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Quinta-feira, Janeiro 10, 2002

The Fluctuating Intellectual
O que temos a aprender com o caso John Gray, o ex-liberal que virou esquerdista, aliado de Tony Blair e teve um livro publicado naquela coleção de livros de "economia" de capa vermelha editada pela Maria da Conceição Tavares ("O falso amanhecer")?
Tibor Machan responde brilhantemente: nunca se pode confiar num intelectual cético. Esse ponto é importante porque o ceticismo (a afirmação da incapacidade humana de conhecer a verdade, qualquer verdade que seja) é um dos fundamentos preferidos dos liberais brasileiros, que, confundindo demonstração e imposição, crêem que alegar conhecer algo equivale a atribuir-se o direito de impor esse conhecimento aos outros; segundo esse raciocínio, o conhecimento necessariamente levaria à coerção.
Essa idéia não apenas é autocontraditória (afinal, se não podemos conhecer nada, como é que podemos saber disso?), como tem efeitos políticos desastrosos. Afinal, se não é possível arbitrar racionalmente as questões, o que resta é uma ideologia competir com a outra através da força, e será triunfante aquela que conseguir esmagar seus oponentes. Longe de significar uma rejeição do autoritarismo estatal, o ceticismo abre as portas para ele e o transforma na única opção política possível.
Ademais, é impossível levar a sério um intelectual cético. Afinal, como é que podemos saber se ele não vai expressar uma opinião diferente a cada dia? Voltando a Machan e Gray:
'Alas, there was one aspect of John Gray’s thought that always struck me as problematic. He was what is called a Pyrrhonist, a skeptic about the human ability to know anything at all. This is one of the many views philosophers have propounded throughout human history, all the way from the ancient Chinese Lao Tzu to today’s Professor Peter Unger (at least the last I read him). The basic idea is this: people always see things in their particular way, which gives them a distorted understanding of how the world is. Thus we are always basically ignorant of the world. OK, so the position is trouble by self-contradiction: if you know that what it says is true, then some things can be known, and then why couldn’t other things be known as well. But this has always struck the people who championed skepticism as a cheap shot and they rarely pay attention to it. They continue to insist that it is true that we know nothing.
'Back then, when John Gray was but a young Turk at Oxford, I was always arguing with him about this basic element of his thinking. And I also didn’t trust his endorsement of anything. For consider: if we know nothing, why should we stick to any opinions we have, about anything? Whatever is convenient to believe is probably just as easy to believe as anything else.
'Sure enough, John Gray has proven me right: over the last two and a half decades he has moved from being a libertarian, a champion of a fully free society, to endorsing, instead, the British Labor Party and denouncing capitalism and, especially, its extension over the globe. His latest pronouncement goes as follows: "The free market has produced a mutation in American capitalism, as a consequence of which it is coming to resemble the oligarchical regimes of some Latin American countries more than the liberal capitalist civilization of Europe, or of the United States itself in earlier phases of its history." Gray maintains that "the confluence of ethnic and economic divisions and antagonisms in the United States is not found in any other First World country." And his book False Dawn is devoted to denouncing globalization, that is, the exportation of free market institutions across the world.
'OK, why bother with this particular egghead? Well, there is a lesson here. When you believe nothing is knowable by us, you can say anything you want. It cannot be shown to be either right or wrong, it is just there for whatever personal purposes it may serve.'
postado por Alvaro Velloso 12:12 PM

McCarthy Was Right
Paul Gottfried, sobre o que os neoconservadores entendem por "civilização ocidental", da qual eles se julgam os maiores defensores:
'"Conservative" journalists have perfected certain tricks to get away with semantic nonsense. Thus Jonah Goldberg, in the latest issue of National Review, expresses the pious hope that the "Pope will come closer to the West." What in Heaven’s name is this West that Goldberg has set out to defend and which John Paul ll is being urged to join?
'Readers of NR who are dumb as stumps (and I must assume that most are) will leap to the conclusion that Goldberg is upholding traditional Western civilization, on which the bishop of Rome has mysteriously turned his back. But the "West" that NR’s editors have in mind is a post-Christian, postliberal, and postconservative phenomenon, run by retread Communists and supranational social engineering bureaucracies. The only thing Western about this West is that its population is still (in spite of NR) predominantly Euro-American and its sprawling administrative governments occupy a region in which Western civilization once existed and thrived as a distinctive religious-cultural entity.
'As far as I can make out, this is not the West that Goldberg talks about online or in his magazine. That West is a neoconservative creation, based on global democratic imperialism, inclusion of Israel as a prototypical American-style democracy, and calibrated versions of certain progressive movements, like feminism, that triumphed in the second half of the twentieth century. The Pope, who leads the ancient Western church, is allegedly anti-Western because he has failed to rally to the neoconservative position on bombing. Since being for the West means being a neoconservative, the Pope’s real failing is not following the Commentary-National Review line.'
postado por Alvaro Velloso 11:59 AM

