Arquivo para a ‘Economia’ Categoria

Mediocracy and ignorance

16 Sep

Mediocracy is one that brings “middle” knowledge above all, always has a ready opinion, based on “doxa” never in epistemy, and if it has episteme (much of classical epistemology this is) it is a set of rules and schemes that treat an object but ignore its fundamentals.
Shortly after World War II, it was Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull who developed this, and I was glad to see the quote in daily El Pais, which is: “systemic processes [that] enable those with average levels of competence to rise to positions. of power, driving both the supercompetent and the totally incompetent out of their way, ”can be seen in schools, political and religious groups where“ rebels ”are dismissed.
Also now Youtubers who speak of politics, philosophy and even theology, are many theologians of apocalypse and puritanism of false morals, while good readings and deepening are dispensed with on any subject.
But El País newspaper cites an author and a principle he did not know, “the secondary illiterate,” an expression coined by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who uses this for people who have a wealth of useful knowledge that, however, does not lead him to question the intellectual foundations that produced that knowledge.
I insisted with my students and in various posts here the discussion of the foundations, especially of idealism and enlightenment that guide much of the reasoning and the “best minds” of this “secondary illiteracy”, make catch phrases, judge context by isolated facts, or refer to some extraordinary theoretical principle, generally know only the principle and not the text from which it originated, they take away unprepared minds and hearts, eager for something new.
I have not, never had, and never intend to exhaust the fundamentals, but we must go in search of these, warns Edgar Morin in the book “In Search of the Lost Fundamentals”, the great architect of the complexity method, applauded but badly read.
Also reading the novels, it is possible that some have read Stendhal, Balzac, Tolstoy, and even more contemporary Albert Camus, or Oscar Wilde’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray,” but few know or read a worthy representative of Generation X, Bret Easton Ellon, or Paul Auster who wrote “In the Land of Last Things” showing a sober future of valuelessness, unrestrained consumption and a constant search for death or whatever. This is not an exercise in arrogance, without naming names I see successful authors (perhaps cites Paulo Coelho) who sell millions of books and that the time spent reading this is the same to read something that speaks more about the contemporary world and its realities. Haruki Murakami, for example, explains why young people feel tortured, is a Nobel candidate. But all this is not new, to take apart the easy speech of… now with the new media… Robert Musil, in “The Young Törless,” speaks of cruelty as he moves into adulthood at a military school, where he learns cruelty. , morality and sexuality. His is the phrase used in the quoted report from El País: “If stupidity […] did not perfectly resemble progress, skill, hope and improvement, no one would want to be stupid,” said this before World War I. World, almost a prophecy.


Pride and vanity

29 Aug

The word pride (orgulho in Portuguese) originates from Catalan orgull, perhaps few know it, but if we look at its synonyms we can see that it can mean positively: pride, dignity, and in the negative sense: superb and pundonor (doesn’t exist in English, it would be something like a hint of honor), depends on context haughtiness can be positive or negative, finally the word depends on the context.
Pundonor instead of Castilian, punt d´honor, meaning a certain rigor or modesty, also decorum, perhaps all this has fallen into disuse, and it strikes me that excess literature, philosophy treats it little and its connection with vanity is not correct . It may be said that Sloterdijk’s era of cynical reason is not only right for big themes, but for these smaller, smaller ones because they have become cynicism perhaps not in literature but in thought, to the point of making the negative expression of “sins”.
Now becoming even greater pleasures, including theft and lies, is not the time for fake News, but a long way from the absence of a clearing where themes like these can be clarified.
Pride driven to exaggeration is an exaggerated concept of itself, which brings it to a point of contact with vanity, but vanity beyond cynicism has become the pride of media philosophy, not just memes and fake ones.
News, but the in-fact views of the media. Reversing the true meaning of things serves the arrogant and proud of skepticism that responds little or nothing to a reality of obscurantism and unclearness.
The vanity of a king can be exemplified in a tale, where close observation clarifies it, although Hans Christian Andersen’s Tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes can also be used in reverse, but the popular saying “the king is naked ”clarifies what it is, we have already posted that the“ state is naked ”and now we could say“ the statesmen are naked ”:


