A ortodoxia económica e a esquerda

Heterodox economics & the left, por Chris Dillow:

[C]onsider the following:

 - Conventional economics tells us that austerity depresses output at the zero bound.

 - More open borders would not make British workers worse off; this is factor price equalization.

 - Thousands of high-paid financiers are overpaid charlatans; this is the implication of the efficienct market hypothesis, which says that stock-pickers can't beat the market in risk-adjusted terms.

 - The diminishing marginal utility of wealth implies that progressive taxation is welfare-enhancing.

- Drug legalization would improve the lot of young black men; this follows from the presumption that markets work less badly than state interventions.

- Complaints by Owen Jones and Aditya Chakrabortty about crony capitalism are  consistent with basic public choice economics - that political power will go to the highest bidder.

- My scepticism about managerialist hierarchies owes more to Hayek's point about the limitations of centralized knowledge and control than it does to my Marxism.

All these points imply that you can adopt a position well to the left of the Labour party whilst being a quite orthodox economist.

Heterodox laziness (or worse), por Simon Wren-Lewis:

Many economists and non-economists of the right try and portray mainstream economics as naturally supportive of their political programme. Right wing think tanks name themselves after one of the pioneers of economics. It is normally nonsense: mainstream economics is all about market failure, diminishing marginal utility favours redistribution etc. Of course there are counter examples (Pareto optimality), so it would be wrong to say that economics leans to the left as well.  
However when some of those on the left say yes, mainstream economics is all the things that those on the right say it is, they share a mutual conspiracy to distort the truth. When you are trying hard to convince policy makers and journalists that what those on the right are arguing for is not implied by mainstream thought, people from the left pop up to undermine what you say.

That last sentence probably exaggerates the importance of heterodox economics. In my view heterodox economics is far more dangerous in giving young students that lean to the left a distorted view of the mainstream which can have lasting damage. Been there, done that (briefly). I actually think that heterodox economists have some important criticisms to make, and I also think that mainstream macro orthodoxy can often discourage such fundamental criticism. However pretending mainstream economics is something that it is not just devalues these criticisms.

Já agora, a respeito das implicações da hipotese dos mercados eficientes, este meu post de 2011.

Eles são Charlie?

World leaders flock to Paris to defend freedom of expression. Oh, wait…, no Keep Talking Greece:

A long list of world leaders have flocked to Paris on Sunday to join the crowds paying tribute to the victims of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the French policemen, the shoppers in a kosher supermarket.  Atheists, Jews, Muslims: all dead by the bullets of  fanatic jihadists claiming to have committed despicable acts in the name of religion.

From what I read and hear, the honorable world leaders have flocked to Paris to express solidarity with the French people and send a “message for the freedom of expression”.

 How much do they honor “freedom of expression” in their own countries? How much “Charlie” are they?

Co-president of LSEMidEastSoc and blogger @DanielWickham took under the magnifying glass all the leaders who attend the #JeSuisCharlie rally and #MarcheRepublicaine today and created an outstanding list of 19 of them who harass, target and imprison journalists for what they write.

Clara Ferreira Alves: "o sunita nunca foi fundamentalista"

Puro delírio.

Os whabitas da Arábia (e da Índia), a Irmandade Muçulmano do Egito e as suas dissidências, os mujahedin e taliban do Afeganistão, o GIA da Argélia, nada disso existia até há poucos anos, claro.

O "heavy metal", economia e sociedade

How Heavy Metal Tracks the Wealth of Nations, por Richard Florida:

Popular music styles are often closely connected to the social situations where they first began. (...)

Heavy metal is a strange case, then. The music sprouted originally from working-class kids in economically ravaged, deindustrialized places like Birmingham, England. Even today, it seems to be most popular among disadvantaged, alienated, working-class kids.

But take a look at the map below, which I wrote about two years ago, and have been thinking again about over the past couple of months. It tracks the number of heavy metal bands per 100,000 residents using data from the Encyclopaedia Metallum. The genre holds less sway in the ravaged postindustrial places of its birth, but remains insanely popular in Scandinavian countries known for their relative wealth, robust social safety nets, and incredibly high quality of life. (...)

So with the help of my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander, I examined the connections between heavy metal and a range of economic and social factors. What we found may surprise you. Mellander, who is Swedish, attributes Scandinavia’s proclivity for heavy metal bands to its governments’ efforts to put compulsory music training in schools, which created a generation with the musical chop to meet metal’s technical demands. (As The Atlantic noted last fall, this has helped the region excel in pop music as well). As always, I point out that correlation does not equal causation and points simply to associations between variables.

What we found is that that the number of heavy metal bands in a given country is associated with its wealth and affluence.

At the country-level, the number of heavy metal bands per capita is positively associated with economic output per capita (.71); level of creativity (.71) and entrepreneurship (.66); share of adults that hold college degrees (.68); as well as overall levels of human development (.79), well-being, and satisfaction with life (.60).

The bottom line? Though metal may be the music of choice for some alienated working-class males, it enjoys its greatest popularity in the most advanced, most tolerant, and knowledge-based places in the world. Strange as it may seem, heavy metal springs not from the poisoned slag of alienation and despair but the loamy soil of post-industrial prosperity. This makes sense after all: while new musical forms may spring from disadvantaged, disgruntled, or marginalized groups, it is the most advanced and wealthy societies that have the media and entertainment companies that can propagate new sounds and genres, as well as the affluent young consumers with plenty of leisure time who can buy it.

Essa tese parece-me ter alguns pontos fracos (aliás, o Richard Florida parece ser um pensador não muito rigoroso):

Em primeiro lugar, avaliar a importância de um dado género musical apenas pelo número de bandas desse género (por habitante) não me parece a melhor metodologia, já que pode estar simplesmente a medir haver muitas bandas, seja de que género for (e nesse caso o artigo se calhar também se poderia chamar "How Pop Music Tracks the Wealth of Nations" ou mesmo "How Orff Orchestras Tracks the Wealth of Nations"); o que faria mais sentido seria um racio entre bandas de "metal" e bandas de outro tipo musical.

Em segundo lugar, é conveniente distinguir entre "jovens da classe trabalhadora de zonas industriais ou recém-desindustrializadas" e "pobres" - a popularidade do heavy metal nos países ricos não é contraditória com o ser a música típica dos jovens da classe trabalhadora de zonas industriais ou recém-desindustrializadas, já que esse grupo de pessoas até pode ter mais peso demográfico em países "ricos" do que em países "pobres".

Liberdade de expressão

"Liberdade de de expressão" é, em primeiro lugar, a liberdade de dizer coisas que alguém pode considerar ofensivo ou chocantes - em qualquer pais do mundo há liberdade de dizer coisas não-ofensivas; é na liberdade de dizer coisas eventualmente ofensivas que se vê a diferença.

Os "liberalismos" dos fãs de jogos de computador

Há tempos, a revista Reason fez uma pesquisa sobre as posições políticas dos fãs de jogos de computador, concluindo que eles se dizem largamente "liberals" (isto é, de esquerda), mas que em muitos assuntos eles são "libertarians" (isto é, liberais):

Political operatives looking to explore gamers as a voting bloc should know that gamers are more likely to identify themselves as independent than non-gamers and also are less likely to identify as Republicans.

When independent gamers are pushed to identify leanings, they are more likely to lean leftward to the Democrats.

Mapping onto their partisanship, gamers are significantly less conservative and more liberal than those who never play video games. This can't be wholly accounted for by the fact that gamers trend younger. Even within age groups, gamers lean more liberal and less conservative than their non-gaming peers.

But while they may lean more liberal, that doesn't necessarily mean gamers are fans of a centrally planned government to deal with everybody's problems. Gamers agree with non-gamers in supporting free market solutions over government intervention when possible, 52 to 43 percent. Gamers also believe (57 percent) that government is often an impediment in people's ability to succeed. And 54 percent disagree with President Barack Obama's views on the role of government.

Don't Tell Me How to Play

If there's any one trend to take away from a poll looking at gamers it's that gamers don't like to be told what to do with their lives. Again, they may describe themselves as liberal, but they do not like government policies that control individual life choices, like what products they can purchase or consume. Video games are all about making choices, right? That's one mentality that does carry over in real life (unlike the fear that games make people more violent). Our polls show that many government bans on products or activities like caffeinated energy drinks or online gambling are already disliked by Americans, regardless of gaming habits. But for gamers, this dislike of nanny-style regulation is enhanced—upgraded if you will. For every single poll question where we asked whether the government should allow people to own, consume, or use certain products or services that are currently a focus of debate, gamers are more likely to say yes than non-gamers. In only one question did gamers support a government ban, for 3D-printed guns. But even then, 42 percent of gamers still supported allowing people to print them, compared to 26 percent of non-gamers.

Probably the biggest gap was the gamer support for allowing use of bitcoin as a currency—55 percent for gamers; 30 percent for non-gamers. This example is particularly interesting because a majority of gamers and non-gamers alike knew very little or nothing at all about bitcoin. But non-gamers appear more likely to call for government regulations or a ban on a product they've never heard of than gamers.

Gamers Concerned About Police Power, Accountability

Though gamers may love the idea of having Four Loko and marijuana delivered to them by drones so they can focus on improving their Call of Duty skills, they are much more reluctant than non-gamers to give police the authority to use them and are more concerned than non-gamers about militarization of police (though even non-gamers are concerned about the trend). Seventy percent of gamers think drones and miitary tools in the hands of police goes too far. Only 57 percent of non-gamers agreed.

Furthermore gamers are much more likely to believe that police are not held accountable for misconduct. Only 33 percent of gamers think police are punished for misconduct, compared to 51 percent of non-gamers. Though three-quarters of gamers have a positive view of the police, they're much less likely to believe the bad apples are properly disposed of.

Noto é que a maior parte dos exemplos que a Reason dá para indicar uma tendência "libertarian" entre os "gamers" têm a ver, ou com questões de o Estado limitar a liberdade dos individuos para o proteger deles próprios, ou com questões de "lei e ordem" (não vejo praticamente questões relacionadas com politicas de distribuição da riqueza ou de proteção ambiental) - tal não me parece entrar em contradição com o seu proclamado "liberalism", já que é o género de posição que há uns anos atrás era mais ou menos a posição padrão de muita esquerda e dos "liberals" dos EUA (combinando a intervenção estatal na economia com a defesa das liberdades civis e a tolerância para com os estilos de vida alternativos que não afetem terceiros), embora é verdade que de há uns anos para cá a esquerda tem vindo a ser colonizada pelos defensores da "vida saudável" (nos EUA, parece-me que tal tem vindo associado à substituição de "liberal" por "progressive" como termo de auto-designação)

Extremistas e moderados

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/22/the-real-extremists-are-american-voters-not-politicians/ The real extremists are American voters, not politicians, por David Broockman(Monkey Cage):

According to a common line of thinking, campaign donors and primary voters are pulling politics to the extremes. Most Americans, the story goes, would prefer their legislators to chart a moderate course.

In a working paper, I question this view. Using a survey designed to measure support for extreme policies, I find that the characterization of the public as largely centrist rests on shaky ground. On many issues, much of the public appears to support more extreme policies than legislators do. And while many argue that today’s engaged activists support more extreme policies than the broader public, my findings suggest the opposite: The disengaged and infrequent voters who allegedly constitute the moderate middle are actually more likely to endorse extreme policies than politically active voters.

Why might we have missed much extremism in the public generally and among the less engaged? The answer is subtle, but has important implications for how we should think about the the public’s attitudes and politicians’ positions. And it might be best explained by pretending you have a crazy uncle.

Suppose your uncle believes that the United States should nationalize the health-care system (a very liberal view) and that gay people should be jailed (a very conservative view). And suppose your uncle is represented in Congress by a moderate Republican who supports civil unions (but opposes gay marriage) and who supports helping the poor purchase health insurance (but opposes Obamacare), two positions just right of center.

Your uncle’s views can’t really be described in ideological terms like “center left” or “very conservative.” He has some mix of very liberal and very conservative views, many of them extreme. But if we try to compare your uncle’s views to his congressperson’s positions in abstract, ideological terms, as academics and journalists often do, some plain facts about your uncle and his legislator both become obscured. Since your uncle supports some liberal policies and some conservative policies, we’d call him a “moderate on average.” However, his congressperson’s conservative votes on both Obamacare and gay marriage mean we might call the legislator conservative. We thus might condemn your uncle’s congressperson for being a conservative extremist while celebrating your uncle’s moderation. However, it’s quite clear that your uncle’s views tend to be further outside the mainstream, just not consistently in one direction.

Edite Estrela e Mário Lino defendem abolição da prisão preventiva

Mário Lino e Edite Estrela visitaram Sócrates. "Só se deve prender quando há provas"

Interação no local de trabalho - externalidade positiva ou negativa?

Frances Woolley expõe a tese de que o teletrabalho pode ter externalidades negativas representadas pela ausência de colegas no local de trabalho (ou talvez seja o trabalho presencial que tem externalidades positivas e não o teletrabalho que tem externalidades negativas?).

Mas o que achei interessantes foi sobretudo a discussão que se gerou depois sobre se os "teletrabalhadores" serão os que menos ou os mais que se sentirá a falta no local de trabalho:

Vladimir: [W]hy don't you take account for self selection. The collegial people who like to mingle and would produce the positive externality actually go to work or at least drop by the office just to say hello to their colleagues. The socially inept or highly introverted stay home and spare us the negative externality of their dour presence.

Frances Woolley: Vladimir - I'm not convinced about the collegial come in/dour stay out theory. One can make a completely different argument: Collegial people will tend to have friends and people to talk to wherever they go - in the park, at the local coffee shop, or perhaps in Montreal/Toronto/California/India/where ever they happen to be hanging out at the moment. Dour people, on the other hand, come in to work because it's the only place where they can find social interaction.

Isso é daquelas situações em que seria conveniente que houvesse uma mais clara distinção linguística entre "pouco sociável", "tímido" e "socialmente inepto", conceitos distintos mas que muitas vezes são confudidos - a visão do Vladimir faz sentido para as pessoas pouco sociáveis, enquanto a da Frances talvez faça sentido para os tímidos ou para os socialmente ineptos.

Computador - a nova "rua"?

Aqui refere-se que os jogos de computador são o novo rock n'roll. Mas ocorre-me outra analogia.

Há uns anos, sempre que aparecia alguém a promover projetos de ocupação de tempos livres para jovens (nomeadamente para pré-adolescentes), como desporto ou alguma atividade cultural, aparecia sempre (p.ex., quando a televisão fazia alguma reportagem sobre o projeto) a conversa do "para os tirar das ruas".

Agora, os promotores dessas atividades incluem sempre o "para eles não estarem sempre agarrados ao computador".

A analogia talvez não seja perfeita (a conversa de "os tirar da rua" provavelmente era a pensar em jovens de estratos mais desfavorecidos dos que agora querem que não estejam "agarrados ao computador"), mas há um certo paralelismo.

Estagnação cultural?

Acid Retirement Home, no Flip Chart Fairy Tales:

They were talking about Acid House on the radio this morning. On Radio 4. On the Today programme! Then again, Acid House was 25 years ago and the people who made it happen are now middle-aged. Was it the last of the great revolutions in music and youth culture? It’s difficult to think of anything since that has had quite the same impact.

It’s often said that before rock ‘n’ roll and the invention of the teenager, young people dressed like their parents. Harriet Walker reckons we are going back to that (...)

So if fashion is losing its edge, is rock ‘n’ roll going the same way?

Suzanne Moore thinks so, as she compares the music and performance of Lady Gaga with that of the late Lou Reed:

[I]f Gaga is working overtime to shock us, it just isn’t happening. (...)

You could say the same about most of the artists that have appeared in recent years. . Amy Winehouse had a great voice and her wild lifestyle made headlines but her style of music was not new. Same for Pink, Adele and a host of others. They are talented people but they haven’t recorded anything that could not have been released fifteen years ago. The same is true of guitar rock. Today’s jangly indie bands don’t sound a lot different from the jangly indie bands of the nineties. (...)

This would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. Radio stations played the classic oldies like Elvis but everything else was pretty much forgotten a couple of years after it had been released. When the ska revival happened in 1979-80, we danced to Tears of a Clown, Don’t Call Me Scarface, Madness and Whine and Grine with no idea that we were listening to covers. These songs were over ten years old and no-one played them any more. They were dead and buried. You’d be more likely to hear the original version of Tears of a Clown on the radio now that you would in 1978. Music from even five years ago was for older brothers and sisters. Each generation had its own sound. (...)

A couple of years ago, these themes were the subject of a brilliant Vanity Fair article by Kurt Anderson.

The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

Think about it. Picture it. Rewind any other 20-year chunk of 20th-century time. There’s no chance you would mistake a photograph or movie of Americans or an American city from 1972—giant sideburns, collars, and bell-bottoms, leisure suits and cigarettes, AMC Javelins and Matadors and Gremlins alongside Dodge Demons, Swingers, Plymouth Dusters, and Scamps—with images from 1992. Time-travel back another 20 years, before rock ’n’ roll and the Pill and Vietnam, when both sexes wore hats and cars were big and bulbous with late-moderne fenders and fins—again, unmistakably different, 1952 from 1972. You can keep doing it and see that the characteristic surfaces and sounds of each historical moment are absolutely distinct from those of 20 years earlier or later: the clothes, the hair, the cars, the advertising—all of it.

Now try to spot the big, obvious, defining differences between 2012 and 1992. Movies and literature and music have never changed less over a 20-year period. Lady Gaga has replaced Madonna, Adele has replaced Mariah Carey—both distinctions without a real difference—and Jay-Z and Wilco are still Jay-Z and Wilco.

(...)

It’s true that old blokes have always moaned about young people’s tastes. Dads wouldn’t be dads if they didn’t say the music their kids listen to all sounds the same.

But this is different. Dads never said ‘it all sounds the same as it did when I was young‘. In 1977, if you’d suggested there was any similarity between Johnny Rotten and Gene Vincent you’d have got a slap. From both adults and kids. These days, the middle-aged men who don’t get out much are complaining that things aren’t changing fast enough and that the kids just aren’t revolting any more. How do you shock your parents nowadays? You certainly can’t do it with rock n roll, not in an age where whole families go to Glasto and teenagers listen to bands that were formed before their parents were born. (...)

For some youngsters, especially the boys, the allegiances and sense of identity that used to be anchored in rock bands and youth tribes now comes from gaming. Gaming is the new rock n roll – even the Christian right has noticed. Perhaps that is where you’ll find some of the innovation and energy that used to go into music. Unless that, too, is yesterday’s news.

What does this all mean? I really have no idea but it does feel like yet another Back-To. There have been a lot of them recently. We are going back to 1938 levels of income distribution, back to a time when profits took the lion’s share of GDP, back to a time when charities, rather than the state, were expected to provide for the poor, back to lower economic growth. And back to a time before rock n roll when sons dressed like their fathers. All of which makes me wonder whether the postwar world, with its high wages, increasing equality, high economic growth and rock n roll revolutions every few years, may turn out to be a historical blip.

Eu diria que, se há uma certa estagnação em termos "estéticos", é compensada por um muito maior dinamismo tecnológico - se nos anos 80 vissemos um filme feito (ou passado) nos anos 50 ou 60, as roupas (e as normais morais) podiam ser muito diferentes, mas os carros, as televisões, os telefones, talvez mesmo as fotocopiadoras não causavam nenhuma estranheza - tentem hoje em dia ver um filme feito nos anos 80 ou 90, e nota-se logo a falta de telemóveis, a raridade de computadores, a internet em que só os "cromos da informática" sabem como entrar... (há muitos cuja própria existência de telemóveis tornaria o enredo impossível).

Esquerda caviar?

Uma passagem de "Um Piano nas Barricadas: Autonomia operária (1973-1979)", de Marcello Tarì:

Em Milão os colectivos autónomos começam a mover-se num terreno mais ofensivo no que toca às auto-reduções e a levar a cabo expropriações nos supermercados.

A história dos exproprios milaneses – a partir do que ocorreu nos supermercados de Quarto Oggiaro e da Via Padova em 1974 – é magistralmente evocada em Insurrezione, o romance auto-biográfico de Paolo Pozzi, à época chefe de redacção de “Rosso”, que, para além da narrativa divertida, permite também apreciar os seus aspectos “técnicos”: enquanto a maioria dos expropriadores roubava as mercadorias, um grupo ocupava-se a cortar a linha telefónica da loja e outro permanecia do lado de fora, armado com cocktails molotov para o caso de se aproximarem viaturas da polícia e de ser necessário cobrir a saída dos companheiros (Paolo Pozzi, Insurrezione, DeriveApprodi, Roma, 2007). Mas a autonomia não roubava apenas massa, carne e azeite, como pretendiam os marxistas-leninistas, mas também whisky, caviar, salmão e todas as mercadorias de luxo que, segundo uma moral partilhada também pelos grupos, não faziam ou não deveriam fazer parte da vida proletária. Os exproprios, a “reapropriação” no sentido praticado pelos autónomos, não eram simplesmente acções de alto significado político-social, aludiam a uma riqueza finalmente partilhada, a uma necessidade que era destruída na satisfação de um desejo, a um tomar pela força parte daquela outra força que o capital te roubava cada dia; e à noite, depois da expropriação, fazia-se a festa partilhando o caviar e o champanhe francês: apropriavam-se as mercadorias para aniquilar o seu maléfico poder simbólico.

O que faria uma super-inteligência artificial?

Paul Krugman (em entrevista a Ezra Klein) sobre o alegado perigo de uma super-inteligência artificial vir a dominar os humanos:

"one thing we might find out if we produce something that is vastly analytically superior is it ends up going all solipsistic and spending all its time solving extremely difficult and pointless math problems"

As línguas mais estranhas do mundo

The weirdest languages (Idibom) [2017/02/19 - link provavelmente morto - cópia aqui, no site Hackerfall]

The World Atlas of Language Structures evaluates 2,676 different languages in terms of a bunch of different language features. These features include word order, types of sounds, ways of doing negation, and a lot of other things—192 different language features in total.

So rather than take an English-centric view of the world, WALS allows us take a worldwide view. That is, we evaluate each language in terms of how unusual it is for each feature. For example, English word order is subject-verb-object—there are 1,377 languages that are coded for word order in WALS and 35.5% of them have SVO word order. Meanwhile only 8.7% of languages start with a verb—like Welsh, Hawaiian and Majang—so cross-linguistically, starting with a verb is unusual. For what it’s worth, 41.0% of the world’s languages are actually SOV order. (Aside: I’ve done some work with Hawaiian and Majang and that’s how I learned that verbs are a big commitment for me. I’m just not ready for verbs when I open my mouth.)

The data in WALS is fairly sparse, so we restrict ourselves to the 165 features that have at least 100 languages in them (at this stage we also knock out languages that have fewer than 10 of these—dropping us down to 1,693 languages).

Now, one problem is that if you just stop there you have a huge amount of collinearity. Part of this is just the nature of the features listed in WALS—there’s one for overall subject/object/verb order and then separate ones for object/verb and subject/verb. Ideally, we’d like to judge weirdness based on unrelated features. We can focus in on features that aren’t strongly correlated with each other (between two correlated features, we pick the one that has more languages coded for it). We end up with 21 features in total.

For each value that a language has, we calculate the relative frequency of that value for all the other languages that are coded for it. So if we had included subject-object-verb order then English would’ve gotten a value of 0.355 (we actually normalized these values according to the overal entropy for each feature, so it wasn’t exactly 0.355, but you get the idea). The Weirdness Index is then an average across the 21 unique structural features. But because different features have different numbers of values and we want to reduce skewing, we actually take the harmonic mean (and because we want bigger numbers = more weird, we actually subtract the mean from one). In this blog post, I’ll only report languages that have a value filled in for at least two-thirds of features (239 languages).

The outlier (weirdest) languages

The language that is most different from the majority of all other languages in the world is a verb-initial tonal languages spoken by 6,000 people in Oaxaca, Mexico, known as Chalcatongo Mixtec (aka San Miguel el Grande Mixtec). Number two is spoken in Siberia by 22,000 people: Nenets (that’s where we get the word parka from). Number three is Choctaw, spoken by about 10,000 people, mostly in Oklahoma.

But here’s the rub—some of the weirdest languages in the world are ones you’ve heard of: German, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, Spanish, and Mandarin. And actually English is #33 in the Language Weirdness Index.

The 25 weirdest languages of the world. In North America: Chalcatongo Mixtec, Choctaw, Mesa Grande Diegueño, Kutenai, and Zoque; in South America: Paumarí and Trumai; in Australia/Oceania: Pitjantjatjara and Lavukaleve; in Africa: Harar Oromo, Iraqw, Kongo, Mumuye, Ju|’hoan, and Khoekhoe; in Asia: Nenets, Eastern Armenian, Abkhaz, Ladakhi, and Mandarin; and in Europe: German, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, and Spanish.

By the way, how awesome of a name is “Pitjantjatjara“? (Also: can you guess which one of the internal syllables is silent?)

(...)

This is odd. Is this odd? One of the features that distinguishes languages is how they ask yes/no questions.The vast majority of languages have a special question particle that they tack on somewhere (like the ka at the end of a Japanese question). Of 954 languages coded for this in WALS, 584 of them have question particles. The word order switching that we do in English only happens in 1.4% of the languages. That’s 13 languages total and most of them come from Europe: German, Czech, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Frisian, English, Danish, and Spanish.

But there is an even more unusual way to deal with yes/no questions and that’s what Chalcatongo Mixtec does: which is to do nothing at all. It is the only language surveyed that does not have a particle, a change of word order, a change of intonation…There is absolutely no difference between an interrogative yes/no question and a simple statement. I have spent part of the day imagining a game show in this language.

The 5 least weird languages in the world

(...)

At the very very bottom of the Weirdness Index there are two languages you’ve heard of and three you may not have: Hungarian, normally renowned as a linguistic oddball comes out as totally typical on these dimensions. (I got to live in Budapest last summer and I swear that Hungarian does have weirdnesses, it just hides them other places.) Chamorro (a language of Guam spoken by 95,000 people), Ainu (just a handful of speakers left in Japan, it is nearly extinct), and Purépecha (55,000 speakers, mostly in Mexico) are all very normal. But the very most super-typical, non-deviant language of them all, with a Weirdness Index of only 0.087 is Hindi, which has only a single weird feature.

Part of this is to say that some of the languages you take for granted as being normal (like English, Spanish, or German) consistently do things differently than most of the other languages in the world. It reminds me of one of the basic questions in psychology: to what extent can we generalize from research studies based on university students who are, as Joseph Henrich and his colleagues argue, Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic. In other words: sometimes the input is WEIRD and you need to ask yourself how that changes things.

Duas observações:

- é natural que tento em inglês como em frisão, holandês, alemão, dinamarquês, sueco e norueguês se troque a ordem das palavras quando se faz uma pergunta, já que essas linguas mais ou menos derivam umas das outras (o curioso aqui será também se usar isso em espanhol e checo, e já agora, pelos vistos, não se usar em islandês)

- dá-me a ideia que os autores avaliaram a estranheza de uma lingua vendo em quantas línguas no mundo apareciam as características da língua em questão; mas penso que faria sentido ponderar pelo número de falantes (no texto não se diz explicitamente se se fez isso ou não, mas dá-me a ideia que não) - afinal, se uma dada construção gramatical for usada em poucas línguas, mas essas línguas forem muito faladas, será que faz sentido dizer que essa contrução é rara ou "estranha"?

O que pode um governo SYRIZA fazer?

Como já se esperava, vai haver eleições na Grécia. Há fortes hipoteses de uma vitória do SYRIZA; a questão, agora, é o que poderá suceder com um governo da "esquerda radical".

É um dado assente que um governo do SYRIZA vai tentar renegociar a dívida - agora que caminhos tal pode seguir:

1) A hipotese mais otimista é que a UE aceite a renegociação; nesta situação o novo governo poderá sem grandes problemas aumentar os gastos sociais, eliminar alguns impostos extraordinários entretanto lançados, etc; não é claro que se nestas eleições o SYRIZA continua com o seu programa de renacionalizar as empresas privatizadas e de apoiar a re-abertura pelos trabalhadores de empresas entretanto encerradas, mas é possível que sim. A nivel europeu, provavelmente a renogociação da dívida grega abrangerá também a dos outros estados endividados (como Portugal), e poderá criar condições para a Europa sair definitivamente da crise económica, com o fim das políticas de austeridade.

2) A hipotese mais provável é que a UE não aceite renegociar a dívida; nesse caso, o governo grego poderá, ou "conformar-se com a realidade" e manter as políticas anteriores (à François Hollande?), ou responder com uma moratória unilateral aos pagamentos da dívida.

3) Caso o novo governo grego prossiga a mesma política, em breve perderá a sua base de apoio, e o descontentamento popular irá passar a ser representado, ou pelos anarquistas, ou pela Aurora Dourada (talvez seja pessimismo da minha parte, mas imagino mais facilmente que a Grécia vire para o lado dos segundos do que dos primeiros...). A nível europeu, isso representará um fim definitivo dos partidos de "esquerda alternativa", estilo BE, Die Linke, Podemos, etc., já que não conseguirão responder à pergunta "o que fariam diferente do que na Grécia?" (e, também a nível europeu, imagino que o descontantamente será mais capitalizado pela extrema-direita do que pela ideia de criar um novo sistema político em que não haja governantes e governados, e assim os primeiros já não poderão trair os segundos).

4) No caso de uma moratória ao pagamento da dívida (que lançará o caos no sistema financeiro internacional, não só pela Grécia, mas também pela possibilidade de outros países seguirem o caminho), a UE pode reagir de 3 maneiras: finalmente aceitar uma renogociação da dívida (e aí voltamos ao ponto 1); ou o BCE deixa de fornecer liquidez aos bancos gregos; ou a UE simplesmente não faz nada.

5) Não é muito claro se o BCE pode simplesmente decidir deixar de emprestar dinheiro aos bancos gregos (recorde-se que os tratados constituitivos da UE não prevêm a possibilidade de um país ser expulso do euro); poderão argumentar que, com o default, a dívida grega passa a valer zero e portanto os bancos gregos já não cumprem os rácios de capital, mas confesso que não sei se, neste momento, os bancos gregos detêm ainda muita dívida pública grega, ou se está já está quase toda nas mãos do UE e do FMI (além de que, se fosse por esse argumento, teriam que deixar de fornecer liquidez a todos os bancos muito expostos à dívida grega, e não apenas aos gregos); de qualquer forma, se o BCE deixar de fornecer liquidez à banca grega, o governo grego terá duas hipoteses: ficar mesmo assim no euro, ou preparar a saída e o lançamento de uma moeda própria.

6) Permanecer no euro mesmo sem o BCE dar suporte aos bancos gregos não é totalmente impossível: afinal, países que nem sequer é suposto fazerem parte da zona euro, como o Montenegro e o Kosovo, usam o euro como moeda oficial (tal como vários países - incuindo alguns supostamente "anti-EUA" como o Equador - usam o dólar); no entanto levantaria problemas os bancos locais funcionarem sem puderem recorrer ao BCE como prestamista de ultima instância, e no caso grego haveria também o problema adicional de a expetativa seria que talvez deixasse completamente o euro (ao contrário do Montenegro e do Kosovo, em que a expetativa é um dia virem a ser membros da UE e da zona euro) o que poderia desencadear uma corrida aos bancos para levantar os euros antes que fosse tarde demais (ou seja, provavelmente seria necessário, nem que temporariamente, impor limites ao levantamento de dinheiro, tal como foi feito em Chipre)

7) Sobre as consequências da saída do euro já se escreveu tanto que não há muito a dizer; politicamente, poria em grandes dificuldades o governo do SYRIZA, que se tem apresentado como pretendendo manter a Grécia no euro (suspeito que a saída do euro só seria possível com um referendo) - e se a moratória à dívida não dar origem ao caos previsto no ponto 4, a saída da Grécia do euro provocaria-o de certeza (também neste caso, sobretudo pelo efeito de "precedente" - a partir do momento em que se toma consciência real que um país pode sair do euro, a confiança neste seria bastante abalada). Finalmente, recorde-se que, de acordo com os tratados, uma saída do euro obrigaria a uma saída da UE.

8) Finalmente, no caso de a UE não reagir à moratória grega, talvez não houvesse grande problema - a Grécia tem um superavit primário, logo poderia dispensar os mercados financeiros e ainda afrouxar um pouco a austeridade.

Todos os cenários acima descritos foram feitos abstraindo de condicionantes internas à politica do hipotético governo SYRIZA, como coligações de governo (uma coligação com os social-democratas do Potami, com os comunistas eurocéticos do KKE ou com os Gregos Independentes da direita nacionalista com certeza não seria indiferente em termos de percursos a escolher), ameaças de golpes de estado, etc.

De qualquer forma, suspeito que 2015 será um ano decisivo para a Europa, em que vai acabar a fase do "empurrar com a barriga" e, ou se finalmente avança para uma politica coordenada de combate à crise (em vez de uma politica coordenada de deprimir a economia via austeridade), ou a UE se começa a desagregar.

[Esquema do post inspirado neste]

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

Capitalismo e Rendimento Básico Incondicional

Basic income vs capitalism, por Chris Dillow:

On the one hand, the merits of a guaranteed income for all seem clear:

- It would be simple to administer, which should appeal to governments wanting to cut "wasteful" public spending.

- In giving an unconditional income to all, workers would be able to take on insecure jobs, training, internships or zero-hours jobs without fear of losing their benefits. In this sense, A BI underpins the flexible labour market.

- A BI could free people to do voluntary work, thus helping to promote the "Big Society."

- In replacing tax credits, A BI could well be associated with lower marginal withdrawal rates (pdf) than at present. This could increase work incentives.

The case for some kind of BI, then, seems strong. And herein lies my paradox. If the case is so strong, why has it for years not been considered by the main political parties, other than the Greens?

It's not obviously because it's unaffordable. I reckon a BI of around £130 per week - £20 more than the basic state pension and almost twice the JSA rate - could be paid for by scrapping current spending on social security and tax credits and by abolishing some of the many tax allowances (pdf), the most important being the £62.5bn cost of the personal allowance.

Instead, it's because A BI breaks with a fundamental principle of the welfare state. This, wrote Beveridge in 1942, is "to make and keep men fit for service.*" One function of the welfare state is to ensure that capital gets a big supply of labour, by making eligibity for unemployment benefit conditional upon seeking work. BI, however, breaks this principle.In its pure form, it allows folk to laze on the beach all day.

For many of us - including Philippe van Parijs who first alerted me to the merits of BI - this is not a bug but a feature. Jobs are scarce, so it's better for workers if some are subsidized not to seek them, leaving more opportunities for those who do want to work.

However, this is certainly not in the interests of capitalists, who want a large labour supply - a desire which is buttressed by the morality of reciprocal altruism and the work ethic. It is the fear that a BI would lead to mass skiving that keeps it off the political agenda.

Is such a fear justified? I don't know. Empirically, it's ambiguous, as a BI would - as I've said - in some ways improve work incentives. For capitalists, though, it is a risky prospect.

My suspicion is that a full BI is, for this reason, incompatible with capitalism. Yes, it might well be efficient in many ways. But capitalism is about maximizing profits, not utility.

Henrique Raposo e os desenhos animados

Henrique Raposo critica os desenhos animados atuais, argumentando que fogem ao sofrimento, ao sacrifício, ao esforço, etc.

Confesso que não conheço o conteúdo dos desenhos animados atuais - os meus sobrinhos já estão todos nos dois dígitos e já vêm mais prgramas de imagem real do que desenhos animados; e o único habitante da minha casa só com um dígito na idade não liga muito a nenhum tipo de televisão (nem sequer a documentários sobre leões, tigres, leopardos ou chitas, que à partida até lhe poderiam interessar); já o Henrique Raposo creio que tem um filha com poucos anos, pelo que efetivamente seguirá mais os desenhos animados do que eu.

No entanto, não me parece fazer grande sentido esta passagem «Então façam o favor de comparar "Era uma vez a vida" com os filmes que RTP, SIC e TVI transmitem neste período das festas. A cruz faz falta».

Vamos lá ver os filmes infantis que a SIC passou nos dias 24 e 25 (aviso - múltiplos spoilers):

- Carros: a história de um carro de alta competição que após ficar empanado numa pequena cidade, descobre os valores da comunidade, amizade, família, etc., etc. É verdade que talvez não tenha grande sofrimento e tragédia propriamente ditos, mas também não é exatamente um filme "facilitista"

- Toy Story 3: provavelmente o mais trágico da série Toy Story, em que os brinquedos são (ou julgam ser abandonados) pelo dono e vão parar a um infantário onde, além de serem maltratados pelas crianças, estão submetidos a uma espécie de brinquedo-ditador

- À procura de Nemo: uma família de peixes-palhaços em que mãe e quase todos os ovos são comidos por alguém, só sobrando o pai e um filho; depois o filho é capturado e levado para um aquário (ficando à mercê de uma rapariga assassina de peixes), tendo o pai que atravessar o oceano para o libertar

- Brave - indomável: uma princesa que, para se livrar de um casamento combinado ou coisa parecida, evoca um feitiço que acidentalmente transforma a sua mãe num urso, que ela terá que salvar de ser morta pelo seu pai, que odeia ursos (aparentemente, um urso - que seria também um príncipe transformado - comeu-lhe uma perna); não tem grande drama, mas tem a ameaça disso (e uma mensagem implícita "cuidado com soluções fáceis")

- Força Ralph: o "mau" de um jogo de vídeo (de uma casa de jogos, não daqueles que se jogam em casa) farta-se do seu papel e tenta mudar para outro jogo, dando origem a uma série de acontecimentos que põem em perigo a existência dos jogos da casa de jogos (e a vida dos seus personagem, que desaparecerão se os jogos desaparecerem); e uma das personagem secundárias está traumatizada porque, no dia do seu casamento, o noivo foi morto por um bug informático

- Arthur Christmas: a distribuição de brinquedos pela família Natal foi transformada numa mega-operação tecnologicamente sofisticada, mas algo corre mal e uma criança não recebe o seu presente; agora é necessário, pelo método antigo (o trenó movido a renas) ir entregar o presente à criança, custe o que custar (e com muitas pressões para desistir)

- Alvin e os Esquilos 3 - naufragados: até vi um bocado, mas não percebi nada

- Toy Story - perdidos no tempo: a dona dos brinquedos vai brincar com uma amiga e leva-os; na casa da outra rapariga, têm que enfrentar brinquedos que se dedicam a algo parecido com lutas de gladiadores (a sério), não sendo destruídos por pouco

(mais uns quantos filmes que deram no principio da manhã, e que provavelmente ninguém viu)

Onde é que eu quero chegar - é que todos ou quase todos destes filmes me parecem ter o tal elemento de sofrimento/esforço/perigo/drama, não têm enredos "facilitistas"

Natal cancelado?

‘Christmas is cancelled’ warning as elves vote to strike (Flip Chart Fairy Tales):

Christmas toy deliveries could be severely disrupted this year after Santa’s elves voted to extend their strike. The elves at Santa’s ‘Wish Realisation Centres’, who have been on strike for a week over pay and conditions, have vowed to continue their struggle until their demands are met.

Elves have complained that working conditions at Santa’s manufacturing and distribution centres have become intolerable. They claim that workers are monitored with tracker devices which force a pace of work sustainable only by the very fittest. If performance is too slow, wages are docked. Toilet breaks are ruthlessly monitored and sickness punished with dismissal. The elves also complain of a 3-tier workforce. Older elves, who have worked for Santa of some years, have full pension and redundancy rights. Younger permanent staff have lower pay but some security. An increasing number, though, are employed on precarious zero-hours contracts with low pay and few benefits. (...)

The roots of this dispute go back to the 1980s when Santa, desperate for investment to upgrade his operation, sold a controlling interest in Santa Inc to a consortium of venture capitalists. Although Santa is still non-executive chairman, most of the decisions are taken by the new owners, who brought in a cadre of MBA-educated gnomes to run the operation.

The gnomes, rewarded with a bonus scheme linked to shareholder value, concentrated on taking cost out of the organisation. New processes were brought in, pay rates held down and the final salary pension scheme closed to new entrants.

As one senior gnome blurted out, after a liquid lunch with Lucy Kellaway:

We have to do the nicey-nicey stuff to keep up the good PR. We wheel out the old boy to do the odd kids’ charity thing but the real value of the company is in licensing the Santa name and image. The brand is worth billions and we intend to squeeze as much value from it as we can.

Not that the elves are likely to see much of that. Pay levels at Santa Inc have been slashed. According to a recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the median elf wage has been falling in real-terms for the last ten years and the majority of elves under 30 are in receipt of housing benefit or working tax credits. One newspaper reported that some elves were having to resort to food banks. (...)

Santa Inc has reacted to the strike by threatening to move its operations to lower wage areas. It claims to have armies of dwarves and goblins willing to work harder and for lower pay than the elves. This provoked an angry reaction from union leaders. Elves’ union general secretary, Legolas Crow, condemned “management bully-boy” tactics and accused the company of “flagrant life-threatening health and safety breaches”. (...)

See also:

Daily Mail:
‘Legolas Crow: The vicious Marxist elf who wants to destroy Christmas!’

Society Guardian:
‘With the elves at the food bank.’

Telegraph Comment:
‘There can’t be any ‘poor elves’. I’ve never met one!’

Daily Express:
‘Elves helped MI5 to murder Diana.’

[Para quem não conheça a linha editorial dos jornais ingleses, o Daily Mail, o Daily Telegraph e o Daily Express são de direita e o Guardian é de esquerda]

"Direitos dos animais" ou "bem-estar animal"?

Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare: Which Side Are You On?, por Abigail Geer.

O texto tem o problema de, a meu ver, tratar a posição dos defensores do "bem-estar animal" como uma versão moderada (ou talvez defeituosa?) da posição dos "direitos dos animais" (como se a oposição entre "bem-estar animal" e "direitos dos animais" fosse uma oposição entre pragmáticos e idealistas), em vez de as ver como duas posições filosóficas por direito próprio (ou seja, dois tipos diferentes de idealistas).

Direitos "negativos" e "positivos"

Qualquer "direito", chamemos-lhe "positivo" ou "negativo" implica sempre restringir a liberdade de fazer alguma coisa (p.ex., o direito de propriedade mais não é que a proibição de se utilizar algo - estilo, atravessar um caminho - sem autorização do proprietário).

Eu diria que, das duas uma - ou as ações que os vários individuos querem empreender não interferem umas com as outras, e aí não precisamos de leis, instituições ou direitos ("positivos" ou "negativos") para nada; ou interferem, e aí quaisquer direitos que sejam definidos (chamemos-lhes "positivos" ou "negativos") para regular esses potenciais conflitos implicam sempre (a ideia é essa) impor limites ao que alguém pode ou não fazer.

O programa do Syriza

What Syriza Says About Greece’s Economy, Its Debt and the Euro (Bloomberg)

Pegando neste artigo de há dois anos de Daniel Davies, parece-me que a estratégia do Syriza é algo como 1-32-41-6-[?], provavelmente mantendo 1-47-23-10 como plano B; mas neste momento a Grécia tem um saldo orçamental primário positivo (isto é, se não fosse os juros da dívida sobrava dinheiro), o que torna quer o ponto 6 (no primeiro caso) como o 10 (no segundo) mais fáceis de gerir.

Se não tens nada a esconder...

What Bad, Shameful, Dirty Behavior is U.S. Judge Richard Posner Hiding?, por Glenn Greenwald:

Richard Posner has been a federal appellate judge for 34 years,(...). At a conference last week in Washington, Posner said the NSA should have the unlimited ability to collect whatever communications and other information it wants (...)

His rationale? “I think privacy is actually overvalued,” the distinguished jurist pronounced. Privacy, he explained, is something people crave in order to prevent others from learning about the shameful and filthy things they do (...)

Unlike you and your need to hide your bad and dirty acts, Judge Posner has no need for privacy – or so he claims: “If someone drained my cell phone, they would find a picture of my cat, some phone numbers, some email addresses, some email text,” he said. “What’s the big deal?” He added: “Other people must have really exciting stuff. Do they narrate their adulteries, or something like that?” (...)

[I]f Judge Posner really believes what he’s saying about privacy, and if it’s really true that he personally has nothing to hide – he just has some cat videos and some pictures of his grandkids – then he should prove that with his actions. Every day, he should publicly post online all of the emails he sends and receives, along with transcripts of his telephone and in-person conversations. Or just put a recording device in his office and on his person, and upload the full audio every day. He should also put video cameras in all the rooms in his home and office, and stream it live on the internet 24 hours a day. If there’s a specific reason for excluding a particular conversation – say, something relating to attorney/client privilege – he can post a log identifying the metadata of the withheld communications. (...)

What possible objections could he have to any of this? After all, the Hon. Richard Posner has nothing to hide. He’s a good person. He does nothing shameful, corrupt, adulterous, or otherwise embarrassing – nothing constituting “the sorts of bad activities that would cause other people not to want to deal with [him].” Perish the thought. So why isn’t he doing this, or why wouldn’t he?

O artigo de Greenwald é escrito por referência a Richard Posner, mas aplica-se em geral ao argumento "se não tens nada a esconder, qual é o problema da vigilância?".

Tecnicamente, até estava

"Consider the chart, which shows the policy interest rate in Indonesia: during the 1998 crisis this rate was hiked to 70 percent, yet this wasn’t sufficient to stop a plunge in the rupiah to a fifth of its former value. And Indonesia wasn’t invading any of its neighbors, although it did have a failing authoritarian regime.", escreve Paul Krugman, comparando a crise indonésia de 1998 com a Rússia atual.

Em defesa da disciplina voluntariamente aceite

A respeito disto e disto, a discussão parece ser sobretudo sobre se a disciplina de voto é boa ou má. Mas o que me parece o ponto principal é que os deputados do PSD/Madeira aceitaram ser deputados em representação de um partido que, nas suas regras internas, têm a disciplina de voto no que diz respeito ao Orçamento de Estado.

E, mais importante ainda, mesmo que o PSD decida suspendê-los ou demiti-los de deputados, ninguém os obriga a pedirem a suspensão ou a demissão do mandato; ou seja, se eles, na sequência de algum processo disciplinar, pedirem a demissão, é porque aceitaram, voluntariamente, cumprir a decisão do partido de os demitir (recorde-se que isto começou com um comunicado do LIVRE pedindo para a presidente da AR não aceitar pedidos de demissão de deputados apresentados na sequência de processos disciplinares). Assim, se os deputados do PSD Madeira decidirem, repito, voluntariamente, obedecer às decisões do partido, a que propósito é que a presidente da AR deveria impedir isso? Isso parece-me aquela velha ideia de querer obrigar as pessoas a serem livres...

Outro ponto - David Crisóstomo refere que no Parlamento Europeu não há disciplina de voto; bem, eu suponho que nem no Parlamento Europeu, nem na Assembleia da República, nem da Assembleia de Freguesia de Portimão há disciplina de voto; entre os eleitos de cada partido é que poderá haver ou não disciplina de voto, conforme as regras que cada partido decidir.

Liderança bicéfala?

Aliança israelita entre Trabalhistas e HaTnua propõe primeiro-ministro rotativo.

Eric Garner last words to the State

9 anos de Vento Sueste

Hoje este blogue faz nove anos.

Como de costume, uma seleção de artigos publicados no último ano:

O "precedente do Kosovo", sobre a proclamação unilateral de independências

Keynes contra Hayek?

A opinião socialmente correta sobre os jogos de computador

Keynesianismo e Estatismo

Inteligência, personalidade e rendimentos

A saída do "Fórum Manifesto" do BE

Bens supérfluos, essenciais e indivisibilidade e  Racionalidade, definições, etc., largamente sobre se certos comportamentos são "racionais" ou não (os comentários são talvez mais interessantes do que os posts propriamente ditos)

O IRS das pessoas sem filhos

Vantagens de um doutoramento em Economia?

If you get a PhD, get an economics PhD, por Noah Smith:

People often ask me: "Noah, what career path can I take where I'm virtually guaranteed to get a well-paying job in my field of interest, which doesn't force me to work 80 hours a week, and which gives me both autonomy and intellectual excitement?" Well, actually, I lied, no one asks me that. But they should ask me that, because I do know of such a career path, and it's called the economics PhD. (...)

There are PhDs, and there are PhDs, and then there are econ PhDs.

Basically, I think of PhDs as mostly falling into one of three categories:

1. Lifestyle PhDs. These include math, literature and the humanities, theoretical physics, history, many social sciences, and the arts. These are PhDs you do because you really, really, really love just sitting and thinking about stuff. You work on you own interests, at your own pace. If you want to be a poor bohemian scholar who lives a pure "life of the mind," these PhDs are for you. I totally respect people who intentionally choose this lifestyle; I'd be pretty happy doing it myself, I think. Don't expect to get a job in your field when you graduate, though.

2. Lab science PhDs. These include biology, chemistry, neuroscience, electrical engineering, etc. These are PhDs you do because you're either a suicidal fool or an incomprehensible sociopath. They mainly involve utterly brutal hours slaving away in a laboratory on someone else's project for your entire late 20s, followed by years of postdoc hell for your early 30s, with a low percentage chance of a tenure-track faculty position. To find out what these PhD programs are like, read this blog post. If you are considering getting a lab science PhD, please immediately hit yourself in the face with a brick. Now you know what it's like.

(...)

3. PhDs that work. I'm not exactly sure which PhDs fall into this category, but my guess is that it includes marketing, applied math and statistics, finance, computer science, accounting, and management. It definitely, however, includes economics. Economics is the best PhD you can possibly get.

Why get a PhD in economics? Here's why:

Será que o que Smith escreve também se aplicará a Portugal? Dos doutoramentos não sei, mas parece que as licenciaturas em Economia são das com menos desemprego (eu por acaso levei 5 anos até arranjar algo comparável a um emprego, mas reconheço que não sou um caso representativo)

O "Rendimento Básico Incondicional" não é um exercício teórico

One State Already Has a Basic Income Plan, por Jesse Walker (no blog da Reason):

I made a brief reference yesterday to the idea of a negative income tax or universal basic income: a single, unconditional cash payment aimed at keeping people out of poverty. (...) One way to sort those ideas is to separate the proposals in which the payments would supplant the existing welfare state from the ones that would just add one more program to the mix. (That's why Milton Friedman ended up opposing Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, even though it had been inspired by Friedman's negative-income-tax proposal: Nixon's version would have been an add-on to the existing welfare state rather than a replacement for it.) Another notable distinction is between the people who would means-test the program and the ones who would just send a check to everyone. (That second division isn't a right/left split, by the way -- Friedman was a means-tester, while Charles Murray is in the checks-for-all camp.)

(...)

But I don't want to get into the weeds of weighing the competing proposals right now. I just want to note a fact that's oddly missing from a lot of these discussions: One state of the union has something similar to a basic income program already. (...)

That seems relevant to the policy discussion about income grants, doesn't it? Yet while the full-time campaigners for a guaranteed income are well aware of Alaska's system, the people who write about the idea elsewhere tend to ignore it. The liberal site Remapping Debate, to give an especially egregious example, did a big story on the push for a basic income in the '60s and '70s that concluded that those old proposals faded because "market devotees drowned out those who continued to believe that government has a vital role to play....By Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, the country in which [a basic income] had seemed mainstream a decade earlier looked considerably different." All of which is hard to square with the fact that such a program was adopted during the Reagan years, in a state with a Republican governor, as part of a political moment that saw the same state eliminate its personal income tax, and with an important assist from the Libertarian Party, which was a substantial political force in Alaska at the time. (There were Libertarian legislators in Juneau in those days, and the party was capable of drawing 15 percent of the vote in a gubernatorial election. The party supported the dividends on the grounds that sending the money to individual citizens was preferable to letting elected officials spend it.)

Three decades later, several states have established sovereign wealth funds like Alaska's, and with the fracking boom their number may soon grow. As of yet, no state has followed Alaska in distributing dividends to its citizens. But you shouldn't be surprised if you see a strong push in some of those jurisdictions for a system like the one adopted in Juneau. And if that happens, you shouldn't be surprised if the conversation about income grants in Washington continues to treat the idea as an esoteric intellectual exercise

As minhas escolas

De novo, os resultados das "minhas" escolas no ranking do Expresso (o que é que isso interessa?, perguntarão; nada, mas sempre é um pretexto para atualizar o blogue)

Escola	Ranking Geral	Média 2013	N.º Provas	% ASE	Exame
Escola Secundária Manuel Teixeira Gomes	144/628	10.97/20	561	41	11º/12º
Escola Secundária Poeta António Aleixo	408/628	9.82/20	694	31.5
Escola Básica D. Martinho Castelo Branco	541/1168	2.91/5	243	45.1	6º
Escola Básica de Mexilhoeira da Carregação	3800/4465	2.6/5	42	44.4	4º
Escola Básica  Major David Neto	2969/4465	2.88/5	256	45.2

Já agora, a sua posição em percentil (em que 0% seria a com melhores resultados na sua categoria e 100% a com piores):

Escola Secundária Manuel Teixeira Gomes - 23% (38% em 2013)

Escola Secundária Poeta António Aleixo - 65% (40%)

Escola Básica D. Martinho Castelo Branco - 46% (55%)

Escola Básica de Mexilhoeira da Carregação - 85% (81%)

Escola Básica  Major David Neto - 66% (31%)

Observações:

- A percentagem de alunos carenciados parece ter aumentado (pouco) em todas

- A Escola Básica Major David Neto (vulgo "Escola da Estrada de Alvor") teve uma hecatombe em termos de posição relativa (ainda que em termos absolutos a sua nota média tenha tido uma queda de apenas 9 centésimos de valor)

Esferas de influência

Acerca das eleições moldavas, escreve-se na Al-Jazeera:

 "If the pro-European parties win, Moldova's course towards European integration could become irreversible," Arcadie Barbarosie, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy in Chisinau told the AFP news agency.

"If Moldova turns back towards the customs union [with Russia], however, it risks remaining forever in Russia's sphere of influence."

Sou só eu que acho que isso é a mesma coisa que dizer

 "If the pro-Russian parties win, Moldova's course towards  the customs union [with Russia] could become irreversible,"

"If Moldova turns towards the European Union, however, it risks remaining forever in West's sphere of influence."

Afinal, "tornar-se irreversível" e "permanecer para sempre" são conceitos mais ou menos equivalentes...

Ver também - Politica internacional e verbos irregulares e RE: Politica internacional e verbos irregulares

O fim da civilização tal como a conhecíamos?

Depois de Anthímio de Azevedo, Sousa Veloso.

A liderança em disputa pela primeira vez?

Na altura da última convenção do Bloco de Esquerda, alguma comunicação social referiu que pela primeira vez havia disputa pela liderança.

Isso será correto? Afinal, em todas as convenções do BE excluindo a primeira houve listas de oposição para a Mesa Nacional; é verdade que antes nenhuma dessas listas tinha apresentado um candidato a "líder", mas o BE tem um sistema "parlamentarista" em que não há eleições específicas para líder ou coordenador - a direção é escolhida de acordo com o resultada da votação para a Mesa Nacional; logo, todas as candidaturas oposicionistas à Mesa que houve em quase todas as convenções podem ser consideradas candidaturas à direção (mesmo que sem qualquer hipótese real de vitória).

E não se pode expulsar o juiz Carlos Alexandre?

Xanana "consternado" com a detenção do "amigo" Sócrates

Um voto nunca fez diferença?

Por vezes diz-se que é praticamente impossível um voto individual decidir uma votação - é verdade que há casos reais de eleições decididas por um voto (ou com margens ainda menores), mas na maior parte dos casos trata-se de eleger representantes para um órgão colectivo, logo um voto só faria mesmo diferença se, além da eleição de um representante ser decidida por um voto, esse representante individual fosse decisivo para decidir quem tinha a maioria na assembleia (uma probabilidade quase nula).

Mas agora temos um exemplo fresquinho - a votação para a Mesa Nacional do Bloco de Esquerda foi empatada (ambos com 259 votos), e, na semana passada, na Assembleia Eleitoral de Olhão a moção E (Pedro Filipe Soares) ficou a um voto de eleger mais um delegado em Olhão; assim, se mais um bloquista olhanense tivesse votado na moção E, hoje essa moção teria sido a mais votada para a Mesa Nacional.

Os vistos gold

Muito se tem criticado os "vistos gold" por estarem a ser dados sobretudo ao investimento em imobiliário em vez de ao investimento a sério (aqui o que me parece ser um exemplo - ver o ponto 1).

Ironicamente, essa criticas vem sobretudo de sectores (nomeadamente da área do PS ou do BE) que seguem uma perspetiva keynesiana, segunda a qual o problema da economia portuguesa é do lado da procura (mais exatamente, procura externa e interna reduzida) e não da oferta (reduzida capacidade produtiva).

A mim parece-me que, para quem acha que a solução para a crise é aumentar a procura, não há grandes razões para achar melhor um investimento numa fábrica do que um investimento (de igual valor) numa casa.

Claro que se pode sempre argumentar que, entre um investimento que aumenta a procura e a oferta (fábrica) e um que apenas aumenta a procura (casa), o primeiro será sempre melhor, mas quanto mais se achar que o problema fundamental da economia é de procura, menos se achará essa "vantagem" significativa (se a lógica não for uma batata).

Diga-se que esse género de inconsistência lógica parece-me frequente no keynesianismo português - afinal, é também desses lados que se costuma ouvir as queixas de que os bancos não estão a fazer o dinheiro chegar à economia real, e por causa disso haverá muitos projetos de investimento que não vão para a frente, por falta de finaciamento (cenário pouco consistente com uma crise económica motivada por baixa procura, em que me parece que o normal será haver um excedente de capital disponível para ser emprestado, e quase ninguém a querer pedir empréstimos, já que, devido à baixa procura, haverá poucos projetos de investimentos rentáveis).

O fim do sionismo moderado nos EUA?

The new American Jewish struggle over Israel: Hawks versus ultra-hawks, por Peter Beinart (Haaretz):

Consider this week’s spat between Sheldon Adelson and Abraham Foxman. At an event last Sunday, Adelson’s fellow oligarch, Chaim Saban, said Israel needed to support a Palestinian state if it wanted to remain a Jewish democracy. To which Adelson replied, “I don’t think the Bible says anything about democracy. I think God didn’t say anything about democracy. God talked about all the good things in life. He didn’t talk about Israel remaining as a democratic state, otherwise Israel isn’t going to be a democratic state — so what?”

So what? With that question, Adelson lobbed a grenade at the American Jewish establishment. When the American Jewish establishment defends Israel, it doesn’t talk much about God. That’s because while theological language plays well among conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews, it tends to alienate secular liberals. Indeed, it alienates some of the secular liberals who populate American Jewish organizations. As a result, America’s mainstream Jewish groups generally justify Israeli policy not via religion but via America’s civil religion—democracy—a creed that enjoys unquestioned reverence across the political spectrum. By claiming democracy doesn’t matter, Adelson was sabotaging the case for Israel that the American Jewish establishment has been making for decades. Which is why one of that establishment’s senior members, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman, called Adelson’s remarks “disturbing on many levels.” Foxman added that, “the founders of Israel got it exactly right when they emphasized the country being both a Jewish and democratic state. Any initiatives that move Israel away from either value would ill-serve the state and people of Israel.”

The problem is that Israel has been pursuing just such an initiative for almost a half-century now. Since 1967, it has established dominion over millions of West Bank Palestinians who lack citizenship or the right to vote in the state that controls their lives. (...)

For years now, the American Jewish establishment has been laundering Israel’s behavior for American consumption: Justifying Israel’s undemocratic settlement policies in the soothing language of democratic values. But right-wingers like Adelson increasingly refuse to play along. Claiming you cherish Israeli democracy, after all, requires claiming that the West Bank Palestinians who Israel currently controls should one day have a state of their own. Since the American Jewish right sees that as both dangerous to Israeli security and an affront to God, it is challenging the American Jewish establishment by bluntly advocating a one-state solution in which millions of Palestinians are permanently disenfranchised, democracy be damned. The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which Adelson helps bankroll, has partnered with conservative Christians to pass resolutions in the Florida and South Carolina legislatures declaring that they “consider Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem to be part of Israel.” The ZOA pushed a similar resolution at the Republican National Convention in 2012 but was stymied by AIPAC, which wanted both parties to go on record as supporting the two state solution.

Behind this growing conflict between the Jewish center and the Jewish right lies a demographic shift. Historically, mainstream American Jewish groups have been dominated by relatively secular Jews who vote Democratic and hold fairly liberal views on domestic issues, even as they passionately defend Israel against external criticism. But the children of these secular American Zionists are more likely to inherit their parents’ secularism than their Zionism. They’re not anti-Zionists. They’re just not as interested in devoting their free time to defending an Israeli government from which they feel distant, if not alienated.

As a result, the younger American Jews most willing to dedicate themselves to the “Pro-Israel” cause come disproportionately from an Orthodox community that is growing in both size and self-confidence. But Orthodox Jews, unlike their more secular counterparts, don’t generally hold liberal views on domestic issues. They mostly vote Republican. They’re more likely to explicitly reject the two state solution, and to justify that rejection by invoking God’s promise to give Jews the land. All of which makes them more willing to embrace the right-wing Christian evangelicals who more secular American Jews fear. (...)

Once upon a time, Jews from across the political spectrum joined groups like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League or the American Jewish Committee. Now the liberals are more likely to join J Street or even Jewish Voices for Peace and the conservatives are more likely to join the ZOA, the Republican Jewish Coalition or the Emergency Committee for Israel.

For years, the American Jewish center has tried to uphold the fiction that you can both support the two state solution and support Israel’s right to destroy the two state solution. Now the contradiction between those two imperatives is fracturing American Jewish institutional life. The result is an intra-Jewish debate that is fiercer, more divisive and more honest.

Titulos que não consigo perceber

Este da Ana Vidigal no Jugular.

Tunisia vs. Turquia

Why is Tunisian democracy succeeding while the Turkish model is failing?, por Yüksel Sezgin (Monkey Cage):

In an influential book in 1991, Samuel Huntington established the “two-turnover” test to distinguish between emerging and consolidated democracies. For a democracy to be consolidated, according to the test, free and fair elections must twice have led to the peaceful handover of office between an incumbent and a successful challenger. As Huntington notes, this is a very difficult test. American democracy was not consolidated until Jacksonian Democrats lost the presidency to the Whigs in 1840.

The secularist Nida Tunis’s defeat of the moderate Islamist Ennahda in Tunisia’s elections last week brought the fledgling democracy a big step closer to passing Huntington’s test. The elections also strengthen the embattled forces for democracy throughout the Middle East and Muslim world. Tunisia’s successful democratic experiment despite rising extremism and a weak economy trumps Turkey’s already bogus claim to being the model for democratizing Muslim countries. In reality, Turkey has never been a viable model for Muslim democracy, since it was never a free or liberal democracy in the first place. (...)

If there is any model of Muslim democracy post-Arab Spring, it is Tunisia, not Turkey. (...)

While Turkey has descended down this authoritarian spiral over the past two years, Tunisia has achieved the most impressive democratic transformation in the history of the region. Tunisia had its first free elections in October 2011 after the fall of the Ben Ali regime. Ennahda won a plurality of seats (41 percent) and soon reached a power-sharing agreement with two secular parties in the Constituent Assembly. One of the things Tunisians got right was the rejection of presidentialism in favor of parliamentary democracy. Tunisians recognized the dangers of presidentialism in a country with a weak democratic tradition and historic lack of checks and balances. Tunisians also chose proportional representation with a zero-percent national threshold, giving the greatest possible representation to different voices in parliament. Turkey headed in the opposition direction. The AKP government tried unsuccessfully to use its majority to change the country’s parliamentary system into a presidential regime and to switch from the current PR-based electoral system to a “first-past-the-post” majoritarian system, which could give the AKP a supermajority while denying smaller parties’ representation. Turkey has one of the highest and most undemocratic electoral thresholds (10 percent) in the world; but the lack of representativeness of the electoral system has never been a real concern for the AKP elite.

 A respeito do sistema eleitoral turco, um artigo de 2007 (é velho, mas penso que não houve grandes mudanças): Is Turkey’s electoral system democratic?, por Matthew Shugart.

O que faria se fosse catalão

- Ia votar
- À questão "Quer que a  Catalunha seja um Estado?", respondia "sim"
- À questão "Quer que esse Estado seja independente?", respondia "não"

Explicando:

- Eu acho que se o povo da Catalunha (ou o povo de Santo António dos Cavaleiros, já agora) tem todo o direito a decidir ser independente, logo em primeiro lugar iria votar, apoiando o processo referendário contra a tentativa das autoridades de Madrid de o impedirem  (e levando à sua transformação em "consulta")
- Achando que uma federação (ou melhor, uma confederação) voluntária é preferível à independência pura, seria a favor de um Estado catalão não-independente.

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

Relembrando as eleições norte-americanas de 2008

Água na fervura, um post meu de novembro de 2008:

se os Democratas obtiveram uma vitória conjuntural (não houve qualquer mudança significativa nos padrões de votação), a sua principal dificuldade estrutural (o apoio que, nas eleições nacionais, os brancos do Sul dão aos Republicanos, mesmo contra os seus interesses económicos - afinal, o Sul e a Appalachia são as regiões mais pobres dos EUA) parece que se está a reforçar.

Ou seja, parece-me que os Democratas conquistaram votos de eleitores flutuantes (que noutra eleição podem passar facilmente para os Republicanos - nomeadamente os votos que Obama obteve entre a alta burguesia), enquanto os conservadores consolidaram a sua base de apoio.

Esquerda, Direita e o Rendimento Básico Incondicional

Basic income: left & right, por Chris Dillow:

He'll not thank me for saying so, but I agree with Sam Bowman's call for a basic income (or, as he calls it, negative income tax). This raises a question: how can a Marxist so warmly agree with a right(ish)-libertarian?

In part, it is because Marxism is a form of libertarianism. But there's two other sources of agreement between us.

One is that I agree with Sam that alternatives to a basic income, such as a living wage, are inferior to the extent that they would price some people out of work. And I also agree that capitalism cannot provide full employment. We differ on how we express this: Sam would emphasize some people having a low marginal product and the effects of automation whilst I'd stress more systemic defects of capitalism. (...)

Secondly, I suspect we agree in rejecting the idea that the welfare state should have a moralistic purpose. From the "less eligibility" principle of the Poor Law, through Beveridge's plan to "make and keep men fit for service", to New Labour's use of tax credits to "make work pay", the Welfare State has always tried to encourage work. Libertarians and Marxists are, or should be, sceptical of this. Libertarians because the state in a free society should be neutral between ways of life. And Marxists because we don't think the state should be capitalism's human resources department. (...)


Where, then, might we differ? The answer, I think, lies in the level of basic income.

A "auto-proclamada" Republica de Donetsk

Penso que grande parte dos países são "auto-proclamados"...

Uma abordagem anarco-capitalista às histórias de princesas?

An Anarcho-Capitalist Disney Movie I'd Like to See: Who Paid for The Palace?, por Art Carden (Econlog):

I'd love to see an anarcho-capitalist take on the Disney Princess narratives. Where did the resources come from that paid for the castle? In one of the songs in Frozen, Anna sings "who knew we had a thousand salad plates?"

Who paid for those thousand salad plates?

Perhaps Anna and Elsa's parents were the pictures of wise and benevolent rulers, trading protection of property rights for tax revenue, but who had their dreams deferred in order to pay for a thousand salad plates collecting dust in the palace?

The "benevolent ruler" view comes into question toward the end of the movie when there is a royal proclamation that the kingdom of Arendelle will no longer do business with "Weasel Town." Granted, the Duke of Weselton is a scoundrel, but why should the queen stand between her subjects and willing trading partners in Weselton? How is the edict to be enforced?

I suspect there are much darker histories behind the princes and princesses than Disney (or the original authors of the fairy tales on which Disney movies are based) is willing to admit. What happened before "once upon a time"? How did the royal families get their power? And how, for that matter, would they respond to competing providers of security services in their jurisdictions?

Já agora, também recomendo este comentário «If you like speculation about "the dark stories behind the fairy tales", Disney does have a product for your: ABC's "Once Upon a Time".»