Sobre a irracionalidade das políticas governamentais - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Sobre a irracionalidade das políticas governamentais

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Quem se expõe muito tecendo comentários sobre nossa irrealidade cotidiana – aproveitando o título de um livro do Umberto Eco, de crônicas sobre as coisas bizarras que ele encontra pelo mundo, em suas viagens – sempre se arrisca a receber comentários “corretivos”, como acontece frequentemente com este humilde blogueiro, que não possui nenhum poder externo, nenhuma capacidade de mudar o mundo, e suas idiossincrasias bem mais perigosas do que os exemplos de kitsch em que tropeçava o escritor italiano. O único poder deste blog, na verdade, está nas poucas virtudes socráticas que ele possa ter, o poder – muito vago, é verdade – de convencer outros, de forma didática, por demonstrações que possuem certa lógica intrínseca, certo embasamento na realidade e certa coerência entre os meios e as finalidades, o que nem sempre é fácil de encontrar nas medidas do governo, vou logo adiantando.

Por que digo isto? Bem, digamos que, como cidadão consciente, sou tremendamente exigente quanto ao uso que se faz do meu dinheiro, sim, todo aquele terço – senão mais – da minha renda que é apropriado pelo governo para fazer, supostamente, obra benemérita. O mais das vezes, o que vejo, são políticas erradas, que deixam os ricos ainda mais ricos, e distorcem cada vez mais as regras do jogo no Brasil. Por isso escrevo, sem muita audiência, mas com a certeza de que pelo menos cumpro ou dever cívico, ou no mínimo didático, ao alertar os mais jovens – e alguns mais velhos também – sobre o real sentido, e as consequências efetivas de todas essas políticas governamentais, que eu encontro particularmente malucas. Sim, sou um anarquista conceitual, e sempre serei crítico dos governos: afinal de contas somos nós que os colocamos lá, e eles são pagos com o nosso dinheiro. Temos, portanto, todo o direito de criticá-los à vontade.

Nessa tarefa, encontro muita gente que escreve raivosamente para este blog, me acusando disso ou daquilo, o que pode fazer parte do jogo; desde que seja pertinente ao post, não tenho problema em publicar. Não é o caso do comentário abaixo, que transcrevo em sua integralidade, antes de oferecer uma pequena aula de economia política, ao jovem acadêmico que o escreveu. Sim, primeiro pensei que se tratava de um economista governamental, de um Adesista Anônimo como muitos que se encontram por aí, e que se comprazem em defender a sua boa causa, mesmo com todos os equívocos acumulados ao longo do tempo. Depois concluí que se trata apenas de um estudante de graduação querendo aprender economia. Sendo assim, vou parar com outras tarefas mais importantes, para oferecer-lhe uma pequena aula de economia brasileira e internacional.

Mas primeiro a transcrição do comentário. Ele deu-se a propósito deste post:

SEXTA-FEIRA, 30 DE MARÇO DE 2012

Governo aumenta a irracionalidade e a ilegalidade da tributacao nacional...

Eis aqui o comentário recebido, em itálico:

Anônimo deixou um novo comentário sobre a sua postagem "Governo aumenta a irracionalidade e a ilegalidade ...":

O sistema internacional esta mal regulado e cheio de distorções, como mostra sabiamente o documentário "Inside Job".Com o câmbio sobrevalorizado de 20% a 30%, a indústria brasileira tem sido massacrada desde 2008, com a invasão de produtos do sudeste asiático. A China utiliza um câmbio desvalorizado em 40%, como é de amplo conhecimento no cenário internacional. Além disso, conta com uma infraestrutura eficiente, energia elétrica barata e uma mão de obra semiescrava. O Brasil tem feito um esforço grande para voltar a investir, mas tem muitos problemas estruturais. A baixa taxa de poupança, a maneira como a CF/88 estabeleceu um amplo sistema de seguridade social (que é caríssimo, algo que a China não tem que arcar), isso tudo leva a uma baixa taxa de poupança, o que dificulta um crescimento dos investimento. A reforma tributária é um exemplo, o Delfim Neto diz que desde a época em que ele era ministro se fala de reforma tributária. Ele diz que a reforma não sai, porque os governadores e as bancadas estaduais sempre travam a discussão, ficam com medo de saírem prejudicados, preferindo deixar a coisa no 0x0. Pequenas reformas foram feitas ultimamente, dentro das possibilidades politicas (simples nacional, por exemplo). Eu teria de escrever um livro aqui para falar como é dificílimo atacar os problemas estruturais do Brasil. Acho que no curto prazo o Brasil esta correto ao aplicar essas medidas, não existe outra opção. É necessário criar empregos de qualidade para 200 milhões de pessoas, só o agronegócio e o setor de serviços não conseguem atingir essa marca. É muito fácil falar que o protecionismo é um erro, quando você esta assistindo tudo de fora, sentado na sua poltrona. Difícil é abrir uma fábrica e concorrer com os chineses. O governo sabe que o protecionismo leva à ineficiência, ninguém lá é idiota. No momento, o Brasil tem a industrialização que ele consegue ter. Ponto final. Agora é apagar o incêndio, deixar a indústria respirar um pouco, para depois tentarmos mudar as questões mais complexas.

Postado por Anônimo no blog Diplomatizzando em 31/03/12 00:37

=============

Agora meus comentários a cada uma das afirmações do meu anônimo comentarista. Como sempre faço, procederei por transcrever, topicamente, cada uma das afirmações ou argumentos que me parecem suscitar reparos, e agregarei meus próprios comentários em seguida.

O autor dos comentários está convidado a me rebater, e me prontifico a publicar sua réplica, ou tréplica, neste caso.

Vamos lá:

1) “O sistema internacional esta mal regulado e cheio de distorções, como mostra sabiamente o documentário "Inside Job".”

PRA: Concordo, parcialmente, com a primeira parte da frase, mas nunca recomendaria, para qualquer aluno, esse filme, que me parece um Michael Moore um pouco mais especializado. Recomendo ao meu comentarista o filme “Too Big To Fail”, bem mais realista e confiável do que essa lamúria contra os “especuladores” que constitui o “Inside Job”. Francamente, se trata de um filme piegas, maniqueísta.

