Porque Portugal está condenado ao colapso

O principal problema de Portugal, mais do que o deficit, é o quase nulo crescimento económico; e esse baixo crescimento é o resultado de nos últimos 10 anos os preços (e salários nominais) terem crescido muito mais depressa em Portugal (e na periferia da UE - Grécia, Espanha, Irlanda) no que no resto da Europa (suponho que o principal incentivo para isso tenham sido os juros baixos propiciados pela moeda única).

E o resultado desses preços altos é que os sectores que estão em competição com o exterior (seja porque exportam, seja porque competem com as importações), como a indústria ou a agricultura, perderam "competitividade" e deixaram de ser viáveis, ficando o país largamente reduzido aos sectores que tem que ser produzidos no lugar onde são consumidos, como o comércios, serviços e imobiliário, uma situação que não é sustentavel a prazo.

E há solução para isso? Não. Mesmo que fosse possível deflacionar (seja por uma deflação mesmo, seja saido do euro e desvalorizando o "novo escudo"), o resultado disso seria um aumento enorme do valor da dívida - p.ex., se tivessemos uma deflação de 30% (um número que costuma ser sugerido), isso significaria um aumento de 43% no valor real da dívida.

Desta forma, estamos entre a morte lenta do "não produzir nada" e a morte rápida da deflação e falência total; ou seja, acho que não há solução dentro do sistema.

[Artigo publicado no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá se quiserem]

Descoberto um planeta habitável (II)?

Possible earthlike planet found in the Goldilocks zone of a nearby star!, por Phil Plait:

But the amazing thing is that the planet’s distance from the star puts it in the Goldilocks Zone: the region where liquid water could exist on its surface! (...)

If you’re too close to a star, it’s too hot to support liquid water. If you’re too far, it freezes. This defines a rough region from the star — the Goldilocks Zone, for obvious reasons — where liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet. This depends on the star, of course, but also on other factors like the planet’s atmosphere; Venus could have liquid water, but its super-thick atmosphere produces a runaway greenhouse effect which has heated it to 460° C (900° F). If Mars had a thick atmosphere, it might support liquid water! So the planet itself matters here too.


Gliese 581g, as the new planet is called, is in the zone where the temperature is just right. And with a mass of just three times that of the Earth, it’s unlikely to be a gas giant.

However, this does not mean the planet is habitable, or even very Earthlike. It may not even have any water on it at all. For now, we can’t know these things, so beware of any media breathlessly talking about life on this planet, or how we could live there.

There are some things we can speculate on with some solid footing. The orbital period of 37 days puts it pretty close to the star – since the star is a red dwarf, it’s cooler than the Sun, so being closer doesn’t necessarily mean you overheat. But it does mean the star exerts strong tides on the planet, which have the effect of slowing the planet’s rotation until it equals the orbital period. This has almost certainly happened to this planet, so in other words, one day on this planet = one year, and the planet always shows the same face to its star like the Moon does to the Earth.

That makes things a bit dicier for habitability. The side facing the star may get very hot, while the dark side gets very cold. If the planet has an atmosphere that gets mitigated somewhat (the hot air on the day side will flow over to the night side and vice versa, smoothing out the highs and lows in temperature), and may make the planet more clement. However, we have no clue if this planet has an atmosphere at all.

I also want to note that the mass found (3x Earth) is the minimum mass of the planet! It may be more massive, though it’s unlikely to be much more. The Doppler method doesn’t give an exact mass, only a lower limit. That’s frustrating, but that’s the way the math works out.

[Via Razib Khan]

Descoberto um planeta habitável?

Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet:

The planet is tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness. One effect of this is to stabilize the planet’s surface climates, according to Vogt. The most habitable zone on the planet’s surface would be the line between shadow and light (known as the “terminator”), with surface temperatures decreasing toward the dark side and increasing toward the light side.

“Any emerging life forms would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude,” Vogt said.

The researchers estimate that the average surface temperature of the planet is between -24 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 to -12 degrees Celsius). Actual temperatures would range from blazing hot on the side facing the star to freezing cold on the dark side.

