Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.
segunda-feira, 2 de janeiro de 2017
Transformacoes da ordem economica mundial do seculo 19 a Segunda Guerra - Paulo Roberto de Almeida
domingo, 1 de janeiro de 2017
Deirdre McCloskey contesta solucoes de liberais para a liberalizacao economica - entrevista
Even in the old countries, when the governments have not crushed market-tested betterment with regulation ("not": Ireland, Switzerland, the UK, the USA; but "crushing": Italy, France, Greece), real incomes measured to include quality improvements have risen. The longer "experiment"---Joe is a short-run sort of economist---is the new liberalism of Europe and its offshoots and then its imitators after 1800. Moving away from guilds and protectionism and mercantilist tales of aggregate demand arising from money flows raised the incomes of the poorest people in the countries that made the move by 3,000 percent. Not 300 percent, my dear students, but a factor of 30, near three thousand percent over the base in 1800. Thus Italy. Some "failure."
I am amazed that all thinking Italians are not members of the liberal Istituto Bruno Leoni. If Italians were Swedish, with a competent and honest state, I would not wonder. But every sentient Italian knows that it is a terrible idea to send more money and power to Rome. Most Americans, especially in a corrupt state like my own Illinois, know the comparable truth. I am in favor of tax competition among countries, because I do not want the government to provide education, health care, clean air, drinking water, roads, and so forth. All these, even clean air, can be provided, with a few moderate taxes on carbon and some exclusively governmental activities such as going after the Mafia, by private firms. Clean water is widely provided worldwide by private companies. Sweden introduced in the 1990s educational vouchers for everybody. Le Autostrade could easily be privatized, with transponders in cars to pay the peak price. And so forth. I cannot weep that Ireland's corporate tax rate is lower than yours, or that of the USA---especially as every competent economist agrees the corporate taxes are double taxation and their incidence (that is, which people actually end up paying them) is utterly unclear, after seventy years of research on the topic.
The Economist discuss the challenges to a Liberal Order
The future of liberalism
How to make sense of 2016
Liberals lost most of the arguments this year. They should not feel defeated so much as invigorated
FOR a certain kind of liberal, 2016 stands as a rebuke. If you believe, as The Economist does, in open economies and open societies, where the free exchange of goods, capital, people and ideas is encouraged and where universal freedoms are protected from state abuse by the rule of law, then this has been a year of setbacks. Not just over Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, but also the tragedy of Syria, abandoned to its suffering, and widespread support—in Hungary, Poland and beyond—for “illiberal democracy”. As globalisation has become a slur, nationalism, and even authoritarianism, have flourished. In Turkey relief at the failure of a coup was overtaken by savage (and popular) reprisals. In the Philippines voters chose a president who not only deployed death squads but bragged about pulling the trigger. All the while Russia, which hacked Western democracy, and China, which just last week set out to taunt America by seizing one of its maritime drones, insist liberalism is merely a cover for Western expansion.
Faced with this litany, many liberals (of the free-market sort) have lost their nerve. Some have written epitaphs for the liberal order and issued warnings about the threat to democracy. Others argue that, with a timid tweak to immigration law or an extra tariff, life will simply return to normal. That is not good enough. The bitter harvest of 2016 has not suddenly destroyed liberalism’s claim to be the best way to confer dignity and bring about prosperity and equity. Rather than ducking the struggle of ideas, liberals should relish it.
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Mill wheels
In the past quarter-century liberalism has had it too easy. Its dominance following Soviet communism’s collapse decayed into laziness and complacency. Amid growing inequality, society’s winners told themselves that they lived in a meritocracy—and that their success was therefore deserved. The experts recruited to help run large parts of the economy marvelled at their own brilliance. But ordinary people often saw wealth as a cover for privilege and expertise as disguised self-interest.
After so long in charge, liberals, of all people, should have seen the backlash coming. As a set of beliefs that emerged at the start of the 19th century to oppose both the despotism of absolute monarchy and the terror of revolution, liberalism warns that uninterrupted power corrupts. Privilege becomes self-perpetuating. Consensus stifles creativity and initiative. In an ever-shifting world, dispute and argument are not just inevitable; they are welcome because they lead to renewal.
What is more, liberals have something to offer societies struggling with change. In the 19th century, as today, old ways were being upended by relentless technological, economic, social and political forces. People yearned for order. The illiberal solution was to install someone with sufficient power to dictate what was best—by slowing change if they were conservative, or smashing authority if they were revolutionary. You can hear echoes of that in calls to “take back control”, as well as in the mouths of autocrats who, summoning an angry nationalism, promise to hold back the cosmopolitan tide.
Liberals came up with a different answer. Rather than being concentrated, power should be dispersed, using the rule of law, political parties and competitive markets. Rather than putting citizens at the service of a mighty, protecting state, liberalism sees individuals as uniquely able to choose what is best for themselves. Rather than running the world through warfare and strife, countries should embrace trade and treaties.