Economy, common good and governance

27 Aug

Theories of value (or values, perhaps more accurately) have always been linked to the economic, the expression is strange to the Brazilian, but in Portugal if used in daily life “is more value”, meaning an increase of value,
This is different from the Marxist sense of value added to the profit-making product, which means extracting profit by giving the final value of a produced commodity the sum of the means of production plus the value of labor from which part of the profit is taken.
But a set of social and moral values can have a meaning much more linked to conscience than to the value paid or even considered by a sum of the product, plus the value of human labor and the means used for its production, there is a set of values that add to the “common good”, the “commons” as Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize winner in Economics called it.
This is important because it involves the current controversy over the Amazon, which Dr. Ostrom criticized was the fact that there is growing concern, she has already passed away 2012, was that there was a false impression that here it was a “commons governance” as the case of natural resources could not be governed as a “common good” because it would be a failure.
She criticized the foundations of the political analysis of what was called, there was a written text about it, like “Tragedy of the commons”, ie what is governed by all is always unsuccessful because it is nobody’s, so no value some.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is a matter of social nature and cannot be treated as a private or even public good in the sense of state control, she gathered a body of empirical data to demonstrate her thesis.
Unfortunately the excessive politicization of the Amazon issue, the vested interests that are not to see these natural resources as commons, has made the issue even more difficult.
Elinor, the first Nobel laureate in economics, has not been read or understood, and the “tragedy of commons” still reign in official speeches, as the economic interest behind discourses of all shades does not allow for a serene discussion of the issue.
What is certain is that water, air and nature itself cannot and should not be thought of with all that is available for the advancement of the economy, for it is a common good of humanity.
It would be good for a serene rereading of Elinor Ostrom, the governance of commons is important.
The following video explains in a simple way what commons are:


Pride, valor and nationalist populism

26 Aug

In the midst of international crises, such as problems ranging from ecological to corruption, we fight a dragon and appear 3, and there is no shortage of apocalyptics. drank, among them: Karl Marx, in fact, Adam Smith did not just write about the subject of economics, for which he is always remembered, he wrote about virtue, success, fortune, happiness, and even morality.
One of the interesting things he writes is about pride, for which he formulates two different patterns, a first one that he says is “the idea of exact convenience and perfection, as each of us can understand this idea.”.
That is, a distinctive ability to understand, but for someone who is really wise.
It says of this pattern: “imitating, however, the work of a divine artist, which can never be matched”, conscious of its weaknesses, one feels embarrassed when “for lack of attention, discernment and moderation, violated in words and actions, conduct and conversation, the exact rules of perfect convenience… “is in his work Theory of Moral Feelings.
The second pattern, which is the pride of the ignorant, is the lack of self-evaluation (in the Aristotelian sense, or if you want the most mundane sense): “it is that degree of approximation with this idea which is usually obtained from the world, which most our friends and mates, rivals and competitors, may have really hit, ”and so have we, of course.
It has a lot to do with contemporary populism, because it is grounded in ideas, beliefs, and beliefs that, while not true, await their leaders, but the frustrations that follow as soon as they are put into practice verify their lack of “theory.” and a deeper thought.
They are based on maxims that are generally popularly accepted, this situation has “no way out”, “violence is really needed”, “all politicians are corrupt”, “they are poor because they do not work” and there are no jobs and other popular dictates.
Nationalism of Wealth of Nations had historical justification, it is a step in the building of the wealth of countries that was necessary, but as soon as international trade prospered it became unrealizable, but international conflicts not due to trade but to protective barriers are reborn. , containment of markets in a few countries, and over-protectionist regulation.
Allied to national economic crises they seem to be a way out, but they are not, because without international regulation with egalitarian and fair criteria, there is no price control. Adam Smith argued that the use value and the exchange value were not directly related, but essentially both he and David Ricardo, who Marx also studied, said that the process of producing goods can be thought of with a series of human efforts. the Austrian School of Economics, especially with Carl Menger (1940-1921) who made this point clearer.


Divide the goods and the eternal treasure

02 Aug

A greater distribution of wealth is needed, but happiness and well-being do not depend only on monetary values, but ultimately on what treasure we put our hearts and expectations on, of course the problem of poverty exists and overcoming it is good. But those who spend their lives depositing the bliss of efforts to acquire material possessions, in many cases, eventually let the tastes and bliss of life pass.
A biblical story with its own hermeneutics is one in which one seeks Jesus to share the inheritance with the brother, when asked Jesus (Luke 12: 13) asks who charged him with that division, curious the parable that Jesus tells next.
One person was preoccupied with making sure to accumulate his wealth from the immense land he owned and decided to build more barns so that he could drink, eat and enjoy life.
But the master will scold him and say that even that night he would lose his own life, thus creating an economy at least curious, accumulating goods can make someone lose their lives, while those who donate and distribute goods may be enjoying more happiness.
It is the perverse logic of capital or accumulated goods, not only can life be lost, of course it can increase the value of goods by creating an inflationary current of product demand, but even financially, accumulating goods results in less development of wealth, even if it personally means a greater accumulation of wealth.
What history shows, Balzac’s novels are a good indication of this, is that the accumulation of goods only gives rise to greater concern for those who do while it will be the relatives, friends, and heirs who will enjoy the accumulated goods.
But what Balzac’s and King Lear’s of Shakespeare’s novels demonstrate is that true feelings are far from possession of goods, what socially is called selfish feelings, that means that the heart is directed toward goods and not people. who own them.
It also means that the person who has these feelings is bound by unhuman values and beyond the possibility of taking the goods of those who accumulated them, little or nothing will result in his own happiness, for the heart is not directed to true human feelings, only to Passenger goods.
This is not to say that we should not organize our lives financially.


Utilitarianism, philosophy and goods

31 Jul

Utilitarianism essentially sees social logic only for the goods they produce, as well as many currents of modernity, what is important is objectivity, the actual relationship with objects, and the essence of Being, its relation to the Other, and its culture. .

It thus becomes a dispute for power, money and mobilizing forces for the production of goods, no matter how these goods are distributed among different people, in different positions on the social scale, from different religious or cultural postures.

Professor Julia Markovits of Cornell University’s class, which gives an introduction to the moral aspects of utilitarianism, explains that one of the reasons that a simple disappointment of football fans together could produce a greater devaluation than a person’s pain would mean loss of values ​​associated with the soccer team, while the pain is only of the person.

He explains that according to philosopher Robert Nozick, the “utility monster” can transform an extremely good person, who transforms resources in direct relation to happiness, when more money and food we give to this person, the happier he is, but in the limit this It does not transform all ordinary people into a happy “general collectivity” because of utility.

The answer to utilitarianism is that this will not happen, because the opposite is true, the more resources we have the less impact any additional resources will have on our happiness.

If we think about accumulation this is not what happens, how much impact it has on a mega tech company account, while the same $ 100 can make a difference to a child in a poor region of the planet.

The subject may seem psychological or even sociological, but Robert Nozick was interested in the discussion of the state, so his book is called “Anarchy, State and Utopia” (2011), its original version is from 1974, so long before the fall of the Berlin wall, changes in Russia and the western world.

Nozick’s unique argument is that man chose to leave the “state of nature” and set up a kind of state whose existing morality consists of a future Minimum State, where some “laws” would work automatically, since of course it is no longer possible.

Apart from Martha Nussbaum’s recent book on “The Monarchy of Fear,” little or no literature penetrates the current conjuncture about the return of states as a force of repression and “order” to re-establish possible harmony.

He says of victims of injustice, including those practiced by the state: “What is permissible for victims of injustice to do in order to rectify the injustices committed against them, including the large number of injustices committed by people acting through government? I do not know of a complete or theoretically sophisticated approach to these issues. ”(NORZICK, 2011, p. 195).

He is the only author to criticize John Rawls’s utilitarianism on the issue of distribution and the only author to include in his critique Bernard Williams’s text on the fact that the state’s only action on inequality is the question of disease, curiously. Obama’s health plan that was attacked by Donald Trump. Addressing even Utopia, Nozick states that: “Life is not a race where everyone competes for a prize pre-set by someone…” (NOZICK, 2011, p. 305).

NOZICK, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. Sao Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, 2011. The following video explains these arguments, the 3rd. Julia Markovitz’s class about utilitarism:


Utilitarianism, economy and moral

30 Jul

The idea that it was consumerism and the production of goods in modernity that led humanity to a wave of accumulation of goods or capital is not entirely true, the fact that this was done as a way of feeding a capital-based society is rather one part of the matter, the other is what is thought of as life and happiness.
This current as an ethical doctrine that argues that goods promote happiness is not the one that arises from the beginning, liberalism defends usury and capitalization at first, the novels by Honoré de Balzac, which even Marx liked to read, show this anatomy of society liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, utilitarianism later matured with the idea that goods lead to greater happiness, notably with Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).
In Balzac’s novels the figures of Father Goriot, named in the Human Comedy organized by the Brazilian Paulo Rónai, received in the Portuguese edition the name of Uncle Goriot, is a novel that two ungrateful daughters take everything from their father after leaving him (they were not even on their deathbed) they spend their goods on true liberalism in Paris in 1819, the period of the restoration of the French Bourbon monarchy.
Father Gouriot says on his deathbed: “Ah, my friend, do not marry, have no children! you give them life and they give you death, ”as they see their daughters spend their accumulated possessions. It is not unique to this period, as in King Lear also we note that two daughters also abandon their father because of his throne and only one will follow faithful to their father, and the Shakespeare period to remember is around the year 1605.
Utilitarianism is thus a current born in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that influenced the idea that more goods is more happiness, from this the idea that more development must also be a greater social production of goods, not forgetting that this is only an aspect of happiness.
Mill was a member of the British Parliament in 1865, and defended individual rights, including petitioning to extend the vote to women, so this defense is initially the defense of a liberal right.
Even the studies of political economy were done by Mill, who was an economist, having studied Adam Smith, David Ricardo, the physiocrats and mercantilism, and is not, therefore, an exclusivity of Marx, which is in some way aligned with Mill’s thinking, essentially in the aspect of economicism and utilitarianism, they lack the human aspect.
Interestingly, Stuart Mill defends the distribution of wealth, he writes verbatim: “The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society,” which is in volume 2 of its Principles of Political Economy (1983).
Julia Markovits (Cornell University) presents video an introduction to the moral theory of utilitarismo:


World and the Post 2015´s Agend

11 Jul

When the UN organized its Post 2015 Development Agenda, it appeared that civil society organizations were moving towards a greater focus on poverty and hunger, urban planning and education, nuclear disarmament and women’s empowerment, others subjects related to the person, the struggle for greater perks and powers, the return of nationalism moved in the opposite direction.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in September 2014 “Our world needs more wind and solar energy. But I believe in an even stronger source of energy, people’s power”, the path seemed safe and was not, one can now evaluate the error.
The numbers that preceded the conservative turnaround were still “very unequal” in Latin America, Eduardo Frei affirmed that the Chile that governed from 1994-2000, with several initiatives that promoted democracy and social justice, had reduced poverty by 38.6% to 7.8% of the population, and extreme poverty from 13% to 2.5%, but by 2015 Latin America had another profile, despite GDP growth from 2015 to 2018 (photo above).
It was still a region “more unequal” than another, of its 600 million inhabitants still 167 million lived in poverty and 71 million in extreme poverty, this contrast reveals a dangerous and deep social gap, according to the own Frei in 2015.
Regarding the future, Frei affirms that the struggle against poverty and inequalities demanded another effort on an ethical basis, and at this crossroads, it would be time for governments to give greater impetus to the “moral movement” that did not happen.
Juan Somavia, former Director of the International Labor Organization, said in the post 2015 agenda that a good basis for negotiations would be: “the document reflects an extremely ambitious vision with its 17 goals and 69 indicators centered on the concept of sustainable development focused on people and eradicating poverty, “saying that UN political support was critical.
In 20th birthday of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which was adopted in 2000, said that the problem of poverty eradication was echoed by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) : productive employment and social integration have been excluded, and it is not mere coincidence. And social integration is a broader concept when we think of global citizenship.


Earth-planetarism, a planetary worldview

09 Jul

We have already mentioned that the worldview depends on a vision of the cosmos and life itself, there is still a citizen worldview, Edgar Morin called the land-fatherland and what I call earth-planetaryism. Seeing the planet as Patria, as “common house” in the religious mystical vision, as Gaia in a mythological view, incorporate this view, for the planet itself, living beings including animals and plants and cultures that are the citizenship of living peoples in the Planet.

Broaden a cosmos-planetary view of the Earth they inhabit. In Edgar Morin’s book he traces in chapters 2 and 3 what this planetary identity would be, and at the same time reveals an exhaustion and planetary agony, there is something that involves beyond the traditions and cultural issues at stake, the worldview depends on how man sees himself as a whole, and this implies an advanced worldview, which admits the new telescopes, which made the Copernican revolution, which are now the new media.

Terraplanism is the most extreme side of this view, but attachment to an earlier view of quantum physics, black holes, the view of a multi-verse implies that the planetary cosmovision is still enlightened and idealistic, stuck to an idea of ​​citizenship , of state and of planet that already is much surpassed, and agonizes in successive crises. In the book by Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern, they point out that the key phenomenon to understand this crisis of planetary proportions is “moral, psychic and intellectual underdevelopment” (Morin and Kern, 2011, 115), including development, and the proliferation of holistic “hollow” ideals and of mutilated visions, the loss of the global, the fundamental and the responsibility “(ibid.).

Broadening this vision requires abandoning pseudo-planetary principles that are Eurocentrists, third-worldists, imperialists and neocolonizers present in the “saviors of the homeland” are left or right, generally unrelated and limited worldview.

A new planetary vision, which respects nature itself, demands a vision of an even wider universe that was thought by Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and the Enlightenment, the eternal dualism materialism x idealism, the imperial religiosity of some religions.

Lack of wisdom to the humble and humility to the wise, it is time to rethink the thought, as Edgar Morin wanted, a time of transdisciplinarity of multi-verse (several universes).

MORIN, E., KERN, A.B. Terra Pátria (Earth homeland.) Trad. Paulo Neves. 6th. edition, Sulina Publishing, Brazil, 2011.

This presentation of the Edgar Morin in SESC in São Paulo Brasil, he talks about this subject:


Cultural misery or ignorance

24 Jun

It is not a current phenomenon, although its visibility has increased with the new media, I remember the files (handouts), the manuals of this or that author that the measure that it saw via it is a vulgarity, or a good part of the pseudo -phylosophies in online videos today, but the background to it all is much worse.
Theodore Darlymple, a pseudonym of an English psychiatrist who worked in prisons with high-risk prisoners, identified human misery as the worst face of the culture, wisdom, and reason we live in, identifying three clear axes: the conveniences of corruption of the whole world, not only Brazil), sex and more sex and the death of childhood.
It is rare to find anyone innocent today, even a child, sexual trivialization did not lead to pleasure or good human conviviality, led to more violence, and Byung Chul-Han’s book goes further wrote in The Agony of Eros, wrote that already there is no love, only narcissism.
There is no doubt that there are social and economic reasons that link these facts, but what jumps the eye is that any hasty or similarly new thought appears as a great exercise of “creativity” and with a little examination it is easily seen that it is ignorance.
So themes that are no more than practical rules to live, appear as magical formulas, make campaigns and appear as miraculous source of youth, ease of enrichment or easy joy, see drugs and drinks, in short, ignorance and obscurity.
Religious or ideological pragmatism emerges as this formula, but they are not enough, corruption and illicit enrichment is also there and are themes throughout the world and hide the real interests behind beautiful words and attitudes, if not investigated in depth or nothing is perceived in real life.
There is a forgetting of being, the true religion, since religion is also subject to all kinds of ignorance, even justifying or defending it, see the irony with all manner of education, true religion and true morality.
Heidegger claimed the quest for the “clearing,” there is no doubt we live in obscure times.