Os beneficios sociais estimulam o desemprego?

Welfare benefits & unemployment, por Chris Dillow:

The problem here is that the anti-welfare lobby misrepresents its case. For example, when Neil O’Brien claims that higher benefits encourage people to stay on benefits rather than find work, what he should say is: “other things being equal, higher benefits will, at the margin, discourage people from seeking work.”
Put like this, four questions arise.

1. Is even this true? Yes, higher benefits encourage people to substitute work for leisure. But as Don says, there might also be an offsetting income effect; higher benefits allow people to afford bus fares to Job Centres, or a local newspaper, or child care whilst they are at interviews,  or a pleasant-smelling clunge that’ll impress an interviewer. They might, therefore price people into work.

2. How extensive is the margin? One of my big gripes against the right is their tendency to assume that margins are more extensive than they are. And this might be the case here. Some cross-country evidence has found that the link between job search and the ratio of unemployment benefits to wages is statistically insignificant.

3. Isn’t there an aggregation problem here? Let’s concede that lower unemployment benefits do encourage people to look for work. For any individual unemployed person, this increases their chances of getting a job. However, unless aggregate employment increases, their increased chances come at the expense of lower chances of finding work for someone else. The question, then, is: does increased job search lead to increased aggregate employment?

As virtudes da auto-suficiência - clarificação

Neste post, talvez não tenha ficado muito claro o que eu queria dizer com "estes meus argumentos a favor da auto-suficiência não me parecem escaláveis do nível individual para o nível de um país"; é que isto é capaz de poder ser interpretado de duas maneiras:

A - "haver vantagens em um individuo ser auto-suficiente não quer dizer que haja vantagens em todos os indivíduos de um país serem auto-suficientes"

B - " haver vantagens em um individuo ser auto-suficiente não quer dizer que haja vantagens em um país ser auto-suficiente"

É verdade que um pais de indivíduos auto-suficientes é um país auto-suficiente, mas a inversa não é verdadeira; e se pensarmos em termos relativos e não absolutos, a diferença ainda é mais clara - podemos ter um país em que cada habitante é largamente auto-suficiente, mas as (poucas) trocas comerciais que tem até são com o estrangeiro (p.ex., pode ter importado a cana de pesca e o machado com que cortou as árvores com que construiu a casa); e podemos ter um pais auto-suficiente, mas em que cada individuo praticamente não produza nada para consumo próprio.

De qualquer maneira, o que eu queria dizer era a "opção B" (sobretudo, lendo esta resposta do Rui Botelho Rodrigues, fiquei na dúvida se ele teria percebido exactamente o que eu quis dizer).

[post igualmente publicado no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá]

Re: Pornografias

João Pereira Coutinho escreve:

Eis o programa para a tarde de hoje, em Lisboa: umas dezenas de ‘humanistas’ vão protestar contra a lapidação de uma mulher no Irão. Para que servem estes cortejos? Para travar a barbárie? Duvidoso. Estas selvajarias, recorrentes no Islão ‘pacífico’, só se travam pelo fim dos regimes teocráticos que reinam por lá. E a menos que haja um milagre interno (uma vitória da oposição; um movimento ‘iluminista’ dentro do Islão; o repúdio expresso da herança Khomeini; e etc.), o fim destes regimes consegue-se por intervenção externa. Estarão os manifestantes desta tarde interessados em repetir as aventuras do cowboy Bush?

[Via 31 da Armada]

Em primeiro lugar, já houve, noutros países, vários casos de condenados à lapidação que foram salvos devido provavelmente aos protestos internacionais.


E, em segundo (e deixando de lado a tautologia "esses regimes só caiem por intervenção externa a menos que sejam derrubados por dentro"), como é que as intervenções externas resolvem essas situações? No Afeganistão, a sharia continua em vigor; no Iraque, a intervenção externa derrubou um regime secular abrindo caminho às milícias xiitas e sunitas (para não falar das seitas não-muçulmanas, que não são propriamente secções locais da Amnistia Internacional).

[Publicado também no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá se quiserem]

As virtudes da auto-suficiência

[A respeito deste post d'O Insurgente]

Eu vejo pelo menos duas boas razões para um individuo tentar ser o mais auto-suficiente economicamente (isto é, ser ele a produzir grande parte dos bens e serviços que consome) possível

A primeira é que um individuo vivendo em regime de autoconsumo não está sujeito ao perigo de desemprego nem é afectado pelas crises económicas (pelo menos, da forma que existem actualmente); no caso extremo de alguém que viva numa cabana nas montanhas (construída por ele), cultivando o seu quintal, caçando nos bosques vizinhos e pescando no ribeiro, e tecendo as suas próprias roupas, sem vender ou comprar nada ao resto do mundo, o PIB pode descer 10% e o desemprego pode duplicar que nada lhe acontece a ele (basicamente, o problema do desemprego só existe por causa... do problema do emprego; alguém que não precise de procurar emprego não está sujeito ao desemprego); no caso (mais realista) de alguém que tenha um emprego mas que costume ir à pesca no fim-de-semana, tenha uma horta onde cultive verduras e faça a maior parte das obras e arranjos eléctricos lá em casa, ele continua a poder ser afectado pelas crises económicas, mas menos que alguém que todo o rendimento real esteja dependente do mercado (se for para o desemprego continua a ter acesso aos bens e serviços que ele próprio produz).

Aliás, quase todas as teorias explicativas das crises económicas (keynesianismo, monetarismo, "escola austríaca"...) explicam-nas a partir da moeda (seja porque os agentes querem acumular mais moeda que a que têm, ou porque a quantidade de moeda diminuiu, ou porque aumentou...); assim, podermos concluir que numa economia sem moeda não haveria este género de crises (embora pudesse haver outras).

Outra vantagem é que a maior parte das pessoas nas sociedades modernas são trabalhadoras assalariadas, ou sejam, trabalham sob a direcção de outras. Assim, passar uma hora, digamos, a afinar o motor do seu próprio carro tem uma vantagem face a passar mais uma hora no emprego a ganhar o dinheiro para pagar a uma oficina - no primeiro caso, é ele próprio que dirige o seu trabalho, que pode executar no hora e local que lhe dá mais jeito, quiçá até com a roupa com que se sente mais à vontade, etc., enquanto na hora passada no trabalho formal está submetido à disciplina organizacional.

Diga-se, desde já, que estes meus argumentos a favor da auto-suficiência não me parecem escaláveis do nível individual para o nível de um país: ao contrário do que se passa com os indivíduos, não é por um país ser auto-suficiente que deixa de estar sujeito a ciclos económicos, nem menos sujeito à tal "disciplina organizacional" (até há quem diga o oposto - que o proteccionismo favorece a concentração dos grupos económicos). Esta observação pode ter alguma importância porque me dá a ideia que muitas discussões sobre a auto-suficiência individual usam-na sobretudo como metáfora para a questão da auto-suficiência nacional, seja a favor ou contra.

Sugestão de leitura adicional - O Direito ao Desemprego Criador, de Ivan Illich

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

Os caçadores-recolectores

Which Primitives?, por John Bedell:

One thing we know is that our distant ancestors did not farm or raise animals; they were hunters and gatherers. We therefore look to modern hunting and gathering groups for insights into our own distant past.

What are hunter-gatherers like? Are they peaceful or violent? Do they carefully tend the wild resources on which they depend or use whatever they can take? Are men and women equal in status among them? To ask these questions sets us trembling, as before the revelation of some great religious mystery: tell us about ourselves, O Anthropologist. What is our nature?

To ask these questions also assumes that they have answers. We can't say what hunter-gatherers are like unless they are like something in particular. But are they? Not according to Robert Kelly. In The Foraging Spectrum Kelly argues that hunter-gatherers are so diverse in their behavior that the words do not even denote a meaningful category for analysis. Of course, Kelly managed to write a 446-page book about this non-category, so the words must mean something, but Kelly has a point. Hunter-gatherer societies differ from each other on every point of interest to moderns trying to understand their own origins: some are violent, some peaceful; some are egalitarian, some have chiefs and slaves; in some men and women are equal in most ways, but in others women are denigrated and oppressed.

O fracasso da austeridade europeia

It's Clear: The Failure Of European Austerity Is Going To Be A Huge Story This Fall, no Bussines Insider:

Except now it's looking more and more like austerity may be a flop. See, everyone expected that austerity would be an economic drag. What they didn't expect is that austerity would worsen sovereign balance sheets (or at least not improve them).

Of course there were warnings. Ireland was an early austerity adopter and it did squat. Richard Koo has been slamming the austerians, using the Japanese lesson, for some time.

And now we're getting results from the recent wave, and so far they're not that encouraging -- in fact, Moody's is now warning that austerity will make the sovereign credit worse in many situations (though of course they're behind the ball, as bond spreads in Ireland and Greece are now showing).

If these initial results hold, this will definitely pose a policy dilemma. In theory it should cause people to question their previous assumptions, though it's hard to say what will happen. Most likely the pro-austerity camp will simply double down on their calls, claiming governments aren't going far enough.

Gold Dinar, Silver Dirham

Ou o padrão-ouro como o sistema que melhor protege a população em geral do capitalismo de estado representado pelo actual sistema monetário (bancos centrais, moeda por decreto, grandes bancos e grandes credores que beneficiam da capacidade de fabricar moeda - os quais quando o sistema inevitavelmente treme são novamente protegidos pela fabricação de mais moeda).

A "ground zero mosque" e as sondagens

Polling on Cordoba House, por Steven L. Taylor:

It is interesting that as one gets closer to the project, opposition lessens. Indeed, if one looks within the Marist poll to the breakdown of opinion by borough we find that not only does opposition lessen, support moves into majority public opinion when we get to Manhattan. If we look at the table below, the one borough of NYC that supports the project is the borough where the building will be built (as well as the borough that directly suffered the attacks of 9/11). According to the table 53% of the registered voters polled in Manhattan favor the project, 31% oppose it and 16% are unsure.

(...)

At a minimum, it is curious that the farther away one goes from the locus of the debate that opposition grows. To summarize:


Manhattan: 53% in favor.

NYC: 53% opposed

The US: ~70% opposed.

Polls, Reporting on "Ground Zero Mosque" May Mislead, por Nate Silver:

Another problem with both the Quinnipiac and Ramsussen polls is that it's a bit ambiguous what it means to "support" or "oppose" the project in this context. I imagine there is a spectrum of about five different positions that one might take on Cordoba House:
1) I support the project: its goals seem laudable, and it would be a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

2) I am indifferent about the project itself -- I can see the arguments both for it and against it. But this is a free country, and the developers certainly have a right to express themselves.

3) I'd rather that the project weren't built, especially so near to Ground Zero. But it's certainly not the government's business to stop its construction.

4) I'm opposed to the project and hope that it isn't built. But I'm indifferent about whether or not the City should act to stop it.

5) I'm definitely opposed to the project, and the City should exercise its authority to prevent it from being built.

Arguably, responses 3 through 5 all qualify as "opposition" to the project, whereas only the first one indicates clear support. But one's personal position on the mosque is not necessarily the same as thinking that the City should take affirmative steps to prohibit its construction by eminent domain laws by or other means, a position held by only those in Group 5. This is somewhat analogous to asking: "do you support or oppose flag-burning?". Without additional context, it would be quite natural for someone to say they opposed it, but they might nevertheless consider it to be Constitutionally protected activity. Likewise, while Cordoba House is clearly not popular, none of the polling speaks to whether a proposal like Paladino's would find much support.

[Com "a proposal like Paladino's", Nate Silver está-se a referir a isto]

"Ter poder tem efeitos comparáveis a uma lesão cerebral" - uma critica

Are people in power assholes because they’re neurotic? Or because they’re rational?, por Navin Kumar:

The Wall Street Journal turns to psychology to understand and explain the “power paradox“: Nice people are the ones entrusted with positions of power, but once they become powerful they turn into dicks. Yet instrumental rationality and common sense explain their behaviour better than psychology.

Bad behavior ranges from the shouting of profanities to inappropriate flirting to judges who don’t put as much thought into a decision as they did when they were on a lower rung. It doesn’t take a genius to see what these have in common: they provide a benefit to the person who engages in them, while imposing a cost on people around them.

But it’s the people around them that decide whether or not they end up in a position of power; a position they presumably want to be in. The trade-off becomes clear: the joy of engaging in bad behaviour vs the joy of being promoted.

Thus, a person who is low on the ladder has more to gain than someone higher up: a person at the bottom of a 5 step pyramid has 5 levels to climb. His boss already has the higher salary and position and only worries about 4 levels and so on. The cost of nastiness is therefore higher. When the price of a good increases, demand decreases. Conversely,  a person higher on the ladder has a) less to gain and b) insulation from accountability.

[Via comentários do Hit & Run]

"Ter poder tem efeitos comparáveis a uma lesão cerebral"

The Power Trip (Wall Street Journal):

Contrary to the Machiavellian cliché, nice people are more likely to rise to power. Then something strange happens: Authority atrophies the very talents that got them there. (...)

But first, the good news.

A few years ago, Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, began interviewing freshmen at a large dorm on the Berkeley campus. He gave them free pizza and a survey, which asked them to provide their first impressions of every other student in the dorm. Mr. Keltner returned at the end of the school year with the same survey and more free pizza. According to the survey, the students at the top of the social hierarchy—they were the most "powerful" and respected—were also the most considerate and outgoing, and scored highest on measures of agreeableness and extroversion. In other words, the nice guys finished first.

This result isn't unique to Berkeley undergrads. Other studies have found similar results in the military, corporations and politics. "People give authority to people that they genuinely like," says Mr. Keltner.
Of course, these scientific findings contradict the cliché of power, which is that the only way to rise to the top is to engage in self-serving and morally dubious behavior. In "The Prince," a treatise on the art of politics, the 16th century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli insisted that compassion got in the way of eminence. If a leader has to choose between being feared or being loved, Machiavelli insisted that the leader should always go with fear. Love is overrated.

That may not be the best advice. Another study conducted by Mr. Keltner and Cameron Anderson, a professor at the Haas School of Business, measured "Machiavellian" tendencies, such as the willingness to spread malicious gossip, in a group of sorority sisters. It turned out that the Machiavellian sorority members were quickly identified by the group and isolated. Nobody liked them, and so they never became powerful.
There is something deeply uplifting about this research. It's reassuring to think that the surest way to accumulate power is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In recent years, this theme has even been extended to non-human primates, such as chimpanzees. Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, has observed that the size and strength of male chimps is an extremely poor predictor of which animals will dominate the troop. Instead, the ability to forge social connections and engage in "diplomacy" is often much more important.

Now for the bad news, which concerns what happens when all those nice guys actually get in power. While a little compassion might help us climb the social ladder, once we're at the top we end up morphing into a very different kind of beast.

"It's an incredibly consistent effect," Mr. Keltner says. "When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools. They flirt inappropriately, tease in a hostile fashion, and become totally impulsive." Mr. Keltner compares the feeling of power to brain damage, noting that people with lots of authority tend to behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area that's crucial for empathy and decision-making. Even the most virtuous people can be undone by the corner office.

Why does power lead people to flirt with interns and solicit bribes and fudge financial documents? According to psychologists, one of the main problems with authority is that it makes us less sympathetic to the concerns and emotions of others. For instance, several studies have found that people in positions of authority are more likely to rely on stereotypes and generalizations when judging other people. They also spend much less time making eye contact, at least when a person without power is talking.

Consider a recent study led by Adam Galinsky, a psychologist at Northwestern University. Mr. Galinsky and colleagues began by asking subjects to either describe an experience in which they had lots of power or a time when they felt utterly powerless. Then the psychologists asked the subjects to draw the letter E on their foreheads. Those primed with feelings of power were much more likely to draw the letter backwards, at least when seen by another person. Mr. Galinsky argues that this effect is triggered by the myopia of power, which makes it much harder to imagine the world from the perspective of someone else. We draw the letter backwards because we don't care about the viewpoint of others.

[Via TechDirt]

No entanto, penso que há uma falha neste conjunto de estudos - os exemplos que levaram à conclusão de que "nice people are more likely to rise to power" foram feitos em ambientes (dormitórios de universidades, bandos de chimpanzés) em que o "poder" vem "de baixo" (isto é, alguém é influente nesses ambientes porque os outros membros do grupo lhe reconhecem influência); será que essas conclusões se manteriam num ambiente em que o poder vem "de cima" (p.ex., numa empresa em que os gestores intermédios são escolhidos pelos de topo)?

Propriedade intelectual

Engenharia social

A respeito desta discussão nos comentários do Portugal Contemporâneo, lembrei-me desta passagem de Charles Johnson:

First, the concept of spontaneous order, as it is employed in libertarian writing, is systematically ambiguous, depending on whether one is using spontaneous to mean not planned ahead of time, or whether one is using it to mean voluntary. Thus, the term spontaneous order may be used to refer strictly to voluntary orders — that is, forms of social coordination which emerge from the free actions of many different people, as opposed to coordination that arises from some people being forced to do what other people tell them to do. Or it may be used to refer to undesigned orders — that is, forms of social coordination which emerges from the actions of many different people, who are not acting from a conscious desire to bring about that form of social coordination, as opposed to coordination that people consciously act to bring about. It’s important to see that these two meanings are distinct: a voluntary order may be designed (if everyone is freely choosing to follow a set plan), and an undesigned order may be involuntary (if it emerges as an unintended consequence of coercive actions that were committed in order to achieve a different goal). While Hayek himself was fairly consistent and explicit in using spontaneous order to refer to undesigned orders, many libertarian writers since Hayek have used it to mean voluntary orders, or orders that are both voluntary and undesigned, or have simply equivocated between the two different meanings of the term from one statement to the next. It’s important to be clear about the difference between the two, because if you equivocate you are likely to expose yourself to certain confusions, and to find yourself wearing certain kinds of conceptual blinders.

O que Johnson escreve sobre a "ordem espontânea" também poderia ser escrito, mutatis mutandis, para "engenharia social" - umas vezes parece que o termo é usado com o sentido de querer organizar a sociedade de acordo com um projecto, outras vezes no sentido de querer usar a coacção para fazer a sociedade funcionar de dada maneira.

São duas coisas distintas; p.ex., um "guru" que inventa uma teoria qualquer de que "como as pessoas devem viver" e sai à estrada (ou abre um site, ou escreve livros...) para tentar convencer as pessoas a viverem segundo as suas ideias é um "engenheiro social" no primeiro sentido mas não no segundo; por outro lado, um Estado que utilize o seu aparelho repressivo para fazer a sociedade funcionar de acordo com as suas tradições imemoriais não está a fazer "engenharia social" no primeiro sentido, mas talvez o esteja no segundo sentido.

Assim, será que a ideia de que qualquer território deve ter direito à secessão por uma maioria de 2/3 é engenharia social?

No sentido de ter uma ideia de como a sociedade deve funcionar e querer fazer os possíveis por pôr essa ideia em prática, claro que é "engenharia social" (como qualquer ideia universalista ou de "direito natural" acaba por ser sempre "engenharia social" - embora o inverso não seja verdadeiro); no sentido de querer obrigar as outras pessoas a viver de determinada maneira, não - por definição, num Estado que permita o direito de secessão haverá (se tudo o resto se mantiver igual) menos gente sujeita contra vontade a um determinado governo e políticas do que num Estado sem direito de secessão.

[Ver também o meu post de 2008, Ordem Espontânea]

Possíveis definições de "capitalismo" e "socialismo"

A respeito desta troca de comentários entre mim e o Helder Ferreira d'O Insurgente, acho que uma interessante abordagem ao problema das definições de "capitalismo" e "socialismo" é esta de Roderick T. Long (um camarada liberal-randiano do HF):

Part of the problem is that there are (at least) two distinct ways of understanding the contrast between capitalism and socialism. In the first meaning, socialism-1 favours control of the means of production by society (whether organised via the state or not), whereas capitalism-1 favours control of the means of production by private (albeit perhaps contractually associated) individuals. In the second meaning, socialism-2 favours control of the means of production by the workers themselves, while capitalism-2 favours control of the means of production by someone other than the workers – i.e., by capitalist owners.


These two meanings are often run together, with socialism entailing control by the workers in their social capacity (perhaps anarchically, perhaps via the state) and capitalism entailing control by capitalists in their private capacity. But that leaves open two harder-to-classify options – control by capitalists via the state, and control by workers via the market and laissez-faire; the aforementioned anarchist thinkers [Hodgskin, Proudhon, Andrews, Spooner, Spencer] – to whose ranks Tucker also belongs – favour the latter option. (Thus when Tucker calls himself a “socialist,” he means socialism-2.) The following chart may be helpful:

Thus Hodgskin, Tucker, et al. would fall in the upper left quadrant, and Marx and Kropotkin in the upper right. The chart doesn’t accommodate everyone (Godwin and Bakunin seem to fall somewhere between the top two quadrants, for example), but it’s a start.

De acordo com esta grelha, uma eventual expropriação dos terrenos minúsculos para favorecer a sua agregação seria provavelmente uma transição do quadrante inferior esquerdo para o inferior direito (já que imagino que, no contexto político actual, o desfecho dessa expropriação não fosse criar Unidades Colectivas de Produção mas sim conceder as terras expropriadas a empresas privadas), o que para uns será uma transição do capitalismo para o socialismo, mas para outros simplesmente uma transição entre diferentes capitalismos.

Ou melhor, uma expropriação feita explicitamente com o objectivo de desfragmentar a propriedade até pode ser considerada uma transição do quadrante superior direito (ou, pelo menos, de uma situação intermédia no lado direito do quadro) para o quadrante inferior esquerdo - afinal, quanto mais fragmentada estiver a propriedade, maior é a probabilidade de o trabalhador ser também proprietário. Ou seja, será uma transição de uma situação que uns chamam "capitalismo" e outros "socialismo" para o que uns chamam "socialismo" e outros "capitalismo" (a confusão conceptual perfeita!).

Diga-se, aliás, que tanto o "sentido 1" de capitalismo/socialismo como o "sentido 2" são largamente "excêntricos" - penso que a maior parte das pessoas chama "socialismo" ao quadrante superior direito e "capitalismo" a todas as outras combinações.

O cientista e o anarquista

The Scientist and the Anarchist - Part I, Part II e Part III, por Eric Michael Johnson, sobre Thomas Huxley, Piotr Kropotkine e o debate que houve entre os dois.

Agora os anarquistas versus liberais sobre direito e filhos (e aborto)

ou o

http://lei-natural.blogspot.com/

versus

http://portugalcontemporaneo.blogspot.com/

Estes último interpretam assim

"O direito reclamado por Rothbard dos pais deixarem os filhos morrer à fome"

o que deve ser lido assim

"o direito negativo (dado o pressuposto dos julgamentos morais não poderem ser criminalizados) reclamado por Rothbard (e na liberdade dos outros de poderem exercer todas as acções de discriminação e ostracismo social) de abandonar os filhos (em condições de serem acolhidos/adoptados por terceiros)."


As citações relevantes de Rothbard são:

"...We must therefore state that, even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a “trustee” or guardianship kind. In short, every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother’s body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child’s rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc. On the other hand, the very concept of “rights” is a “negative” one, demarcating the areas of a person’s action that no man may properly interfere with. No man can therefore have a “right” to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced.

e

"Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights""

Com o complemento meu sobre a análise subsequente de Walter Block:

"Walter Block recentemente complementou em análise mais específica de direito (penal), falando da obrigação do acto de abandono ser feito em condições de razoável expectativa de remédio da situação (procurar tutor temporário ou definitivo, etc) tal como na análise do aborto disse com lógica que se um dia, meios externos tecnológicos poderem acolher o feto, o aborto (a expulsão do feto do corpo da mãe) ter de ser efectuada de tal forma que se possa presumir a tentativa de boa fé de procurar remédio para o feto por esse meio (dado alguém ou instituição estar disposta a assumir a sobrevivência e subsistência do feto por este meio agora possível)"

História alternativa

A World Without Islam (2007), por Graham Fueller, um estudo de como poderia ser o mundo se o islamismo nunca tivesse aparecido (uma versão "aberta ao público" aqui):

Nor would Middle Eastern Christians have welcomed imperial Western oil companies, backed by their European viceregents, diplomats, intelligence agents, and armies, any more than Muslims did. Look at the long history of Latin American reactions to American domination of their oil, economics, and politics. The Middle East would have been equally keen to create nationalist anticolonial movements to wrest control of their own soil, markets, sovereignty, and destiny from foreign grip--just like anticolonial struggles in Hindu India, Confucian China, Buddhist Vietnam, and a Christian and animist Africa.

And surely the French would have just as readily expanded into a Christian Algeria to seize its rich farmlands and establish a colony. The Italians, too, never let Ethiopia‚s Christianity stop them from turning that country into a harshly administered colony.

(...)

But maybe the Middle East would have been more democratic without Islam? The history of dictatorship in Europe itself is not reassuring here. Spain and Portugal ended harsh dictatorships only in the mid-1970s. Greece only emerged from church-linked dictatorship a few decades ago. Christian Russia is still not out of the woods. Until quite recently, Latin America was riddled with dictators, who often reigned with U.S. blessing and in partnership with the Catholic Church. Most Christian African nations have not fared much better. Why would a Christian Middle East have looked any different?

And then there is Palestine. It was, of course, Christians who shamelessly persecuted Jews for more than a millennium, culminating in the Holocaust. These horrific examples of anti-Semitism were firmly rooted in Western Christian lands and culture. Jews would therefore have still sought a homeland outside Europe; the Zionist movement would still have emerged and sought a base in Palestine. And the new Jewish state would still have dislodged the same 750,000 Arab natives of Palestine from their lands even if they had been Christian--and indeed some of them were. Would not these Arab Palestinians have fought to protect or regain their own land? The Israeli-Palestinian problem remains at heart a national, ethnic, and territorial conflict, only recently bolstered by religious slogans. And let‚s not forget that Arab Christians played a major role in the early emergence of the whole Arab nationalist movement in the Middle East; indeed, the ideological founder of the first pan-Arab Ba.th party, Michel Aflaq, was a Sorbonne-educated Syrian Christian.

(...)

But surely Christians in the Middle East would have at least been religiously predisposed toward the West?

(...)

Without Islam, the peoples of the Middle East would have remained as they were at the birth of Islam--mostly adherents of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

(...)

The culture of the Orthodox Church differs sharply from the Western post-Enlightenment ethos, which emphasizes secularism, capitalism, and the primacy of the individual. It still maintains residual fears about the West that parallel in many ways current Muslim insecurities: fears of Western missionary proselytism, the perception of religion as a key vehicle for the protection and preservation of their own communities and culture, and a suspicion of the „corrupted‰ and imperial character of the West. Indeed, in an Orthodox Christian Middle East, Moscow would enjoy special influence, even today, as the last major center of Eastern Orthodoxy. The Orthodox world would have remained a key geopolitical arena of East-West rivalry in the Cold War. Samuel Huntington, after all, included the Orthodox Christian world among several civilizations embroiled in a cultural clash with the West

(...)

This, then, is the portrait of a putative „world without Islam‰. It is a Middle East dominated by Eastern Orthodox Christianity--a church historically and psychologically suspicious of, even hostile to, the West. Still riven by major ethnic and even sectarian differences, this Middle East possesses a fierce sense of historical consciousness and grievance against the West. It has been invaded repeatedly by Western imperialist armies; its resources commandeered; its borders redrawn by Western fiat in conformity with the West‚s various interests; and regimes established that are compliant with Western dictates. Palestine would still burn. Iran would still be intensely nationalistic. We would still see Palestinians resist Jews, Chechens resist Russians, Iranians resist the British and Americans, Kashmiris resist Indians, Tamils resist the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, and Uighurs and Tibetans resist the Chinese. The Middle East would still have a glorious historical model--the great Byzantine Empire of more than 2,000 years standing˜with which to identify as a cultural and religious symbol. It would, in many respects, perpetuate an East-West divide.

It does not present an entirely peaceful and comforting picture.

Tony Judt

What Have We Learned, If Anything?, MAY 1, 2008

"(...) War was not just a catastrophe in its own right; it brought other horrors in its wake. World War I led to an unprecedented militarization of society, the worship of violence, and a cult of death that long outlasted the war itself and prepared the ground for the political disasters that followed. States and societies seized during and after World War II by Hitler or Stalin (or by both, in sequence) experienced not just occupation and exploitation but degradation and corrosion of the laws and norms of civil society. The very structures of civilized life—regulations, laws, teachers, policemen, judges—disappeared or else took on sinister significance: far from guaranteeing security, the state itself became the leading source of insecurity. Reciprocity and trust, whether in neighbors, colleagues, community, or leaders, collapsed. Behavior that would be aberrant in conventional circumstances—theft, dishonesty, dissemblance, indifference to the misfortune of others, and the opportunistic exploitation of their suffering—became not just normal but sometimes the only way to save your family and yourself. Dissent or opposition was stifled by universal fear.

War, in short, prompted behavior that would have been unthinkable as well as dysfunctional in peacetime. It is war, not racism or ethnic antagonism or religious fervor, that leads to atrocity. War—total war—has been the crucial antecedent condition for mass criminality in the modern era. The first primitive concentration camps were set up by the British during the Boer War of 1899–1902. Without World War I there would have been no Armenian genocide and it is highly unlikely that either communism or fascism would have seized hold of modern states. Without World War II there would have been no Holocaust. Absent the forcible involvement of Cambodia in the Vietnam War, we would never have heard of Pol Pot. As for the brutalizing effect of war on ordinary soldiers themselves, this of course has been copiously documented.3"

Depos d'"o" Alvor, "a" Lagoa

P.ex., aqui.

Direitos para os humanos ou para as pessoas?

Este artigo do Science Not Fiction começa com o tema do casamento gay mas depois alonga-se por uma reflexão mais profunda sobre o conceito de "direitos":

Pick any great expansion in the rights of humanity, from the advent of democracy to the Nineteenth Amendment to yesterday’s decision, and I doubt you will find DNA at the philosophical core of the change. So what is it? When we, the human civilization, recognize the rights of those who have been oppressed or ignored, what is it we are recognizing? Their humanity! you may answer. But what does that mean? Surely a baby and a corpse are as human as an adult Homo sapiens is, but only the adult can vote. Why?

In a word: personhood.

This realization gets to a central tenet of the philosophy of transhumanism: that rights are not derived from being human but from being a person. Consider the shows listed above, particularly Mass Effect and Star Trek, and ask if Worf or Liara or Data have “human rights.” Of course they don’t. But they do have rights. The rights are derived from their being sentient, sapient beings capable of autonomous, reflexive, symbolic, ethical, and willful thought. That is, they are persons — and persons have rights.

The brilliance of personhood as a foundation for rights is that it exists independent of biology, even of physical substrate. You already know about personhood because you’ve seen it in your favorite movies. The Iron Giant, District 9, Blade Runner, A.L.F., E.T., Monsters Inc. and Ratatouille are about personhood. The eponymous hero of The Iron Giant demonstrates his personhood by willfully not being a gun and saving the day; Remy does so less on a smaller scale but no less movingly in Ratatouille by cooking a gourmet meal that triggers a Proustian flashback in Paris’ toughest food critic. Personhood is what you discover when you stop trying to figure out what makes humans human and instead try to understand how we recognize another sentient mind. A mind imbued with rights.

Personhood is, as simply as I can put it, the degree to which an entity exhibits a combination of aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as sentience, creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality. One great way to look at the question comes from Steven Wise’s Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights, in which he argues that would-be persons can be ranked from “stimulus-response machines” at 0.0 up through fully functioning, rational adult humans at 1.0. The critical note here is that humans themselves can be placed on the scale, with a blastocyst ranking at 0.0 and 5-year-old somewhere in the range of 0.8. An example of a creature that may benefit from this personhood scale would be the former student of Irene Pepperberg, Alex, an especially bright grey parrot, who would fall above the 0.7 intelligence threshold for “limited personhood.”

If an artificial intelligence system or “uplifted” animal (e.g., Dug from Up!) were capable of achieving the same level of reason and mature reflection as an adult human, then it would be granted the same rights as an adult human. If you were to chart degrees of personhood against degrees of rights, it might look like this example taken from James Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg:



The reason all of this matters is that human beings have never been granted rights because they are merely human. Rights come from a demonstration not of DNA or taxonomy, but of mental and moral ability. (...) If we did bring a Neanderthal back, his or her rights would be founded not in the similarity to human DNA but in the rational and moral mind, the personhood, that the clone would have.

(...)Whether aliens, robots, uplifted animals, or cloned Neanderthals will be the first non-humans to demand rights, I don’t know; however, I do know that it is not a matter of if, but when. I just hope by then we have moved beyond mere human rights.

Profecia auto-cumprida

Depois de Édipo e de Anakim Skywalker, isto.

Os subsidios aos combustiveis fósseis

Fossil-Fuel Subsidies Still Dominate, por Bradford Plumer (The New Republic):

Quick, which gets subsidized more heavily around the world, fossil fuels or renewable energy? Bloomberg crunches the numbers and finds that it's not even close—oil, gas, and coal get a whopping twelve times as much total government support:

Governments last year gave $43 billion to $46 billion of support to renewable energy through tax credits, guaranteed electricity prices known as feed-in tariffs and alternative energy credits, the London-based research group said today in a statement. That compares with the $557 billion that the International Energy Agency last month said was spent to subsidize fossil fuels in 2008.

Granted, these raw totals obscure a few things (if you looked at dollars per unit of energy delivered, oil and coal subsidies would be smaller than wind and solar). But the overall disparity is stunning, given everything we know about the harm fossil fuels are doing. And those subsidies add up, pollution-wise. A report from Harvard's Kennedy Center last year found that the world could cut global CO2 emissions nearly 6 percent simply by scrapping price supports for fossil energy. And yes, removing subsidies might, in the short term, have a regressive impact in the form of higher energy prices, but countries could easily take the money saved and use it to cushion the blow, via efficiency upgrades or even lump-sum payments.

[Via Marginal Revolution e Andrew Sullivan]

Gatos e Cães, Esquerda e Direita

Este post de José Manuel Fernandes fez-me lembrar da questão "gatos e cães / esquerda e direita", já abordada aqui. Em tempos, o anarco-capitalista Walter Block elaborou um catálogo de gostos culturais "de esquerda" e "de direita" (o Apêndice B - pgs. 38-41 - de "Libertarianism is unique; it belongs neither to the right nor the left", pdf), onde considera que a esquerda gosta de gatos e a direita de cães, mas no fim ressalva que há quem ache que é ao contrário.

Os casos de José Manuel Fernandes, George W. Bush, talvez Bill Clinton, Chris Dillow, Paul Krugman, (Inês Teotónio Pereira?), etc., parecem confirmar a tese, mas T.S. Eliot, Margaret Tatcher, Cheri Blair, Razib Khan, Tyler Cowen, talvez William B. Yeats, etc. parecem ir em sentido contrário.

À partida poderia imaginar boas razões, tanto para a esquerda como para a direita preferirem cães ou gatos, dependendo muito do que se considerar ser o essencial da divisão esquerda/direita:

Se considerarmos que a essência da direita é a defesa das hierarquias "naturais", da "lei e da ordem" e o respeito pela autoridade e pelos valores tradicionais (e a saudação feita levantando o membro anterior), e a da esquerda é o igualitarismo, o espírito contestatário e a permissividade nos costumes, então faz sentido que as pessoas de esquerda prefiram gatos e as de direita cães, já que estes últimos são muito mais respeitadores das hierarquias e da autoridade (não que haja um mecanismo do género "sou de direita, vou gostar de cães"; será mais o facto de as mesmas predisposições psicológicas que levam alguém a ser de direita a levarem também a gostar mais de cães do que de gatos).

Pelo contrário, se considerarmos que a essência da direita é a defesa do individualismo e da economia de mercado e a da esquerda o colectivismo e a intervenção do Estado, faria sentido que fossem as pessoas de direita a preferir gatos e as de esquerda cães (que têm muito mais espírito de equipa) - no entanto, alguns direitistas "gatófilos" que citei eram quase fascistas, o que põe em causa este modelo.

Se formos fazer uma análise histórica, até à II Guerra Mundial a direita seria tipicamente "canina" - tanto na versão conservadora/reaccionária, como na versão nazi/fascista, a ideia era defender uma sociedade organizada e hieraquizada (sem tatcheriches de "a sociedade não existe"), à maneira de uma matilha de lobos; já uma esquerda tipicamente "gatidia" não é tão facil de achar, já que desde o principio que a esquerda é mais ou menos colectivista - para encontrarmos uma tradição simultaneamente individualista e anti-elitista, temos que ir ao anarquismo individualista (Proudhon, Stirner, Lysandar Spooner) e eventualmente a certas franjas do "republicanismo radical" (como Alain ou talvez Henry Thoureau).

Também podemos ser mais filosóficos e considerarmos que a direita caracteriza-se por acreditar que o sofrimento (e as suas consequência - dever, esforço, sacrifício, contenção dos impulsos, austeridade...) é uma constante da existência humana, enquanto a esquerda acredita na capacidade da "Razão" para nos elevar a níveis cada vez mais elevados de felicidade e bem-estar; nesse caso, talvez o habito de os canídeos caçarem por perseguição e os felinos (penso que com apenas uma excepção) por emboscada aproxime a direita dos primeiros e a esquerda dos segundos: a "perseguição" evoca mais "esforço" e "determinação para suportar e enfrentar as dificuldades" e a "emboscada" mais "uso da Razão para aumentar o bem-estar" (mesmo que ambos os comportamentos sejam completamente instintivos, sem os canídeos necessitarem de qualquer "fibra moral" nem os felinos de "razão"); por outras palavras, o gato escondido à espera que o rato saia da toca soa muito a "facilitismo".

Mas duvido que aqui haja uma ligação directa (até porque a maior parte das pessoas ignorará as técnicas de caça das diferentes espécies de mamiferos carnivoros); no entanto, poderá haver um efeito (bastante) indirecto - o cão doméstico, programado para perseguir presas, tenderá a aproveitar o tempo livre para andar a correr de um lado para outro; já o gato doméstico, como bom "emboscador", tem momentos de energia súbita que se gastam imediatamente, logo passará grande parte do tempo a dormir, intermeado com instantes de agitação febril e imprevisivel. Assim, o cão tenderá a apelar a pessoas que se vêem a si próprias como individuos "atarefados" e "cheios de genica", enquanto o gato tenderá a apelar mais a individuos que se imaginam do tipo "artistico" e/ou "intelectual", que passam grande tempo perdidos nos seus pensamentos "à espera da inspiração". Deste forma poderemos ter uma ligação entre a preferencia por cães ou gatos, não tanto com o eixo "direita"/"esquerda", mas sobretudo com o que há umas décadas poderiamos chamar o eixo "burguês"/"boêmio"; no entanto, hoje em dia creio que há alguma correlação entre essas duas dimensões (o que explica, aliás, a atracção de alguns escritores e poetes de direita e extrema-direita por gatos - a verdadeira variável explicativa não é a ideologia mas "interesses literários", e a aparente associação "direita > cães; esquerda > gatos" é apenas um subproduto de um maior "intelectualismo" à esquerda).

Mas desconfio que, a exisitir essa associação, a verdadeira causa seja muito mais prática e prosaica: a esquerda baseia-se na classe média/média-baixa que vive em apartamentos (o habitat do gato caseiro) e na classe baixa que vive em bairros "típicos" (o habitat do gato vadio), e a direita na classe alta/média-alta que vive em vivendas e nas populações que vivem no campo (onde é mais fácil ter cães).

Uma questão final - haverá alguma coisa neste post que se aproveite?

[post igualmente publicado no Vias de Facto, podem comentar lá]

«1984» - II

Há quase 5 meses, eu escrevia:

"1984", o romance de Orwell, foi escrito com a intenção de representar o extremo do totalitarismo, e ficou famoso por isso, tendo o nome "big brother" frequentemente utilizado para designar um poder omnisceinte que tudo sabe e controla.

Eu li o livro há 20 anos e já não me lembro bem dos detalhes, mas pelo que me lembro e pelo que tenho pensado, cada vez mais sou da opinião que, nesse aspecto, é uma obra falhada: a Oceania (e provavelmente também a Eurásia a a Estásia) seria melhor descrita como um regime autoritário do que totalitário.

Daqui a uns dias escreverei um post a explicar porquê...

Os "uns dias",afinal, foram 140.

De qualquer forma, como os leitores devem ter adivinhado (pelo menos o Rui Botelho Rodrigues chegou logo lá), a razão porque acho o regime do "Grande Irmão" apenas autoritário (embora o livro apresente-o explicitamente como totalitário e atê dê uma das melhores distinções entre os dois regimes - "o autoritarismo proíbe; o totalitarismo obriga") é que o "totalitarismo" do sistema apenas se exerce sobre uma minoria da população (os membros do partido); a maior parte da população (os "proles") era largamente deixada à vontade (penso que até havia um mercado negro florescente, embora já não me lembre bem do livro).

No fundo, apresentar o «1984» como o extremo do totalitarismo não será um dos muitos exemplos da tendência para confundirmos uma sociedade com a sua "classe média-alta"? [outro exemplo - será que a Idade Média foi mesmo uma "idade das trevas" comparada com a Antiguidade Clássica, ou será largamente uma ilusão provocada pelo desaparecimento dos luxos citadinos do patriciado esclavagista?]

Já agora, não sei se, em «1984» Orwell foi conscientemente influenciado pelo sua obra prévia «O Vil Metal», mas vejo aí um grande paralelo com esse livro anterior, que assenta muito no contraste entre a vida da "classe média-média", aprisionada pelas convenções sociais, e a da classe baixa, que viveria de forma livre e espontânea (p.ex., ao longo desse livro, o protagonista começa por viver numa pensão respeitável, com clientes de classe média e com regras rígidas para os hóspedes, e ao fim de algum tempo vai parar a uma pensão num bairro pobre, cuja proprietária não liga nada ao que os hóspedes fazem ou deixem de fazer, desde que paguem a renda).

Para exemplo de uma sociedade totalmente totalitária, o «Admirável Mundo Novo» de Huxley (com uma excepção) é "melhor": ai toda a gente (desde a classe dos "Alfas" à dos "Epsilons") tem a sua vida rigorosamente planeada, condicionada e dirigida (ou melhor, aí é o contrário - só na classe alta dos "Alfas" é que é aceite alguma individualidade); a excepção -  enquanto os dissidentes em 1984 são torturados até se submeterem, no AMN são simplesmente deportados para ilhas (logo, nesse aspecto até é uma sociedade mais "livre").

[Uma leitura recomendada sobre o assunto - os comentário deste post n'O Insurgente]

Os nazis mongóis - combinação absurda?

Pelos vistos, o neo-nazismo esta na moda na Mongólia. Nalguns sítios, isso tem sido apresentado como algo de bizarro.

No entanto, em tempos (para aí anos 30) chegou (com base em supostas origens comuns) a estar na moda  entre sectores das extremas-direitas turca e húngara a ideia de uma aliança (ou mesmo fusão?) entre a Turquia, a Hungria, a Estónia, a Finlândia, a Mongólia e os povos asiáticos da URSS (por vezes o Japão também era incluído), e durante a II Guerra os proponentes dessa teoria viam esse bloco «turânico» como um aliado natural da Alemanha (e, de facto, foi esse o caminho que seguiram húngaros, finlandeses e japoneses, embora por motivos completamente alheios a essa divagações).

Ou seja, no contexto das teorias extravagantes que já foram inventadas, o "nazismo mongol" talvez não seja tão extravagante como tudo isso.

Celine Dion e "It’s All Coming Back To Me Now"

Arrest this vile pervert now!, por John B:

I’m sure you remember Canadian freak-show queen Celine Dion, and her domination of the 1990s power ballad world. And you most likely remember her utterly ridiculous, pomp-musical-rock-tastic career pinnacle, It’s All Coming Back To Me Now (...)

It’s only just occurred to me, however, that a couple of lines from this song suggest deeply disturbing things about Ms Dion’s past : "There were nights of endless pleasure It was more than any laws allow"

At the time the song came out, heterosexual anal sex had only just been legalised in the UK, so there was much ‘fnarr’-ing among the teenage boy community at this information.

On reflection, our speculations were altogether too tame. Ms Dion isn’t simply claiming that there were nights of endless pleasure that were banned by the laws of any specific jurisdiction – she’s claiming that whatever activities she engaged in were considered illegal by every single code of laws in force in the world at the time she first performed the song.

Anything that was legal in Germany at the time is ruled out, meaning that the activities referred to can’t solely concern consenting adults (unless they involved bodily injury leading to a concrete danger of death). Since bestiality was legal in the state of Washington at the time, that’s out too.

The only laws regulating sexual conduct that exist universally across all societies with codes of laws (much as they may not be applied consistently) are those prohibiting non-consensual sexual activity [**], sex with minors [**], and the consensual infliction of death or severe life-threatening injury.

So therefore, Ms Dion is admitting that the sexual ecstasy she found with her departed-and-possibly-returning partner was either rapey, paedophilic or murderous. Is this really the sort of behaviour we want celebrated in song?

No entanto, nos comentários alguém sugeriu uma ideia mais prosaica - que Celine Dion simplesmente roubasse revistas pornográficas no café da esquina.

Mas na verdade, quem se dê ao trabalho de investigar um bocadinho a história da canção poderá concluir que a referência é mesmo a necrofilia (mas será que tal é ilegal em todas as leis do mundo?).