Such ideas have imprinted themselves on the West—and, despite Mr Trump’s flirtation with protectionism, they will probably endure. But only if liberalism can deal with its other problem: the loss of faith in progress. Liberals believe that change is welcome because, on the whole, it is for the better. Sure enough, they can point to how global poverty, life expectancy, opportunity and peace are all improving, even allowing for strife in the Middle East. Indeed, for most people on Earth there has never been a better time to be alive.
Large parts of the West, however, do not see it that way. For them, progress happens mainly to other people. Wealth does not spread itself, new technologies destroy jobs that never come back, an underclass is beyond help or redemption, and other cultures pose a threat—sometimes a violent one.
If it is to thrive, liberalism must have an answer for the pessimists, too. Yet, during those decades in power, liberals’ solutions have been underwhelming. In the 19th century liberal reformers met change with universal education, a vast programme of public works and the first employment rights. Later, citizens got the vote, health care and a safety net. After the second world war, America built a global liberal order, using bodies such as the UN and the IMF to give form to its vision.
Nothing half so ambitious is coming from the West today. That must change. Liberals must explore the avenues that technology and social needs will open up. Power could be devolved from the state to cities, which act as laboratories for fresh policies. Politics might escape sterile partisanship using new forms of local democracy. The labyrinth of taxation and regulation could be rebuilt rationally. Society could transform education and work so that “college” is something you return to over several careers in brand new industries. The possibilities are as yet unimagined, but a liberal system, in which individual creativity, preferences and enterprise have full expression, is more likely to seize them than any other.
The dream of reason
After 2016, is that dream still possible? Some perspective is in order. This newspaper believes that Brexit and a Trump presidency are likely to prove costly and harmful. We are worried about today’s mix of nationalism, corporatism and popular discontent. However, 2016 also represented a demand for change. Never forget liberals’ capacity for reinvention. Do not underestimate the scope for people, including even a Trump administration and post-Brexit Britain, to think and innovate their way out of trouble. The task is to harness that restless urge, while defending the tolerance and open-mindedness that are the foundation stones of a decent, liberal world.
sábado, 31 de dezembro de 2016
Minhas previsoes imprevidentes para 2017 - Paulo Roberto de Almeida
sexta-feira, 30 de dezembro de 2016
ABRI anuncia novo numero de Carta Internacional, vol. 11, n. 3/2016
A revista Carta Internacional acaba de publicar seu último número, disponível em https://www.cartainternacional.abri.org.br/Carta. Convidamos a navegar no sumário da revista para acessar os artigos e outros itens de seu interesse.
Agradecemos seu interesse e apoio contínuo em nosso trabalho,
Administrador da Carta Internacional
Associação Brasileira de Relações Internacionais (ABRI)
cartainternacional@abri.org.br
Carta Internacional
v. 11, n. 3 (2016)
Sumário
https://www.cartainternacional.abri.org.br/Carta/issue/view/35
Artigos
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A identidade internacional do Brasil: uma síntese da literatura (5 - 31)
Rafael Mesquita
Rumo à cooperação e ao desenvolvimento: as políticas brasileiras para a faixa de fronteira (32 - 55)
Marcio Scherma
A Política Externa do Império no Prata e a Missão Bellegarde ao Paraguai (1848 - 1852) (56 - 76)
Pedro Henrique Verano
Enriquecimento de animosidades: o início da política nuclear brasileira (77 - 98)
Túlio Sérgio Henriques Ferreira, Vanessa Horácio Lira
Comunidades epistêmicas e de prática em Defesa na Argentina e no Brasil: entre a organicidade e a plasticidade (99 - 123)
Samuel Alves Soares
As razões de ser do Conselho de Defesa Sul-Americano da UNASUL (124 - 148)
Tamires Aparecida Ferreira Souza
O Brasil e o acender das luzes das independências de Angola e Moçambique (1974-1975) (149 - 171)
Jose Alejandro Sebastian Barrios Diaz
Reconsidering the consistency between principles and practices for Technical Cooperation between Developing Countries: A critical analysis of ProSavanah. (172 - 198)
Niels Søndergaard
O Sudeste Asiático entre Estados Unidos e China: “arquipélago de economias de mercado” ou palco da competição interestatal capitalista? (199 - 222)
Isabela Nogueira, Bruno Hendler
O Brasil como potência regional: uma análise de sua liderança na América Latina no início do século XXI (222 - 252)
Patricia Nasser de Carvalho, Fernanda Cristina Izidro Nanci Gonçalves
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Edição Completa (1 - 252)
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Editoria da Revista Carta Internacional
http://www.cartainternacional.abri.org.br
cartainternacional@abri.org.br
Associação Brasileira de Relações Internacionais - ABRI
Venezuela: mercado negro de alimentos controlado pelo Exercito
Como, quando, onde isso vai parar, não sabemos. O que se sabe é que a Venezuela deixou de existir como nação organizada: virou um caos total, um país sem lei, sem ordem, sem moral, sem respeito, sem futuro...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida