quinta-feira, 31 de dezembro de 2015

Civilização pre-institucional

The Paradox of Civilization: Pre-Institutional Sources of Security and Prosperity

Ernesto Dal Bó, Pablo Hernández, Sebastián Mazzuca

NBER Working Paper No. 21829
Issued in December 2015
NBER Program(s):   DEV   POL
The rise of civilizations involved the dual emergence of economies that could produce surplus (“prosperity”) and states that could protect surplus (“security”). But the joint achievement of security and prosperity had to escape a paradox: prosperity attracts predation, and higher insecurity discourages the investments that create prosperity. We study the trade-offs facing a proto-state on its path to civilization through a formal model informed by the anthropological and historical literatures on the origin of civilizations. We emphasize pre-institutional forces, such as physical aspects of the geographical environment, that shape productive and defense capabilities. The solution of the civilizational paradox relies on high defense capabilities, natural or manmade. We show that higher initial productivity and investments that yield prosperity exacerbate conflict when defense capability is fixed, but may allow for security and prosperity when defense capability is endogenous. Some economic shocks and military innovations deliver security and prosperity while others force societies back into a trap of conflict and stagnation. We illustrate the model by analyzing the rise of civilization in Sumeria and Egypt, the first two historical cases, and the civilizational collapse at the end of the Bronze Age. 

terça-feira, 29 de dezembro de 2015

Escravidão

"The most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson. (While the editors are careful to say that all of their figures are estimates, I believe that they are the best estimates that we have, the proverbial "gold standard" in the field of the study of the slave trade.)... Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.

And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That's right: a tiny percentage.

In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone! Some scholars estimate that another 60,000 to 70,000 Africans ended up in the United States after touching down in the Caribbean first, so that would bring the total to approximately 450,000 Africans who arrived in the United States over the course of the slave trade. " ~
BY: HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.

WWW.UNHYPHENATEDAMERICA.ORG

segunda-feira, 28 de dezembro de 2015

Fim do monopólio da informação - as consequencias

For most of Martin Gurri’s 29 years working for the Central Intelligence Agency’s open-media group (now the Open Source Center), the world was very different from the one we now inhabit. “When I started out in government,” Gurri recalls in an interview, “it was a perfectly reasonable expectation that an analyst could absorb all the meaningful political information coming out in a day from even a very developed country like Britain or France. And, of course, now if you tried to do that your head would explode.”
Information used to be scarce. Now it’s overwhelming. In his book “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium,” Gurri considers the political implications of this change. He argues that the shift from information scarcity to abundance has destroyed the public’s established trust in institutional authorities, including media, science, religion, and government.
“Once the monopoly on information is lost, so too is our trust,” Gurri writes. Someone somewhere will expose every error, every falsehood, every biased assessment, every overstated certainty, every prejudice, every omission -- and likely offer a contrary and equally refutable version of their own.
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domingo, 27 de dezembro de 2015

Alemanha antes 1900

Rare Color Photos Reveal Germany In 1900 Before It Was Destroyed By Wars

The book contains 800 color photographs and postcards that were produced around 1900. It gives a peaceful and nostalgic glimpse into bourgeois Germany before the terrors of the WWI, and the turn of the 20th century seemed full of promise.
Of course, color photography was not available back then. “The images are all rare examples of the historical photochrom process, a printing technique that allowed black-and-white photographs to be reproduced in colour,” writes the publisher Taschen. The book costs €150 and comes in English, French, and German.

quarta-feira, 23 de dezembro de 2015

Fascismo

George Orwell:
"It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword."
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Neoliberalismo

Abstract

In recent years, neoliberalism has become an academic catchphrase. Yet, in contrast to other prominent social science concepts such as democracy, the meaning and proper usage of neoliberalism curiously have elicited little scholarly debate. Based on a content analysis of 148 journal articles published from 1990 to 2004, we document three potentially problematic aspects of neoliberalism’s use: the term is often undefined; it is employed unevenly across ideological divides; and it is used to characterize an excessively broad variety of phenomena. To explain these characteristics, we trace the genesis and evolution of the term neoliberalism throughout several decades of political economy debates. We show that neoliberalism has undergone a striking transformation, from a positive label coined by the German Freiberg School to denote a moderate renovation of classical liberalism, to a normatively negative term associated with radical economic reforms in Pinochet’s Chile. We then present an extension of W. B. Gallie’s framework for analyzing essentially contested concepts to explain why the meaning of neoliberalism is so rarely debated, in contrast to other normatively and politically charged social science terms. We conclude by proposing several ways that the term can regain substantive meaning as a “new liberalism” and be transformed into a more useful analytic tool.
ArticleStudies in Comparative International Development
, Volume 44, Issue 2, pp 137-161
First online: 21 February 2009
Open Access This content is freely available online to anyone, anywhere at any time.

Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan

  • Taylor C. BoasAffiliated withDepartment of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley Email author 
  • , Jordan Gans-MorseAffiliated withDepartment of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley


A guerra de cem anos

From chapter 43: “The Troubles Begin: 1919 – 1921”; A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin
With this sentence, Fromkin begins his examination of the troubles for western imperialists throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.  Of course, there were interventions before this time (Britain already had significant presence in Egypt and India, for example), yet – corresponding with the overall theme of Fromkin’s book – his examination centers on the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Fromkin summarizes the situation and conflict in nine different regions (many of which were not “countries” as we understand the term).  He suggests that the British did not see a connection in these
In retrospect, one sees Britain undergoing a time of troubles everywhere in the Middle East between 1919 and 1921; but it was not experienced that way, at least not in the beginning.
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A ilusão de iceberg do sucesso


terça-feira, 22 de dezembro de 2015

Hitler e prensa americana

The American Papers that Praised Hitler

They fell hard for the job-creating Führer with eyes that were like ‘blue larkspur.’ Why did so many journalists spend years dismissing the evidence of his atrocities?
“The train arrived punctually,” a Christian Science Monitor report from Germany informed its readers, not long after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. “Traffic was well regulated” in the new Germany, and policemen in “smart blue uniforms” kept order, the correspondent noted. “I have so far found quietness, order, and civility”; there was “not the slightest sign of anything unusual afoot.”
As for all those “harrowing stories” of Jews being mistreated—they seemed to apply “only to a small proportion”; most were “not in any way molested.” Overall, the Monitor’s dispatch declared, the Hitler regime was providing “a dark land a clear light of hope.”
Why did many mainstream American newspapers portray the Hitler regime positively, especially in its early months? How could they publish warm human-interest stories about a brutal dictator? Why did they excuse or rationalize Nazi anti-Semitism? These are questions that should haunt the conscience of U.S. journalism to this day.
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Mitos da alimentação

A farsa do Salmão! 

A esmagadora maioria do peixe encontrado nos mercados de todo o mundo é criado em aquacultura, e tem uma cor que vai do cinza ao bege-claro, passando no máximo por um rosa-pálido. Para ficar com o mesmo tom do salmão selvagem ele recebe uma ração com aditivos sintéticos derivados de petróleo. Além disso, estudos apontam que consumir uma média mensal de 200 gramas deste pescado, apresenta riscos cancerígenos inaceitáveis.
farsa_salmao_2
A verdade é que este peixe, que recebeu a fama de super alimento, repleto de Ómega 3, que combate o colesterol mau, é antiinflamatório e traz inúmeros benefícios para o consumidor, não passa de um produto perigoso. Para piorar a situação, muitas vezes os peixes são criados em ambientes anti-higiénicos, recebem antibióticos, tem o dobro de gordura – na sua maioria de gordura saturada (má) e quase nada de Ómega 3 (boa). Por causa disto, os peixes recebem altas doses de antibióticos e fungicidas. Ou seja: mais contaminação na sua carne.
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Teoria do preconceito

How a rebellious scientist uncovered the surprising truth about stereotypes

segunda-feira, 21 de dezembro de 2015

Fascismo

"Few books on European history in recent memory have caused such controversy and commotion," wrote Robert Wohl in 1991 in a major review of Neither Right nor Left. Listed by Le Monde as one of the forty most important books published in France during the 1980s, this explosive work asserts that fascism was an important part of the mainstream of European history, not just a temporary development in Germany and Italy but a significant aspect of French culture as well. Neither right nor left, fascism united antibourgeois, antiliberal nationalism, and revolutionary syndicalist thought, each of which joined in reflecting the political culture inherited from eighteenth-century France. From the first, Sternhell's argument generated strong feelings among people who wished to forget the Vichy years, and his themes drew enormous public attention in 1994, as Paul Touvier was condemned for crimes against humanity and a new biography probed President Mitterand's Vichy connections. The author's new preface speaks to the debates of 1994 and reinforces the necessity of acknowledging the past, as President Chirac has recently done on France's behalf.
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domingo, 20 de dezembro de 2015