Agora, discordo dele em que exista algo próximo a um sistema internacional. Que sistema é esse? Quais são suas regras? Onde está o Board que dirige o sistema, seu processo decisório e outras coisas que definem um sistema? O que existe são fluxos, dos mais diversos – comerciais, financeiros, tecnológicos, humanos, etc. – sendo intercambiados em economias de mercado mais ou menos reguladas de modo muito imperfeito nos planos nacional e multilateral, com uma descoordenação total entre as diversas unidades que participam desses mercados: empresas, governos, entidades intergovernamentais, blocos, ONGs, etc., com poderes muito diversos entre eles. Não é exatamente uma anarquia, mas é algo muito próximo disso, com a vantagem de que na nossa atual anarquia, poucos são os malucos que acham que governos devem substituir totalmente os mercados – embora sempre tenhamos neobolchevique por aí, que acreditam nisso – e são bem mais os numerosos os que concordam em que a economia capitalista é assim mesmo, dada a sobressaltos e crises eventuais (sempre recorrentes, mas de formas novas e inesperadas).

2) “Com o câmbio sobrevalorizado de 20% a 30%, a indústria brasileira tem sido massacrada desde 2008, com a invasão de produtos do sudeste asiático.”

PRA: Coitadinha da indústria, tão massacrada... Mas será que a razão principal é o câmbio? Pode ser em parte, mas não totalmente. Outros países passaram por processos de valorização tão, ou mais, intensos que o brasileiro, e sobreviveram e se beneficiaram, como Alemanha e Japão, por exemplo, grandes importadores, e exportadores. Sempre quando se fica mais rico, a moeda tende a se valorizar. Isso por acaso é ruim.

Se o meu comentarista for examinar as outras fontes da valorização da moeda, ele certamente vai achar algo que não é da responsabilidade dos chineses: eles são por acaso culpados por nossa taxa de juros tão elevada, que atrai tantos capitais?

E a carga tributária brasileira? Será que ela não começa a ser massacrada aqui mesmo no próprio Brasil? Sugiro ao comentarista que examine os dados de tributação e constate para mim quais são os países malucos que impõem um custo de 40% aproximadamente sobre os produtos de uso corrente, proteção tarifária idem, e outras coisas mais. Não vale dizer “escandinavos”, a menos que ele compare os níveis de renda e de produtividade, também. Pode buscar...

3) “A China utiliza um câmbio desvalorizado em 40%, como é de amplo conhecimento no cenário internacional. Além disso, conta com uma infraestrutura eficiente, energia elétrica barata e uma mão de obra semiescrava.”

PRA: Não é verdade, ou é apenas parcialmente verdade. A China ancora sua moeda no dólar, pois grande parte de suas exportações é feita nessa moeda, e ela quer preservar certo equilíbrio de valores. Pode-se dizer que o dólar se desvaloriza... mas isso também reduz o poder de compra da China no exterior. Ela mantém sua população mais pobre do que poderia ser, e isso é ruim.

Outra coisa: o Brasil praticou manipulação cambial durante 40 anos, e não tivemos reclamação de ninguém contra isso, pois a medida nos deixava mais pobres, justamente, e éramos totalmente desimportantes no comércio internacional. A China não é, mas não adianta reclamar: depois de 1973, cada país pode fazer o que quiser com sua própria moeda, e não foram poucas as vezes nas quais os EUA, coitadinhos, tiveram de operar uma desvalorização administrada do dólar...

4) “O Brasil tem feito um esforço grande para voltar a investir, mas tem muitos problemas estruturais. A baixa taxa de poupança, a maneira como a CF/88 estabeleceu um amplo sistema de seguridade social (que é caríssimo, algo que a China não tem que arcar), isso tudo leva a uma baixa taxa de poupança, o que dificulta um crescimento dos investimento.”

PRA: Não estou vendo nenhum esforço, repito, nenhum: fazem pelo menos 20 anos (e mais de dois governos, portanto), que a taxa de investimento está abaixo de 20% do PIB. Qual é o esforço aí? Não vejo nenhum.

Coitadinho do Brasil: tem problemas estruturais? E não consegue resolver? Mas onde está o governo do “nunca antes”? Nunca antes, na história do Brasil, tantos se beneficiaram da ação tão esplendorosa de tão poucos... Foram mais de 40 milhões arrancados da miséria, ao que parece, embora possa haver certo exagero, claro. A poupança potencial do Brasil, na verdade, não é baixa, pois se considerarmos determinados recolhimentos compulsórios que NÃO SÃO consumidos pelo setor privado, ou pelas empresas, e sim absorvido na esfera governamental, essa taxa poderia ser bem mais alta.

Ah, mas o meu comentarista vai me dizer que a tal de “Constituição cidadã” determinou um padrão de gastos – aliás sempre crescentes – incompatível com uma taxa maior de poupança e de investimentos. É verdade!

Mas que estúpidos brasileiros: já se passaram mais de 20 anos e ainda não se decidiram por reformar a CF e corrigir essas estupidezes! Vão esperar alguma crise, por acaso?

As pessoas não são inteligentes o bastante para perceber que estão num impasse, ou num caminho que leva ao abismo?

Discordo do meu comentarista quando diz que a seguridade social é caríssima. Comparada com o quê? Claro, comparado com os recolhimentos feitos e os benefícios pagos. E somos estúpidos o suficiente para deixar essa situação se prolongar até quando?

Os chineses tem algo a ver com isso? Absolutamente nada. Eles estabeleceram um outro arranjo: as pessoas fazem poupança, e investem, justamente, para terem dinheiro suficiente na velhice. Com isso a poupança e o investimento são altos. Não é inteligente, isso? O que impede os brasileiros de fazer o mesmo? Preguiça? Atraso mental?

O que o meu comentarista me apresenta não é uma explicação; é apenas um lamento. Bem, então invente um mais palatável...

5) “A reforma tributária é um exemplo, o Delfim Neto diz que desde a época em que ele era ministro se fala de reforma tributária. Ele diz que a reforma não sai, porque os governadores e as bancadas estaduais sempre travam a discussão, ficam com medo de saírem prejudicados, preferindo deixar a coisa no 0x0.”

PRA: O motivo não é bem esse. Nos 20 anos decorridos desde a CF, quem aumentou sua parte das receitas totais foi o governo federal, com base em contribuições que não são divididas com os estados e municípios, e é razoável que os governadores e prefeitos se sintam logrados pelo governo federal e queiram uma maior parte da benesse. A questão foi que a CF, estupidamente, deu mais encargos ao governo federal, ao mesmo tempo em que lhe retirava receitas, para distribuir aos estados e municípios. Aí o governo foi buscar o dinheiro onde ele está: no bolso dos cidadãos e no caixa das empresas.

Mas a solução não está em fazer uma reforma tributária que aumente a carga para todos e dê mais dinheiro para o Estado, e sim uma que reduza a carga e isso tem de começar pela redução das despesas públicas. Este é o verdadeiro debate que os governos, em geral, e os economistas também, não fazem. Reduzir despesas, reduzir impostos, dar mais espaço para as iniciativas privadas.

Os economistas do governo, sobretudo deste governo, dizem que estão fazendo distribuição de renda, inclusão social, justiça fiscal, etc. Mentira: os mandarins de sempre estão se apropriando de fatias cada vez maiores da riqueza coletiva: basta comparar salários e benefícios do setor privado com os do setor público. Esta é a vergonha.

6) “Pequenas reformas foram feitas ultimamente, dentro das possibilidades politicas (simples nacional, por exemplo). Eu teria de escrever um livro aqui para falar como é dificílimo atacar os problemas estruturais do Brasil.”

PRA: Pois bem, sinta-se à vontade, escreva seu livro; se ele tiver contribuições relevantes, terei prazer em ajudar a divulgá-lo. Mas, faça, e não se esconda no anonimato, pois debate público é importante, com pessoas inteligentes como parece ser este meu comentarista.

Agora, dizer que o Simples é uma reforma é um exagero. Ele é um paliativo, para não manter na informalidade milhões de micro e pequenas empresas. Mas é estúpido, também, pois limita a capacidade de uma micro ou pequena converter-se em média ou grande empresa, pela engenhosidade e trabalho de seus proprietários, que ao fazê-lo cairiam no inferno tributário que é o Brasil hoje, um verdadeiro manicômio.

O Brasil está sempre inventando expedientes para não fazer as reformas verdadeiras.

7) “Acho que no curto prazo o Brasil esta correto ao aplicar essas medidas [protecionistas], não existe outra opção. É necessário criar empregos de qualidade para 200 milhões de pessoas, só o agronegócio e o setor de serviços não conseguem atingir essa marca.”

PRA: Pois é, nosso comentarista deveria se teletransportar para 1929-1931: ele estaria perfeito lá. Todos os líderes políticos e econômicos fizeram exatamente isso que ele recomenda, e o mundo entrou na maior depressão já conhecida na história. Protecionismo nunca foi solução para nada, apenas para dar dinheiro a industriais espertos, e tornar o país ainda mais pobre.

Claro que existem outras opções: reformar a economia, diminuir custos, aumentar a produtividade, modernizar a infraestrutura, etc. Difícil fazer isso, mas isso cria emprego também, e protecionismo NUNCA foi aumento de qualidade para NADA. O nosso comentarista não conhece história econômica ou se ilude com o discurso do governo.

8) “É muito fácil falar que o protecionismo é um erro, quando você esta assistindo tudo de fora, sentado na sua poltrona. Difícil é abrir uma fábrica e concorrer com os chineses.”

PRA: Sentado na poltrona? Bobagem. Ninguém está falando em concorrer com os chineses naquilo que os chineses fazem melhor e mais barato. Existem milhares de outros produtos que podemos fazer melhor e mais barato que os chineses, pois temos vantagens comparativas que eles não têm e NÃO PODEM ter, só nós temos. Por que não fazemos isso? Queremos continuar brigando com a realidade?

Havia um tempo em que éramos imbatíveis no fornecimento de café, tanto que vendíamos tudo o que produzíamos, mas naquela base do “enfiar no saco” e mandar para o porto. Os colombianos, que JAMAIS poderiam concorrer conosco na quantidade, começaram a concorrer na qualidade, e conseguiram. Por que não fazemos o mesmo?

Burrice? Talvez, mas nada que não possa ser remediado com pessoas inteligentes no governo. A menos que...

9) “O governo sabe que o protecionismo leva à ineficiência, ninguém lá é idiota.”

PRA: Bem, peço licença para não concordar...

10) “No momento, o Brasil tem a industrialização que ele consegue ter. Ponto final. Agora é apagar o incêndio, deixar a indústria respirar um pouco, para depois tentarmos mudar as questões mais complexas.”

PRA: Mas que afirmação mais fatalista. Como “ponto final”? Nenhuma industrialização é estática, jamais. Os EUA começaram na linha de montagem fordista, e teriam sido engolidos pelos japoneses nos anos 1970, por ineficiência, justamente porque ficou na industrialização que “poderiam ter”. Idiotas. Deveriam ter sido comidos pelos japoneses, pois pelo menos não teriam dado despesas nos anos 1970 e agora, justamente, ao terem sido salvos uma segunda vez. Indústria é assim: ou você avança, ou é superado.

O argumento do meu comentarista é a coisa mais fatalista, determinista, que eu poderia encontrar em qualquer pessoa que observa o mundo.

O Brasil já não PODE mais ter a indústria que ele construiu dos anos 1950 aos 1970: isso acabou, e devemos ir mais à frente, agregar valor, passar para outras linhas de produção, inovar.

Difícil? Certamente, mas ninguém disse que o mundo é feito para preguiçosos e acomodados.

Como diz a canção: “I never promised you a rose garden...”

(Se não for isso, alguém me corrija...).

De nada.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Paris, 1ro de abril de 2012.

