Re: Leituras: State-building

No Blasfémias. Lê-se na conclusão da análise do livro de Fukuyama pela defesa do Estado "smaller but strong" (o que, desculpem será sempre uma espécie de contradição - mostrem-me uma qualquer fonte de poder forte sem tendência enexorável para crescer...) e que defende também que:

1) "História da Humanidade é mais a História do totalitarismo do que a História da Liberdade"

Não é bem verdade. Totalitarismo é um fenómeno da modernidade, do século 20, em especial do que obtivemos quando as monarquias europeias cairam pós Grande Guerra: as repúblicas fascistas e o comunistas.

Anteriormente na História, o periodo Liberal Clássico surge com o desenvolvimento económico e contra algumas tentativas de absolutismo. Mas o que é preciso lembrar é que o absolutismo em si era também um fenómeno novo (Alexandre Herculano refere isso com insistência) - as localidades e populações ao longo da história até aí, tinham-se deparado com um sistema de poder altamente descentralizado e policêntrico (concorriam diversas fontes de poder e sistemas legais), na Europa (lembremos o antigo Império Sacro-Romano constituido por cerca de 1600 entidade politicas - no inicio do século 18, a Europa central era ainda constituida por 300 entidades autónomas). Em Portugal, em 1890, o total de receita do Estado equivalia a cerca de 5% do PIB ("now, that´s real freedom!").

PS: Para além disso, alguns liberais em que eu me incluo, serão capazes de definir o actual paradigma de social-democracia centralizada como "Totalitarismo da Maioria"

2) Ainda mais estranho é esta afirmação:

"Faltará, porventura, em State-Building, a vontade de ir até às últimas consequências, porventura defendendo, tal como tive já oportunidade de escrever em ocasião anterior, que "um regime só é legítimo se for democrático, o que implica que toda e qualquer ditadura seja ilegítima"

Vamos ver, será o regime do Dubai, Quatar, Koweit, "ilegitimo" (e será totalitário?). Na história, as monarquias eram "ilegítimas"? A cidade comercial de Veneza (como muitas outras na Europa de outros tempos), governada pelos mais ricos comerciantes, vivia perante um regime "ilegitimo"? Já agora, o Estado do Vaticano será "ilegitimo"?

Mas porquê esta obsessão por "ilegitimo" e como definir "ilegitimo"? E de um ponto de vista liberal, será preferivel viver num Estado "ilegitimo" com muita pouca presença desse Estado ou num Estado legitimo que pratica (do ponto de vista liberal e de direitos naturais) ilegitimidades em doses maciças?

Bush panel rips U.S. intelligence abilities

CNBC: 'Dead wrong' on Iraq; little known about today's enemies

WASHINGTON - In a scathing report released Thursday, President Bush’s commission on weapons of mass destruction found that America’s spy agencies were “dead wrong” in most of their judgments about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

The commission was also highly critical of U.S. abilities to assess what existing adversaries have, stating that the United States knows “disturbingly little” about their weapons programs.
On Saddam, the commission stated that “we conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure".

The main cause, the commission said, was the intelligence community’s “inability to collect good information about Iraq’s WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence. “On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude,” the report said.

Nota: Mas o problema principal é que um conjunto simples de reflexões indicava precisamente para esta falha de pressupostos, quer no que respeita ao

- suposto perigo militar (já tinham sido derrotados em meia dúzia de dias no Golfo I e depois de 10 anos de sanções com graves repercussões para os civis...),

- às supostas ligações à AlQaeda (os Estados, nenhum Estado "gosta" de terroristas por causa do seu potencial subversivo, para além disso, o ditador mais secular e a personagem mais fundamentalista dificilmente iriam cooperar),

- às expectativas de serem recebidos com "flores" (como já disse, a única razão porque a stuação é ainda assim controlável é porque os xiitas e Kurdos viram na ocupação e na democracia uma via para as suas pretensões).

Agora, Paul Wolfitz já no fim da guerra fria e da queda pacífica do muro, numa para-comissão especial criada na CIA, também se enganou redondamente ao falar que a URSS estava mais perto do que sempre, da sua força e perigo máximo para o "mundo livre".

Que o fim dos tempos não tenha ocorrido só o podemos agradecer a Ronald Reagan e Margaret Tatcher.

Terry Shiavo

O problema perturbante neste caso extremo parece-me ser o facto de existirem pessoas que estão dispostas (os pais e terceiros) a financiar e cuidar dos meios necessários para manter viva "Terry Shiavo" e serem impedidos disso por uma decisão judicial que favorece um marido que não está disposto a fazê-lo. E depois, aparentemente existem considerações que podem ser tecidas, sobre o marido " decisor legal" neste assunto (entretanto com outra relação e dois fiilhos):

"I stand by my earlier comment that the "husband" is a very shady character. He invoked recovered memory syndrome seven years after Terri was hospitalized to say that, when they were newlyweds, she told him to kill her off if she became incapacitated. He got a $700,000 insurance settlement, bought himself two Mercedes and some other goodies, and did not spend one cent on rehabilitation for his wife despite the advice of nurses and doctors that it could help" Via LRCBlog.

Taxa Única (ou máxima) de Impostos

Já várias vezes aqui defendi a implementação do que comecei por designar de Taxa Única de Impostos para o IRS, IVA e IRC:

1) Torna mais claras as propostas políticas
2) Põe de lado a falácia de discutir a forma como se colectam os impostos em vez do montante
3) Impede o jogo político do "desce este para subir aquele"

Eu acho que na prática a aplicação desta taxa materializa-se no fundo, na definição de uma Taxa Máxima porque os diversos impostos podem e devem continuar a prever abatimentos e deduções, taxas diferenciadas, etc, ou seja, não sou grande adepto dos "simplificadores".

Mas falo no assunto por causa de um artigo de Miguel Frasquilho no negocios.pt: "Agora, a vez da Alemanha... e nós?!"

"(...) Mas Schröder foi ainda mais longe, decidindo incumbir o Comité Alemão de Sábios Económicos de apresentar até Outubro uma profunda reforma do sistema fiscal alemão. Não querendo fazer futurologia, sou capaz de apostar que esta reforma aproximará o sistema fiscal germânico do que já vigora em países do leste europeu como a Estónia (desde 1991), a Letónia (1994), a Lituânia (1994), a Eslováquia (2004), a Roménia (2005), a Rússia (2001), a Ucrânia (2003) ou a Sérvia (2003) - sendo que estes cinco últimos ainda nem sequer aderiram à UE! -, e que a Polónia e a Hungria adoptarão em breve. E que é um regime fiscal muito simples, praticamente sem deduções ou benefícios, e baseado numa taxa única (flat rate) para o IRC, o IRS e o IVA. Geralmente, esta taxa única acaba por ser baixa (inferior a 20%), o que por si só desincentiva a fraude e a evasão fiscais (basta o leitor pensar por si: se ganhar 100 unidades monetárias, o pagamento de um imposto de 15% ou de 30%, por exemplo, fará toda a diferença sobre a possibilidade de correr o risco e julgar compensadora uma eventual fuga...). E o seu nível, em alguns casos, foi determinado de molde a não perder receita (por exemplo, na Eslováquia os 19% foram obtidos depois de pedidas estimativas ao FMI, ao INE local, aos próprios serviços do Ministério das Finanças e a um comité de especialistas criado para o efeito).

Por outro lado, é claro que o quase desaparecimento dos benefícios, deduções e isenções facilitou imenso a tarefa de vigilância das administrações fiscais, ajudando igualmente a combater (mais) eficazmente a fraude e a evasão. (...)

E para os mais cépticos, que desconfiem, por exemplo, da progressividade da tributação em sede de IRS, basta atentar que, num sistema deste género, até um determinado rendimento ninguém é tributado; acima desse nível, toda a parcela remanescente é tributada à mesma taxa - o que significa que quanto mais se ganha, maior é a taxa efectivade imposto, isto é, o sistema é progressivo. (...)

Como refere Steve Forbes, dono e director da famosa Forbes Magazine, a propósito do caso eslovaco, «(...) a Eslováquia será a próxima Irlanda ou Hong Kong - um pequeno país que se tornará num verdadeiro potentado económico. Poderá despoletar o efeito dominó que transformará o resto da UE num espaço mais livre e empreendedor para as empresas (...)». Para o que, acrescento eu, a decisão do Sr. Schröder veio dar um valente e decisivo empurrão."

Against a priori history

"The theoretical reason why focussing on democracy or dictatorship misses the point is that States—all States—rule their population and de­cide whether or not to make war. And all States, whether formally a democracy or dictatorship or some other brand of rule, are run by a ruling elite. Whether or not these elites, in any particular case, will make war upon another State is a function of a complex interweaving web of causes, including temperament of the rulers, the strength of their enemies, the inducements for war, public opinion.

While public opinion has to be gauged in either case, the only real difference between a democracy and a dictatorship on making war is that in the former more propaganda must be beamed at one's subjects to engineer their approval. Intensive propaganda is necessary in any case—as we can see by the zealous opinion-moulding behavior of all modern warring States. But the democratic State must work harder and faster. And also the democratic State must be more hypocritical in using rhetoric designed to appeal to the values of the masses: justice, freedom, national interest, patriotism, world peace, etc. So in democratic States, the art of propagan­dizing their subjects must be a bit more sophisticated and refined. But this, as we have seen, is true of all governmental decisions, not just war or peace. For all governments—but especially democratic govern­ments—must work hard at persuading their subjects that all of their deeds of oppression are really in their subjects' best interests.

What we have said about democracy and dictatorship applies equally to the lack of correlation between degrees of internal freedom in a coun­try and its external aggressiveness. Some States have proved themselves perfectly capable of allowing a considerable degree of freedom internally while making aggressive war abroad; other States have shown themselves capable of totalitarian rule internally while pursuing a pacific foreign policy. The examples of Uganda, Albania, China, Great Britain, etc., apply equally well in this comparison.

In short, libertarians and other Americans must guard against a priori history: in this case, against the assumption that, in any conflict, the State which is more democratic or allows more internal freedom is neces­sarily or even presumptively the victim of aggression by the more dictato­rial or totalitarian State. There is simply no historical evidence whatever for such a presumption. (...)

For war and a phony "external threat" have long been the chief means by which the State wins back the loyalty of its subjects. As we have seen, war and militarism were the gravediggers of classical liberalism; we must not allow the State to get away with this ruse ever again." For a New Liberty

PS: Claro que num tempo em que as mentes estão receptivas ao argumento de que as guerras e os seus danos inevitáveis (de curto prazo e longo prazo) são justificadas para derrubar um regime não-democrático e substitui-lo pelas maravilhas da social-democracia (mesmo sendo imprevisivel se é uma mudança estável) fica quase demonstrado que "agora" as democracias são mesmo mais militaristas que as não-democracias (ainda que advoguem que no longo prazo, o que se procura é menos militarismo e menos guerras, e na prática estejamos numa "permanent war for permanet peace").

Sobran sobre Bastiat, o Liberal Clássico francês

"(...) Bastiat wrote, “Look at the law, and see whether it does for one citizen at the expense of another what it would be a crime for the first to do to the other himself.” If so, the law itself is criminal.

(...) If Bastiat had written nothing else, The Law would have been enough. Generations of liberty-
loving readers have cherished it; yet most people today have never heard of it, or of Bastiat.

Bastiat (1801–1850) was a devout, reflective man who served briefly, and probably with mounting horror, in the French Assembly. In an age of corrupt democracy, he was a scrupulous old-fashioned liberal who believed that the state should be confined to very few functions, beyond which it became tyrannical.

He lived just long enough to enunciate a few principles he had distilled, dying before age fifty. Bastiat can hardly be said to have an “economic theory.” He merely applied the Golden Rule to politics. He insisted that there is no separate morality for the government. What is wrong for the rest of us is wrong for the state, however the state may try to disguise its criminality as benevolence. And if you allow the state to rob your neighbors on your behalf, don’t kid yourself: you’re criminal too.

One might think a truth so simple and unavoidable would be compelling in every age. But various ideologies — monarchic, Marxist, Machiavellian, democratic — ingeniously evade it. Men persuade themselves that the state is exempt from ordinary moral norms and has a special right to coerce, even to make war. But the same principle applies.

If you have no right to take others’ wealth, neither you nor a majority like you may delegate such a power to the government. If you have no right to kill foreigners who have done you no harm, you can’t delegate the power to do so to the government either. You can’t “delegate” a right that doesn’t exist in the first place. Numbers can’t overrule principles, and complications don’t change axioms.

No human authority can make right what is wrong in its essence. But the state tries to make us all accomplices in its crimes, and many people accept the invitation with gusto, believing they can profit by the system of “organized plunder” the way gamblers are confident that they can beat the house. Some ideas take the world by storm. Bastiat’s ideas haven’t — not because they are too complex, but because they are too obvious. Unable to contradict them, the world goes on ignoring them."

George Kennan por Vasco Rato

(No Independente) Aproveita o que interessa do pai da estratégia da guerra fria mas esquece-se que:

Via Economist: "He wanted America to withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights: "this whole tendency to see ourselves as the centre of political enlightenment and as teachers...strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious, and undesirable" Behind this ...was the old George Kennan who had always advocated caution, subtley and patience in the use of power, without shirlness or pushiness..."

Via Chicago Tribune:

"(...) As today's neoconservatives praise Kennan for his call to arms against the Soviet Union, they miss the deeper and darker conservatism that motivated him.Kennan belonged to a conservative tradition that dated back to and celebrated the 18th Century world, an era when conservatives sounded like the political philosopher Edmund Burke, not today's Straussians. Kennan desired a world of fixed hierarchies, in which wise statesman acted on behalf of subjects, not one in which politicians followed popular polls. He called himself "an expatriate in his own time," more suited to the 18th Century than the 20th or 21st, even though he would hardly have prospered in such a time, being born to immigrants in the provinces.
(...)
His call for "realism" in foreign relations--acting solely on the basis of national interest--was a plea for the fickle American public to leave diplomacy to diplomats like himself better able to discern the country's interests.This realism led him to propose "containing" the Soviet Union through the application of "counter-pressure" in the two writings that catapulted him to fame, his "Long Telegram" of 1946 and "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" in 1947. (...) He quickly complained that containment became too militaristic and too political for reasonable men like himself to pursue American interests. While no friend of the USSR, he envisioned an era of coexistence, where superpowers opposed each other without risking mutual destruction. For this reason, he criticized the accelerating arms race. Realism amounted to self-preservation of a nation, but also of elite prerogatives to shape policy.

(...) He opposed the American war in Vietnam because he doubted that the nation could ever become a democracy. Besides, he added, no direct U.S. interests were at stake.

Kennan's last published statement, a little-noticed 2002 interview appearing in a weekly for Washington insiders, applied this same logic to Iraq. He castigated President Bush for pushing the nation to war and congressional Democrats for not slowing the president down. (...) Saddam Hussein, though dictatorial, did not threaten American interests directly--and besides, were Iraqis really likely to end up with anyone better?

(...) As the Bush administration seeks to bring democracy to some parts of the world where it is least known, its diplomats have tried to associate Kennan's ideas with their plans to radically remake the Middle East through war, nation-building and the export of democracy. These appeals show just how far conservatism has evolved. One of the last words to associate with Kennan is "neo." Rather than remaking the future around American ideas, he sought to conserve a bygone world, even if it was a world he had never known."

A Republic, Not a Democracy

"(...) There is a critical difference between a republic and a democracy, Williams notes, citing our second president: “John Adams captured the essence of that difference when he said: ‘You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.’ Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.”

The Founders deeply distrusted democracy. Williams cites Adams again: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Chief Justice John Marshall seconded Adams’s motion: “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.” “When the Constitution was framed,” wrote historian Charles Beard, “no respectable person called himself or herself a democrat.”

Democracy-worship suggests a childlike belief in the wisdom and goodness of “the people.” But the people supported the guillotine in the French Revolution and Napoleon. The people were wild with joy as the British, French, and German boys marched off in August 1914 to the Great War. The people supported Hitler and the Nuremburg Laws.

Our Founding Fathers no more trusted in the people always to do the right thing than they trusted in kings. In the republic they created, the House of Representatives, the people’s house, was severely restricted in its powers by a Bill of Rights and checked by a Senate whose members were to be chosen by the states, by a president with veto power, and by a Supreme Court.

“What kind of government do we have?” the lady asked Benjamin Franklin, as he emerged from the Constitutional Convention. Said Franklin, “A republic—if you can keep it.”

Let us restore that republic. As Jefferson said, “Hear no more of trust in men, but rather bind them down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution.” The American Conservative, Patrick J. Buchanan

Max Boot (Neocon) versus Thomas Woods: Grande Guerra

No American Conservative: "A Factually Correct Guide for Max Boot" Thomas E. Woods Jr

"(...) Boot is particularly enraged at my World War I chapter (our reviewer being one of the seven or so people who still consider American entry into that war a good idea).

According to Boot, I am “sympathetic to German militarists” and I think it was “Woodrow Wilson’s fault that Germany began sinking American ships without warning, which led the United States into the war.” Boot is actually surprised that American merchant ships, outfitted on Wilson’s orders with Navy guns and staffed with Navy crews and instructed to fire upon any surfacing submarine, would be sunk by the Germans.

As for the Belgian atrocities, which I describe as “largely fabricated” (since they were), Boot also dissents. The point he misses is that although the Germans were indeed brutal in Belgium in suppressing a guerrilla uprising whose size they gravely overestimated, it was the tales of children having their hands cut off and corpses being made into margarine that outraged civilized opinion. And it was these sadistic and bizarre crimes, described in the Bryce Report, that were fabrications for propaganda purposes. When Clarence Darrow offered to pay $1,000 ($17,000 in today’s money) to anyone who could show him a Belgian boy whose hands had been cut off by a German soldier, no one took him up on it.

Boot continues: “The real atrocity, [Woods] thinks, was Britain’s naval blockade of Germany.” Well, yes, as a matter of fact that is what I think. Britain’s hunger blockade of Germany, which violated accepted norms of international law in more than one respect, resulted in 750,000 civilian deaths—about 150 times the number of Belgian civilians most scholars say were killed by the Germans.

Boot then proceeds to mischaracterize the Zimmerman telegram as “the document in which Germany’s foreign minister offered Mexico the return of the American Southwest if it would declare war on the United States.” Some might consider it relevant that the telegram began by noting that the Germans hoped to keep the U.S. neutral but that if they were unsuccessful and the United States entered the war against them, they wished to contract an alliance with Mexico.

Shortly after the Second World War, George Kennan wondered, “Today if one were offered the chance of having back again the Germany of 1913—a Germany run by conservative but relatively moderate people, no Nazis and no Communists—a vigorous Germany, full of energy and confidence, able to play a part again in the balancing-off of Russian power in Europe, in many ways it would not sound so bad.”

In other words, U.S. intervention in World War I, undertaken with the best of intentions, had been an exceedingly costly mistake. My point exactly.(...)"

Apontamentos sobre deflação

1) Descida de preços não é deflação

A descida de preços causada pelo aumento da produção/produtividade não deve ser denominada de "deflação" e não causa nenhum problema económico.

"...falling prices caused by increases in production and supply are not deflation. Such falling prices are not deflation, because they result neither in a reduction in the average nominal rate of profit on capital in the economic system nor in any generally greater difficulty in repaying debts, which are two essential symptoms of any genuine deflation.

(...)The fall in prices that accompanies it is theresult of the increase in production and supply exceeding this increase in thequantity of money and volume of spending."

"Such falling prices occurred in the United States in the generation prior to the discovery of the California gold fields in 1848, and again in the generation following 1873. Because of the fall in prices in these two generations, prices inthe United States are estimated to have fallen by half over the nineteenth century as a whole. The fall in prices, of course, would probably be significantlymore pronounced under a 100-percent-reserve gold standard."

Quando os preços baixam por efeito do aumento da produtividade, (imaginemos uma economia com quantidade monetária fixa e em sistema de 100% de reservas e uma descida de preços num determinado produto por efeito de inovação tecnológica) significa que sobram unidades monetárias para serem aplicadas entre maior consumo (do mesmo produto ou outros produtos) e maior investimento (=poupança) para fazer face ao aumento da procura do mesmo produto ou novos produtos. A descida de preços representa assim a libertação de recursos para maior investimento (=poupança) e consumo e "production creates its own demand"

Por último, a descida de preços numa economia com quantidade fixa de dinheiro não dificulta os devedores porque no limite as vendas totais nominais são constantes (representam é maior quantidade de bens) assim como a sua capacidade de sustentar determinado serviço de dívida nominal.

2) Deflação

Ocorre quando assistimos à contração monetária só possível no actual sistema em que o crédito ao investimento está suportado em parte no crescimento da massa monetária e não por poupança real.

Resulta assim, que a contrapartida dos depósitos à ordem - são os créditos concedidos às empresas (e deixaram de representar a posse de uma determinada quantidade de ouro colocado à guarda/depósito) o que potencialmente levanta a possibilidade da massa monetária poder contrair por "default" (neste caso, o que é de esperar dos Bancos Centrais é a emissão de toda e qualquer quantidade monetária necessária, ou seja inflação monetária, para faze face à insolvência dos depósitos).

A principal causa para os ciclos económicos é um sistema monetário que para seu proveito (e do financiamento do déficit do Estado quando a sua dívida pública acaba nos Bancos Centrais), tem a capacidade de conceder crédito por emissão monetária e não pela captação de poupança (abstenção de consumo materializada na acumulação de valores monetários disponíveis para serem voluntáriamente emprestados a troco de um juro ou dividendos/ganhos), o que se reflecte numa taxa de juro abaixo da taxa natural, criando a ilusão de sustentabilidade dos investimentos realizados.

"Such deflation, as I have said, is a decrease in the quantity of money and/orvolume of spending in the economic system. That is what produces not only afall in prices but at the same time a sharp reduction or even total wiping out ofbusiness profitability and a greatly increased difficulty of repaying debts andthus widespread insolvencies and bankruptcies.

Profits are cut because the monetary contraction reduces sales revenuesimmediately, but aggregate costs, specifically aggregate depreciation cost andaggregate cost of goods sold, fall only with a time lag in response to thereduction in business firms’ expenditures for the factors of production.14At the same time, the monetary contraction increases the difficulty ofrepaying debt, simply because there is less money out there to earn."

3) 100% Padrão Ouro

"There are two basic reasons why the 100-percent-reserve gold standard wouldbe a guarantee against deflation.

First, under a 100-percent-reserve goldstandard, nothing could happen that would suddenly reduce the quantity of money in the economic system. Once gold money comes into existence, it stays inexistence. It is not wiped out by the failure of debtors, as are fiduciary media.

Second, nothing could happen that would suddenly increase the need or desire ofpeople to hold money rather than spend it, because none of the artificial inducementsto a lower demand for money for holding would exist that set the stage forsuch an increase.

It must be recalled that what creates the potential for a suddenincrease in the need and desire to hold money is that first, people are misled intoexperiencing an artificial decrease in their need and desire to hold money. All theinducements that mislead them into this decrease are caused by the prior undueincrease in the quantity of money, especially in the form of credit expansion.

A100-percent-reserve gold standard would thus be a system in which the quantityof money would not decrease and the demand for money for holdingwould not suddenly increase. As a result, it would be a system in which totalspending in the economy would virtually never contract. Thus . . . it would bea system that was deflation proof as well as inflation proof."

THE GOAL OF MONETARY REFORM - George Reisman

Os primeiros passos são como as primeiras pedras

Re: "Escolhas difíceis", no Insurgente:

"Para mim, é uma questão muito complicada e não é nada claro quem está a interferir nos direitos de quem. A única razão relativamente clara (e não ambígua) que vejo para fundamentar uma oposição à lei é o facto de não ser uma competência federal."

1. Um sinal de que todo o federalismo é difícil de praticar... pelos orgãos federais. E isto está inteiramente certo:"Attorneys for Michael Schiavo, her husband, say they will argue the new law that enabled federal involvement is unconstitutional."

2. Como está bem visivel em Rothbard en "THE RIGHT TO KILL, WITH DIGNITY?", "O" defensor da eutanásia acabou por sugerir, num caso específico em que uma doente que tinha expressamente manifestado a vontade de continuar viva mesmo que "caísse" num estado vegetativo e tendo assegurado os meios financeiros para isso, que:

"If overwhelming medical opinion says treatment is pointless, courts should arbitrate disputes between doctors and families." E Rothbard remata com : Now just a minute, where do courts get the right to decide life or death? Does government have more of a right to commit murder than doctors, or what? And on what principles are the courts supposed to decide that "arbitration"?

O que podemos tirar daqui é que muitas e muitas vezes, é dificil antever que caminhos serão percorridos depois de determinados passos serem dados. Passos estes que parecem ser evidentes, demasiado evidentes. Mas cada passo traz consigo um novo passo e um caminho desconhecido.

A eugenia foi defendida no inicio do século 20 de forma alargada um pouco por todo o mundo em termos muito objectivos e de propostas de aplicação necessáriamente muito limitada parecendo assim até muito racional e justificada, creio que até Churchill teceu considerações sobre o assunto. Mas depois, uma sucessão de acontecimentos, levou a que uns quantos dessem um passo gigante em direcção ao mal absoluto - o necessário para nunca mais se falar no assunto, mas um preço excessivo.

O filme de Clint Eastwood é sobre um conflito moral individual. Não sobre "legalização", não sobre chegar a uma verdade colectiva que se aplica universalmente, proclamada e sancionada pelo monopólio uniformizador sobre "legal"/"ilegal" que o estatismo reivindica.

The Amount vs. the Form of Taxation

"We conclude with the observation that there has been far too much concentration on the form, the type of taxation, and not enough on its total amount. The result has been endless tinkering with kinds of taxes, coupled with neglect of a far more critical question: how muchof the social product should be siphoned away from the producers? Or, how much income should be retained by the producers and how much income and resources coercively diverted for the benefit of non-producers?

(...) Even more egregious was an early doctrine of another group of supposed free-market advocates, the supply-siders. In their original Laffer-curve manifestation, now happily consigned to the dustbin of history, the supply-siders maintained that the tax rate that maximizes tax revenue is the "voluntary" rate, and a rate that should be diligently pursued. It was never pointed out in what sense such a tax rate is "voluntary," or what in the world the concept of "voluntary" has to do with taxation in the first place. Much less did the supply-siders in their Lafferite form ever instruct us why we must all uphold inaximizing government revenue as our beau ideal. Surely, for free-market proponents, one might think that minimizing government depredation of the private product would be a bit more appealing" The Consumption Tax: A Critique By Murray N. Rothbard

Frei Bento Domingues, O.P, P-in-C?

No Público: "(...) As calúnias entre judeus e cristãos atingiram, ao longo de dois milénios, expressões inacreditáveis. É evidente que a noção de culpa colectiva e herdada pela morte de Jesus de Nazaré é absurda, maldosa e teve efeitos terríveis.

Mas a responsabilidade não deve ser atribuída só aos cristãos.

Segundo uma penetrante obra de Israel Shahak, o judaísmo está imbuído de um ódio profundo contra o cristianismo, combinado com a ignorância a seu respeito.Os relatos sobre Jesus que figuram no Talmude e na literatura pós-talmúdica são inexactos e mesmo caluniosos. São, no entanto, aquilo que os judeus acreditavam até ao séc. XIX e que muitos, em particular em Israel, ainda hoje acreditam. (3)Segundo o Talmude, Jesus foi executado - mediante sentença de um apropriado tribunal rabínico - por idolatria, por incitar outros judeus à idolatria e por desprezo da autoridade rabínica.

Todas as fontes clássicas judaicas que referem esta execução sentem-se orgulhosas de assumir a responsabilidade por ela. No relato talmúdico, os romanos nem sequer são mencionados! Os relatos mais populares - mas tomados muito a sério -, como o conhecido Toldot Yeshu, são ainda piores. Além dos crimes já apontados, também acusam Jesus de feitiçaria. O próprio nome Jesus era, para os judeus, o símbolo de tudo o que era abominável.

Esta tradição popular continua. Os Evangelhos são igualmente detestados. Não podem ser citados - muito menos ensinados - mesmo nas modernas escolas judaicas israelitas. Em 23 de Março de 1980, centenas de cópias do Novo Testamento foram queimadas pública e cerimonialmente em Jesusalém sob os auspícios do Yad Le"akhim, uma organização religiosa judaica subsidiada pelo Ministério israelita das Religiões.Segundo Israel Shahak, por razões teológicas, radicadas principalmente na ignorância, o cristianismo é uma religião classificada pelo ensino rabínico como idolatria. Isto baseia-se numa interpretação tosca das doutrinas cristãs sobre a Trindade e a Incarnação. Todas as representações pictóricas e emblemas cristãos são encarados como ídolos, mesmo por aqueles judeus que adoram literalmente manuscritos, pedras ou relíquias de "homens santos".

Pelos vistos, ainda há muito caminho a percorrer para que cristãos e judeus aprendam, pelo menos, a respeitarem-se mutuamente!"

O Prémio Nobel de Hayek

"Three books of Hayek’s in particular deserve great praise in this connection: Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle, Prices and Production, and Monetary Nationalism. It is probably fair to say that this early work of Hayek’s is his least well-known work. Far better known (and far more dubious) are his later (post World War II) lucubrations in the field of political philosophy. The more important, then, is it to emphasize that Hayek’s 1974 Nobel Prize was not awarded for his later, better-known work, but in explicit recognition of his early contributions to the so-called Mises-Hayek business cycle theory. Given this, Hayek’s Nobel Prize was certainly well deserved.

Incidentally, among Austrian economists there has been some speculation why Hayek’s recognition came so late (in 1974). One highly plausible explanation is this: If the prize is awarded for the development of the Mises-Hayek business cycle, then as long as both Mises and Hayek are still alive you can hardly give the prize to Hayek without giving it also to Mises. Yet Mises was a life-long opponent of paper money (and a proponent of the classical gold standard) and of government central banking—and the prize money for the economics “Nobel” was “donated” by the Swedish National Bank. Mises, then, so to speak, was persona non grata for the “donors.” Only after Mises had died in 1973, then, was the way free to give the prize to Hayek, who, in contrast to his “intransigent” master and mentor, had shown himself sufficiently willing to compromise, “flexible,” and “reasonable." Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Interviewed by Mateusz Machaj

Somalia e o Terceiro Mundo versus FMI/Banco Mundial/UN

"(...) the World Bank, as John Perkins points out, has done more than its share to crush the hopes of the world’s impoverished peoples. The problem with the World Bank is not that sometimes it is run by the "wrong" people, but rather that it exists at all.

"Throughout sub-Saharan Africa," observed Ian Vasquez of the Cato Institute’s Project on Global Economic Liberty more than a decade ago, "the IMF and World Bank have been loaning enormous sums to oppressive socialist and authoritarian regimes for decades, with pretty much the same abysmal results: a steady decline in per capita income, agricultural production, food production, and many other areas as well."

Somalia, described by the World Bank as "the quintessential failed state," also perfectly illustrates the point made by Vasquez. Between the 1960s and the early 1990s, Somalia was the "beneficiary" of huge loans from the World Bank; by 1987, those loans accounted for 37 percent of the country’s GNP. Siad Barre, the Marxist thug on whom the World Bank bestowed that beneficence, lived in opulent splendor even as the nation’s infrastructure rotted away.

The 1991 collapse of the Barre regime and the ensuing civil war resulted in an abortive UN-commanded "humanitarian" military intervention — following the formula described by Perkins, Conable, and Barnett.

But the constituency for that mission proved fragile, and the mission ended in the early 1990s. Confounding the expectations of globalist humanitarians, Somalia flourished precisely because of the "world community’s" neglect.

In Somalia, "the very absence of a government may have helped nurture an African oddity — a lean and efficient business sector that does not feed at a public trough controlled by corrupt officials," wrote Peter Maas in the May 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Tele-communications, transportation, and shipping companies were organized up to provide services to the liberated private sector. Internet cafes have sprung up in Mogadishu. Private security firms helped businessmen protect their investments and property.

A recent World Bank study grudgingly admitted: "Somalia boasts lower rates of extreme poverty and, in some cases, better infrastructure than richer countries in Africa." This is almost certainly because it is not cursed with a World Bank-subsidized central government to siphon away the nation’s wealth. "

Wolfowitz at the World Bank's Door by William Norman Grigg - The New American

Democracia política e o SISTEMA

Quando se fala de escolhas democráticas (no sentido político, porque convenhamos, a democracia civil precedeu a primeira - as assembleias de associações, accionistas , proprietários, etc) temos que ter presentes que falamos quae sempre de escolhas de "sim" ou "não" em que uma determinada resolução ou é aprovada e aplicada compulsóriamente a todos ou não.

Por exemplo, no caso da Segurança Social no que respeita a pensões de reforma, a decisão até afecta significativamente as gerações seguintes, recebendo estas uma responsabilidade que não pediram e que nem temos a certeza que se revejam nela.

Seguramente, à medida que as "reformas" implementem a necessária

- diminuição gradual do "subsídio" de reforma (a que chamam de "alterações ao cálculo")
- aumento da idade de reforma
- aumento de impostos ou do défict estrutural (inflação monetária e dívida pública)

...aumentará também a percepção do risco de falência do sistema, o chamado contrato entre gerações será cada vez mais posto em causa e ainda que o presente paradigma sobreviva (Estados Sociais-Democratas centralizados com a capacidade de um incontestado monopólio legal e monetário sobre todo o território nacional e vigência de ordens supra-nacionais alargadas) porque nenhum evento o ponha em causa (guerras entre Estados, conflitos intra-Estados, crise monetária e económica profunda, ou uma mistura de eventos destruturantes, ou simples alteração ideológica alargada - um efeito de queda do muro de Berlim da social-democracia e do Estado Moderno).

A Segurança Social nunca seria implementada se fosse proposta individual/ e voluntáriamente (como os seguros e produtos de poupança de longo prazo o são) e ruiria se hoje fosse perguntado ao "indivíduo" se prefere ver o seu rendimento liquido aumentado em 33% ou auferir dos serviços (transferências de rendimento): concerteza assistiriamos a respostas diferentes conforme a probabilidade e prazo temporal do sujeito o puser mais próximo de ser (ou já ou actuarialmente) receptor líquido de fundos ou contribuinte líquido, e ainda também conforme a sua percepção da sustentabilidade do SISTEMA - que é ainda hoje, muito elevada.

O problema da democracia política centralizada (e que um efectivo federalismo minimiza) é o conflito de interesses que as resoluções compulsórias levantam, principalmente quando os efeitos de uma decisão colectiva não recaiem sobre todos, e quando a escala humana se perdeu e nenhuma proximidade ou mútua identificação previne esse efeito:

Seria mais difícil que numa aldeia uma maioria política fosse capaz de aprovar - embora em tese para isso tivesse legitimidade - um SISTEMA de transferência de rendimentos similar ao que temos hoje no Estado Moderno. Porquê? Porque as pessoas e famílias se conhecem, incluindo as razões mútuas presentes e históricas porque uns têm mais rendimentos e património e outros menos, quer porque é mais homogéneo o reconhecimento dos efeitos danosos de incentivar comportamentos, que em última análise, são no médio prazo, gravosos para a comunidade a que todos pertencem.

Por outro, quanto maior for o "circulo político único" ou similar, onde o direito de voto político confere um direito real de propriedade sobre a "liberdade, vida e propriedade" de todos os outros, mais nos aproximamos da ilusão de o considerar um instrumento de auto-governo.

Qualquer analista sincero de sistemas sociais fechados saberá prever o desfecho ou pelo menos o caminho (e independentemente do ponto de partida, que por exemplo, nos EUA, foi quase de uma total ausência de efeitos da representação política sobre a vida das pessoas e comunidades locais) que se irá percorrer (com altos e baixos, recuos e avanços). o SISTEMA evolui para uma crescente centralização de funções compulsórias e legitimada por uma maioria flutuante mas estável de exercicio do direito de dispor da liberdade-vida-propriedade de todos os outros:

Um efeito de "51% sobre 49%" maximiza o conflito de interesses: a menor maioria necessária para manter o maior número de beneficiários líquidos à custa do menor número de constribuintes líquidos (isto aplica-se tanto em efeitos monetários como legislativos e regulamentares).

Este é o SISTEMA e que detém a sabedoria de um parasita consciente que tem de (apesar de tudo) manter a vitima viva - mesmo que seja no limiar da vida - para sobreviver. Apesar do SISTEMA incentivar comportamentos que tirem partido do SISTEMA em interesse próprio (os estudantes não querem propinas, os subsídios à doença incentivam os doentes, etc, e todos votam - exercem o direito de propriedade sobre os outros - por isso), ele mantém em prática todo o aparato necessário para sobreviver à custa dos contribuintes líquidos que quase irracionalmente teimam em escapar à desordem ordem moral e ética.

O sistema político-partidário adapta-se a este conflito de interesses (bem visível na acepção de que 45% da populaçao activa depender directamente do SISTEMA) e torna-se renitente em qualquer reforma de regime que o ponha em causa, e que em termos gerais se pode denominar de Federalização Interna e que pode ter diferentes graus conforme:

- autonomia e independência financeira e regulamentar local
- capacidade de veto das decisões nacionais
- forma de representação local nos orgãos nacionais (circulos uninominais e deputados independentes no parlamento, existência de um "senado", etc).

O SISTEMA irá preferir sempre estar legitimado por maiorias cada vez mais abstractas (caso de um único circulo e representação proporcional) e desconectadas dos interesses locais - porque é assim que se socorre de uma legitimidade macro-"democrática" - para absorver as realidades micro-democráticas das suas partes e no limite as dos direitos naturais do indivíduo e da comunidade local.

O SISTEMA incentiva os políticos que o mantém: prometer o máximo possível à custa do menor número de população possível e sem pôr em causa o SISTEMA.

Mas o SISTEMA também sabe que tem de responder aos interesses de uns poucos à custa de todos, porque esses poucos têm uma grande capacidade do o pôr em causa quando são enfrentados. De vez em quando, assistimos à ilusão do ataque a interesses instalados e que nos é proporcionado quando de tempos a tempos, o SISTEMA muda de parceiros estratégicos, efectuando uma mera rotação dos alvos:

E é aqui que surgem os "Reformistas", são aqueles que abandonam e enfrentam os interesses de uma determinada Classe que perdeu a sua antiga capacidade de pôr em perigo o SISTEMA (por mudanças sociais, económicas, tecnológicas, etc) para, sem publicidade, passar a responder às necessidades de outra qualquer Classe ou Elite emergente menos visível. Os "Reformistas", são na verdade muitas vezes, os maiores perpetuadores do "SISTEMA".

"Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have." Davy Crockett

Estatísticas

"There's a joke in the fixed income world that the PPI and CPI excluding everything is zero." Via MisesBlog

Impostos e conflitos de interesse

"No fundo, os portugueses votaram contra o desmantelamento do Estado-providência. Não admira, porque há 750.000 funcionários públicos e, diz Medina Carreira, 45 por cento dos eleitores vivem directamente ou indirectamente do Estado." Rui Moreira PLENOS PODERES

Remédio: os funcionários públicos deixarem de votar em eleições nacionais. Como pode 45% da população (que não paga impostos e sim "vive" deles - não é uma afirmação de estigmatização dos funcionário públicos, apenas uma constatação) votar em interesse próprio, sendos os efeitos suportados pelos restantes?

Mas a adopção de circulos uninominais e deputados independentes provavelmente já ajudava.

TRICKLE-DOWN KEYNESIANISM

"(...) John Maynard Keynes in 1936 proposed a counter-depressionary program of large government deficits. Heargued that rich people were saving far too much money. They were building up monetary assets. They were notspending enough money to create opportunities forinvestment and expansion.

So, he concluded, the government ought to borrow moneyfrom these people and start spending. It did not matterwhat the government spends money for, he said. Anythingwill do. Even pyramids.

Ancient Egypt was doubly fortunate, and doubtless owed to this its fabled wealth, in that it possessed two activities, namely, pyramid-building as well as the search for precious metals, the fruits of which, since they could not serve the needs of many by being consumed, did not stale with abundance. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and sang dirges. Two pyramids, two masses for the dead, are twice as good as one; but not so two railways from London to York. ("General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money," p. 131)

He was a defender of make-work projects. As children, teachers assigned us busy work to keep us occupied. Eventually, we caught on: the work was not meaningful. Itwas wasting our time. Keynes advised the governments ofhis era to imitate our teachers.

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again. (Ibid., p. 129)

What Keynes and his followers ignored is the fact thatcapital investment is driven by the hope of future income,and future income depends on future sales. Sellers don'tplan to give away their future output. They plan to sellit to consumers.

But how will consumers buy this output? With money. But where will they obtain this money? In one of fourways: exchanging their productive assets, including theirlabor, for money; borrowing money; stealing money; orprinting money.

Keynes proposed to add to the monetary reserves of consumers by having the government borrow and then spend the money any old way. To this income stream would beadded whatever money the government could extract by taxes: theft by majority vote. His disciples added counterfeiting, also known as counter-cyclical central bank monetary policy.

The consumer would supply the rest of the moneythrough his labor. What is the free market's solution to recessions? Price competition (to clear the market) and thrift (to expand productivity). Why thrift? To provide tools for workers, i.e., to increase their productivity. Their increasing level of output will then provide them with thepurchasing power they will need to increase spending.

The free market's answer to the Great Depression wa sthrift: the purchase of assets, including corporate debt.

Keynes's answer to the Great Depression was thrift: thepurchase of government debt. What did it matter which agency served as the pipelineof money from rich savers to employees?

It mattered agreat deal. Capital produces output. Government debt\produces dependency: dependency of income recipients on thestate and dependency of the state on taxpayers.

(...) The Keynesian theory taught that in recessions,governments would run deficits. In boom times, they wouldrun surpluses. In the long run, deficits and surpluseswould balance out. There would be no piling up of debt.

We know how that theory has worked out. The Federal government has run huge deficits during recessions andmerely large deficits during boom times. It has runofficial surpluses only by siphoning enough money out ofthe officially off-budget Social Security Trust Fund to cover up the red ink in the on-budget deficit.

Under the guidance of Keynesian economists andpoliticians, the Federal government never experiences a surplus. The debt national debt keeps growing.

(...) So, in boom times they reduce the percentage of their income devoted tothrift, and in bad times, they borrow more and save evenless. Keynes' solution to national economic recession was more thrift by the rich, more spending by the government,and more spending by the common people.

When does government debt get paid off? Never. When does consumer debt get paid off? Never." Gary North

Anti-federalismos: Balkans' present is the EU's future?

"Built on the postmodern, postnational, post-religious, post-logical, welfare-state legacy of the mass-murderous 20th century, the Brussels Leviathan is basically a rebirth of the Soviet Union, dressed in velvet(...). What few understand is that the Balkans' present is the EU's future. Seeking to outrun entropy, the Leviathan will eventually run out of people, welfare money, or both. And when that happens, there may well be a Succession War on a continental scale that would easily dwarf the 1990s tragedy in the former Yugoslavia. One peek behind the curtain of false prosperity – no more than the legacy of a once-powerful civilization now dying – would make it obvious that the difference between Balkans kleptocrats and the Brussels Eurocrats is not one of principle, but of scale." Eastern Empire Rising? EU Back in the Balkans, by Nebojsa Malic

Re: A estratégia chinesa

No Insurgente: "Vista por Tom Donnelly, no Daily Standard. Enquanto a América se distrai com a Coreia do Norte, o governo chinês tem caminho livre para espalhar os seus domínios e aumentar a sua influência. Pouco a pouco, o gigante acorda. Depois não se queixem. "

Na realidade o que eu acho que se passa +e que enquanto a América se distrai no Médio Oriente ...

a bem de Israel, da democracia tribalista é étnica dos outros, e lutando contra um perigo menor (o terrorismo do ponto de vista de defesa nacional e "geo-estratégico" não oferece ameaça alguma) arriscando-se apenas a aumentar o risco de um efeito de entropia política na zona (reformistas versus fundamentalismo versus actuais regimes, conflitos étnico-religiosos, separatismo, etc) e a aumentar o terrorismo.

...afunda-se cada vez mais na areia dos déficits, da queda do dólar e da dispersão da capacidade militar e do focus estratégico, enquanto a China (e a Rússia, não esquecer) acorda. Vamos lembrar o antigo Império Chinês e Russo de outros tempos, o Império Comunista e agora, com a re-descoberta dos benefícios que o crescimento económico providenciados por uma economia capitalistapodem dar a um poder politico central desejoso de mais recursos (económicos e militares - via impostos, a moeda e tecnologia).

Sigilo Bancário e Fiscal

Sigilo é uma expressão algo falaciosa neste contexto. Fala-se de sigilo como se fosse um direito criado e atribuido pelo Estado às pessoas. Mas não é. Resulta apenas da obrigação contratual entre prestadores e clientes. Isto numa altura em que a legislação pretende regular toda a espécie de bases de dados (como se o litigio civil não chegasse), com a desculpa de proteger toda e qualquer informação privada das pessoas.

O "sigilo" é um direito bem mais real do que os chamados direitos ao bom nome e à privacidade, que têm muito de abstractos e indefinidos (não resultam de nenhum contrato) funcionando na prática como protecção um pouco artificial (e a bem) de políticos e elites.

Assim, se a teoria do contrato social diz que determinados direitos podem ser repudiados por consenso maioritário (a base do sistema democrático), o caso do "sigilo" devia ser então referendado. E tal como nas decisões de perda de soberania, devia ser necessária uma maioria qualificada.

Sempre que direitos específicos são postos em causa pelo sistema político (o parlamento), deviam passar pelo referendo e uma maioria qualificada. O parlamento propõe e supõe-se aprova, mas o referendo pode vetar. Os referendos deve assim realizar-se como medida incluida num edifício de "check and balance" de resoluções que determinam perdas objectivas de direitos.

What?

Wolfowitz tapped to lead World Bank

A ler

Burke e a democracia no Pasquim da Reacção

"Hoje em dia existe muita gente a utilizar Edmund Burke para justificar as suas teorias.Os neo-conservadores prosseguem a utilização utilitária derivada dos liberais vitorianos. Defendem que a oposição de Burke à abstracção é um ódio ao constructivismo social, uma defesa do material contra o espiritual, um manifesto de cepticismo (ao estilo da escola escocesa) contra a especulação e a realidade espiritual, a defesa última da Liberdade.
(...)

Os neo-conservadores recuperam Burke, mas um Burke amputado. Tomam a doutrina de Burke como alheia à sua posição filosófica primordial. Como se as posições anti-revolucionárias do irlandês fossem passíveis de transplantar para defender as posições democráticas e as doutrinas de Direitos Humanos que Burke tentava denunciar. Tentam colar as posições de Burke a uma concepção de “Paz Perpétua” democrática a que Burke se referiu muitas vezes como a mais grave ameaça à comunidade cristã de países da Europa"

Destaque

Sobre o conceito de externalidades, o qual é frequentemente usado e abusado para justificar o estatismo.

"The End of the Externality Revolution" by Andy Barnett and Bruce Yandle (Auburn University and Clemson University)

"The externalities literature spans 100 years, thousands of journal articles and more than a few books, that collectively brought about a virtual revolution in views on market failure and the proper role of government. This literature includes a staggering array of instances in which authors find market failure, and a wide variety of proposed government mechanisms to be used in correcting the market’s errant ways. The authors of this paper are as guilty as others. We have also analyzed externalities and proposed government imposed solutions, but now wish to
repent for the sins of our youth.

Simply put, markets seldom fail because of externalities. Non-trivial externalities that arise in the use of private goods can persist only if governments prevent markets from working. In the absence of government impediments to market transactions, only public goods can yield externalities that can persist, and even this case is subject to qualification. Externality may be a term that is useful in categorizing resource allocation problems, but it adds little more.

More to the point, a great deal of public policy is inappropriately based on the externality rationale. Neoclassical welfare economists let this genie out of the conceptual bottle. It is time to do what we can to put it back."

Acerca da Eutanásia: "THE RIGHT TO KILL, WITH DIGNITY?"

Ou o problema de relaxarmos determinados princípios...um caso analisado por Murray N. Rothbard passado em 1991:

"For a long time now we have been subjected to a barrage of pro-death propaganda by left-liberals, and by their cheering squad, left, or modal, Libertarians. The "right to die," the "right to die with dignity" (whatever that means), the right to get someone to assist you in suicide, the "right to euthanasia," etc. Up till now, left-liberals have at least appeared to be scrupulous in stressing the crucial importance of consent by the killed victim, because otherwise the right to die with dignity looks very much like the right to commit murder. For what is compulsory euthanasia but murder, pure and simple?

But now the mask has begun to slip.(...)

Helga Wanglie, an elderly lady in Minneapolis, wrote a Living Will, but she opted for being kept alive if she lapsed into a vegetative state. Now 87, she is indeed in such a state, and her husband, respecting Helga's wishes in realizing that only while there is life can there be hope, is anxious to respect Helga's wishes and keep her alive. Note, too, that Helga's medical cost is being covered privately, by private health insurance; Helga is no burden on the taxpayer.

So what's the problem?

The problem is that the medical authorities, in their wisdom, have decided that since Helga's case is hopeless, they should have the right to pull the plug, overriding the wishes of Helga on this issue. But what are the medical authorities, whose very profession pledges them to keep patients alive to the best of their ability, advocating here if it is not mere murder? The Minnesota doctors having decided that Helga Wanglie is not fit to live, propose to murder her, and they, and other liberals, are sneering at the Wanglies for being backward Neanderthals in trying to affirm her life. Will somebody explain to me how this attitude differs from that of Nazi doctors, with their zeal to exterminate people whose lives they considered unfit?

The right to kill seems to be the established medical position. Thus, Minnesota "medical ethicist" Dr. Steven Miles: "We are certain this person cannot change from her present condition. Shouldn't we be making sure that we're responsible in allocating the resources...to keep costs down for everybody?" Notice the paramount consideration given to the collective "we," with individuals not allowed to decide their own costs, and with the Doctor, long professionally accustomed to playing God, now playing Satan.

(...) Our final specimen is Derek Humphry, head of the Hemlock Society, the most venerable of the right to suicide groups, and careful up to now to stress consent. Where does he stand on the case of Helga Wanglie? Humphry begins by saying that patients "should always have the right of choice to live or die," and if they are in a persistent vegetative state, their families should decide. OK, so what about Helga Wanglie? Here is Humphry's new and contradictory position: "If overwhelming medical opinion says treatment is pointless, courts should arbitrate disputes between doctors and families." Now just a minute, where do courts get the right to decide life or death? Does government have more of a right to commit murder than doctors, or what? And on what principles are the courts supposed to decide that "arbitration"?

(...) The excuses of these killers is that far more important than prolonging life is the "quality of life." But what if a key part of preserving and enhancing that quality is getting rid of this crew of murdering liberals, people whom Isabel Paterson, with wonderful perception and prophetic insight termed "the humanitarian with the guillotine"? What then? So where do we sign up to assist their death? "

Liberais Franceses

Para reforçar o que aqui disse, "JCE diz que "Gertrude Himmerfarb sugeriu recentemente que esta ideia de um poder central unitário, intérprete infalível da razão contra os interessses particulares dos indivíduos e das instituições particulares, permeia todo o pensamento francês do século xviii"...e acaba mais À frente com "...porque são os povos de lingua inglesa os primeiros a levantar-se em defesa...".

Eu observo apenas que da cultura francesa saiu muito do pensamento liberal clássico e também da produção de teoria económica, muita dela, antecedente da Escola Austriaca (que corrigiu alguns rumos da teoria económica clássica com origem inglesa)."

Fica a chamada de atenção para Remembering Gustave de Molinari, no Mises Institute:

"March 3 marks the 185th anniversary of economist and philosopher Gustave de Molinari's birth in Belgium. It is a date worth commemorating, because according to David Hart, "He was the leading representative of the laissez-faire school of classical liberalism in France in the second half of the 19th century."

Onde estão expostas algumas citações:

"Government must confine itself to the naturally collective functions of providing external and internal security."

"Society is heavily taxed in the increased costs which follow government appropriation of products and services naturally belonging to the sphere of private enterprise."

"Citizens of constitutional States have obtained a right of consent to public expenditure, and to the taxes which furnish it, but the right has proved sterile. Their representatives have never checked the progressive rise in taxation and expenditure which has occurred in every State…And this process must continue indefinitely for just so long as governments, charged with guaranteeing national security, maintain their right of unlimited requisition upon the life, liberty, and property of the individual."

"[Individual sovereignty] is the right of each man to dispose freely of his person and his property and to govern himself."

"A natural instinct reveals to these men that their persons, the land they occupy and cultivate, the fruits of their labor, are their property, and that no one, except themselves, has the right to dispose of or touch this property."

"…when the sphere of collective government has been reduced to its natural limits, and individual action has obtained perfect freedom, the influence of individuals upon the destinies of society and the race will rapidly increase."

Libano V

CNN - Massive protest marks former PM's death: "Last week, Syria began pulling its 14,000 troops to the Bekaa Valley near the border, and vowed to bring all the troops and intelligence officials across the border into Syria later on.To counteract the opposition, Hezbollah -- an official party in Lebanon, considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel -- organized an enormous pro-Syria rally. Monday's opposition rally in Beirut was designed to pull even greater numbers. It was not immediately clear which rally was larger. "

Esperemos que as guerras fiquem pelos números. É em situações destas que a ingerência externa se torna visivelmente perigosa, podendo mesmo ser contraproducente. Pode resultar bem como mal, mas mesmo que resulte bem, qual será o resultado de se tornar norma que todos os países e blocos políticos começem a disputar activamente (e não só a tomar posições de princípio) influências em todos os momentos críticos de outros países? Foi assim que um atentado terrorista na Bósnia levou a um conflito mundial.

Time preference and Elton john

"...the article tells of how Elton once went on an $80 million shopping spree in a 20 month period, even spending $200,000 on flowers "because I like them." In one year he spent $18 million on house purchases around the world, and owns more than 2500 paintings, some of which are worth a million dollars or more.

When asked why he spends the way he does, Elton replied: "I have no one to leave the money to. I'm a single man. I like spending money" (p. 74). He's gay and childless, and so he naturally has a high rate of time preference" via LRCBlog.

Nota: Parece que a afirmação de Hans-Herman Hoppe, de que em geral, os homosexuais (como outros grupos - pessoas idosas, etc) , tendem a poupar (relativamente a outros) menos (ou seja, têm uma alta preferência temporal) se encontra demonstrada.

The Unpredictability of Revolutions

"(...) When we Americans think of revolution, we think of the Spirit of '76 and the republic that came out of our War of Independence. But when Louis XVI was dethroned in 1789, that revolution gave us the guillotine, the Terror, and the Napoleonic wars. When kings depart, democracy is not always at hand.

What is critical in a revolution is the character of the men who make it. When the czar abdicated, a democratic socialist took power, but a weak Alexander Kerensky was soon run out of the Winter Palace by Bolsheviks. After World War II, there came the Chinese and Cuban revolutions that looked to the Russian as the model. As did Pol Pot's revolution in Cambodia, which came out of an earlier American intervention.

In the Middle East, rebellions and revolutions do not have Hollywood endings. In 1952, King Farouk of Egypt was ousted in a colonels' coup from which the dictator Nasser emerged. In 1958, King Feisal of Iraq was overthrown, his body dragged through the streets of Baghdad. Saddam came out of the pile. In 1968, King Idris was overthrown. Enter Ghadafi. In 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was ousted by Col. Mengistu. A million perished. In 1979, the shah fell to a revolution that butchered all remnants of his pro-American government.
It is this history that causes one to smile at the giddiness of neocons who see events in Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon as vindication and harbingers of two, three, many "Prague springs" sweeping the Islamic world. (...)

Though from the look of that Beirut crowd of 500,000, roaring for Sheik Nasrallah of Hezbollah, it may be premature to call this democracy. A day after that monster rally in a land of 4 million, the pro-Syrian prime minister, ousted after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, was voted back into office by parliament, an in-your-face defiance of America and "the international community."

Rather than democracy, revolution may be on the march. If the May elections in Lebanon are free, Hezbollah could move closer to power. While that might constitute pure democracy, is it something we Americans should applaud, subsidize, or fight for?

In elections thus far in the Middle East, the returns have been mixed. In Iraq, Kurds voted for autonomy now, independence later. Shias voted as Ayatollah Sistani told them. Whether the new regime will be pro-Iranian, we know not. It will surely be less pro-American than the ousted Alawi regime. But the cost of a Shi'ite government in Iraq is already known: 1,500 U.S. dead, 10,000 U.S. wounded, 200 billion U.S. dollars gone." Patrick J. Buchanan

Destaques

1) Jaime Nogueira Pinto em "A (re)fundação da direita (1) " no Expresso, cita Russel Kirk "...dizia que «as ideias têm consequências» ...Olhando os resultados do «centro-direita», eu diria que a sua falta (das ideias) também!"

[Nota: e como era bom que existisse uma direita portuguesa atlantista mas alternativa e mais imune ao neoconservadorismo - onde certas ideias se arriscam a terem consequências que as tornam próximas de Napoleão e Trotsky - e que pudesse rever-se no conservadorismo tradicional americano (e que ao contrário do europeu tradicional contém muitos princípios liberais clássicos, por um lado, mantendo o pessimismo em eleger a vox populli a qualquer fim em si mesmo, por outro) de Russel Kirk e Robert Nisbet]

No fim, JNP estabelece alguns princípios gerais:

"Não sei se estes valores são património exclusivo da direita. Por mim, penso que a defesa dos princípios cristãos, do valor da nação como comunidade solidária dos cidadãos e da família e da propriedade ...

[esta sentença tem muito de Robert Nisbet, que dizia ser a reverência à propriedade , como um elemento de continuidade e ordem, uma das características obrigatórias da sensibilidade conservadora e que torna possivel a soberania da familia e comunidade - o que por sua vez faz com que essa sensibilidade olhe com desconfiança para qualquer intromissão nesses domínios por parte de qualquer poder político - visivel na Idade Média e no Feudalismo até ao advento do absolutismo antigo e do novo - o do Estado Moderno. Eu diria que o problema da direita actual é ter capitulado perante o centralismo e por culpa própria, porque caiu na falácia de ver nesse centralismo um meio de proteger a sua "familia, comunidade e propriedade" - o problema é que depois de criada essa fonte de poder, foi depois tomado de assalto adoptadas outras prioridades - o igualitarismo, relativismo, etc]

da sua liberdade. Esta é a direita com que me identifico - patriótica, realista, solidária, livre, mas consciente de que o bem comum existe e é superior à soma e à subtracção dos bens e interesses individuais"

2) João Carlos Espada, num artigo intitulado de "Burke e a tradição anglo-americana da liberdade" fala de Edmund Burke que "condenou todas as tentativas políticas ou governamentais de redesenhar a ordem social com vista a fazê-la conformar com um visão abstracta. Fê-lo em defesa dos direitos dos católicos irlandeses, em defesa dos colonos americanos, em defesa dos súbditos nativos da Índia sob administração inglesa; e finalmente, em defesa da liberdade dos franceses contra o despotismo iluminado dos jacobinos"

Burke era também prudente quanto ao crescimento do Império Britânico (já agora Burke nasceu em Dublin o que provávelmente contribuiu para o capacitar de apreciar e criticar...). Nos dias de hoje talvez se afirmasse que alguém como Burke apoiava causa separatistas (e quem sabe até "terroristas" - afinal a revolução americana, como as lutas irlandesas...), mas o essencial não está nas classificações (ou seja, de "separatismos" em si) mas num correcto julgamento:

"...The surge in royal executive power during the 1760’s and 1770’s alarmed the colonists and they feared that their way of life might be destroyed. In order to preserve their "English liberties" as they called them, the colonists decided to withdraw from a governmental entity they saw as a threat to their value system. They did not wish to engage in regicide or to indulge in vengeful slaughter. They only sought to conserve a system they feared would be taken from them. Edmund Burke saw this clearly from the Parliament in London. Burke could appreciate that American politics, American values, and even American religion was not like that which existed in England. As the conflict drew on, Burke predicted that if the British were to win the war, the American colonies would have to be remade in a new image in order to remain a part of the British Empire. That which made America what is was would have to be expunged from the earth. Burke did not wish to revolutionize America or anywhere else. The fact that Burke supported the American Revolution while condemning the French Revolution is a compelling fact. While the French Revolution sought to overturn and destroy an established order, the American Revolution sought only to conserve an established order which was being destroyed by British intrusion. " (1)

Eu acho que tudo o JCE diz é correcto, só não tenho a certeza que Burke embarcaria no actual cruzeiro neoconservador (nem cruzada) e porventura seria mais prudente em reclamar mudanças aceleradas induzidas exógenamente (e na ponta da baioneta) a bem de uma nova ordem mundial (até porque quem pediu uma Nova Ordem Europeia, utilizando a força, a mudanças de regime, a influência na escolha de governantes de terceiros, etc, foi Napoleão). Creio mesmo que nem no conflito israelo-palestiniano podemos ter a certeza que os seus olhos veriam com a mesma simplicidade de quem costuma caracterizar um conflito por domínio territorial como de sendo de "democracia versus terrorismo" ou coisa do género.

