Praza das agulhas

Mark Thornton explica as conseqüências da proibição: "... No one wants a needle park in his or her neighborhood, but that is exactly what prohibition brings. Prohibition also brings increased violence and property crime. Legalization would bring commercially produced products that are reasonably priced..."
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Ciências físicas versus ciências sociais

F. A. Hayek explica: "... Ao contrário das ciências físicas, na ciência econômica — e em outras disciplinas que lidam com fenômenos essencialmente complexos — os aspectos dos eventos a serem estudados, e sobre os quais podemos coletar dados quantitativos, são necessariamente limitados. Além disso, esse número necessariamente limitado de aspectos quantitativos pode não incluir aqueles aspectos mais importantes. Nas ciências físicas geralmente se supõe, provavelsmente com boas razões, que qualquer fator importante na determinação dos eventos observados é ele próprio diretamente observável e mensurável. Já no estudo de fenômenos essencialmente complexos — tais como o mercado, que depende das ações de vários indivíduos —, todas as circunstâncias que irão determinar o resultado de um processo dificilmente serão totalmente conhecidas ou mesmo mensuráveis.

Assim, ao passo que nas ciências físicas o pesquisador é capaz de mensurar, com base em uma teoria aparentemente evidente, aquilo que ele julga ser importante, nas ciências sociais frequentemente só se dá importância àquilo que por ventura possa ser mensurado. Esse modo de pensar é algumas vezes levado ao ponto em que se exige que nossas teorias sejam formuladas de uma maneira que leve em conta apenas grandezas mensuráveis...."

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Veja também:
Praxeologia versus positivismo 
Teoria de valor e ideologia política

Quando todo começou

"[B]y targeting and butchering civilians, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman paved the way for all the genocidal horrors of the monstrous 20th century."

M. N. Rothbard sobre a guerra de secessão ou de independência do sul (War for Southern Independence 1861-1865) que é falsamente chamada "guerra civil".

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A grande estagnação

Tyler Cowen's The Great Stagnation, the eSpecial heard round the world that ignited a firestorm of debate and redefined the nature of our economic malaise, is now-at last-a book.
America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, media wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess? One political party tries to increase government spending even when we have no good plan for paying for ballooning programs like Medicare and Social Security. The other party seems to think tax cuts will raise revenue and has a record of creating bigger fiscal disasters that the first. Where does this madness come from?
As Cowen argues, our economy has enjoyed low-hanging fruit since the seventeenth century: free land, immigrant labor, and powerful new technologies. But during the last forty years, the low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau. The fruit trees are barer than we want to believe. That's it. That is what has gone wrong and that is why our politics is crazy.
Cowen reveals the underlying causes of our past prosperity and how we will generate it again. This is a passionate call for a new respect of scientific innovations that benefit not only the powerful elites, but humanity as a whole.

Proteção de patentes no Brasil

7 passos para proteger uma ideia inovadora

Aprenda qual o processo para pedir a proteção de sua invenção através de patente

As micro e pequenas empresas pediram 44% mais patentes entre 2006 e 2010, segundo o Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Intelectual (Inpi). O aumento é positivo, mas os pequenos empresários ainda se sentem intimidados na hora de proteger suas inovações.  Em todo o ano passado foram feitos quase 30 mil pedidos de patente no Brasil (o número ainda não foi consolidado pelo órgão). Destes, apenas 288 vieram de empresários de pequeno porte. Leia mais

Ranking de patentes por paises

Patents granted by country (Last data: 2008)

Rank	Country	No. of Patents Granted
1	Japan	239,338
2	United States	146,871
3	South Korea	79,652
4	Germany	53,752
5	China	48,814
6	France	25,535
7	Russia	22,870
8	Italy	12,789
9	United Kingdom	12,162
10	Switzerland	11,291
11	Netherlands	11,103
12	Canada	8,188
13	Sweden	7,453
14	Finland	4,675
15	Australia	4,386
16	Spain	3,636
17	Belgium	2,948
18	Israel	2,665
19	Denmark	2,347
20	Austria	2,306

Educação universitária online

A College Education for All, Free and Online
By Kevin Carey
All around the world, people have been waiting for someone like Shai Reshef to come along.
Reshef is the founder and president of the University of the People, a tuition-free online institution that enrolled its first class of students in 2009.
UoPeople strives to serve the vast numbers of students who have no access to traditional higher education. Some can't afford it, or they live in countries where there are simply no good colleges to attend. Others live in rural areas, or identify with a culture, an ethnicity, or a gender that is excluded from public services.
UoPeople students pay an application fee of between $10 and $50 and must have a high-school diploma and be proficient in English. There are also small fees for grading final exams. Otherwise, it's free.
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Universidade popular

University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first tuition-free online university
dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education.

The University embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring tuition-free academic programs within reach to millions of people around the world.

With the support of academic leadership from top universities and a student body comprised of students from over 115 countries, UoPeople has become a tuition-free higher education global leader.

http://www.uopeople.org/

Vídeo Palestras para assistir durante as férias

	1.- Financial Cycles, Business Activity and Asset Valuations January 26, 2004 Antony Mueller
	2.- Do Current Account Deficits Matter? January 27, 2004 Antony Mueller
	3.- Currency Arrangements in Europe January 29, 2004 Antony Mueller
	4.- Independence of the European Central Bank January 28, 2004 Dr. Antony Mueller
	5.- Inflation and Deflation in a New Capital-Based Macroeconomic February 9, 2006 Antony Mueller

O sentido da vida

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Realidade é uma ilusão?

Fixar a cruz
Shocking illusion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM6lGNhPujE&feature=player_embedded

A grande debate sobre propriedade intelectual

http://mises.org/daily/5461/The-Great-IP-Debate-of-1983

A grande debate sobre propriedade intelectual de 1983

http://mises.org/daily/5461/The-Great-IP-Debate-of-1983

A política da tecnologia de informação

According to Columbia professor and policy advocate Wu (Who Controls the Internet), the great information empires of the 20th century have followed a clear and distinctive pattern: after the chaos that follows a major technological innovation, a corporate power intervenes and centralizes control of the new medium--the master switch. Wu chronicles the turning points of the century' s information landscape: those decisive moments when a medium opens or closes, from the development of radio to the Internet revolution, where centralizing control could have devastating consequences. To Wu, subjecting the information economy to the traditional methods of dealing with concentrations of industrial power is an unacceptable control of our most essential resource. He advocates not a regulatory approach but rather a constitutional approach that would enforce distance between the major functions in the information economy--those who develop information, those who own the network infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the venues of access--and keep corporate and governmental power in check. By fighting vertical integration, a Separations Principle would remove the temptations and vulnerabilities to which such entities are prone. Wu' s engaging narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity--and necessary deregulation--in the information age. 

Educação é política

Educação numa sociedade livre promove lógica e pensamento crítico. Educação numa sociedade repressiva exige repetição e decoração.

Moeda

Sem moeda livre continuamos no estado de escravos:
Mike Rozeff explica: "Currency is the blood of human exchange. From currency arise prices, and prices are the air that peaceful exchange breathes, an air that communicates living information. Currency is the division of labor’s partner. Currency is our means to transfer labor and energy through time and space, to bring future goods into commerce today. It is that vital means by which we convey the benefits of our labor to others and they to us.
Mankind needs currency. It is absolutely essential to our welfare in any modern economy.
Do we want freedom and free markets? Then currency must be produced in freedom. Do we want to be controlled and directed by government in totalitarian style? Then currency will be in the hands of government as it is now.
What sort of order do we now have and what sort of order do we want to have? We now have an order of force. It is a corrupt and harmful order that destroys lives. It is an order of unjust laws written by unjust government to pay off privileged and select groups in society. It is an order of excessive and overbearing government that destroys healthy social relations. This is not a free market order. If we want a peaceful free market order built upon private property and recognizable and well-defined rights, we need to change direction. The order of force in all respects leads away from the free market order.
If we want freedom and free markets, we cannot and should not depend on one supplier of currency. That supplier, government through its central bank, playing dictator, has abused, will abuse and cannot help but abuse the power of issue. Its hidden and unstated goal, its raison d’être, is favoritism and privilege for itself and its friends...."
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Leia também:
Desestatização do Dinheiro
por Friedrich A. Haye

Ensinar os limites de conhecimento

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.’
– Friedrich von Hayek

História contemporânea - fome em massa na Coréia do Norte

Mass Starvation in North Korea

Posted by Lew Rockwell on July 17, 2011 08:30 AM

Once again, vast numbers are dying from socialist starvation. Call it North Korean state mass murder. But the US must take a share of the blame. Ever since the Korean war, the US has used its military occupation of South Korea to prevent peace and trade negotiations from breaking out. Like all empires, the US's real motto is divide et impera. US out of Korea. It is the only way we can help to save the people of the north.
UPDATE from David Burns:

The UN's World Food Programme says North Korea faces its worst food shortage in a decade, with six million people at risk — a consequence of poor economic management of its centrally planned system. Wrong, UN. It is a consequence of a centrally planned system. There is no such thing as good economic management of a centrally planned system, as Mises proved almost 100 years ago. Of course, the UN is filled with would-be planners and they might be just a tad biased (and insane.)

Legalizar drogas reduz o seu consumo

The Fix / By Tony O'Neil

 5 COMMENTS

Ten Years Ago Portugal Legalized All Drugs -- What Happened Next?

When the nation legalized all drugs within its borders, most critics predicted disaster. But a decade later, drug use has plunged dramatically.

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O holocausto vermelho

Abstract: Twentieth and twenty-first century communism is a failed experiment in social engineering that needlessly killed approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more. These high crimes against humanity constitute a Red Holocaust that exceeds the combined carnage of the French Reign of Terror, Ha Shoah, Showa Japan's Asian holocaust, and all combat deaths in World War I and II. This fascinating book investigates high crimes against humanity in the Soviet Union, eastern and central Europe, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia 1929-2009, and compares the results with Ha Shoah and the Japanese Asian Holocaust.
As in other studies, blame is ascribed to political, ideological and personal causes, but special emphasis is given to internal contradictions in Marx's utopian model as well as Stalinist and post-Stalinist transition systems concocted to realize communist ends. This faulty economic engineering forms a bridge to the larger issue of communism's historical failure.

História oculta

Escreve Lew Rockwell: "... É um escândalo, de fato, que poucos ocidentais sequer estejam informados — ou, se estão, não estão conscientes - sobre a sanguinolenta realidade que predominou na China entre os anos de 1949 e 1976, os anos da ditadura comunista de Mao Tse-Tung. (Ou Mao Zédong).

Quantos morreram como resultado das perseguições e das políticas de Mao? Será que você se importaria em adivinhar? Muitas pessoas ao longo dos anos tentaram. Mas elas sempre acabavam subestimando os números. Porém, à medida que mais dados foram aparecendo durante as décadas de 80 e 90, e os especialistas foram se dedicando mais intensamente às investigações e estimativas, os números foram se tornando cada vez mais confiáveis. Mas, ainda assim, eles permanecem imprecisos. Qual a margem de erro com a qual estamos lidando? Ela pode ser, por baixo, de 40 milhões; mas também pode ser de 100 milhões ou mais. Para o Grande Salto para Frente, de 1959 a 1961, o número de mortos varia entre 20 milhões e 75 milhões. No período anterior foi de 20 milhões. No período posterior, dezenas de milhões a mais...
Tendo lido tudo isso, você agora faz parte da minúscula elite de pessoas que sabem alguma coisa sobre o maior campo de morte da história do mundo, que foi no que a China se transformou entre 1949 e 1976 — um experimento de controle total, algo que jamais se viu na história...."

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História silenciosa

Thomas Woods pergunta: "Normalmente é dito que o número de ucranianos mortos na fome de 1932-33 foi de cinco milhões. De acordo com Robert Conquest, se acrescentarmos outras catástrofes ocorridas com camponeses entre 1930 e 1937, incluindo-se aí um enorme número de deportações de supostos "kulaks", o grande total é elevado para entorpecentes 14,5 milhões de mortes. E, mesmo assim, se apenas 1% dos alunos do ensino médio já tiver ouvido falar sobre esses eventos, isso já seria um pequeno milagre..."
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Arquitectura socialista

Galeria de fotos – arquitetura socialista – o monstro em concreto:
Galeria de 16 fotos

Pesquisadores do exterior

Brasil vai trazer cientistas do exterior, diz Mercadante

Em quinta-feira 14/7/2011, às 16:43

O ministro de Ciência e Tecnologia, Aloizio Mercadante, informou hoje que o governo pretende trazer cientistas da Europa e dos Estados Unidos para desenvolver os institutos de pesquisa do País. Em entrevista no Palácio do Planalto, ele observou que o momento é ideal, destacando que enquanto o Brasil investe no setor, os países industrializados estão demitindo cientistas. Mercadante disse que ainda está sendo estudada a meta de quantos cientistas poderão vir, por meio de uma programa de "trabalhadores temporários".
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Comentário: Claro, se precisa pesquisadores do exterior quando os próprios "cientistas" estã ocupados demais em pesquisar 'hamburguer" (veja abaixo).

Pesquisa sem valor

USP pesquisa origem do hambúrguer do Big Mac

Por Redação Yahoo! Brasil | Yahoo! Notícias Você já se perguntou se o hambúrguer do Big Mac, um dos ícones da globalização, tem o mesmo gosto em todo o mundo? Pois essa curiosidade levou cientistas da USP a investigar como é produzido o principal ingrediente do Big Mac.

Pesquisadores do laboratório de Ecologia Isotópica do Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (Cena), localizado em Piracicaba (SP), foram a 26 países para rastrear as origens da carne que dá origem ao hambúrguer e constataram que o sabor não é igual. O estudo concluiu, assim, que o Big Mac é um produto “glocal”: embora seja uma comida global, seu sabor é local, pois o hambúrguer é originário do rebanho de cada país.
Realmente, NÂO vale ler mais sobre esta pesquisa doida demais!

Einstein sobre as absurdidades da guerra

Einstein on Militarism

Posted by Lew Rockwell on July 13, 2011 03:47 PM

Albert Einstein:

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that does by the name of patriotism — how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.

(Thanks to Paul Voss

Sobre a mitologia da Segunda Guerra Mundial

209. Myths of World War II

 

On July 12, 2011

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Eric Margolis leads Lew Rockwell through the murky distortions surrounding
the Great Catastrophe to show that it was not the good vs. evil conflict as
official propaganda would have it.

"Ordem e progresso" à la americaine

Seguem trechos dos slides da apresentação do Professor Thomas C. Leonard of Princeton University sobre a "Progressive Era" dos Estados Unidos - a variação americana da "Ordem e Progresso" da filosofia de Auguste Comte adotada dos republicanos brasileiros (veja).
Fonte para os slides

A grande ilusão

•       The late 19^th-century progressive embrace of social-control doctrine thus represented a decisive intellectual break with classically liberal thought, in two ways.

•       (1) Most fundamentally, it reconceived how economic and social progress was obtained. 

–      No longer was progress seen as a gradual, evolutionary process arising naturally as the byproduct of voluntary exchange. 

–      Instead, reformers argued, progress would need to be planned and continuously directed – the new guarantor of economic progress would be the visible hand of expert-guided government.

•       (2) American progressives were profoundly, almost naively, optimistic about the efficacy of reform, and the scope for its application: reform could improve education, medicine, family life, government, the economy, even humanity itself – everything, as Jane Addams said, was amenable to improvement.