Brics: abaixo de um clube de domino?! - Editorial do Estadao

Parece que o venerando jornal conservador -- ou reacionário, como diriam alguns -- pegou pesado desta vez, ironizando sobre o portentoso encontro e estupenda declaração dos Brics, rebaixando-os a menos importantes do que a ata de um clube de dominó.
Que jornalão mais desaforado!
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

A comédia dos Brics

Editorial O Estado de S.Paulo, 31 de março de 2012

Haverá pelo menos uma sequência cômica na próxima reunião de cúpula do Grupo dos 20 (G-20), marcada para junho no México. A presidente Dilma Rousseff e seus companheiros do grupo Brics vão protestar contra a grande emissão de dólares, euros e libras, acusando os bancos centrais do mundo rico de impor um desajuste cambial aos emergentes. Ao mesmo tempo, vão exigir dos governos do mundo rico políticas mais eficientes de recuperação econômica. Em contrapartida, americanos e europeus poderão cobrar da China, como fazem há muitos anos, providências sérias para corrigir a desvalorização excessiva do yuan, um pesadelo para os empresários industriais da maior parte do mundo, incluídos os brasileiros. O governo chinês, com seu costumeiro ar de inocência, tem acusado as autoridades americanas de negligenciar o valor do dólar, a principal moeda internacional de reserva. O representante da China deverá ficar muito feliz com a parceria brasileira nessa briga. Brasília tem raramente acusado Pequim de manipulação cambial. Prefere jogar a culpa dos problemas nacionais nas velhas potências imperialistas, embora a competição mais dura e mais devastadora para a indústria brasileira venha do Oriente.

O espetáculo será ainda mais divertido para quem se lembrar de um evento recentíssimo. China e Estados Unidos ficaram do mesmo lado, quando o Brasil tentou provocar na Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC) um debate sobre a manipulação cambial e seus efeitos nas trocas internacionais. Americanos e chineses fizeram o possível para matar a discussão e trabalharam para transferir o assunto para a reunião do G-20.

Como de costume, nenhuma decisão consequente a respeito do câmbio deverá resultar do encontro no México. A reunião das 20 principais potências desenvolvidas e emergentes poderá ser um sucesso por algum outro motivo - especialmente se contribuir para a superação da crise europeia. Um passo importante para isso é a decisão dos governos europeus de elevar de 500 bilhões para 700 bilhões os recursos disponíveis para ajuda a políticas de estabilização. Isso deverá facilitar o trabalho do FMI de coletar dinheiro dos emergentes para operações de socorro aos próprios europeus.

O G-20 perdeu muito de sua capacidade de mobilização desde a superação da primeira fase da crise internacional. Mas ainda é mais relevante que o grupo Brics, formado por Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China e África do Sul. O despreparo desses países para ações conjuntas de grande alcance foi mais uma vez confirmado na reunião de cúpula de Nova Délhi, na quarta e na quinta-feira. O grupo é novo e isso poderia, talvez, explicar o escasso valor prático das confabulações de seus ministros e chefes de governo. Mas o problema é muito mais sério. Esses países partilham poucos interesses com suficiente importância para transformá-los em aliados ou para levá-los a constituir um bloco. O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva classificou os grandes emergentes como aliados estratégicos, mas nunca houve reciprocidade efetiva. Ao contrário: preteriram o Brasil mais de uma vez, em suas ações diplomáticas e comerciais, e sempre deram mais importância a entendimentos com parceiros regionais ou com as potências do mundo rico.

Não houve surpresa na retórica balofa da Declaração de Nova Délhi, recheada de manifestações de preocupação com a crise internacional, cobranças dirigidas a europeus e americanos - como se estes se importassem - e apelos a soluções pacíficas para a crise no Oriente Médio, para a matança na Síria e para os desentendimentos entre o Ocidente e o Irã. Nada, nesse documento, é leitura indispensável.

Seus 50 artigos chochos se completam com um Plano de Ação de Nova Délhi. Os quatro primeiros itens se referem a encontros ministeriais "à margem" de reuniões da ONU, do FMI e de outros eventos multilaterais. Encontros "à margem" de eventos oficiais importantes são rotineiros há muito tempo. O resto chega a ser mais fraco. Muito mais emocionante pode ser uma ata da reunião de um clube de dominó.

Bibliotecas virtuais: uma desaparece, outra permanece (por enquanto)

No que se refere a VirtualBooks, trata-se de uma triste notícia o desaparecimento de uma das maiores, library.nu, mas por enquanto existe uma alternativa, que esperamos permaneça, e que leva à Library Genesis, neste link: http://free-books.us.to/

The disappearing virtuallibrary

Christopher Kelty *

Al-Jazeera, March1, 2012

* Christopher M. Kelty is an Associate Professor of Information Studies and Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software.

The shutdown of library.nu is creating a virtual showdown between would-be learners and the publishing industry. 

The shutdown of library.nu doesn't bode well for those who wish to learn, but can't afford to pay for textbooks

Los Angeles, CA - Last week a website called "library.nu" disappeared. A coalition of international scholarly publishers accused the site of piracy and convinced a judge in Munich to shut it down. Library.nu (formerly Gigapedia) had offered, if the reports are to be believed, between 400,000 and a million digital books for free.  And not just any books - not romance novels or the latest best-sellers - but scholarly books: textbooks, secondary treatises, obscure monographs, biographical analyses, technical manuals, collections of cutting-edge research in engineering, mathematics, biology, social science and humanities. The texts ranged from so-called "orphan works" (out-of-print, but still copyrighted) to recent issues; from poorly scanned to expertly ripped; from English to German to French to Spanish to Russian, with the occasional Japanese or Chinese text. It was a remarkable effort of collective connoisseurship. Even the pornography was scholarly: guidebooks and scholarly books about the pornography industry. For a criminal underground site to be mercifully free of pornography must alone count as a triumph of civilisation. To the publishing industry, this event was a victory in the campaign to bring the unruly internet under some much-needed discipline. To many other people - namely the users of the site - it was met with anger, sadness and fatalism. But who were these sad criminals, these barbarians at the gates ready to bring our information economy to its knees?  They are students and scholars, from every corner of the planet. Pirating to learn "The world, it should not come as a surprise, is filled with people who want desperately to learn." The world, it should not come as a surprise, is filled with people who want desperately to learn. This is what our world should be filled with. This is what scholars work hard to create: a world of reading, learning, thinking and scholarship. The users of library.nu were would-be scholars: those in the outer atmosphere of learning who wanted to know, argue, dispute, experiment and write just as those in the universities do. Maybe they were students once, but went on to find jobs and found families. We made them in some cases - we gave them a four-year taste of the life of the mind before sending them on their way with unsupportable loans. In other cases, they made themselves, by hook or by crook. So what does the shutdown of library.nu mean? The publishers think it is a great success in the war on piracy; that it will lead to more revenue and more control over who buys what, if not who reads what. The pirates - the people who create and run such sites - think that shutting down library.nu will only lead to a thousand more sites, stronger and better than before. But both are missing the point: the global demand for learning and scholarship is not being met by the contemporary publishing industry. It cannot be, not with the current business models and the prices. The users of library.nu - these barbarians at the gate of the publishing industry and the university - are legion. They live all over the world, but especially in Latin and South America, in China, in Eastern Europe, in Africa and in India. It's hard to get accurate numbers, but any perusal of the tweets mentioning library.nu or the comments on blog posts about it reveal that the main users of the site are the global middle class. They are not the truly poor, they are not slum-denizens or rural poor - but nonetheless they do not have much money. They are the real 99 per cent (as compared to the Euro-American 1 per cent). They may be scientists or scholars themselves: some work in schools, universities or corporations, others are doubly outside of the elite learned class - jobholders whose desire to learn is and will only ever be an avocation. They are a global market engaged in what we in the elite institutions of the world are otherwise telling them to do all the time: educate yourself; become scholars and thinkers; read and think for yourselves; bring civilisation, development and modernity to your people. Sharing is caring Library.nu was making that learning possible where publishers have not. It made a good show of being a "book review" site - it was called library.nu after all, and not "bookstore.nu". It was not cluttered with advertisements, nor did it "suggest" other books constantly. It gave straight answers to straightforward searches, and provided user reviews of the 400,000 or more books in the database. It was only the fact that library.nu included a link to another site ("sharehosting" sites like ifile.it, megaupload.com, or mediafire.com) containing the complete version of a digital text that brought library.nu into the realm of what passes for crime these days. But the legality of library.nu is also not the issue: trading in scanned, leaked or even properly purchased versions of digital books is thoroughly illegal. This is so much the case that it can't be long before reading a book - making an unauthorised copy in your brain - is also made illegal.  But library.nu shared books; it did not sell them. If it made any money, it was not from the texts themselves, but from advertising revenue. As with Napster in 1999, library.nu was facilitating discovery: the ability to search deeper and deeper into the musical or scholarly tastes fellow humans and to discover their connections that no recommendation algorithm will ever be able to make. In their effort to control this market, publishers alongside the movie and music industry have been effectively criminalising sharing, learning and creating - not stealing. Users of library.nu did not have to upload texts to the site in order to use it, but they were rewarded if they did. There were formal rules (and informal ones, to be sure), concerning how one might "level up" in the library.nu community. The site developed as websites do, adding features here and there, and obviously expanding its infrastructure as necessary. The administrators of the site maintained absolute control over who could participate and who could not - no doubt in order to protect the site from skulking FBI agents and enthusiastic newbies alike. Even a casual observer could have seen that the frequent changes to the site were the effects of the cat-and-mouse game underway as law authorities and publishers sought to understand and eventually seek legal action against this community. In the end, it was only by donating to the site that law authorities discovered the real people behind the site - pirates too have PayPal accounts. Shutting down learning The winter of 2012 has seen a series of assaults on file-sharing sites in the wake of the failed SOPA and PIPA legislation. Mega-upload.com (the brainchild of eccentric master pirate Kim Dotcom - he legally changed his name in 2005) was seized by the US Department of Justice; torrent site btjunkie.com voluntarily closed down for fear of litigation. In the last few days before they closed for good, library.nu winked in and out of existence, finally (and ironically), displayed a page saying "this domain has been revoked by .nu domain" (the island nation of Niue). It prominently displays a link to a book (on Amazon!) called Blue Latitudes, about the voyage of Captain Cook. A story about that other kind of pirate branches off here. So what does the shutdown of library.nu mean? One thing it means is that these barbarians - these pirates who are also scholars - are angry. We scholars have long been singing the praises of education, learning, mutual aid and the virtues of getting a good degree. We scholars have been telling the world of desperate learners to do just what they are doing, if not in so many terms.  So there are a lot of angry young middle-class learners in the world this month. Some are existentially angry about the injustice of this system, some are pragmatically angry they must now spend $100 - if they even have that much - on a textbook instead of on themselves or their friends. All of them are angry that what looked to everyone like the new horizon of learning - and the promise of the vaunted new digital economy - has just disappeared behind the dark eclipse of a Munich judge's cease and desist order. Writers and scholars in Europe and the US are complicit in the shutdown. The publishing companies are protecting themselves and their profits, but they do so with the assent, if not the active support, of those who still depend on them. They are protecting us - we scholars - or so they say. These barbarians - these desperate learners - are stealing our property and should be made to pay for it. Profiteering In reality, however, the scholarly publishing industry has entered a phase like the one the pharmaceutical industry entered in the 1990s, when life-saving AIDS medicines were deliberately restricted to protect the interests of pharmaceutical companies' patents and profits.  The comparison is perhaps inflammatory; after all, scholarly monographs are life-saving in only the most distant and abstract sense, but the situation is - legally speaking - nearly identical. Library.nu is not unlike those clever - and also illegal - local corporations in India and Africa who created generic versions of AIDS medicines. Why doesn't the publishing industry want these consumers? For one thing, the US and European book-buying libraries have been willing pay the prices necessary to keep the industry happy - and not just happy, in many cases obscenely profitable. Rather than provide our work at cheap enough prices that anyone in the world might purchase, they have taken the opposite route - making the prices higher and higher until only very rich institutions can afford them. Scholarly publishers have made the trade-off between offering a very low price to a very large market or a very high price to a very small market. But here is the rub: books and their scholars are the losers in this trade-off - especially cutting edge research from the best institutions in the world. The publishing industry we have today cannot - or will not - deliver our books to this enormous global market of people who desperately want to read them. Instead, they print a handful of copies - less than 100, often - and sell them to libraries for hundreds of dollars each. When they do offer digital versions, they are so wrapped up in restrictions and encumbrances and licencing terms as to make using them supremely frustrating.  To make matters worse, our university libraries can no longer afford to buy these books and journals; and our few bookstores are no longer willing to carry them. So the result is that most of our best scholarship is being shot into some publisher's black hole where it will never escape. That is, until library.nu and its successors make it available.  What these sites represent most clearly is a viable route towards education and learning for vast numbers of people around the world. The question it raises is: on which side of this battle do European and American scholars want to be? Christopher M Kelty is an Associate Professor of Information Studies and Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Karl May: o maior escritor de minha juventude, junto com Monteiro Lobato

