics because the costs outweigh the benefits, and so economists (who are obviously right about everything) should dictate public policy. You know, like in Chile.

Allende was overthrown for his abuses of power after calls from the parliament and the supreme court. Economic policy was a complete afterthought.

> Chicago School economists managed to persuade first legal theorists, and then those involved in the legal system itself, of the efficacy of their way of thinking, eventually forming the ‘law and economics’ ... Nor should it surprise you that the movement had a large degree of – ahem – ‘support’ from various moneyed interests.

Sasha Volokh: Is Law and Economics a Right-Wing Plot? http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/28943137 (the audio gets better)

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Allende was unacceptable to the US before he even became president, so the claim that he was deposed due to your so called "abuses of power" is absurd on its face - he can't possibly have a abused power before taking power. Declassified documents prove indisputably that the US plotted his removal before he even took office: "Recent documents declassified under the Clinton administration's Chile Declassification Project show that the United States government and the CIA sought the overthrow of Allende in 1970 immediately before he took office ("Project FUBELT"). Many documents regarding the U.S. intervention in Chile remain classified." from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende

> he can't possibly have a abused power before taking power

He came into office in '70, and the coup was in '73. From the very link you posted: "29th President of Chile In office 4 November 1970 – 11 September 1973." What CIA planned doesn't take precedence over what actually happened.

Yes. By the time they enacted the plan they had an excuse, but they had planned to depose him before they had evidence.

Was the whole supreme court of Chile on the CIA payroll, to declare the following UNANIMOUSLY:

On May 26, 1973, the Supreme Court of Chile unanimously denounced the Allende government's disruption of the legality of the nation in its failure to uphold judicial decisions, because of its continual refusal to permit police execution of judicial decisions contrary to the government's own measures.

Could it be possible that the CIA wanted to remove him as soon as he got elected AND that also and independently he abused power so much as to lead to this declaration by the supreme court?

I tend to respect each country legislative body - especially at the higher level. More recently, even Zimbabwe supremes denounced the abuse until they resigned - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1850771.stm

Allende wildly overstepped his constitutional boundaries.

But if he were really being removed merely because of those actions and not because of policy, it's certainly fairly odd that they immediately rounded up thousands of unionists, leftists, and other political undesirables and started putting bullets through the back of their skulls.

Which you might also call abusing power.

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