Edmund Burke apreciava a imagem dum "...English garden, a parable for a decentralized, diverse and lovely place where individuals and families and communities produce, create, and find joy – as they work to gently govern themselves in ways that satisfy their higher values, culture and tradition – is never found in statist "order." (2) o que elege como qualquer liberal clássico sem antagonismo com a tradição ainda que preparado para advogar a mudança com realismo, tendo dito “change is the means of our preservation".

E por isso mesmo, JCE fala de Burke como o "primeiro teorizador dos partidos políticos parlamentares modernos" (se bem que não sei se é mais adequado falar do parlamento em si mais do que em partidos).

JCE diz que "Gertrude Himmerfarb sugeriu recentemente que esta ideia de um poder central unitário, intérprete infalível da razão contra os interessses particulares dos indivíduos e das instituições particulares, permeia todo o pensamento francês do século xviii"...e acaba mais À frente com "...porque são os povos de lingua inglesa os primeiros a levantar-se em defesa...".

Eu observo apenas que da cultura francesa saiu muito do pensamento liberal clássico e também da produção de teoria económica, muita dela, antecedente da Escola Austriaca (que corrigiu alguns rumos da teoria económica clássica com origem inglesa).

Diz em "Richard Cantillon and the French Economists: Distinctive French Contributions to J. B. Say*" by Leonard P.Liggio, Institute for Humane Studies George Mason Universiry:

"...Stanley Jevons made reference to this supriority of the French over the English schocls in the Preface to the Theory of Political Economy:
The true doctrine may be more or less clearly traced to the writings of a sucession of great French economists, from Condillac, Baudeau, and Le Trosne, through J. B. Say, Deshin de Tracy, Stroch, and others, down to Bastiat and Concerlle Semeille.

(...) The Physiocrats were concerned to treat the economy as a natural phenomenon, a natural order, a process, in comparison to the mercantilists who emphasized the need for artificial and extraordinary government measures to achieve their objectives.

In this the Physiocrats were following the lead given by Cantillon. Starting with their foundation in a theory of property, the Physiocrats constructed a science around the natural harmony of interests. Property owners should be those or their heirs who cleared and drained land for its cultivation. From Cantillon's analysis, including his contribution on entrepreneurship, the Physiocrats derived their sense of harmony of interests. Le Mercier de la Riviere, L'Ordre naturel et essenciel des societes politique (1767), described how competition is the means by which diverse economic interests are reconciled.' According to Le Trosne, Del ínteret social (1777): It is competition which conciliates all interests: it is perfect only under the absolute reign of freedom of trade, which is the premier consequence of the right of pmperty, and in consequence one of the most essential laws of the social order.'

The Physiocrats shared with Cantillon a system of thought based on methodological individualism. Cantillon's assumption that autonomy of the individual leads to harmony of interests was suggested by Mandeville's Fable of the Bees."

Outro aspecto a propósito tem que ver com o papel da França na história das guerras: combateu a tentativa de hegemonia continental por Carlos V, foi a primeira a derrotar a Prússia (Napoleão), combateu a Alemanha de Bismarck em 1870, depois na Grande Guerra começou a mobilização mal a Rússia declarou guerra, e na Segunda declarando Guerra a Hitler por causa da Polónia sem ter um canal para a proteger...e não ficaria mal lembrar que a França foi o primeiro aliado da Revolução Americana (mais tarde, em 1812, James Madison declarou guerra à Inglaterra e quando esta se empenhava na luta contra Napoleão... tendo os ingleses conseguido incendiar Wasghinton").
O preço pago pela França foi, ao longo da sua história, sempre muito elevado, o que por vezes não custava nada ser reconhecido - em West Point o francês ainda é lembrado como a lingua das manobras militares (tal como os Prussos também a usavam) e hoje os neocons falam na criação de uma "legião estrangeira" que como não podia deixar de ser, só podiam (propor) baptizar de "legião da liberdade".

Talvez a América seja hoje, apenas uma nova França. Não que isso sejam boas notícias.

The Welfare State We’re In

As Agruras do Estado Social, por Miguel Noronha, no site da Causa Liberal.

Recensão da obra The Welfare State We’re In (Politico’s, 2004), de James Batholomew.

A causa maior do declínio está na progressiva intromissão do Estado na sociedade substituindo funções anteriormente desempenhadas pela sociedade civil. Por outras palavras, a construção do Welfare State. Esta “infiltração” teve como consequência a desresponsabilização do indivíduo perante o seu próximo e mesmo perante o seu próprio destino. Os sucessivos programas de “engenharia social” levados a cabo pelos responsáveis políticos destruiram as intituições, formais e informais, anteriormente vigentes (e que, reconhecidamente, no caso britânico, tinham dado provas da sua eficácia) causando autênticos pesadelos dignos de países do Terceiro-Mundo.

The Meaning of Security

"(...) In the world of ideas, a vigorous debate is taking place about the extent to which private enterprise is capable of providing security, not only as a supplement but as a full replacement for state-provided security.

Advocates of fully privatized security point out that in the real world, most of the security we enjoy is purchased in the private sector. Vast networks of food distribution protect against starvation, private agents guard our homes, insurance companies provide compensation in the event of unexpected misfortune, and the locks and guns and gated communities provided by private enterprise do the bulk of work for our security in the real world.(...)

The message of this school of thought is that liberty and security (real security) are not opposites such that one must choose between them. They go together. Liberty is the essence of the free enterprise system that provides for all our material needs, that helps us overcome the uncertainties and contingencies of life.(...)" Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Aumento de Impostos?

Taxation Is Robbery, by Frank Chodorov
[From Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist, by Frank Chodorov; The Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1962, pp. 216–239.]

THE Encyclopaedia Britannica defines taxation as "that part of the revenues of a state which is obtained by the compulsory dues and charges upon its subjects." That is about as concise and accurate as a definition can be; it leaves no room for argument as to what taxation is. (...)What sanc­tion, in morals, does the State adduce for the taking of property? Is its exercise of sovereignty sufficient unto itself?

On this question of morality there are two positions, and never the twain will meet. Those who hold that political institutions stem from "the nature of man," thus enjoying vicarious divinity, or those who pronounce the State the key­stone of social integrations, can find no quarrel with taxa­tion per se; the State's taking of property is justified by its being or its beneficial office.

On the other hand, those who hold to the primacy of the individual, whose very existence is his claim to inalienable rights, lean to the position that in the compulsory collection of dues and charges the State is merely exercising power, without regard to morals.(...)

If the State has a prior right to the products of one's labor, his right to existence is qualified. Aside from the fact that no such prior right can be established, except by declaring the State the author of all rights, our inclination (as shown in the effort to avoid paying taxes) is to reject this concept of priority. (...)

In principle, as the framers of the Constitution realized, the direct tax is most vicious, for it directly denies the sanc­tity of private property. By its very surreptition the indirect tax is a back-handed recognition of the right of the indi­vidual to his earnings; the State sneaks up on the owner, so to speak, and takes what it needs on the grounds of neces­sity, but it does not have the temerity to question the right of the owner to his goods. The direct tax, however, boldly and unashamedly proclaims the prior right of the State to all property. Private ownership becomes a temporary and revocable stewardship. The Jeffersonian ideal of inalienable rights is thus liquidated, and substituted for it is the Marx­ist concept of state supremacy.(...)

Taxes cannot be compared to dues paid to a voluntary organization for such services as one expects from membership, because the choice of withdrawal does not exist.(...)

If the State supplies him with all his needs and keeps him in health and a degree of comfort, it must account him a valuable asset, a piece of capital. Any claim to individual rights is liquidated by society's cash invest­ment. The State undertakes to protect society's investment, as to reimbursement and profit, by way of taxation.(...)

(...) They insist that the State is a contributing factor in production, and that its services ought properly to be paid for; the measure of the value of these services is the income of its citizens, and a graduated tax on these incomes is only due compensation. If earnings reflect the services of the State, it follows that larger earnings result from more services, and the logical conclusion is that the State is a better servant of the rich than of the poor.(...)

The State does not give; it merely takes. All this argument, however, is a concession to the obfus­cation with which custom, law and sophistry have covered up the true character of taxation. There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion."