Como China se tornou capitalista

How China Became Capitalist details the extraordinary, and often unanticipated, journey that China has taken over the past thirty five years in transforming itself from a closed agrarian socialist economy to an indomitable economic force in the international arena.
The authors revitalise the debate around the rise of the Chinese economy through the use of primary sources, persuasively arguing that the reforms implemented by the Chinese leaders did not represent a concerted attempt to create a capitalist economy, and that it was 'marginal revolutions' that introduced the market and entrepreneurship back to China. Lessons from the West were guided by the traditional Chinese principle of 'seeking truth from facts'. By turning to capitalism, China re-embraced her own cultural roots.
How China Became Capitalist challenges received wisdom about the future of the Chinese economy, warning that while China has enormous potential for further growth, the future is clouded by the government's monopoly of ideas and power. Coase and Wang argue that the development of a market for ideas – which has a long and revered tradition in China – would be integral in bringing about the Chinese dream of social harmony.
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Hans-Hermann Hoppe está lançando um novo livro, Der Wettbewerb der Gauner ("A Competição dos Escroques").  
Senhor Hoppe, o senhor escreveu em seu novo livro, Der Wettbewerb der Gauner ("A Competição dos Escroques"), que "Não precisamos de um superestado europeu, que é o que a União Europeia está querendo estabelecer... mas sim de uma Europa e de um mundo formado por centenas, até mesmo milhares, de pequenas Liechtensteins e Cingapuras." Tal arranjo não parece muito factível no momento — muito pelo contrário, aliás. Será que as coisas terão de piorar ainda mais — política e economicamente — para que só então possam melhorar?
Infelizmente, receio que sim. Antes de chegarmos a este arranjo que defendo, provavelmente vivenciaremos várias quebradeiras nacionais, começando por Portugal, Espanha, Itália e, no final, a Alemanha. Somente então, receio eu, tornar-se-á óbvio para todos aquilo de que muitos já sabem hoje: que a União Europeia nada mais é do que uma enorme máquina de redistribuição de renda e riqueza, da Alemanha e da Holanda para Grécia, Espanha, Portugal e outros.
Mas isso não é tudo. Também ficará claro que a mesma insanidade, a mesma bagunça, também existe dentro de cada país: na Alemanha, por exemplo, há redistribuição de renda e riqueza da Bavaria e de Baden-Württemberg para Bremen e Berlim, da Pequena Cidade A para o Pequeno Vilarejo B, de uma empresa para outra, de uma indústria para outra, de João para José e por aí vai. E sempre seguindo o mesmo e perverso padrão: redistribuição dos países, regiões, locais, empresas e indivíduos mais produtivos para aqueles menos produtivos ou nada produtivos. A quebradeira trará toda esta realidade à luz de uma maneira bastante dramática.
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Resumo da III Conferência de Escola Austríaca no Brasil

Notas sobre a III Conferência de Escola Austríaca

por Equipe IMB,

"Épico!", disse um participante ao final do evento. "Inesquecível!", acrescentou outro. "Quando você chora na palestra do Tucker e não é chamada de maluca, você sabe que está entre irmãos", confessou uma participante. "Emocionante mesmo", concluiu mais um. "Surreal", finalizou outro.
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Depois o jogo

O mito do contrato social

Vídeo apresentação de Stefan Molyneux

Brasil

Sobre o Brasil:
" É um país que desperta carinho, mas não respeito."
Simon Anholt, consultor britânico
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A grande revolução online da educação superior

Chubb and Moe: Higher Education's Online Revolution

The substitution of technology (which is cheap) for labor (which is expensive) can vastly increase access to an elite-caliber education.

By JOHN E. CHUBB And TERRY M. MOE

At the recent news conference announcing edX, a $60 million Harvard-MIT partnership in online education, university leaders spoke of reaching millions of new students in India, China and around the globe. They talked of the "revolutionary" potential of online learning, hailing it as the "single biggest change in education since the printing press."
Heady talk indeed, but they are right. The nation, and the world, are in the early stages of a historic transformation in how students learn, teachers teach, and schools and school systems are organized.
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"College Conspiracy" - a destruição da educação superior nos EUA

College Conspiracy is the most comprehensive documentary ever produced about higher education in the U.S. The film exposes the facts and truth about America's college education system. 'College Conspiracy' was produced over a six-month period by NIA's team of expert Austrian economists with the help of thousands of NIA members who contributed their ideas and personal stories for the film. NIA believes the U.S. college education system is a scam that turns vulnerable young Americans into debt slaves for life.
Veja vídeo

O mito da significância estatística

“McCloskey and Ziliak have been pushing this very elementary, very correct, very important argument through several articles over several years and for reasons I cannot fathom it is still resisted. If it takes a book to get it across, I hope this book will do it. It ought to.”

—Thomas Schelling, Distinguished University Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, and 2005 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics

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Como identificar ciência ruim

http://www.ted.com Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they're right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrition claims to the very subtle tricks of the pharmaceutical industry.

Video palestra

Argumentação

Como aprender sabedoria

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. - Confucius

Metodologia

"There is no method but to be very intelligent." -- T.S. Eliot

Enem

Você quer passar na prova do Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (Enem), obter uma excelente nota de corte e estar entre os primeiros no SiSU? Então, confira o conteúdo programático da parte de história do Enem. Fiquem ligados que existem várias faculdades e universidades públicas que utilizam parcial ou integralmente a nota do Enem. E este número tende a aumentar! Se você deseja conhecer mais sobre o Enem, clique aqui.
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O engano da redistribuição

"Muitos dos interessados na distribuição do bolo querem sobretudo o controle da faca"

Política externa americana

Guerra

A guerra do Lincoln

The Latest Update on the Costs of (Lincoln's) War

Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo on May 29, 2012 02:26 PM

Since the turn of the 20th century historians have used the 620,000 number as the "official" death toll of the War to Prevent Southern Independence; 300,000 Southerners and 320,000 Northerners. In addition, at least 50,000 Southern civilians were murdered. The 620,000 figure is greater than the number of all Americans who died in all other wars combined, up to the present day. In addition, it is relevant that the population of the U.S. was about one tenth of what it is today. Thus, standardizing for today's population, it would be the equivalent of 6.2 million American war deaths in four years. The number of combatants who were maimed for life was more than double the number of deaths. In a couple of years after the war the state of Mississippi spent almost its entire state government budget on artificial limbs.
The history profession is rapidly accepting an updated number of 750,000 war deaths, however. One way to look at this shocking number is to look at it as an economist should look at it: All other nations of the world, including most of the Northern states in the U.S., found a way to end slavery peacefully in the nineteenth century, as Jim Powell documents in his book, Greatest Emancipations: How the West Abolished Slavery. Why, then, was the Republican Party the only political party in the world that abandoned the tried and true tactic of peaceful emancipation? As Powell writes on page 240 of Greatest Emancipations: "Some people have objected that the United States couldn't have bought the freedom of all the slaves, because this would have cost too much. But buying the freedom of slaves was not more expensive than war," wrote the former student of F.A. Hayek. "Nothing is more costly than war! The costs include people killed or disabled, destroyed property, high taxes inflation, military expenditures, shortages, war-related famines and epidemics—plus long-term consequences that often include more wars. The billions of dollars of Union military expenditures during the Civil War would have been better spent reducing the number of slaveholders and slaves, accelerating progress toward total emancipation."
The Official Spin by the Lincoln Cult will probably be something like this: We should revere King Lincoln even more than we do now since he must have suffered so much, knowing that all of those Americans perished during his regime.

Apresentação música pop alemã

Sociedades complexas precisam leis simples

Complex Societies Need Simple Laws

"If you have 10,000 regulations," Winston Churchill said, "you destroy all respect for law."

He was right. But Churchill never imagined a government that would add 10,000 year after
year. That's what we have in America. We have 160,000 pages of rules from the feds alone.
States and localities have probably doubled that. We have so many rules that legal specialists
can't keep up. Criminal lawyers call the rules "incomprehensible." They are. They are also "uncountable." Congress has created so many criminal offenses that the American Bar
Association says it would be futile to even attempt to estimate the total.

So what do the politicians and bureaucrats of the permanent government do? They pass
more rules.

That's not good. It paralyzes life.
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Brasil no caminho perigoso

Leandro Roque explica: "A quantidade de medidas totalitárias editadas pelo atual governo, e o ritmo em que elas são produzidas, é certamente um recorde na história da nação. Não há absolutamente uma só semana em que não haja pelo menos três notícias que explicitem a concupiscência de poder do atual governo. Ainda pior do que as medidas em si, é ver a mídia propagandeando tais medidas de maneira quase jubilosa, para não dizer exultante....

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Transformação

A mente humana

• "Men are governed by opinion; this opinion is as much influenced by appearances as by realities." -- Alexander Hamilton, letter of James Duane, September 3, 1780.

Eugenia na América

By the late 1920s, 376 American colleges were offering courses in eugenics. The army of enthusiasts included, at various times, the presidents of Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the American Museum of Natural History, and the universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, and California. State fairs also embraced the eugenic cause. Known for celebrating grand champion sows and other masterworks of animal husbandry, they now added a “human stock” section, where competitors vied for the blue ribbon in the “Fitter Families” contest. A traveling display warned, “Some people are born to be a burden on the rest,” above a light that flashed every 15 seconds to indicate that another “$100 of your money” had just gone “for the care of a person with bad heredity.”
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Mercado e moralidade

The notion that the market economy makes people greedy, selfish, and amoral is simply fallacious.
Herbert Gintis

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Guerra e o sistema de banco central

Quem ganha com "políticas públicas"

Bob Higgs explica

Keynes - o santo moderno de todos os governos

The theory of output as a whole, which is what The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state.

John Maynard Keynes

In looking at and assessing the economic paradigm of John Maynard Keynes — a man himself fixated on aggregates — we must look at the aggregate of his thought, and the aggregate of his ideology.

Keynes was not just an economist. Between 1937 and 1944 he served as the head of the Eugenics Society and once called eugenics ”the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists.” And Keynes, we should add, understood that economics was a branch of sociology. So let’s be clear: Keynes thought eugenics was more important, more significant, and more genuine than economics.

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Ron Paul's Ten Principles

Ron Paul’s Ten Principles of a Free Society

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Admin

This is the Appendix to Ron Paul’s book, Liberty Defined.

1.   Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government.

2.   All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order.

3.   Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments.

4.   Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group.

5.   Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves.

6.   Government may not claim the monopoly over a people’s money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability.

7.   Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden.

8.   Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm.

9.   All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.

10.  Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.

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Guerra e dinheiro

"The government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semi-occult power which....pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I." British military historian Major General J.F.C. Fuller, 1941

Estado, governo e a história da escravidão

Why We Couldn't Abolish Slavery Then and Can't Abolish Government Now
Robert Higgs
Slavery existed for thousands of years, in all sorts of societies and all parts of the world. To imagine human social life without it required an extraordinary effort. Yet, from time to time, eccentrics emerged to oppose it, most of them arguing that slavery is a moral monstrosity and therefore people should get rid of it. Such advocates generally elicited reactions that ranged from gentle amusement to harsh scorn and violent assault. Mais

Arguments Against the Abolition of Slavery and Arguments Against the Abolition of Government (as We Know It)

Slavery is natural.	Government (as we know it) is natural.
Slavery has always existed.	Government (as we know it) has always existed.
Every society on earth has slavery.	Every society on earth has government (as we know it)
The slaves are not capable of taking care of themselves.	The people are not capable of taking care of themselves
Without masters, the slaves will die off.	Without government (as we know it), the people will die off.
Where the common people are free, they are even worse off than slaves	Where the common people have no government (as we know it), they are much worse off (e.g., Somalia).
Getting rid of slavery would occasion great bloodshed and other evils.	Getting rid of government (as we know it) would occasion great bloodshed and other evils.
Without slavery, the former slaves would run amuck, stealing, raping, killing, and generally causing mayhem.	Without government (as we know it), the people would run amuck, stealing, raping, killing, and generally causing mayhem.
Trying to get rid of slavery is foolishly utopian and impractical; only a fuzzy-headed dreamer would advance such a cockamamie proposal.	Trying to get rid of government (as we know it) is foolishly utopian and impractical; only a fuzzy-headed dreamer would advance such a cockamamie proposal.
Forget abolition. A far better plan is to keep the slaves sufficiently well fed, clothed, housed, and occasionally entertained and to take their minds off their exploitation by encouraging them to focus on the better life that awaits them in the hereafter.	Forget anarchy. A far better plan is to keep the ordinary people sufficiently well fed, clothed, housed, and entertained and to take their minds off their exploitation by encouraging them to focus on the better life that awaits them in the hereafter.

Vergonha europeia - um poema de Günter Grass

Europas Schande
Ein Gedicht von Günter Grass
Dem Chaos nah, weil dem Markt nicht gerecht,
bist fern Du dem Land, das die Wiege Dir lieh.
Was mit der Seele gesucht, gefunden Dir galt,
wird abgetan nun, unter Schrottwert taxiert.
Als Schuldner nackt an den Pranger gestellt, leidet ein Land,
dem Dank zu schulden Dir Redensart war.
Zur Armut verurteiltes Land, dessen Reichtum
gepflegt Museen schmückt: von Dir gehütete Beute.
Die mit der Waffen Gewalt das inselgesegnete Land
heimgesucht, trugen zur Uniform Hölderlin im Tornister.
Kaum noch geduldetes Land, dessen Obristen von Dir
einst als Bündnispartner geduldet wurden.
Rechtloses Land, dem der Rechthaber Macht
den Gürtel enger und enger schnallt.
Dir trotzend trägt Antigone Schwarz und landesweit
kleidet Trauer das Volk, dessen Gast Du gewesen.
Außer Landes jedoch hat dem Krösus verwandtes Gefolge
alles, was gülden glänzt gehortet in Deinen Tresoren.
Sauf endlich, sauf! schreien der Kommissare Claqueure,
doch zornig gibt Sokrates Dir den Becher randvoll zurück.
Verfluchen im Chor, was eigen Dir ist, werden die Götter,
deren Olymp zu enteignen Dein Wille verlangt.
Geistlos verkümmern wirst Du ohne das Land,
dessen Geist Dich, Europa, erdachte.

Bankers always win

THE joke recounted by the boss of a large Italian bank is an old one, but it captures the moment. Two hikers are picnicking when a bear appears. When one laces up his boots to run, his friend scoffs that he can’t outrun a bear. The shod hiker retorts that it is not the bear he needs to outrun, merely his fellow hiker. “We’re sitting at the picnic with our boots still on,” says the bank boss.
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Um milagre justicial brasileiro aconteceu

Fazer cópia de CD ou livro para uso próprio deixará de ser crime

Cópia integral de uma obra para uso pessoal, desde que não tenha objetivo de lucro, será descriminalizada; atualmente, a pena por essa conduta pode chegar a 4 anos

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Transformação do mercado dos livres de texto

May 21 (Reuters) - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishers Inc, whose textbooks have been a staple in American schoolhouses for decades, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday after agreeing with creditors to eliminate $3.1 billion of debt.
The "pre-packaged" bankruptcy would give control of Houghton Mifflin to its lenders.
It comes as cash-strapped state and local governments defer or cancel education-related purchases, reducing demand for textbooks for students from kindergarten to 12th grade.
Traditional book publishers also face pressure from the online availability of published material, including e-books.
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Um experimento fatal

The Soviet Union lasted as a socialist worker's paradise from 1917 until 1991. As a direct result of that experiment, at least 30 million Russians died. It may have been twice that. China's experiment was shorter: 1949 to 1978. Perhaps 60 million Chinese died.
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