A revista Der Spiegel publica uma matéria a propósito dos cem anos da morte de um dos maiores escritores de aventuras em língua alemã, Karl May, de quem devo ter lido TODOS os livros traduzidos para o Português.
Ele era um ladrão, contumaz, mas escrevia bem...
Pelo menos eu adorava as aventuras de seus herois em terras selvagens.
Seus livros estão disponíveis em Português no link seguinte: http://ebooksgratis.com.br/livros-ebooks-gratis/literatura-estrangeira/romance-karl-may-diversos-livros-para-download/
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

GERMANY'S BEST-LOVED COWBOY 

Der Spiegel, March 30, 2012

The Fantastical World of Cult Novelist Karl May 

Karl May, who died 100 years ago, was an impostor, a liar and a thief -- and one of Germany's most widely read authors. He embellished his own biography with as much fantasy as the scenarios in his adventure novels, and when the deceit was finally exposed, he never recovered. But his legend lives on.

Photo Gallery: The Life of Armchair Adventurer Karl May 

Germany's Best-Loved Cowboy

The Fantastical World of Cult Novelist Karl May

By Jan Fleischhauer

Karl May Jahr 2012

Karl May, who died 100 years ago, was an impostor, a liar and a thief -- and one of Germany's most widely read authors. He embellished his own biography with as much fantasy as the scenarios in his adventure novels, and when the deceit was finally exposed, he never recovered. But his legend lives on.

Only once did he actually visit those wild, faraway countries where he had so fearlessly traveled from the safety of his desk. In April 1899, Karl May took a ship from Genoa to Port Said in Egypt, aiming to finally see the Orient. He had 50,000 marks, a tremendous amount of money at the time, to spend on lodgings for himself and his valet. He was 57, one of Germany's most famous authors and a rich man.