Mitos científicos

Once a myth is here, it is often here to stay. Psychological studies suggest that the very act of attempting to dispel a myth leads to stronger attachment to it. In one experiment, exposure to pro-vaccination messages reduced parents' intention to vaccinate their children in the United States. In another, correcting misleading claims from politicians increased false beliefs among those who already held them. “Myths are almost impossible to eradicate,” says Kirschner. “The more you disprove it, often the more hard core it becomes.”
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ARTIGOS RELACIONADOS

A tiarania dos experts na política do desenvolvimento

Professor William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York Univeristy and Co-Director of the New York University Development Research Institute, was the speaker at the 2015 Annual Hayek Memorial Lecture.
He spoke on the topic of "The Tyranny of Experts: Foreign Aid versus Freedom for the World's Poor", and argued that more freedom provides better outcome for poorer countries than any number of technocratic solutions.
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sábado, 19 de dezembro de 2015

Manipulação em massa

10 Estratégias de Manipulação em Massa utilizadas diariamente contra Você


terça-feira, 15 de dezembro de 2015

LLiderança

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?

There are three popular explanations for the clear under-representation of women in management, namely: (1) they are not capable; (2) they are not interested; (3) they are both interested and capable but unable to break the glass-ceiling: an invisible career barrier, based on prejudiced stereotypes, that prevents women from accessing the ranks of power. Conservatives and chauvinists tend to endorse the first; liberals and feminists prefer the third; and those somewhere in the middle are usually drawn to the second. But what if they all missed the big picture?
In my view, the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is our inability to discern between confidence and competence. That is, because we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women. In other words, when it comes to leadership, the only advantage that men have over women (e.g., from Argentina to Norway and the USA to Japan) is the fact that manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential, and that these occur much more frequently in men than in women.
This is consistent with the finding that leaderless groups have a natural tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident and narcissistic individuals as leaders, and that these personality characteristics are not equally common in men and women. In line, Freud argued that the psychological process of leadership occurs because a group of people — the followers — have replaced their own narcissistic tendencies with those of the leader, such that their love for the leader is a disguised form of self-love, or a substitute for their inability to love themselves. “Another person’s narcissism”, he said, “has a great attraction for those who have renounced part of their own… as if we envied them for maintaining a blissful state of mind.”

segunda-feira, 14 de dezembro de 2015

EPL


Rede de estudantes quer quebrar hegemonia estatista nas universidades



Apesar de contar com importantes nomes como Eugênio Gudin, Roberto Campos, Meira Penna, José Guilherme Merquior, a inexpressividade do pensamento liberal dentro da academia brasileira parecia uma sina. A enorme quantidade de acadêmicos com viés estatista conseguia abafar as vozes que continuavam a falar sobre as vantagens da liberdade.

Incomodados, um grupo de estudantes participantes do primeiro curso de férias oferecido pelo Instituto Ordem Livre em 2012 resolveu resgatar uma ideia até então adormecida. Uma organização voltada para a promoção e empoderamento de liberais dentro da academia, assim nascia os "Estudantes pela Liberdade (EPL)". Desde sua criação há três anos, o EPL cresceu de um pequeno grupo de pessoas para mais de 600 indivíduos que se dedicam a promover as ideias da liberdade dentro de universidades e escolas brasileiras, criando coletivos, grupos, jornais, realizando eventos, e marcando posição sobre os mais diversos temas. 

Impostos


sexta-feira, 11 de dezembro de 2015

O mistério do fascismo

Steele on The Mystery of Fascism

Worth reading: David Ramsay Steele’s now-classic article on the intellectual origins and practical evolution of fascism — “The Mystery of Fascism.”
Mussolini“From 1912 to 1914, Mussolini was the Che Guevara of his day, a living saint of leftism. Handsome, courageous, charismatic, an erudite Marxist, a riveting speaker and writer, a dedicated class warrior to the core, he was the peerless duce of the Italian Left. He looked like the head of any future Italian socialist government, elected or revolutionary.”
Here also is the online text of Mussolini and Gentile’s The Doctrine of Fascism.
And two short items about unexpected connections between Mussolini and Keynes and Mussolini and Kant:

quinta-feira, 10 de dezembro de 2015

Nova fonte de energia

Após 19 anos de construção, cientistas testam reator Wendelstein 7-X pela primeira vez. Tecnologia pode ajudar a resolver a crescente demanda por energia limpa no mundo. Segundo o IPP, um grama de hidrogênio poderia gerar 90 mil quilowatts-hora de energia – a mesma quantidade produzida pela combustão de 11 toneladas de carvão. Ou seja, a tecnologia superaria todas as antigas fontes energéticas, como o petróleo e o próprio carvão."
Após 19 anos de construção, cientistas põem o reator Wendelstein 7-X pela primeira vez em funcionamento, no Instituto Max Planck. Tecnologia pode…
DW.COM|POR DEUTSCHE WELLE (WWW.DW.COM)

quarta-feira, 9 de dezembro de 2015

Sowell sobre pobreza

Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Sowell discusses poverty around the world and in the United States. Poverty in America, he says, compared to the rest of the world, is not severe. Many poor people in poverty in the United States have one or two cars, central heating, and cell phones. 
Assista

terça-feira, 8 de dezembro de 2015

Progressivismo

bookjacket

Illiberal Reformers:
Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era
Thomas C. Leonard

Hardcover | January 2016 | $35.00 | £24.95 | ISBN: 9780691169590
264 pp. | 6 x 9
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In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all.
Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity, journalism, and law, played a pivotal role in establishing minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws, workmen’s compensation, progressive income taxes, antitrust regulation, and other hallmarks of the regulatory welfare state. But even as they offered uplift to some, economic progressives advocated exclusion for others, and did both in the name of progress.
Leonard meticulously reconstructs the influence of Darwinism, racial science, and eugenics on scholars and activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing a reform community deeply ambivalent about America’s poor. Economic progressives championed labor legislation because it would lift up the deserving poor while excluding immigrants, African Americans, women, and "mental defectives," whom they vilified as low-wage threats to the American workingman and to Anglo-Saxon race integrity.
Economic progressives rejected property and contract rights as illegitimate barriers to needed reforms. But their disregard for civil liberties extended much further. Illiberal Reformers shows that the intellectual champions of the regulatory welfare state proposed using it not to help those they portrayed as hereditary inferiors, but to exclude them.
Thomas C. Leonard is research scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University, where he is also lecturer in the Department of Economics.
Endorsements:
"Mythologies that arise around individuals, groups, and ideas of the past tend to mask many warts. Thomas Leonard’s excellent book about American economics during the Progressive Era shows how progressives’ efforts to champion reform drew on a vision of scientific development that would institutionalize the eugenic creed and, in the process, do great violence to the liberal project that had been at the heart of the American system. Illiberal Reformers provides a powerful lesson in the tensions that surround ideals of social progress, scientific expertise, and the democratic system."--Steven G. Medema, University of Colorado, Denver
"Economists like to think of their ancestors as heroic seekers of truth, each generation, as Newton suggested, standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before. Thomas Leonard demonstrates clearly that the story of economics in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America was far more complex--and more interesting. He shows how the economists of that era combined their passion for social reform with religion, eugenics, and evolution theory in ways that seem incredible today. This book is an eye-opener."--Craufurd Goodwin, James B. Duke Professor of Economics Emeritus, Duke University
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments vii
Prologue ix
Part I The Progressive Ascendancy
1 Redeeming American Economic Life 3
2 Turning Illiberal 17
3 Becoming Experts 27
4 Efficiency in Business and Public Administration 55
Part II The Progressive Paradox
5 Valuing Labor: What Should Labor Get? 77
6 Darwinism in Economic Reform 89
7 Eugenics and Race in Economic Reform 109
8 Excluding the Unemployable 129
9 Excluding Immigrants and the Unproductive 141
10 Excluding Women 169
Epilogue 187
Notes 193
Index 233
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