If Gliese 581g has a rocky composition similar to the Earth’s, its diameter would be about 1.2 to 1.4 times that of the Earth. The surface gravity would be about the same or slightly higher than Earth’s, so that a person could easily walk upright on the planet, Vogt said.

 [Via Marginal Revolution e arbesman.net]

Se for verdade, terá sido antes de Maio de 2011.

Uma maneira optimista de ver a coisa

Ganho 1.373,12 €.

A tecnologia amish

Amish Hackers:

The Amish have the undeserved reputation of being luddites, of people who refuse to employ new technology. It's well known the strictest of them don't use electricity, or automobiles, but rather farm with manual tools and ride in a horse and buggy.  In any debate about the merits of embracing new technology, the Amish stand out as offering an honorable alternative of refusal. Yet Amish lives are anything but anti-technological. In fact on my several visits with them, I have found them to be ingenious hackers and tinkers, the ultimate makers and do-it-yourselfers and surprisingly pro technology. 

Já agora, passando da Venezuela para o vizinho do lado

Piedad Cordoba banned from politics for 18 years, no "Bloggings by Boz", sobre uma senadora colombiana destituida do cargo e baninda de ocupar cargos politicos pelo Procurado-Geral, sob a acusação de ligações às FARC:

What bothers me about this story is that the Attorney General removed her from office and banned her from politics without a judicial trial. In my opinion, that's anti-democratic. An executive branch going after a opposition politician like this reeks of political persecution.

The Attorney General should not be able to make this decision unilaterally. If the evidence is solid, then charge her with a crime and let her face an open trial. Otherwise, she should be left alone.

Resultados das eleições venezuelanas

PSUV - pró-Chavez
MUD - oposição de direita
PPT - oposição de esquerda

Ou as virtudes dos sistemas eleitorais maioritários.

Sugestões de leitura

Who should own schools?, por Chris Dillow, sobre quem faz mais sentido serem os proprietários (ou, pelo menos, os gestores) das escolas - os pais, os professores ou o Estado?

The view from somewhere smart, por Razib Khan, sobre a história dos "cristãos orientais" nos últimos 1500 anos (muita gente achará isso um tema chato, mas algumas passagens têm interesse actual: p.ex., parece que actualmente o pais árabe em que a minoria cristã tem melhor estatuto é a Síria, enquanto que após a "libertação" do Iraque pelos EUA houve uma "limpeza étnica" dos cristãos locais; o que muitos "defensores da civilização cristã contra a jihad islâmica" acharão disso?).

Uma terceira via na Venezuela?

Leftist Venezuelan politician Henri Falcon challenges Chavez's authority (Washington Post):

BARQUISIMETO, VENEZUELA - The most popular politician in this tidy city plunges into the crowds, handing out small loans to small businesses and pledging to build new homes.

He's not President Hugo Chavez, the best-known populist on the continent. His name is Henri Falcon, and as governor of the western state of Lara, he has sought to carve out space for what he calls moderate leftists seeking an alternative to Chavez.

The objective is ambitious: Win enough seats to give the party he helps lead, Fatherland for All, a viable future as a leftist movement without the demagoguery and authoritarianism that critics say characterizes Chavez's government. If the more traditional and conservative opposition also advances, Fatherland for All could become the kingmaker in a new congress.(...)

Falcon, 49, who is not running for congress but is the party's most recognizable leader, said he is banking on support from voters who dislike both Chavez and the traditional opposition.(...)

O atalho para a servidão

The Shortcut To Serfdom, por Conor Friedersdor.

Colômbia: o lado escuro de Alvaro Uribe

Colombia: The dark side of Alvaro Uribe:

After Alvaro Uribe accepted a job at Georgetown University, a Colombian humorist suggested the former president should teach a course on wiretapping.


On his first day of class last week, Uribe was met by protesters who held up banners calling him a mass murderer.

Back in Colombia, meanwhile, nearly a dozen of Uribe’s former advisers are under investigation for abuse of power and could end up in prison. (...)


First elected in 2002, Uribe quickly sought congressional approval of a constitutional amendment so he could stand for re-election in 2006. At the time, the Colombian constitution banned presidents from serving more than one four-year term.

The amendment was approved but accusations emerged that government ministers secured the support of key lawmakers by offering them jobs and other benefits. Two legislators were convicted of receiving payoffs and Uribe’s former interior and social protection ministers are now under investigation for bribery.
Even more serious is a scandal known as DAS-gate, which, according to Shifter, “makes Watergate look like child’s play.”

The DAS is the Colombian equivalent of the FBI and during the Uribe administration its agents illegally monitored the telephone calls and actions of opposition politicians, human rights workers, journalists and even Supreme Court justices.

At the time, dozens of pro-Uribe lawmakers were being investigated by the Supreme Court for their financial and political links to right-wing death squads. They included Senator Mario Uribe, the president’s cousin, who later resigned and went to prison. Experts say the president’s men wanted to embarrass and discredit the court judges.

“Uribe believed the Supreme Court was out to get him,” said Alfonso Cuellar, an editor at Semana news magazine, which broke the DAS-gate story. “That was not true but that’s what Uribe believed because he was surrounded by a small group of people who fed him rumors.”

This month, new details emerged about the infiltration campaign from a DAS agent cooperating with the investigators. Alba Florez, who has been dubbed by the Colombian media as the DAS Mata Hari, said she persuaded the bodyguards and personal assistants of Supreme Court judges to spy on their bosses.

Sugestão de leitura

After Barrington Moore: Draft for September 25, 2010 50th Anniversary Conference, por Brad DeLong: 

John Stuart Mill was perhaps the last who was substantially at home in and competent in all the branches of moral philosophy: political theory, psychology, history, public administration, political economy, sociology, etc.

Afterwards young scholars paying their dues found it simply impossible to learn everything and still have time to write anything. And since it is much easier to teach undergraduates what you know than what you don't, specialization in research drove specialization in curriculum as well. But dividing up the social sciences makes sense even for professors and graduate students only if the beast is cut at the joints, so that the problems in understanding the world that fall in the debatable lands between two disciplines are few and unimportant. And dividing up the social sciences makes no sense for undergraduates: What use are economics B.A.s who know no political science or history? None at all.(...)

Call [the] problematic presented by the history of the world from 1914 to 1975 the "Barrington Moore problematic": it is to understand the historical and social origins of dictatorship and democracy, of slavery and freedom, of ideology and rationality, of poverty and prosperity. Humanity had moved from societies of illiterate farmers producing little more than subsistence dominated by thugs with strong arms and sharp spears to urban, literate, industrial orders. That produced Abraham Lincoln but also Vladimir Lenin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt but also Mao Zedong, Konrad Adenauer but also Augusto Pinochet. And Adolf Hitler as the sole member of the my-regime-killed-50-million club. Why? How? And what could be done to make it stop? (...)

Can the Barrington Moore problematic serve a role similar in the next generation to the one it has served in the past two?

I would say not.

Adolf Hitler is sixty-five years in his grave. Societies in transition to urban-market-mass political modernity and how to keep more Lenins and Hitlers from arising in them does not seem to be the globe's most urgent problem any more. And our most recent modern monsters seem of a different and perhaps older kind: Saddam Hussein reminded me more of the Caliph Uthman or of Mehmet II than of Hitler. Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah seem more like updated versions of the Assassins of Syria rather than of the Comintern. Rwanda seems more like the Sicilian Vespers with radios than like the terror-famine of the Great Leap Forward.

Eleições venezuelanas - o meu endorsement

Vamos ver quantos milhões de votos o meu apoio vai valer nas eleições na Venezuela (eu até tenho uma profunda ligação ao país - o meu avô ainda trabalhou muitos anos numa padaria em Maracaíbo ou coisa parecida...).

Noticiário Local

Câmara de Portimão aprova quase o dobro da construção depois de o terreno mudar de proprietário

Anterior dono teve aprovação prévia para 2485 m2 de construção. Novos donos, entre os quais um antigo vice-presidente da câmara, conseguiram que lhes fossem aprovados 4545 m2.

Susan Sontag sobre a ficção científica (em 1965)

The Imagination of Disaster [PDF].

O texto é interessante sobretudo por uma razão - a autora faz uma resenha dos vários "roteiros-tipo" dos filmes de ficção científica, o que, há distância de mais de 40 anos, permite ver as diferenças e semelhanças dos filmes de FC dos anos 50/60 com os actuais.

Bryan Caplan sobre Cristovão Colombo

Columbus: The Far Left is Dead Right:

The far left's radical critique of Columbus Day rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But the facts are on their side. Columbus was not just a brutal slaver; he was a pioneer of slavery. I flipped through a dozen books on Columbus and slavery in the library today, and none of them disputes this - though the hagiographies generally omit "slavery" from the index.


Can you condemn a man just for being a slaver? Of course. It's almost as bad as you can get. And Columbus didn't even have the lame excuses of a Thomas Jefferson, like "I grew up with it," or "I couldn't afford not to do it."

The lamest excuse of all is that we have to judge Columbus by the standards of his time. For this is nothing but the cultural relativism that defenders of Western civilization so often decry. If some cultures and practices are better than others, then we can fairly hold up a mirror to Columbus and the Spanish conquerors, and find theirs to be among the worst.

Eleições venezuelanas - sondagens e previsões

POLL NUMBERS!!! Venezuela's 26S legislative election, por "Boz":

Polls:

Datanálisis:PSUV 27, Opposition 24, Undecided 30%
Hinterlaces:PSUV 37,Opposition 41, Undecided 17%
Keller: PSUV 32, Opposition 46, Undecided 19%


Polls with undecided voters removed:

IVAD: PSUV 54, Opposition 46
GIS XXI: PSUV 53, Opposition: 47
Datanálisis: PSUV 52, Opposition 48
Keller: PSUV 43, Opposition 57


Chavez approval:

IVAD: 66%
Hinterlaces 46%
Datanálisis: 44%
Keller: 37%

Consultores 21: 36%

The next National Assembly? , por "Daniel":

Sobre o "Tea Party"

The misguided reaction to Tea Party candidates, por Glenn Greenwald:

The "tea party" movement is, in my view, a mirror image of the Republican Party generally.  There are some diverse, heterodox factions which compose a small, inconsequential minority of it (various libertarian, independent, and Reagan Democrat types), but it is dominated -- in terms of leadership, ideology, and the vast majority of adherents -- by the same set of beliefs which have long shaped the American Right (...)

All that said, there are some reactions to the Tea Party movement coming from many different directions -- illustrated by the patronizing mockery of Christine O'Donnell -- which I find quite misguided, revealingly condescending, and somewhat obnoxious.  In two separate appearances (...) Karl Rove, that Paragon of Honor, insisted that she lacks the "character and rectitude" to be in the Senate (...)

It's hard to avoid the conclusion, at least for me, that, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, much of the discomfort and disgust triggered by these Tea Party candidates has little to do with their ideology.  After all, are most of them radically different than the right-wing extremists Karl Rove has spent his career promoting and exploiting?  Hardly.  Much of the patronizing derision and scorn heaped on people like Christine O'Donnell have very little to do with their substantive views (...) and much more to do with the fact they're so . . . unruly and unwashed.  To members of the establishment and the ruling class (like Rove), these are the kinds of people (...) who belong in Walmarts, community colleges, low-paying jobs, and voting booths on command, not in the august United States Senate.

Class/Cultural reactions to the tea party, por Lisa Kramer:

I can’t fully agree with him that the Tea Party is just Republican Plus.  The name alone suggests something else, as does the 1776 iconography and the overtaking of old charges of “liberalism” with 21^st century charges of “socialism.”  When the spectacle is stripped away, I do see something that, at its core, is much closer to libertarianism than traditional Republicanism, even the more vitriolic Republicanism of the last decades.  But that’s a lot of layers of spectacle to strip away, so I understand why the point can be debated.

(...)

The limitation of Greenwald’s argument is that it makes class and culture almost interchangeable.  Over and over again, the enemy is regarded as “effete Guardians of Elite Political Power” or “the ruling class.”  (...) I just don’t buy it.  Cultural hierarchy seems to have little to do with class hierarchy; even Sarah Palin, who Greenwald labels another victim of cultural bias, was raised comfortably middle class.

A extrema-direita, os judeus e Israel

Numa discussão nos comentários deste post (e também aqui), Luis Cardoso escreve que "que nunca vi um partido de extrema-direita que fosse filo-semita, filo-sionista, filo-judaico, etc. O que me leva a tirar a conclusão que o anti-semitismo e a oposição ao estado de Israel é como que a pedra-de-toque do extremismo de direita" e que "julgo que o posicionamento perante os judeus e o estado de Israel é a prova definitiva do extremismo de direita, prova superada com distinção por Wilders".

Há uma certa circularidade nesta opinião (afinal, se um partido que seja pró-Israel ou pró-judeus não pode ser de extrema-direita, claro que nunca se irá encontrar um partido de extrema-direita filo-semita, filo-sionista ou filo-judaico), mas imagino que o raciocinio de LC seja algo como "como no último século os movimentos geralmente considerados de extrema-direita eram normalmente anti-semitas, podemos considerar o anti-semitismo uma marca da extrema-direita" (e aí já não é um raciocinio circular).

Mas será que não há mesmo uma extrema-direita pró-Israel? Eu até não poria o PVV holandês na mesma divisão que outros partidos usualmente chamados de "extrema-direita", como a FN francesa ou o PNR português (o PVV parece-me muito um partido "one-issue" sem grande construção ideológica por detrás), mas o que dizer, p.ex., do BNP britânico (um partido cujos estatutos até há pouco tempo não aceitavam não-brancos, e cujo o lider tem um passado de ligações aos neofascistas italianos), que recentemente também adoptou uma linha pró-Israel? Ou, recuando no tempo, de Xavier Vallat, o "comissário para os assuntos judaicos" do regime de Vichy, que iniciou a implementação das leis anti-semitas, que em 1936 disse que o governo de Leon Blum era os "talmudistas" a governar a França, mas que em 1967 organizou manifestações de apoio a Israel durante a Guerra dos Seis Dias?

Vamos pensar a questão de forma mais aprofundada - porque é que a extrema-direita não gosta dos judeus (afinal, com tantos grupos étnicos que há no mundo, porque é que foram escolher os judeus como objectos de ódio?); a mim parece-me que a resposta é simples: a extrema-direita normalmente é nacionalista, e tem muito a mitologia da "terra e dos antepassados" ("o solo e o sangue") - ora, os judeus, como um grupo espalhado por todo e mundo e com uma grande história de mobilidade (ela própria provocada pelos anti-semitas...) são a antitese disso, são o protótipo dos "cosmopolitas desenraizados".

Além disso, provavelmente como um resquicio da velha oposição entre "terra" e "dinheiro" (aristocracia tradicional vs. burguesia urbana), parte da direita mais radical tende a seguir uma linha de defesa da "propriedade sólida" (terras, fábricas, etc.) contra a "propriedade fluida" (dinheiro, títulos, etc.), com uma distinção entre os "bons capitalistas" (agricultores, industriais...) e os "maus capitalistas" (comerciantes, banqueiros, "especuladores"...). Ora, os judeus (em parte também por culpa dos anti-semitas...) dedicavam-se largamente ao comércio e à finança, ou seja, eram o protótipo dos "maus capitalistas"; além disso, entre os judeus que não eram banqueiros nem comerciantes (suponho que, apesar do mito, os banqueiros judeus fossem uma minoria entre a população judia), também havia uma grande proporção de "intelectuais", grupo também não muito apreciado por muita extrema-direita.

E onde é quero chegar com isso? Muito simples - todas estas razões só se aplicam aos judeus da Diáspora; não há nenhuma razão especial para a extrema-direita odiar os judeus de Israel: os israelitas não são "cosmopolitas desenraizados", não são uma etnia espalhada pelo mundo - pelo contrário, são uma comunidade nacional a viver no seu território supostamente ancestral; ainda por cima, Israel cultiva a imagem de uma potência agricola (e militar), em contraste com a imagem de comerciantes/banqueiros/intelectuais urbanos "decadentes" dos judeus da diáspora. Ou seja, o facto de alguém ser um defensor entusiasta de Israel não significa que não possa ser de extrema-direita; aliás, acho que alguêm até pode detestar os judeus da diáspora e defender Israel exactamente pelas mesmas razões.

[Post publicado no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá]

O cigarro electrónico vs. os reguladores

Electronic Cigarettes and the Fog of (Class) War, por Thomas Knapp, no Center for a Stateless Society:

A week ago, after 27 years at an average of probably two packs of cigarettes a day (and “smokeless tobacco” before that; I switched when I discovered that girls I wanted to kiss objected to the whole mouth full of tobacco thing), I’d have called you crazy if you suggested I was within a week or so of becoming an ex-smoker.

It’s true, though. I had two-and-a-half packs of cigarettes left last Tuesday. Now, on Sunday, I’ve still got half a pack. I’ve cut my smoking by about 75% through “vaping” — getting my nicotine from an “electronic cigarette” that delivers a smokeless vapor without all the tars and gunk that you get from burning tobacco — and when this pack is gone I expect to never buy another.

About the time a friend was putting together an “electronic cigarette” package to send me, the US Food and Drug Administration was mailing letters to several manufacturers/sellers of e-cigs, informing them that the regulatory hammer is about to come down.


I’m dismayed, but hardly surprised, to learn that the US government, the tobacco companies and their “non-profit” anti-smoking counterparts are conspiring to keep me (and millions of other Americans) on tobacco. Smoking, and pretending to oppose it, are big moneymakers for the political class.

(...)
 
The tobacco companies fought FDA regulation tooth and nail, but once it became reality they embraced it and made the best of it. What is the best of it? In a word, monopoly.


One of FDA’s first acts was to ban flavored cigarettes (except for menthol). The main target was the clove cigarette, which is usually imported. One competitor down.

Buried in FDA’s new authority is a grandfather clause. Existing cigarette brands and types are somewhat protected, but new products require “approval.” Anyone who follows the ongoing saga of pharmaceutical development knows that FDA approval entails hundreds of million dollars in trial, submission and lobbying costs.

(...)
 
Enter the electronic cigarette: No tobacco involved. Nicotine and flavorings are delivered in a liquid (propylene glycol or vegetable glycerine), slightly heated to produce a fog or vapor. While the full health implications aren’t yet clear, it’s a safe bet that e-cigs are safer than “real” cigarettes. Cigarette smoke is full of carcinogen-laden “tars.” E-cig vapor isn’t. There’s no “secondhand smoke” because there’s no smoke at all.

Even thought they’re currently only a tiny portion of the nicotine market, e-cigs are driving all the usual suspects crazy.

Big Tobacco wants them gone ASAP because they threaten tobacco profits.

The FDA wants to bring them under its regulatory authority because authority is what regulation is all about.

If you’re surprised to hear that the American Lung Association has condemned e-cigarettes, you shouldn’t be. They rake in more than $50 million per year, mostly by leveraging the scare value of tobacco-related lung disease. “Non-profit” or not, the continued solvency of ALA depends largely on the continued popularity of their bête noire, smoking.

The alleged Axis of Anti-Smoking — Big Government and Big Non-Profits — are fully aligned with Big Tobacco on the issue of electronic cigarettes. If we take their claims at face value, smoking kills more than 400,000 Americans per year … and they want to keep it that way.

If you ever find yourself falling for the lie that government is on your side, remember that the FDA and its “private sector” cronies are willing to inflict the equivalent of the 9/11 attacks, 130 times over — every year, year after year — as the price of preserving their own power and profits.