The right uses natural disasters to push through their agenda. So should the left | Aman Banerji and Jeremy Mohler

Naomi Klein showed in The Shock Doctrine how disasters are often exploited by business at the expense of local communities. It doesn't have to be that way

Months before a one-two punch of September storms slammed Puerto Rico, a financial manager living on the island quipped: "The only thing we need now is a hurricane." With the US territory mired in a debt crisis, the manager told an interviewer that she had redirected her clients' assets from public debt to stocks. She recommended investing in Home Depot, as devastation from a hurricane would surely bring federal aid, much of which would flow to the construction industry.

While quite absurd, this anecdote demonstrates an increasingly predictable phenomenon, one popularized by Naomi Klein in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: disasters are good for business.