The trip was a disaster. May couldn't tolerate the foreign food, and he was distressed by the stench, the noise and ubiquitous filth. Everything went straight to his stomach and his head. And then there were the tourists combing the sights of Cairo with their Baedeker travel books, "tightly clutching the red guide," as the author grumbled.
But he stuck it out, traveling from Egypt to Ceylon and Sumatra, as if to retroactively walk in the steps of someone he had only pretended to be in the past: an adventurer and globetrotter. When May returned to his native Saxony, after 16 months and two nervous breakdowns, he vowed not to embark on another adventure anytime soon. America, the other land of adventure he portrayed in his books, would have to wait.
Inventing a world is the essence of being a writer. Hardly any other author pursued this discipline as consistently, even in writing about his own alleged experiences. This week marks the 100^th anniversary of Karl May's death. To this day, in Germany at least, the man from the town of Radebeul in Saxony stands alone in the art of creating a make-believe world.
More than 200 million copies of his books have been printed, a dimension otherwise associated with dictators or the founders of religions -- or J. K. Rowling with her Harry Potter series. Half of the Karl May books printed were sold in German-speaking countries. He is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, and only in Eastern Europe did he achieve a comparable degree of fame. The number of fans who remained loyal to him beyond their adolescent years is large, ranging from Albert Einstein to political activist Karl Liebknecht, Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch and writer Martin Walser.
Enduring Heros
One could call also May the forefather of today's environmentalist Green Party. With his critical view of civilization and naïve enthusiasm for nature, he was a romantic revivalist preacher determined to give pacifism a voice or, like some of his Christian contemporaries, a dangerous corrupter of young minds. The East German government felt uneasy about him, banning his works until the 1980s, when May, a native of the eastern German state of Saxony, was rehabilitated, together with Martin Luther and Frederick the Great. German writer Klaus Mann felt that May was an early Nazi, even describing him as "Hitler's literary mentor," but he is relatively isolated in this assessment.
There is no question that May created heroes that entered the collective mythology. There was the Native American Chief Winnetou, of course, or "The Red Gentleman," as he was once referred to in a subtitle in his famous series of novels. Then there was Winnetou's German friend and blood brother Old Shatterhand. But the indestructible German traveler of the Orient, Kara Ben Nemsi, whose popularity surpassed that of all of May's other characters while the author was still alive. Only after May's death did Chief Winnetou become his most beloved fictional character, partly as a result of the popular films with Pierre Brice and Lex Barker that were shown in theaters starting in 1962.
But his works remain adventure literature, driven by the author's desire to dream his way out of the narrow confines of his real life, a unique mixture of genius and triviality. May introduced his readers to people and landscapes they had known only by name, capitalizing on a yearning for distant places that was just as prevalent in the late 19^th century as it is today.
Still, May didn't stop at dreaming. Through his literature, he transformed his own life. For him, writing was initially a way of finding himself, and later a way of rescuing himself. In this sense, he could be seen as an early advocate of the modern age.
From Con Man Best-Selling Author
His ascent was as spectacular as the material that fueled it. A con man with a criminal record, he wrote his way to success and became a best-selling author. May himself couldn't have come up with a more improbable life story than his climb from the penitentiary to the stars. But that would be a novel for others to write. In reality, May, once he had become respectable, was determined to wipe away all traces of his earlier life. But when it did catch up to him, at the height of his success, it was a scandal that would cost him the tranquility of his twilight years and much of his health.
So many aspects of his life had been bent into shape, obtained by fraudulent means and invented. He was a relatively slight man, only 1.66 meters (5'3") tall, whose fists were about as dangerous as a flyswatter. But when he sat on his black horse, his Bärentöter (Old Shatterhand's rifle, the "bear killer,") in hand, he could take anyone on, even the worst villains. May was a pioneer in the art of playing with identities, a talent reflected in the life story of every major artist today.
The German author and literary critic Hans Wollschläger titled his well-known study about Karl May "Grundriss eines gebrochenen Lebens," or "Sketch of a Broken Life." And indeed, May's early years could hardly have been less auspicious for someone who would later become a major international author. Everything about the squalor into which he was born in 1842 is evocative of a brief, oppressed existence. Nine of his 13 siblings died in infancy.
Weaving was a traditional livelihood in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) town of Ernstthal, where May was born, but the craft was in decline, so that local residents were forced to turn to smuggling and other secondary occupations to make ends meet. If that wasn't enough, people had to eat soup made with weeds and potato peels, the sort of food on which only a "deprived child," as Arno Schmidt, another May enthusiast, described him, could thrive. When his mother received an unexpected inheritance, she used some of the money to pay for midwife training. But her husband had soon spent the rest of the money on his various schemes. Like his son, Heinrich August May was a dreamer.
A Criminal Record
It was clear early on that Karl was talented, and the family pinned its hopes on him. After school, he was forced to spend hours copying text from the encyclopedias, prayer books and stories about nature that his father had gathered from the neighborhood. If young Karl failed to complete his allotted work in time, he could expect a whipping with a birch switch.
The boy was stuffed with facts in a completely unsystematic way, in keeping with his father's confused ideas about education. Looking back on his childhood, May likened it to being "fed and stuffed beyond compare." Nevertheless, a layer of knowledge developed over time that would later prove useful to him.
Prison was his second significant source of education. May was 20 when he stood before a judge for the first time. He had earned a diploma as a teacher's assistant, which promised a meager but steady income. And he did try to earn a living as a teacher, but there was a part of him that refused to accept the limitations of his circumstances.
He seemed to have inherited a certain swagger. When he was a young student, his file described him as "extremely deceitful." May would later describe the dark aspects of his personality that controlled him: "There were all kinds of characters inside me, and they all wanted to be part of my worries, my work, my creativity, my writing and my composing."
What began harmlessly enough soon became more serious. May posed as an eye doctor, "Dr. Heilig," and even wrote prescriptions. According to a police profile, he wore glasses and had a "friendly, suave and mellifluous demeanor." Then he rented a room in the city of Chemnitz as the "seminary teacher Lohse," ordered two muskrat coats from a furrier and disappeared out the back door with his loot.
He was arrested near Leipzig in March 1865, and the verdict was quickly passed down: four years and one month in the workhouse. It was harsh, but not excessive for the time. May had already attracted the attention of the authorities before: a few stolen candles at boarding school and a watch he had neglected to return. They were trifles, but now they were contributing to a picture of a crook and petty criminal who would be better off behind bars.
Serial Novel Success
May was lucky. He ended up in Oberstein Castle near Zwickau, a reform prison that was committed to the idea of rehabilitation, and he was sent to work in the prison library. It was his second stroke of luck. The library contained 4,000 books, including works of fiction with ethical aspirations, as well as historic, scientific and geographic works -- plenty of material for the next few years. May began to fashion a future for himself as a writer. A so-called "C. May Repertoire," now part of his estate, lists 137 titles and sketches for future books. There was something grandiose about all of May's ambitions, a characteristic he shared with Richard Wagner.

He had hardly been released before resuming his lifestyle of deceit and petty crime. In March 1869, he posed as a "police lieutenant" and confiscated alleged counterfeit money from a grocer. In May, he stole billiard balls from a tavern, and in June he stole a horse. When the police arrested him again, he told them his name was Albin Wadenbach, the son of a plantation owner from Martinique.
Some May scholars speculate that the author may have been mentally ill. In a retroactive psychological appraisal performed in 2003, the neurologist and psychiatrist Edgar Bayer concludes that May suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. The typical symptoms, Bayer wrote, were a "grandiose sense of one's own importance," an excessive "craving of admiration" and "fantasies of limitless success."
May was 32 when he was released from the Waldheim Prison, where the authorities described him as "somewhat exhausted but otherwise fit for work." He was a dropout who had already spent half of his life under supervision, a dependent and "very old child," as May biographer Rüdiger Schaper writes. May insisted that he wanted to emigrate to America, but instead he published the first episode of "Aus der Mappe eines Vielgereisten" ("From the Portfolio of a Well-Traveled Man") in a magazine published by Heinrich Gotthold Münchmeyer, the Deutsches Familienblatt, or German Family Magazine.

Part 2: Blurring Fact and Fiction

Münchmeyer was one of the major players in the business of serial novels, which flourished when printing machines became widespread. Each booklet, which was part of a subscription, consisted of about 20 pages. May proved to be a talented supplier, and he was soon hired as full-time writer. He was tremendously prolific as an author of light fiction, churning out more than 20,000 printed pages in the first five years. Someone who writes trash fiction can't afford to have writer's block. Sometimes May lost track of where he was and characters would simply disappear, or the plot lines became so entangled that he had to abandon some of them.
At first, producing fiction on demand was a "gift from heaven" for May, but he would later perceive it as a curse. He moved on to more reputable publishers. In 1892, the Fehsenfeld publishing company in Freiburg published the first volume of "Carl May's Collected Travel Novels," with the characteristic green spine that still reminds many readers today of nights spent blissfully devouring May's books.
May intuitively understood the public's need for authenticity. At first, he merely hinted that his writing wasn't just made up, but that he was describing his own experiences. When one reader inquired as to the author's whereabouts, he received the following response: "He is currently traveling in Russia and intends to make another side trip to Zululand." A few months later, readers learned that May was "laid low because of an old wound that has opened up again."
But the boundaries between the author and his fictional heroes became more blurred with each new story. At some point, Old Shatterhand and Kara Ben Nemsi were no longer merely written extensions of the author's existence.
May outfitted his house as an exotic treasure chamber, buying the furniture from a dealer in Dresden. At a time when the Orient was in vogue, he had no trouble finding what he wanted. Carpets were hung up on the walls and a stuffed lion stood next to his desk.
Living in a Fantasy World
May had a studio photographer in Linz make portrait photos of him, dressed in an Old Shatterhand costume against exotic backdrops. A rifle maker in Dresden made the Silberbüchse (Silver Gun), the Bärentöter(Bear Killer) and the Henrystutzen (Henry Rifle), the most famous weapons from his books, according to his specifications. They were proudly displayed in his house, the "Villa Shatterhand," which the author bought in 1896 with his now handsome royalties. But the guns could not be used because they probably would have exploded.
The fictitious persona came naturally for an impostor like May. Because he believed that he was the person he pretended to be, he became convincing to others. This distinguished him from a liar, who is always aware of his tricks. As with the charades that led to his imprisonment, May became more audacious over time. Once he had internalized his role as an adventurer, there were no longer any limits to his fantasies.
During a reading in Munich, May told the audience that he had "only two major goals left in life, a mission to the Apaches, where I am a chief," and a trip to "my Halef, the supreme sheikh of the Haddadin Arabs." Then, he said, he would present his Henrystutzen to his majesty, the Kaiser, in the hope that it would become the standard weapon in the German army. When May was invited to an audience at the court in Vienna, he had his assistant inquire whether he was to appear as a "cow-boy" or an author. The archduchess chose the latter.
There were irritations here and there, which May deftly managed to explain away. One reader was surprised to see the Silberbüchse on display, because the author, in the third volume of the Winnetou series, had described how he had buried his dead friend "with all of his weapons." It was all perfectly explainable, May replied, saying that he had spotted robbers nearby while visiting the grave and had decided to take the costly memento with him. Someone once knocked on his door and asked for a strand of Winnetou's hair. The visitor was overjoyed when the author sent him on his way with a handful of black horsehair.
Lies Exposed
May was also ahead of his time in knowing what he owed his fans. In his letters, he complained about the endless stream of visitors, and yet he rarely told his servants to say that he wasn't home. He answered his fan mail promptly, and he even wrote a description of himself, for his most tenacious admirers, that would forestall today's celebrity profiles in tabloid newspapers: "I wear a moustache and a mouche, both of which, like the hair on my head, were once very dark blonde. Now my hair is beginning to turn a very dignified but unwanted gray, as I am 54 years old, despite looking 10 years younger. My eyes are grayish-blue. I dance every dance, but only when I must. My favorite dish is roast chicken with rice, and my favorite beverage is skim milk."
May's blustering nature also marked him as a man of his time. In his biography, Rüdiger Schaper places him within the genealogy of Wilhelminism, the overheated final phase in the history of the German Empire characterized by hubris and the craving for status. Kaiser Wilhelm II posed in uniforms that changed daily, the dreams of German global dominance continued to expand and the German navy doubled as a vehicle for fantasy. The extravagant and the illusory led to the trenches of World War I, but in May's case they ultimately led in the opposite direction, toward a mystical pacifism with Winnetou, the Apache chief, serving as a sort of red-skinned Christ figure.
At the age of 56, May had arrived at the height of his fame. By now he allegedly spoke 40 languages, including Malay, Kurdish and Swahili, and understood a great deal more -- "more than 1,200 languages and dialects," as he explained to a delighted audience in Munich. The adoration took on such a dramatic scale that the fire department had to be brought in to disperse his admirers.
But then his lies finally caught up with him, when a strange alliance of the gutter press and Christian zealots that converged against May starting in 1899. In addition to the charges that he had deceived the public about his past, his books came under sharp criticism. The self-appointed investigators identified a "deeply amoral" aspect to his works, especially his early trash novels, and one critic even claimed to have discovered "pornographic works of the worst kind."
Legal Battles
In a panic, the author tried to destroy the evidence of his deception, but his attempts were in vain. He had the plates of the photographs taken by his Austrian studio photographer thrown into the Danube, even though thousands of copies of the compromising negatives were already in circulation. Starting with Volume 14, the "Travel Novels" published by Fehsenfeld included a portrait of the author with the caption "Old Shatterhand (Dr. Karl May) with Winnetou's Silberbüchse."
Everything was exposed and examined, including his fake doctorate (from the University of Rouen) and the criminal record he had kept hidden. A huge media spectacle ensued. But May's books still sold, even after he was exposed and brought down as a charlatan.
The legal battles lasted almost 10 years. There were constantly new accusations and defamatory claims, which May fought in court. Could someone describe him as a "born criminal" with impunity, or did this exceed the rights of the critic? The author sank into depression, his writing dried up and he began to experience a sharp pain in his chest that almost took his breath away. May's legal nightmare ended with the redeeming pronouncement that a literary man was entitled to a different, freer perception of the truth. "I consider Karl May to be a poet," Theodor Ehrecke, the chief justice on the Berlin District Court concluded in 1911. But this final judgment could not restore the author's lost health.
A few years before his death on March 30, 1912, May finally made the trip to America. With his Baedeker in hand, the book he had scoffed at in Cairo, May visited New York, Boston and Niagara Falls. The man who had called the Wild West his home dutifully completed the standard tourist circuit, bought souvenirs for himself and his wife, and wrote postcards to Germany.
A sad highlight of his journey was a visit to the reservation where 400 descendants of the once-powerful Tuscarora people, one of the nations of the Iroquois tribes, lived in teepees. A photo depicts the author standing next to the chief, who is wearing suspenders. May knew perfectly well why he preferred the life of the armchair traveler. He knew that reality could rarely compete with fantasy.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan