Harmonia regulatória e barreiras comerciais

É quase impossível o Reino Unido conseguir ter, simultaneamente, ausência de barreiras comerciais com a UE e autonomia para estabelecer a sua própria regulamentação; mas, paradoxalmente, e existência de barreiras comerciais depende mais da autonomia em matéria regulatória do que propriamente de depois irem existir grandes diferenças concretas entre as regulamentações britanica e "unionista"

Flexibility does not come for free, por Sam Lowe (Center for European Reform):

Unilateral UK alignment with EU rules post-Brexit does have benefits for businesses: it avoids a situation whereby they have to produce to two different sets of rules when selling to both markets. It does not, however, lead to a substantive reduction in regulatory barriers to trade, if the UK has secured the ability to diverge if it wants to. For example, once the UK is outside of the EU’s food hygiene (SPS) regime, British exports of products of animal origin will face new regulatory controls at the EU border in the form of new paperwork and physical inspections. This will occur whether the UK applies the same food hygiene regime in practice or not. Thus, the upfront costs of being outside of the EU’s SPS regime are large. However, if the UK does then decide to diverge, and, for example, accept US production methods, this would not lead to a significantly larger increase in trading friction with the EU. The additional trade costs associated with choosing to diverge are large; the relative costs of then actually diverging are smaller.

To give another example, the moment the UK is outside of the EU’s single market, even if British producers continue to produce to EU standards, they will not be able to place them directly on the European market. Instead they will need an EU-established entity to take on the legal responsibility for ensuring the product complies with EU product rules. This could be the EU-based importer or an EU-based legal representative of the British company. No longer being able to place products directly on the EU market creates an additional cost for British businesses selling to Europe, no matter what the UK’s domestic regime. Whether the UK then decides to introduce its own product standards (as is currently the ambition), or accepts certain US standards, the barriers facing British exporters selling to the EU remain the same.

As "trabalhadoras do sexo" querem ser salvas?

Today’s sex workers, like their Victorian sisters, don’t want ‘saving, por Kate Lister, em The Guardian:

The tactics employed by the society and groups such as Not Buying It are virtually identical. But what has changed in the intervening 77 years is that the sex workers at the centre of these debates are finally being allowed to speak for themselves. And to the surprise of many feminist groups, it turns out that they do not want saving. Nor do they seem particularly grateful to their would-be saviours for campaigning on their behalf to do them out of a job. In fact, they appear to be downright angry about have-a-go rescue missions that involve secretly filming them naked, then outing them to members of local licensing committees.

There’s nothing new about the rescue dynamic. Sympathy for the plight of the “fallen woman”, and a need to save her, was endemic in Victorian newspapers. Hundreds of charitable organisations were established throughout the 19th century to rescue and reform such women.

 Dito isto, não estou certo que não queiram mesmo ser "salvas"; sim, provavelmente não querem que alguém lhes vá fechar o local de trabalho e atirá-las para o desemprego; mas será que muitas não quereriam que alguém lhes arranja-se um emprego noutro ramo de atividade, desde que com uma remuneração similar?

Afinal, as redes sociais e os smartphones NÃO estão a destruir uma geração

Social Media Has Not Destroyed a Generation, por Lydia Denworth, na Scientific American (versão livre no site da autora):

It was the headlines that most upset Amy Orben. In 2017, when she was a graduate student in experimental psychology at the University of Oxford researching how social media influences communication, alarming articles began to appear. Giving a child a smartphone was like giving a kid cocaine, claimed one. Smartphones might have destroyed a generation, said another. Orben didn’t think such extreme statements were warranted. At one point, she stayed up all night reanalyzing data from a paper linking increases in depression and suicide to screen time. “I figured out that tweaks to the data analysis caused major changes to the study results,” Orben says. “The effects were actually tiny.”

Teenagers, screens and social media: a narrative review of reviews and key studies, por Amy Orben em Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology (2020):

In light of growing concerns about an increasingly digital adolescence, the academic field investigating how digital technologies affect adolescents’ psychological well-being is growing rapidly. In the last years, much research has amassed, and this has been summarised in over 80 systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

(...)

When examining the reviews, it becomes evident that the research field is dominated by cross-sectional work that is generally of a low quality standard. While research has highlighted the importance of differentiating between different types of digital technology use many studies do not consider such necessary nuances. These limitations aside, the association between digital technology use, or social media use in particular, and psychological well-being is—on average—negative but very small. Furthermore, the direction of the link between digital technology use and well-being is still unclear: effects have been found to exist in both directions and there has been little work done to rule out potential confounders.

Panicking About Your Kids’ Phones? New Research Says Don’t, por Nathaniel Popper, no New York Times:

A growing number of academics are challenging assumptions about the negative effects of social media and smartphones on children.

Annual Research Review: Adolescent mental health in the digital age: facts, fears, and future directions, por Candice L. Odgers e Michaeline R. Jensen, no Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (Janeiro de 2020):

Adolescents are spending an increasing amount of their time online and connected to each other via digital technologies. Mobile device ownership and social media usage have reached unprecedented levels, and concerns have been raised that this constant connectivity is harming adolescents’ mental health. This review synthesized data from three sources: (a) narrative reviews and meta‐analyses conducted between 2014 and 2019, (b) large‐scale preregistered cohort studies and (c) intensive longitudinal and ecological momentary assessment studies, to summarize what is known about linkages between digital technology usage and adolescent mental health, with a specific focus on depression and anxiety. The review highlights that most research to date has been correlational, focused on adults versus adolescents, and has generated a mix of often conflicting small positive, negative and null associations. The most recent and rigorous large‐scale preregistered studies report small associations between the amount of daily digital technology usage and adolescents’ well‐being that do not offer a way of distinguishing cause from effect and, as estimated, are unlikely to be of clinical or practical significance. Implications for improving future research and for supporting adolescents’ mental health in the digital age are discussed.

A eugenia poderia resultar?

Richard Dawkins pensa que sim, mas alguma vez a eugenia foi capaz de produzir vacas, cavalos, porcos, cães ou rosas "melhores" (em termos de capazes de subsistir por si mesmos) do que as versões originais? Eu tenho quase a certeza que, sem ajuda humana e numa região semi-desértica do Médio Oriente, qualquer gato-da-Núbia teria mais chances de sobrevivência que a minha Irís.

It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) 16 de fevereiro de 2020

Ainda a respeito disto, ver esta série de comentários de Carwil Bjork-James (que levanta outra séria de objeções à viabilidade da eugenia).

Ajuda externa e depósitos em paraísos fiscais

A transferência de ajudas financeiras a países pobres vem frequentemente associada a aumentos de depósitos em paraísos fiscais de dinheiro oriundo desses países.

The World Bank loses another chief economist, em The Economist:

When autocratic, oil-rich nations enjoy a windfall from higher crude prices, where does the money go? One place to look is Swiss bank accounts. Sure enough, an increase in oil prices is followed by a spike in deposits held by these countries in financial havens, according to a 2017 paper by Jorgen Juel Andersen of bi Norwegian Business School, Niels Johannesen of the University of Copenhagen and their co-authors.

When Mr Johannesen presented this result at the World Bank in 2015, the audience included Bob Rijkers, a member of the bank’s research group. The two of them joined forces with Mr Andersen to investigate if something similar happened after another kind of windfall: infusions of aid from foreign donors. Their conclusion was dispiriting. World Bank payouts to 22 aid-dependent countries during 1990-2010 were followed by a jump in their deposits in foreign financial havens. The leaks averaged about 5% of the bank’s aid to these countries.

Venezuela vira 180º

A Venezuela de Maduro parece estar no caminho para se tornar, não apenas mais liberal economicamente do que a Venezuela de Chavez, mas até mais do que a Venezuela pré-chavista.

To Survive, Venezuela’s Leader Gives Up Decades of Control Over Oil, por Anatoly Kurmanaev and Clifford Krauss, no New York Times:

After decades of dominating its oil industry, the Venezuelan government is quietly surrendering control to foreign companies in a desperate bid to keep the economy afloat and hold on to power. (...)

In effect, a stealth privatization is taking place, said Rafael Ramírez, who ran Venezuela’s oil industry for more than a decade before breaking with Mr. Maduro in 2017, in a video address this week.

“Today, Pdvsa doesn’t manage our oil industry, Venezuelans don’t manage it,” said Mr. Ramírez. “In the middle of the chaos generated by the worst economic crisis suffered by the country in its history, Maduro is taking actions to cede, transfer and hand over oil operations to private capital.” (...)

And there are indications that Mr. Maduro’s government wants to take the underhand liberalization further, even rolling back the watershed nationalization of the oil industry that took place in the 1970s.

A group of lawmakers installed at the head of the National Assembly by Mr. Maduro in January — amid an international outcry — has proposed changing energy laws to allow greater private investment.

Entretanto, parece estar a acontecer um pré-golpe de Estado em El Salvador, ou não?

Nayib Bukele's power play, em El Salvador Perspectives:

Salvadorans wake up Sunday morning to a country in the midst of a constitutional crisis.   President Nayib Bukele provoked the crisis Thursday when his Council of Ministers ordered the Legislative Assembly to come into extraordinary session Sunday, February 9, to vote on approving a $109 million international loan to "modernize" security forces.  The Assembly refuses to bow to Bukele dictating when they should meet.

As forças armadas parecem ter ocupado o parlamento há poucos minutos, ou coisa parecida:

Como a UE governa até os países que não pertencem à UE

The parable of the plug, em The Economist:

The eu, no superpower in the traditional sense, pulls this off in three ways. First, the eu’s market is so enormous—roughly a fifth of global gdp at market exchange rates—that producers cannot ignore the continent, no matter how onerous its regulation. Second, in contrast to America where light-touch regulation is the goal, Brussels revels in making its rules exacting. It prides itself on having the toughest regulations on everything from privacy to the environment. So if a company wants to sell the same product everywhere, rather than wasting money on having lots of different versions, it has to meet European standards. These two factors combine to introduce a third way of influencing global regulation, as companies sometimes lobby their domestic governments to raise their regulations to European levels, lest a rival gain an advantage by producing shoddy stuff solely for their home market.

In this way, the Brussels effect has turned the eu into a self-perpetuating policy machine. While more countries and global businesses find themselves sucked into its regulatory tractor beam, one country is trying to escape.

Posts recorrentes no Europe Elects (II)

E continua...

Italy: The national-conservative Fratelli d'Italia (FdI-ECR) reaches a new record high. The latest Ixè poll puts them at 12.4%. #Meloni

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) February 4, 2020

Italy: The centre-right Forza Italia (FI-EPP) reaches a new record low in latest Winpoll poll: 4.8%. #Berlusconi

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) February 6, 2020

Contexto - Posts recorrentes no Europe Elects (post de há 3 meses)

Kirk Douglas (1916-2020)

Uma aposta que penso que fiz sobre as eleições norte-americanas

Eu acho que, há cerca de um ano, fiz esta aposta com o Ricardo Campelo Magalhães d'O Insurgente:

Tema da aposta – que, caso Trump seja o candidato republicano em 2020, vai perder o voto popular

O que é apostado – um almoço num restaurante no Norte Litoral (distritos de Coimbra, Aveiro, Porto, Braga e Viana do Castelo)

Casos especiais:

– Para isto, contam todos os votos em Trump e no candidato apoiado pelo Partido Democrático, incluindo votos em eventuais terceiros partidos que também os apresentem como candidatos (pelo menos em Nova Iorque isso vai acontecer – acontece sempre)

– Caso Trump concorra sem o apoio oficial do Partido Republicano, se ficar à frente no voto popular, Ricardo Campelo Magalhães ganha a aposta; se não ficar à frente, considera-se um empate

– Caso o Partido Democrático ou o Partido Republicano não apresentem um candidato oficial, é um empate

– Se Trump não ficar à frente no voto popular, mas um terceiro candidato à sua direita tiver mais de 10% do votos expressos, considera-se um empate

– Se Trump ficar à frente no voto popular, mas um terceiro candidato à esquerda do Partido Democrático tiver mais de 10% dos votos expressos, considera-se um empate

– Para efeito dos dois pontos anteriores, pode-se combinar previamente, nos quinze dias anteriores à eleição, que terceiros candidatos contam como “à direita de Trump” ou “à esquerda do Partido Democrático”.

– Em caso de eleições cujo resultado seja disputado (e essa disputa afete o resultado final em termos de voto popular) considera-se como válido o resultado oficial, com três exceções:

a) Caso o atual Supremo Tribunal altere, a favor dos Democratas, um resultado, conta o resultado anunciado na noite eleitoral

b) Caso um Supremo Tribunal com uma composição diferente do atual altera, a favor dos Republicanos, um resultado, conta o resultado anunciado na noite eleitoral

c) Caso o resultado de uma votação seja anulado por um órgão que não um tribunal, conta o resultado anunciado na noite eleitoral

Os pontos a) e b) devem ser interpretados no sentido de “altere face aos resultados iniciais” (isto é, se um tribunal em primeira instância alterar os resultados iniciais e no recurso o supremo tribunal confirmar a alteração, como como o Supremo ter alterado o resultado).

Alguns cenários parecem alucinados (nomeadamente aquela alínea c), mas eu atribuo uma probabilidade não-nula a uma crise institucional nos EUA, e aí quase tudo é possível.

Não ficou muito claro da conversa se, em caso de eu ganhar a aposta, o custo da minha deslocação estaria incluído...

Note-se que o que está a ser apostado é o voto popular, não a eleição (eu estou convencido que Trump vai ser reeleito, mesmo que perca o voto popular).

Poderá se perguntar o que é que o voto popular interessa - mas o que deu origem à eventual aposta foi uma discussão sobre se o alegado radicalismo dos Democratas iria afugentar as pessoas, e para verificar se isso aconteceu ou não o que interessa mais é o voto popular, não detalhes complexos sobre como as regras de eleição do Colégio Eleitoral podem afetar o resultado final (os Republicanos estão em vantagem no CE porque quase todos os estados atribuem todos os seus votos ao vencedor, mesmo que ele ganha por 50,01% contra 49,99%, e como tende a haver mais votantes Democratas nos estados Republicanos do que o oposto, os Democratas desperdiçam mais votos).

Note-se que a conversa não teve seguimento, logo nem sei se chegou a a haver mesmo aposta.

Depois do comércio livre, o quê?

Economists Have No Idea What Replaces Free Trade, por Noah Smith, na Bloomberg:

One of the most interesting sessions I attended at last week’s American Economic Association meeting was a panel titled “Making global markets work for American workers.” The discussion, featuring economists Dani Rodrik, Kimberly Clausing and Josh Bivens, laid out the problems with free trade, the shortcomings of U.S. trade policy during the past few decades and some suggestions for improvement. But although the economists did a great job of critiquing the old free-trade consensus, there was no clear idea of what to replace it with.

Economists still tend to strongly back trade liberalization. But the cozy consensus in favor of removing trade barriers is eroding. The experience of the China shock, in which a sudden wave of import competition devastated the lives of many American manufacturing workers, was a wake-up call.  The bipartisan backlash against trade agreements, which threatened to leave economists in the political wilderness, was another. Economists such as Rodrik and Bivens, who have criticized the free-trade consensus for a long time, are getting heard more, while free-trade defenders such as Clausing are forging more nuanced arguments.

Ainda sobre blogues - a sua por vezes inesperada evolução

Continuando a falar de blogues (nomeadamente aqueles mega-blogues que tinham montes de colaboradores), estes muitas vezes têm evoluções inesperadas; exemplos:

a) O que era a principio o mais "centrista" dos blogues da esquerda radical (ou o mais radical da esquerda moderada?) acabou por se tornar o principal blogue da esquerda mais radical (numa espécie de joint venture entre ultra-trotskistas e comunistas relativamente ortodoxos, tendo tido ainda uns autónomos à mistura; e claro, com permanentes polémicas internas e cisões, na melhor tradição da extrema-esquerda)

b) Aquele que inicialmente me parecia o menos conservador dos principais 3 ou 4 blogues de direita parece-me agora o mais Trump/CHEGA.

EUA: a complicada relação entre milícias e Antifas

O movimento das "milícias" nos EUA parece estar em turbulência sobre colaborar ou não com os antifas (ou com o John Brown Club) na luta contra o controle de armas.

Ler também A Collection Of Antifascist Reflections From The Streets Of Virginia.

A política industrial de Trump

Trump's Surprising Embrace of Industrial Policy to Fight China, por Matt Stoller:

Today I’m going to write about the Trump administration’s surprising rejection of the traditional Republican free market orthodoxy. He is embracing a more traditional American concept for organizing the economy: Industrial policy.

[Uma nota - este post que re-posto aqui é de uma newsletrer/ blogue/??  alojado no Substack, talvez dando razão ao artigo que cito no post anterior]

Um regresso aos blogues?

A return to blogs (finally? sort of?), por Joanne McNeil:

Newsletters seem to have circled around from being the new blogs to being like blogs (but with posts that are emailed to readers). The web interface of any given public Substack is basically that of a blog. You can even set up comments. And there are subscription apps like Stoop that organize newsletters’ content as RSS readers did for blogs. (...)

It’s been long enough now that people look back on blogging fondly, but the next generation of blogs will be shaped around the habits and conventions of today’s internet. Internet users are savvier about things like context collapse and control (or lack thereof) over who gets to view their shared content. Decentralization and privacy are other factors. At this moment, while so much communication takes place backstage, in group chats and on Slack, I’d expect new blogs to step in the same ambiguous territory as newsletters have — a venue for material where not everyone is looking, but privacy is neither airtight nor expected.

Eu um dia sou capaz de escrever mais alguma coisa sobre isto (nomeadamente a respeito do que o João Vasco Gama escreve aqui).

A entrada na universidade deve ser via testes e notas, não via "avalições holísticas"

Going from standardized tests to recommendations will compound inequality in the long-term, por Razib Khan, no Gene Expression:

[T]he tests were not fair. You often needed resources to engage in the study of “classics.” They clearly favored those with privilege. But, they were invariably fairer than other paths to an official position.(...)

In contrast, other paths toward an official position, such as recommendation, tended to be monopolized by those with connections.

The “natural experiment” has happened many times. The plaintiffs in the above case assert that “teacher recommendations” “would provide a fairer way of judging students.” They are either ignorant or being disingenuous. Teachers are human, and there is a fair amount of evidence that they naturally bias toward believing children with polish and who “look the part” are smarter and more competent.

 E, do outro lado do expectro político,The Progressive Case for the SAT, por Freddie Deboer, na Jacobin:

The student who is captain of the sailing team, president of the robotics club, and who spent a summer building houses in the Global South will likely look more “holistically” valuable than a poorer student who has not had the resources to do similar activities. Who is more likely to be a star violin player or to have completed a summer internship at a fancy magazine: a poor student or an affluent one? College essays are more easily improved through coaching than test scores, and teachers at expensive private schools likely feel more pressure to write effusive letters of recommendation than their peers in public schools.

Favoring the “soft” aspects of a college application is straightforwardly beneficial to the more privileged at the expense of the less.

E nesta thread no Twitter, links para mais uma carrada de artigos no mesmo sentido. Ver também o que tenho escrito sobre o assunto no Vias de Facto:Investigador quer que o ensino superior seja ainda mais selectivo e discriminatório e  O acesso ao ensino superior (de novo).

O mal da "meritocracia" está na "-cracia", não no "mérito-"

The Problem Isn't the 'Merit,' It's the 'Ocracy', em The Scholar's Stage:

A pure meritocracy undistorted by existing class cleavages will distort the nation it is inflicted upon. Deciding who rules and who is ruled through a system which selects on a narrow field of virtues inevitably leads to one outcome: an aristocracy of the meritorious few who do not have the experience or the inclination to act in the interests of masses less virtuous than they.

O post é totalmente EUA-cêntrico, mas penso que pode ser generalizado sem grande esforço.

Roger Scruton como snowflake que queria um safe space

European conservatives mourn their intellectual hero, por Cas Mudde(VoxEurop):

Although many obituaries imply that he was fired by his university, Scruton in fact resigned from the University of London’s Birkbeck College on his own initiative, upset by the growing critique of his openly right-wing views.

Hence, Scruton can also be seen as the original right-wing snowflake, who thinks freedom of speech is not so much about the state protecting the right of everyone to say what they want, but about (...) having the right to say dismissive things about others without being criticized for their remarks.

Reino Unido põe na gaveta comércio livre unilateral?

UK to use high tariff threat to raise pressure in trade negotiations (Reuters):

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is mulling to use the threat of high tariffs to raise pressure on the European Union, the United States and other nations to strike trade deals with Britain, The Times newspaper reported on Saturday.

A mim parece-me que a ideia, que a dada altura foi muito falada, do Reino Unido, fora da UE, abolir unilateralmente as tarifas, nunca fez grande sentido - como é que o RU poderia "ter todos as cartas" nas negociações com a UE (como os brexiters diziam) se prometesse logo à partida que, decorressem as negociações como decorressem, as produtos da UE poderiam entrar sem barreiras? E, sobretudo,  a conversa de que a industria automóvel alemã irá pressionar a UE a fazer um acordo com o RU em condições favoráveis a este último parece ter implícito um cenário em que na ausência de um acordo o default fosse ser mais díficil exportar automóveis da Alemanha para o RU.

A classe operária como parteira de democracia

Movimentos de protesto contra regimes autoritários tendem a produzir regimes democráticos (em vez de fracassarem ou mudar um ditador por outro) sobretudo quando têm grande apoio do operariado industrial.

We checked 100 years of protests in 150 countries. Here’s what we learned about the working class and democracy, por Sirianne Dahlum, Carl Henrik Knutsen e Tore Wig, no Monkey Cage (Washington Post):

In a new study, we systematically examine how citizens have sought to promote democracy in about 150 countries. Here’s what we find: Industrial workers have been key agents of democratization and, if anything, are even more important than the urban middle classes. When industrial workers mobilize mass opposition against a dictatorship, democratization is very likely to follow.

Who Revolts? Empirically Revisiting the Social Origins of Democracy, por Sirianne Dahlum, Carl Henrik Knutsen e Tore Wig, em The Journal of Politics, Vol. 81, Nº 4 (Agosto de 2019):

Several prominent accounts suggest that democratic transitions are more likely to take place when opposition to the incumbent regime is led by certain social groups. We further develop the argument that opposition movements dominated by industrial workers or the urban middle classes have both the requisite motivation and capacity to bring about democratization. To systematically test this argument, we collect new data on the social composition of antiregime opposition movements, globally from 1900 to 2006. We find that movements dominated by one of these urban groups more often result in democracy, both when compared to other movements and to situations without organized mass opposition. As expected, the relationship is stronger in urban than rural societies, and in more recent decades. When further differentiating the groups and accounting for plausible alternative explanations, the relationship between industrial worker campaigns and democratization is very robust, whereas the evidence is mixed for middle-class campaigns.

O autoritarismo centrista

O artigo tem por base Bloomberg nos EUA, mas parece-me que o raciocínio também poderá ser aplicado a Macron em França, p.ex..

Michael Bloomberg Has an Anti-Democratic Streak, por Jeet Heer, em The Nation:

The affinity of centrists with authoritarianism makes sense when we consider that people on the extreme ends of the political spectrum are likely to be wary of unchecked state power. They can easily imagine such power being used against them. Centrists like Bloomberg, who are safely ensconced in mainstream society and hold positions of high social status, are more likely to take an uncritical view of trampling on democratic norms, since they have the comfort of knowing that the authorities are unlikely to go after reputable figures.

Writing in The New York Times, political researcher David Adler cited comparative polling showing that “across Europe and North America, centrists are the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its institutions and the most supportive of authoritarianism.” While it’s become commonplace to locate the authoritarian threat as a product of extremism, Adler found “evidence of substantial support for a ‘strong leader’ who ignores his country’s legislature, particularly among centrists. In the United States, centrists’ support for a strongman-type leader far surpasses that of the right and the left.”

Efeitos (e vantagens) da democracia direta

 Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia [PDF], por Benjamin A. Olken, na American Political Science Review,Vol. 104, No. 2, (Maio de 2010):

This  article  presents  an  experiment  in  which  49  Indonesian  villages  were  randomly  assigned to   choose   development   projects   through   either   representative-based   meetings   or   direct election-based plebiscites. Plebiscites resulted in dramatically higher satisfaction among villagers, increased knowledge about the project, greater perceived benefits, and higher reported willingness to contribute. Changing the political mechanism had much smaller effects on the actual projects selected, with some evidence that plebiscites resulted in projects chosen by women being located in poorer areas. The results suggest that direct participation in political decision making can substantially increase satisfaction and legitimacy.

Direct Democracy and Land Use Policy: Exchanging Public Goods for Development Rights [PDF], por Elisabeth R. Gerber and Justin H. Phillips, em Urban Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, (Fev., 2004):

This study analyses the effects of one type of direct democracy—voter requirements for new development—on municipal growth. Analysing data from a sample of California communities, we consider the impact of voter requirements on the land use process and outcomes. We find that—in general—voter requirements fail to stop new development; property owners and developers can and do adapt to the constraints created by these direct democracy institutions. We also find, however, that voter requirements change the land use process in important ways. Specifically, they change the way developers interact with interest groups in the community and force developers to compensate current residents for enduring some of the negative aspects of growth.

Legislative Response to the Threat of Popular Initiative [link de acesso restrito], por Elisabeth Gerber, no American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Fev., 1996):

A spatial model of the policy process is used to identify conditions under which the threat of initiatives constrains legislative behavior. Legislators in states that allow initiatives are expected to pass laws that more closely reflect their state's median voter's preference than legislators in states that do not allow initiatives.

Direct Democracy: New Approaches to Old Questions [link de acesso restrito], por Arthur Lupia and John G. Matsusaka, na Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 7 (Junho de 2004):

We organize the discussion around four “old” questions that have long been at the heart of the direct democracy debate: Are voters competent? What role does money play? How does direct democracy affect policy? Does direct democracy benefit the many or the few? We find that recent breakthroughs in theory and empirical analysis paint a comparatively positive picture of the initiative and referendum. For example, voters are more competent, and the relationship between money and power in direct democracy is less nefarious, than many observers allege. More new studies show that the mere presence of direct democracy induces sitting legislatures to govern more effectively.

 [Via Shom Mazumder]

A morte do liberalismo (inglês?)

Como a direita liberal parece estar a desaparecer (pelo menos no mundo anglo-saxónico).

The Strange Death of Libertarian England, por Chris Dillow (suponho que em referência a este livro de 1935):

It wasn’t just the Labour party that took a beating in last month’s general election. So too, but much less remarked, did right-libertarianism.

The Tories won on policies that repudiated many of their professed beliefs: ahigher minimum wage; increased public spending; and the manpower planning that is a points-based immigration policy. And the manifesto (pdf) promise to “ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government” should also alarm libertarians. John Harris quotes an anonymous minister as saying that the libertarianism of Britannia Unchained is “all off the agenda” and that “some of the things we’ve celebrated have led us astray.”

Este post de Tyler Cowen, What libertarianism has become and will become — State Capacity Libertarianism, parece-me apontar no mesmo caminho, ainda que em tom entusiástico: o que ele me parece estar a defender é um liberalismo que aceita ou até defende qualquer intervenção do Estado desde que seja para beneficiar a economia e as empresas (só aquelas intervenções puramente redistributivas parecem ficar de fora); a passagem em que Cowen escreve que "A good strong state should see the maintenance and extension of capitalism as one of its primary duties, in many cases its #1 duty" parece-me o protótipo do "pro-business, not pro-market" (diga-se que isto parece-me muito a definição de "neoliberalismo" que o "ladrão de bicicletas" Alexandre Abreu dava há uns anos - afinal ele até teria alguma razão; já Simon Cook - vereador conservador numa pequena localidade inglesa - considerou o "state-capacity libertarianism" como os liberais adultos a tornarem-se conservadores mas sem puderem usar a palavra "conservador"; por outro lado, um dos comentadores ao artigo de Cowen respondeu "You've basically invented fascism").

Localizações de instituições públicas

Há muito que sou da opinião que a sede do Centro Hospitalar e Universitário do Algarve deveria ficar em Paderne (mesmo a meio caminho entre Portimão e Faro).

Create your own government policy distraction by moving the last public institution you visited to the provincial hometown of one of your grandparents.

For example, I am moving the V&A to Derry

— James Shaddock (@jpshaddock) 20 de janeiro de 2020

(o twitt acima é, suponho, a respeito da transferência da Câmara dos Lordes para York)

Reservas à "Teoria Monetária Moderna"

Uma crítica pela esquerda à TMM e também à "garantia universal de emprego".

Modern Monetary Theory Isn’t Helping, por Doug Henwood, na Jacobin:

Sometimes it’s really hard to figure out just what MMTers believe. Are they just saying, in very roundabout ways, that it’s okay for the federal government to run a small deficit in normal times and occasional big ones in crises like 2008? That would be hard for anyone but the most wicked austerity hound to disagree with.

Or is it that we shouldn’t worry about deficits at all?

Antifa contra o "gun control"

Antifa Seven Hills issued a lengthy statement after Vice News reported the group would be attending a rally to protest pending gun control legislation in front of the Virginia Capital in Richmond on January 20.

Vice reported that while conservative gun-rights activists and antifa appear to be "unlikely bedfellows," Antifa Seven Hills "believe they've got more in common with working-class white Virginians, regardless of their political bent" than many moderate Democrats.

According to Vice, the group opposes the new gun bills introduced by Democrats late last year because those kinds of laws are used "primarily to criminalize poor people, minorities and leftists."

The outlet said the "shared skepticism" of political moderates and authorities is the reason why Antifa Seven Hills views the rally as a chance to "extend an olive branch to other gun owners—at least those who don't align with the far-right militias or white supremacists who are also expected to show up to the event."

(Newsweek)

Atenção que "Antifa" não é uma organização, mas um nome genético atribuído a (ou usado por) vários grupos, largamente sem nada comparável a um comando central (ou seja, este artigo refere-se apenas a um grupo "antifa", não ao conjunto do movimento)

Islamismo e textualismo

Islamic Wine-Goblets and Christian Adultery, por Roderick T. Long:

Throughout Islamic history, there have been traditions that regarded some source of moral and spiritual knowledge other than the Qur’an and Hadith (e.g., philosophical reason, personal mystical inspiration, communal customs, etc.) as superior in authority to the Qur’an and Hadith, and on this basis happily engaged in and celebrated activities forbidden by the literal words of Qur’an and Hadith, such as wine-drinking (and wine-poems, and wine-cups inscribed with Qur’anic verses), figurative painting, a “positive valorization of idol-worship,” the “calling of God by the names of Hindu deities,” etc., etc. (...)

A final explanation offered by Ahmed appeals to an unfortunate accident of geography: “the rise in a relatively unimportant part of northern Arabia in the eighteenth century of Wahhābism,” a particularly rigid legalist-textualist form of Islam, “followed by the accession to power in the Arabian peninsula by the adherents of this movement in the early twentieth century, followed in turn by the discovery of copious quantities of the most strategically critical and financially lucrative modern commodity in the Arabian peninsula, the funds from which have entrenched the power of the Saʿūdī Wahhābī state and supported the propagation of [its] creed worldwide.”

A situação no Haiti seria considerada um "golpe de Estado" em grande parte do mundo

Exclusive: Haiti's Moise plans to use new powers to overhaul constitution (Reuters):

Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise, who began ruling by decree this week, wants to use his new power to overhaul the constitution in an attempt to break a “decades-long cycle of political crises,” a planned presidential statement seen by Reuters shows.

Isto parece ser tudo legal, mas quer a ideia da legislatura acabar sem novas eleições e a partir daí o presidente governar por decreto, quer sobretudo a do presidente aproveitar esses poderes adicionais para rever a Constituição parecem muito peculiares.

Os sonhos mudam em regimes autoritários?

How Dreams Change Under Authoritarianism, por Mireille Juchau, na New Yorker:

Not long after Hitler came to power, in 1933, a thirty-year-old woman in Berlin had a series of uncanny dreams. In one, her neighborhood had been stripped of its usual signs, which were replaced with posters that listed twenty verboten words; the first was “Lord” and the last was “I.” In another, the woman found herself surrounded by workers, including a milkman, a gasman, a newsagent, and a plumber. She felt calm, until she spied among them a chimney sweep. (In her family, the German word for “chimney sweep” was code for the S.S., a nod to the trade’s blackened clothing.) The men brandished their bills and performed a Nazi salute. Then they chanted, “Your guilt cannot be doubted.”

These are two of about seventy-five dreams collected in “The Third Reich of Dreams,” a strange, enthralling book by the writer Charlotte Beradt. Neither scientific study nor psychoanalytic text, “The Third Reich of Dreams” is a collective diary, a witness account hauled out of a nation’s shadows and into forensic light. The book was released, in Germany, in 1966; an English translation, by Adriane Gottwald, was published two years later but has since fallen out of print. (Despite ongoing interest from publishers, no one has been able to find Beradt’s heir, who holds the rights.) But the book deserves revisiting, not just because we see echoes today of the populism, racism, and taste for surveillance that were part of Beradt’s time but because there’s nothing else like it in the literature of the Holocaust. “These dreams—these diaries of the night—were conceived independently of their authors’ conscious will,” Beradt writes. “They were, so to speak, dictated to them by dictatorship.”

Imigração para o Canadá

Unskilled foreigners seek move to Canada (The Beaverton):

A British and American couple, both unemployed, are seeking to emigrate to Canada despite having no real skills to offer the country, early reports indicate.

British and American media have said that an American actor and her husband have the intention of living in the country on a semi-permanent or permanent basis. 

Sobre o acordo comercial EUA-China

Uma sucessão de posts de Brad Setser no Twitter.

Considerações sobre o controle das rendas

Considerations on Rent Control, por J. W. Mason:

Among economists, rent regulation seems be in similar situation as the minimum wage was 20 years ago. At that time, most economists  took it for granted that raising the minimum wage would reduce employment. Textbooks said that it was simple supply and demand — if you raise the price of something, people will buy less of it. But as more state and local governments raised minimum wages, it turned out to be very hard to find any negative effect on employment. This was confirmed by more and more careful empirical studies. Today, it is clear that minimum wages do not reduce employment. And as economists have worked to understand why not, this has improved our theories of the labor market.

Rent regulation may be going through a similar evolution today.

A ala libertária dos Trabalhistas britânicos

Black Rose - The Labour Party Libertarian Socialists:

This is why we are launching Black Rose: the libertarian socialist caucus of the Labour Party. Black Rose will be a radically democratic, decentralised organisation for members of the party who identify as intersectional libertarian socialists: people who, like all other socialists (and as stated by our party’s old Clause IV), believe in the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, but who also recognize that the fullest realisation of this core socialist principle can only occur in a system where the working class have direct power over their lives. We believe in the transfer of power from the state to the ordinary civilian, through principles of radical democracy, decentralisation, liberation and anti-capitalism.

We also recognise intersectionality: the recognition of the multitude of ways in which individuals and communities are affected by a multiplicity of oppressive structures and coercive power relations. These include not just class, but also racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, ableism, colonialism, just to name a few.

An intersectional approach requires the recognition of these oppressive structures and relations in order to understand people's and communities' social, political and economic positions in order to work towards solutions to emancipating them. For us, intersectionality, libertarianism, and socialism go hand-in-hand and guide us in all our political activities.

Within the party, we will advocate for changes to our current policy platform. We want the party to oppose the war on drugs that has left communities in ruin, and end it in government, decriminalising drugs alongside policies based on a public health approach to addiction. The party must also oppose state surveillance and excess police powers, such as stop-and-search.

To this end, we aim to bring motions to the next party Conference to ensure these stances are adopted and that Labour politicians offer a real alternative to the authoritarian status quo.

In terms of policy, we welcome the moves made by John McDonnell and his team towards a model of public ownership that puts workers and communities in charge of services, and not the state as nationalisation previously has done. The party must continue in this vein, studying all parts of our policy platform and revising policies where needed to put as much economic and political power into the hands of the civilian as possible. Black Rose will be lobbying for this.

We also aim to be much more than a cog in an electoral machine; we want to be an organisation that puts our principles into practice, engaging with and supporting the wider left outside the party. We must become organisers out in the real world, organising in our workplaces through trade unions and in our communities through renters’ unions. We also need to be supporting smaller, member-led unions doing great work on the ground such as IWW, IWGB, and UVW. These unions, as well as plenty of other worthwhile extra-Parliamentary struggles, often lack support from Labour members, mostly due to a lack of awareness of their work. This is something that has to change.

Our organisation will be built from the ground up with other libertarian socialist members, ensuring that our principles are embedded into our very organisational structures. Although we draw inspiration from our comrades in the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America, our structures will only be the result of a multitude of voices of the Labour Party coming together to create a true model for radical democracy.

Os conselhos operários na Revolução Iraniana

Do seu aparecimento em 1978/79 à sua repressão pelo regime de Khomeini.

The Iranian Revolution at the Twilight of the Workers' Council, por Arya Zahedi, no Commune (via Libcom):

On February 9, 1979, after a group of pro-Khomeini technicians at the main air base outside Tehran mutinied, pro-shah elite units, called “Immortals,” attacked the base. The rifts in the state shone bright, a moment of opportunity had arrived. Word spread throughout the city. Barricades went up. Far-left guerilla groups rushed into the city to confront the shock troops. Police stations and military barracks were overrun. An arms factory was raided and over fifty thousand weapons expropriated and distributed to the insurgents. Prisons were blown open. Government buildings occupied. On February 11, the TV and radio stations declared the victory of the revolution.

At the center of the mobilization were the working class committees — shoras — which had evolved out of the strike committees of November the previous year. In the context of the insurrection, these committees flourished. The shoras developed out of the real needs of the workers after the collapse of the shah’s regime. Many owners and managers, particularly of state-owned firms close to the regime, had fled. The workers took over the factories and ran them through their councils. This holiday of workers’ self-organization was brief, however, as Khomeini and forces within the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) that had formed around him immediately began to weaken the power of the shoras as an independent base of working class action.

Jeanine Áñez, presidente-ditadora?

Constitucionalista afirma que Presidenta no necesita a la ALP para gobernar después del 22 de enero (Agencia Boliviana de Información):

Sucre, 12 ene (ABI).- El abogado constitucionalista, Marco Baldivieso, sostuvo el domingo que la presidenta Jeanine Áñez no necesita a la Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional para gobernar después del 22 de enero

Combate ao absentismo escolar na China

"Schools in China's Guizhou and Guangxi have introduced "smart uniforms" embedded with GPS trackers and facial recognition tech to stop students from skipping class and to assure parents of their children's attendance and safety."

Criptomoedas e o padrão-sardinha

Isto faz-me lembrar que por volta de 1983 as conservas de sardinha transformaram-se numa espécie de moeda nalguns subúrbios de Portimão - as fábricas de conserva (que pouco depois acabariam por fechar) começaram à pagar às operárias em latas de conserva em vez de em escudos.

Crypto And Sardines Combine To Create An Investment Opportunit, por Frances Coppola:

Hot on the heels of the ill-fated Bananacoin (remember that?) comes another token linked to the price of a foodstuff. Yesterday, the crypto world was rocked by the announcement of an Initial Sardine Coin Offering. Specifically, a Vintage 2020 Sardine Coin, known as SARD2020. (...)

But issuing a stablecoin pegged to vintage sardines is not as silly as it sounds. It is a lot more credible than pegging a cryptocurrency to bananas, though this is a pretty low bar. Sardines are not only delicious, they can be valuable. Canned sardines that have been aged under controlled conditions are prized for their “mellower flavor, which after years of turning becomes more subtle and nuanced, with a soft, plump texture that probably comes from the tiny bones in the fish breaking down over time.” Because of this, they command a premium price. In 2013, one brave individual bought a 32-year-old can of sardines for $53: the original price of the can was probably less than a dollar.

Ver também: O padrão-carapau

64% dos trabalhadores preferiam ser dirigidos por um robot do que pelo seu gestor humano

 E na China e na Índia chega aos 90%.

64% workers globally would trust a robot manager more than their human boss, por Khatarine Roomey (ThePrint):

But a new survey shows some workers have much friendlier views toward AI. Oracle and Future Workplace found 82% of workers believe robot managers are better at certain tasks – such as maintaining work schedules and providing unbiased information – than their human counterparts.

And almost two-thirds (64%) of workers worldwide say they would trust a robot more than their human manager. In China and India, that figure rises to almost 90%.

Os imigrantes que enfrentam a Amazon

Meet the Immigrants Who Took On Amazon (Wired):

How a group of Somalis became leaders in the fight to change a tech behemoth.

"It's Not Working: Steeltown USA"

Documentário norte-americano de 1980 sobre soluções para empresas que fecharam, nomeadamente a sua compra por cooperativas organizadas pelos seus trabalhadores.



[Via Libcom]

Possíve confusão na próxima noite eleitoral nos EUA?

An Inconclusive 2020 Election Night Is Already Looming, por Jonathan Bernstein (Bloomberg):

We know it’s going to happen. In several states where voting by mail is either the only or a major form of casting ballots, and where those ballots take time to collect, the Election Day counts are — not can be, but are — highly misleading. We know that millions of votes will be counted after election night. And we know that those votes will tilt toward Democrats.

Therefore, we know that the count on election night will be better for Republicans than the eventual total count. One of the states involved, Arizona, is likely to be an important swing state in 2020, so it’s possible that election night will end with Arizona seemingly giving Republicans the presidency, only to flip to the Democrats a few days later. After all, in the 2018 Arizona Senate contest, Republican Martha McSally led after Election Day, but Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won when all the ballots were counted and it wasn’t all that close; Sinema prevailed by 2.4 percentage points, or 55,900 votes.

Manzanar - parte 2?

BREAKING: US CUSTOMS & BORDER PROTECTION NATIONALLY HAVE BEEN ORDERED TO DETAIN & "REPORT" ALL IRANIANS ENTERING THE COUNTRY DEEMED POTENTIALLY SUSPICIOUS OR "ADVERSARIAL" REGARDLESS OF CITIZENSHIP STATUS. 

[Para quem não perceba o título]

Como o latifúndio reduz o crescimento económico

Pelo menos parece ter sido o caso nos EUA, onde, na colonização do Oeste, as terras foram na maior parte dos sítios entregues (pelos Homstead Acts) a quintas familiares, mas nalguns sítios foram entregues a grandes empresas (nomedamente ferroviárias). Até hoje, os sítios onde as terras foram entregue a grandes empresas continuam menos ricos que os outros,

Land Concentration and Long-Run Development: Evidence from the Frontier United States [PDF], por Cory Smith (Massachusetts Institute of Technology):

Worldwide, land ownership is concentrated in the hands of relatively few people. This paper studies the impacts of land concentration on the long-run development of communities founded in the frontier United States using quasi-random variation in land allocation policies. I collect a large database of modern property tax valuations and show that land concentration had persistent effects over a span of 150 years, lowering investment by 23%, overall property value by 4.4%, and population by 8%. I argue that landlords’ use of sharecropping raised the costs of investment, a static inefficiency that persisted due to transaction costs in land markets. I find little evidence for other explanations, including elite capture of political systems. I use my empirical estimates to evaluate counterfactual policies, applying recent advances in combinatorial optimization to show that an optimal property rights allocation would have increased my sample’s agricultural land values by $28 billion (4.8%) in 2017.

 Uma sequencia no Twitter onde o autor explica o artigo.

Eu há uns 11 anos comecei a escrever um post (na sequência deste do Carlos Novais) em que iria abordar a questão das ineficiências que podem ser provocadas pela grande propriedade - deve estar nos rascunhos, pelo que pode ser que ainda venha a ver a luz do dia.

O candidato favorito dos soldados norte-americanos?

Não é quem eu estava à espera.

Pelo menos em termos de donativos (fonte: Which Democratic Candidates Are National Security Employees Opening Their Wallets for?, na Foreign Policy).

Já agora, e pela mesma fonte,  o candidato favorito do deep state parece ser Pete Buttigieg.

Achei a diferença!

A Helena Matos pede no Blasfémias para se "descubra as diferenças" entre a morte (ou as reações à morte) de Bin Laden e de Qasem Soleimani.

Efeitos de um imposto sobre a riqueza nos investimentos arriscados

Does a wealth tax discourage risky investments?, por Joshua Gans (Digitopoly):

The other day I wrote about the potential impact of a wealth tax. In so doing, I wrote: “we can all agree that the wealth tax likely deters risk-free saving.” This was a paraphrase of a claim made by Larry Summers who then went on to say that it was unknown whether a wealth tax would encourage or discourage risky investment. But I did wonder what the impact of a wealth tax would be on various types of investments and in examining this I realized that the claim was incorrect. In fact, a wealth tax is unlikely to have any change on the risk profile of investments in contrast to an income (or even consumption tax) that will. I discovered later that this was a known result being contained in a paper from Joe Stiglitz (QJE, 1969).

Centralização, descentralização e anarco-sindicalismo

In Defense of A/S: Centralism and Decentralism, por Piper Tompkins/Ivysyn (via Libcom):

This is the third in a series of posts here on the Antisystemic blog which defend Anarcho-syndicalism from various criticisms. This edition of "In Defense of A/S" will deal with the issue of "centralism". Anarcho-syndicalism and Anarchism more broadly are often criticized for supposedly fetishizing decentralization. The Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin, in his critique of Anarchism, states that Anarchists advocate small scale market economies rather than working class control of society at large.1 I have personally encountered criticisms of Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism which contend that there can not be a rationally planned system of production without top down central planning which Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism are presumed to be allergic to.

Milícias anti-governo e milícias anti-imigração nos EUA

Militias, Patriots, and Border Vigilantes in the Age of Trump, por Jesse Walker (Reason):

If you remember the days when George W. Bush was president, that story may have given you a gust of déjà vu. Several civilian border patrols cropped up back then too, most famously the Minutemen. These weren't the first paramilitary groups to go hunting for unauthorized border crossers—that had been happening for decades—but the Bush years were a boom time for the practice.

That, in turn, was part of a larger pattern. When Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office, the social space that would later be filled by the immigrant-fearing Minuteman movement was filled instead by the government-fearing militia movement. When Barack Obama became president, the Minutemen fell into factionalism and '90s-style militias began to grow again. Donald Trump's reign has seen a new surge of border patrols by nativist vigilantes. What do these shifts mean?

 The easy reply is that this is just a matter of which party occupies the White House: Camo-clad right-wing populists are more likely to be afraid of a Democratic president than a Republican one, so they turn their guns outward rather than upward when the GOP is in power.

There is truth to that, but it doesn't explain everything.

Os seres humanos são naturalmente monogamicos?

Are We Monogamous? A Review of the Evolution of Pair-Bonding in Humans and Its Contemporary Variation Cross-Culturally, por Ryan Schacht e L. Kramer (Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution), via Razib Khan:

Despite a long history of study, consensus on a human-typical mating system remains elusive. While a simple classification would be useful for cross-species comparisons, monogamous, polyandrous, and polygynous marriage systems exist across contemporary human societies. Moreover, sexual relationships occur outside of or in tandem with marriage, resulting in most societies exhibiting multiple kinds of marriage and mating relationships. Further complicating a straightforward classification of mating system are the multiple possible interpretations of biological traits typical of humans used to indicate ancestral mating patterns. While challenging to characterize, our review of the literature offers several key insights. 1) Although polygyny is socially sanctioned in most societies, monogamy is the dominant marriage-type within any one group cross-culturally. 2) Sex outside of marriage occurs across societies, yet human extra pair paternity rates are relatively low when compared to those of socially monogamous birds and mammals. 3) Though the timing of the evolution of certain anatomical characteristics is open to debate, human levels of sexual dimorphism and relative testis size point to a diverging history of sexual selection from our great ape relatives. Thus, we conclude that while there are many ethnographic examples of variation across human societies in terms of marriage patterns, extramarital affairs, the stability of relationships, and the ways in which fathers invest, the pair-bond is a ubiquitous feature of human mating relationships. This may be expressed through polygyny and/or polyandry but is most commonly observed in the form of serial monogamy.

Como os indios Creek da América do Norte foram obrigados a ter um governo

 The Creek Nation and the Culture of Consent, por Amy Sturgis (Reason):

Under threat from the United States, Creek people replaced consent with coercion. Then they lost everything.

In the decades after the United States achieved independence, its representatives compelled the Creek people of present-day Georgia, Alabama, and Florida to reorder their social system into a coercive state. This, officials said, would make the Creeks "good neighbors" to U.S. citizens, and especially to the country's problem child, the unruly state of Georgia. The U.S. then proved to be a poor neighbor itself, systematically humiliating and undermining the very Creek government it had demanded, effectively pushing the Native Americans into civil war, and ultimately abandoning all pretense of respecting the sovereignty of—or its treaties with—the Creek Nation.

As alterações à "constituição" britânica

Boris Johnson is planning radical changes to the UK constitution – here are the ones you need to know about, por Stephen Clear (The Conversation):

With a very large majority in parliament, Boris Johnson is planning radical changes to the UK constitution. His party claims that far reaching reforms are needed because of a “destabilising and potentially extremely damaging rift between politicians and the people” under the last parliament. The issue at the centre of this “damaging rift”, however, is whether the proposals for constitutional change are a democratic necessity or a cynical attempt by the Conservative government to bolster its power.

These are the most important changes the Conservative government is proposing. (...)

The Conservatives have been clear about their opposition to holding a second independence referendum in Scotland. (...)

It is likely that Johnson will try to meet this challenge by devolving more powers to the regions and offering them more money. (...)

The Conservative government has detailed plans for changing the way the UK elects its members of parliament, starting with redrawing constituency boundaries to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600. (...)

But it has been noted that moving boundaries could have a greater negative impact on Labour and the Scottish National Party than the Conservatives – which perhaps tells us why the plan features so highly on Johnson’s agenda. (...)

The Fixed-Term Parliaments Act is on the chopping block, too. This act stipulates that general elections must be called every five years, with early elections held only in exceptional circumstances. (...)

But there is also concern that repealing the act hands the prime minister discretion to decide when to call an election – and, in the most extreme interpretation, could mean that this government’s term lasts a decade. (...)

The Conservatives have long talked of repealing the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a “British” bill of rights. (...)

The UK is also about to see its justice system “[updated]” – including judicial review, the process through which people can challenge decisions made by public bodies. This process was famously used in two high-profile Brexit cases in which the Supreme Court ruled against the government.

Some therefore question whether the prime minister’s displeasure with these rulings is the real motivation for “updating” the justice system. The Conservative manifesto says the idea is to ensure the process is not being abused “to conduct politics by another means”. 

A "economia do lado da oferta" como "noble lie"

Ainda a respeito disto, duas (bem, uma e meia) teorias minhas sobre a "economia do lado da oferta": -

- suspeito que a economia do lado da oferta na prática não foi mais do que uma maneira de fazer keynesianismo disfarçado (como já escrevi aqui)

- também me ocorre que pode ter havido uma cadeia de "noble lies" (e recorde-se que a economia do lado da oferta foi inicialmente divulgada nas revistas dirigidas pelo neoconservador Irving Kristol, que era também um discipulo de Leo Strauss) nisso tudo, com políticos a apresentarem aos eleitores a economia do lado da oferta mas eles próprios a acreditarem no starve the beast, e por detrás deles intelectuais a apresentarem aos políticos a economia do lado da oferta ou a starve the beast mas eles próprios a acreditarem no keynesianismo (pensando algo como "o keynesianismo até pode estar largamente correto, mas isso deve ficar entre nós, os intelectuais que buscam o conhecimento pelo conhecimento; para os homens e mulheres comuns, que sucumbem facilmente aos baixos prazeres, a ideia que os orçamentos devem estar equilibrados - mesmo que não esteja totalmente certa - é útil como forma de lhes incutir auto-disciplina; sem isso, vão votar por cada vez mais despesas e mesmo na sua vida privada vão se comportar como se não fosse necessário sacrificar o curto-prazo ao longo-prazo e mergulhar numa vida de drogas, sexo casual e jogo. Assim, na nossa condição de sábios por detrás do trono, deveremos aconselhar os governantes a porem em prática políticas keynesianas quando tal for necessário, mas sem nunca deixarmos ninguém perceber que é isso que estamos a fazer").

Uma coisa parece ser verdade - Kristol não levava muito a sério a teoria de que os cortes de impostos se pagavam a si mesmos, ao contrário do que é normalmente associado à teoria do lado da oferta; a posição dele parecia mais de achar que, mesmo que desse origem a deficits, não haveria grande problema desde que criassem crescimento económico (claro que essa posição é tão compatível com o keynesianismo como com uma versão moderada da economia do lado da oferta)

Politicas orçamentais ao longo do espectro político

Este post no Facebook de Alexandre Mota lembra-me de algo que tenho pensado há algum tempo - é que há 3 tipos possíveis de políticas orçamentais que tendem a ser indistintamente chamadas "política de direita":

a) Qualquer política que reduza a despesa pública, mesmo que aumente os impostos

b) Qualquer política que reduza os impostos, mesmo que não reduza ou até aumente a despesa

c) Uma política de redução simultânea da despesa e dos impostos

Compare-se, p.ex, Reagan (com uma política largamente do tipo b) com Thatcher (com uma política largamente do tipo a), ou talvez nem isso), que muitas vezes até são apresentados como se fossem quase gémeos ideológicos.

Isto que vou escrever agora talvez já seja um bocado arrevejado, mas até me parece que poderemos associar essas diferentes politicas orçamentais com diferentes correntes especificas:

- A política a), cortar primordialmente na despesa, penso que é mais típica dos democratas-cristãos e conservadores europeus, frequentemente com grandes evocações de "contas em ordem", "não podemos gastar mais do que temos" ou até "temos que fazer como uma boa dona-de-casa.."

- A política b), cortar primordialmente nos impostos, sem grandes preocupações com a desesa, parece-me mais típica do conservadorismo norte-americano, por um lado, e da direita "populista", por outro, com argumentos diversos - umas vezes abertamente keynesianos, outras vezes recorrendo à supply side economics, outros com argumentos starve the beast;

 - A política c), cortar nas despesas e nos impostos, parece-me mais típica dos liberais.

Diga-se que as políticas a) e b) têm, perante a c), a vantagem de serem vendáveis a um eleitorado em que a maior parte das pessoas recebe mais em subsídios ou sob a forma de serviços públicos do que paga de impostos - e provavelmente muitas pessoas que sonham com c) acham que a melhor maneira de o atingir é mesmo alternar b) com a) em vez de dizer abertamente que se quer c) - a tal estratégia de starve the beast.


E à esquerda, não haverá também várias políticas orçamentais? Bem, à partida eu conseguiria imaginar quase o simétrico:

a1) Aumentar a despesa pública sem aumentar os impostos

b1) Aumentar os impostos sem aumentar a despesa

c1) Aumentar a despesa e os impostos

Mas o problema é que aqui a margem é mais estreita - por norma basta um governo baixar os impostos ou a despesa para ser considerado "política de direita" (a menos que se trate de baixar impostos específicos - como impostos regressivos sobre o consumo - ou despesas específicas - como as militares - que sejam particularmente impopulares à esquerda), logo seria necessário manter os impostos milimetricamente idênticos para fazer a política a1 (se os subisse um pouco estaria a fazer a política de esquerda c1), e se os descesse um pouco estar a fazer a política de direita b) ou a despesa milimetricamente idêntica para fazer a política b1 (mutatis mutandis).

Assim diria que a diferenças entre políticas orçamentais de esquerda acabam por se resumir a

d) aumentar mais os impostos que as despesas, reduzindo o deficit

e) aumentar mais as despesas que os impostos, aumentando o deficit

Mas aqui não sei se será fácil associar as duas políticas a correntes definidas - a esquerda mais radical (nomeadamente a mais entusiasmada pela "Teoria Monetária Moderna") tende a preferir a política e) e a moderada a d), mas não me parece que seja uma regra muito rígida; e, por outro lado, isto leva-me a duvidar da minha tentativa de associar os vários tipos de políticas orçamentais de direita a ideologias específicas - afinal, se na área que eu conheço melhor não consigo fazer essa associação, é duvidoso que a consiga fazer com precisão para a área que eu conheço pior.

Outros posts que acho que podem ter alguma relação com isto - Keynesianismo e Estatismo e o acabado de escrever A "economia do lado da oferta" como "noble lie"; e acho que o clássico  Political Aspects of Full Employment, de Michael Kalecki também interessa para aqui, ainda que de forma à primeira vista algo indireta.

O declinio dos blogues

Já há algum tempo que penso nisto que o Paul Krugman escreve aqui - os blogues largamente quase morreram porque a) grande parte da conversa passou para as redes sociais (penso que mais o twitter do que o facebook); e b) os bloggers mais destacados passaram para os jornais e afins


O segundo efeito suspeito que será cíclico; já o primeiro talvez seja mesmo uma mudança estrutural.

O "Trumpgate" como um filme cómico de espionagem

Laughing Through the Trump Era, por Ross Douthat, comparando toda a investigação à volta de Trump ao filme Destruir depois de Ler.

É raro eu concordar com alguma coisa que o Ross Douthat escreva, mas achei bastante interessantes algumas passagens, como:

Trump has indeed hurt vulnerable people, but between the leaven of incompetence in his cruelty, his rejection of some of the disastrous ambitions of his predecessors and a certain amount of fool’s luck, his administration is arguably responsible for fewer human tragedies so far than more high-minded, less personally degraded presidencies. (...)

The second answer, meanwhile, is a mild suggestion that a little more laughter might actually be good for the anti-Trump Resistance. In particular, anti-Trumpists might be a touch more effective if they could recognize how humorlessness and constant self-important dudgeon frequently helps the Trumpian cause, by setting up the dynamic I just sketched in my movie pitch — where the country is asked to choose between two kinds of folly, one squalid and corrupt but the other pompous, insufferable and paranoid in its own self-important way.

The latter sort folly is at its worst, not on the far left, but on the establishment center-left and the Never-Trumper center-right.

Como os sindicatos alemães combateram uma crise de habitação

When German Unions Built Housing for the People, por David O'Connell (Jacobin):

In postwar Germany, a cooperative run by trade unionists created Europe’s largest housing company. Building over 400,000 homes, “Neue Heimat” showed we don’t have to live on the terms dictated by landlords — we can take control for ourselves.

Os gangs têm benefícios para a sociedade?

Should We Legalize Street Gangs?, por Dan Bier (Freethink):

The theory behind suppression strategies is that the gang itself is the problem. If we get rid of the organization — capture its leaders, disrupt recruitment, seize assets, etc. — it will crumble and evaporate, because it won’t be able to sustain itself. Problem solved.

But that’s almost never what actually happens. In Chicago, police tried a similar zero-tolerance approach and “decapitated” the old gangs, and the result was the same as in Mexico: smaller, less organized, and more numerous gangs, fighting a dizzyingly complex war. Chicago’s violence has been difficult to quell precisely because there is nobody to call a ceasefire — or rather, there are now too many people who have to negotiate and agree on it.

Centralização versus descentralização da web

The Decentralized Web Is Coming, na Reason:

Google handles 88 percent of search traffic in the United States. Facebook has more than 2.4 billion active monthly users worldwide. Half of all U.S. online retail is projected to go through Amazon by 2021. (...)

Berners-Lee and other web pioneers intended for their creation to be decentralized and open-source. "The cyber-utopian view was not merely that seizing the means of information would make you free, but that failing to do so would put you in perpetual chains," says Doctorow.

There are many theories about why the web became centralized. Doctorow largely blames the abuse of intellectual property law to defeat the decentralized "free software" movement championed by the programmer and activist Richard Stallman. Stallman helped create the popular open-source operating system Linux after freely modifying Unix, Bell Labs' proprietary system.

Uma hipótese alternativa é que seja uma situação de grandes economias de escala - afinal, desenvolver um sistema informático para um conjunto de atividades tem quase o mesmo custo, independentemente de ir ser utilizado por 10 mil ou 10 milhões de pessoas (é verdade que esse problema fica um pouco anulado com o recurso a software livre desenvolvido por voluntários, em que várias organizações independentes podem usar o mesmo software - talvez algo como isto? -, havendo assim economias de escala no software sem ser preciso criar organizações à escala).

Os mitos da frente anti-pornografia

5 Myths That Anti-Porn Crusaders Keep Repeating, por Elizabeth Norman Brown (Reason):

1. Claim: The rise of online pornography and digital marketplaces for sex work has coincided with a rise in violence against women.

In fact, the last several decades have seen decreases in all sorts of violent crime rates, including rates of rape and sexual assault. (...)

People who commit rape appear to consume less porn than the general population. (...)

2. Claim: Teens who watch porn are more likely to engage in sexually risky behaviors.

In fact, the proliferation of online porn and minors' easy access to it has coincided with asignificant drops in just about every negative outcome connected to young people and sex. (...)

Falo em frente anti-pornografia, porque temos de novo do mesmo lado a direita religiosa e parte do feminismo.

Porque é que a Revolução Industrial ocorreu em Inglaterra?

The Crucial Century, por Anton Howes:

If a peaceful extraterrestrial visited the world in 1550, I often wonder where it would see as being the most likely site of the Industrial Revolution – an acceleration in the pace of innovation, resulting in sustained and continuous economic growth. So many theories about why it happened in Britain seem to have a sense of inevitability about them, but our extraterrestrial visitor would have found very few signs that it would soon occur there. There were many better candidates, on a multitude of metrics. (...)

So Britain’s precocity would have seemed unlikely in 1550. But the exercise potentially also gives us a few clues as to what was important for growth. Indeed, 1550-1650 increasingly appears, to me, to be the crucial century. It was by 1650, for example, that a critical mass of influential inventors and scientists in England were already plotting the creation of what would become the Royal Society – one of the most important institutions in Europe for the promotion of useful technical and scientific knowledge. And it was by 1650 that London had become one of Europe’s largest cities, a major trading centre, and a hub of innovation. More on that another time.

A perseguição aos norte-americanos naturalizados

The New War on Naturalized Citizens, por Amanda Frost (The American Prospect):

The Trump administration is seeking to denaturalize and deport longtime U.S. citizens, seizing on tiny mistakes in the process and putting the status of every naturalized citizen at potential risk.

Cogestão ou co-propriedade?

Why Labour should focus on putting workers on boards – not inclusive ownership funds, por Ciaran Driver, acerca das propostas dos Trabalhistas britânicos para transferir gradualmente 10% da propriedade das principais empresas britânicas para fundos controlados pelos trabalhadores.

O Estado nasceu dos cereais?

Book Review: Against the Grain, por Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex):

Someone on SSC Discord summarized James Scott’s Against The Grain as “basically 300 pages of calling wheat a fascist”. I have only two qualms with this description. First, the book is more like 250 pages; the rest is just endnotes. Second, “fascist” isn’t quite the right aspersion to use here. (...)

Scott argues that intensive grain cultivation was a natural choice not for cultivators, but for the states oppressing them. The shift from complicated and mobile food webs to a perfectly rectangular grid of wheat fields was the same sort of “progress” as scientific forestry and planned cities thousands of years later (...)

Scott’s great advantage over other writers is the care he takes in analyzing the concrete machinery of statehood. Instead of abstractly saying “the state levies a 10% tax”, he realizes that some guy in a palace has resolved to take “ten percent” of the “value” produced in some vast area, with no natural way of knowing who is in that area or how much value they produce. For most of the Stone Age, this problem was insurmountable. You can’t tax hunter-gatherers, because you don’t know how many they are or where they are, and even if you search for them you’ll spend months hunting them down through forests and canyons, and even if you finally find them they’ll just have, like, two elk carcasses and half a herring or something. But you also can’t tax potato farmers, because they can just leave when they hear you coming, and you will never be able to find all of the potatoes and dig them up and tax them. And you can’t even tax lentil farmers, because you’ll go to the lentil plantation and there will be a few lentils on the plants and the farmer will just say “Well, come back next week and there will be a few more”, and you can’t visit every citizen every week.

But you can tax grain farmers! You can assign them some land, and come back around harvest time, and there will be a bunch of grain just standing there for you to take ten percent of. If the grain farmer flees, you can take his grain without him. Then you can grind the grain up and have a nice homogenous, dense, easy-to-transport grain product that you can dole out in measured rations. Grain farming was a giant leap in oppressability.