Quarta-feira, Janeiro 09, 2002

Cotas raciais
Ótima carta (não publicada) de Cláudio Rodrigues sobre um "debate" promovido pelo Globo na página de opinião sobre cotas raciais - assunto, aliás, que tem produzido uma assombrosa quantidade de baboseiras:
+++++
Na edição do dia 21/12 o debate "Cotas para negros" acabou virando um coro.
Ambos os "debatedores" defendiam o mesmo ponto de vista embora utilizando diferentes abordagens. O resultado foi um único artigo defendendo a implantação de cotas racias.
No artigo "Privilégios ameaçados" os autores, partindo de um efeito (grande parcela da população negra é pobre), fazem uso de um argumento absurdo ao tentarem provar que a causa de todas as mazelas é a discriminação racial.
Sem entrar no mérito se a conclusão é verdadeira ou falsa, escolaridade e experiência (no caso entendo por anos de trabalho) absolutamente não representam capacidade para exercer uma determinada atividade. Senão como explicar que eu, um negro (ou mulato depende da quantidade grãos de areia), receba salário maior que colegas brancos com formação e/ou tempo de trabalho superiores ao meu? Será que minha empresa comete racismo às avessas? É tão
óbvio que, numa mesma sala de aula, existirão alunos mais talentosos para determinadas atividades que outros que isso nem deveria ser necessário colocar numa discussão séria.
Atribuir o sucesso de negros de destaque como Colin Powell à Ação Afirmativa é fazer pouco do seu esforço individual e torná-lo um mero beneficiário incapaz de um programa do governo.
Por falar em privilégios, o Sr. Jesse Jackson montou uma indústria milionária de extorsão devidamente apoiada pelas leis anti-discriminação norte-americanas. Isso sim é um baita privilégio que certamente irá atrair o interesse de muitas instituições de apoio às minorias marginalizadas se leis parecidas passarem a vigorar no Brasil. Os investimentos, ao que parece, já estão sendo feitos.
O outro artigo, "Cotas e montes de areia", procurou fazer crer que o debate de quem é ou não negro é irrelevante. Ora, como um programa que vai insituir um tipo de discrimição (no caso o racismo por parte do Governo) pode considerar irrelevante o método pelo qual essa discriminação será realizada?
Para tentar provar seu ponto de vista o autor usou toda a sorte de elementos inanimados (areia, dinheiro, cabelo, etc.) mas esqueceu um pequeno detalhe (em geral muito esquecido por experimentadores sociais): estas leis irão afetar a vida de pessoas. Irão prejudicar e punir pessoas, que por ironia, talvez nunca tenham demonstrado um pingo sequer de racismo. Ciente disso, ele antecipadamente tira o corpo fora: "e a autoridade competente tomar uma decisão injusta a seu respeito, paciência; teremos uma injustiça. Estará fora do programa alguém que ter sido incluído nele." Muito conveniente.
postado por Alvaro Velloso 11:44 AM

Argentina dumps peso-dollar peg
A imprensa brasileira está ocupada demais celebrando o que supõe ser um fracasso do liberalismo na Argentina para dar um pouco de atenção ao currículo do novo presidente Duhalde, mas eis aqui o que esse sujeito fez na província que governava:
'As the governor of Argentina's largest province for the last eight years, Mr. Duhalde ran up huge debts to create jobs, build housing for the poor, distribute free food and pay for other social programs. To pay for the debts when he ran out of pesos, he took the audacious step of issuing a new provincial currency. [!]
'"He's the governor who broke the back of the province Buenos Aires," said Aldo Abram, an economist at Exante, an Argentine consulting firm. "The closer he got to election, the more he spent."
'Martin Redrado, chief economist of Fundacion Capital, a Buenos Aires think tank, said Mr. Duhalde is taking "a leap into the unknown" by ending the decade-old economic regime. Thousands of Argentine citizens registered their misgivings about Mr. Duhalde by protesting in the streets even as Congress installed him.
'"I think he will move Argentina toward a more protectionist economy away from the free-market policies we have seen in the last 10 years," said Mr. Redrado.'
É o suficiente para assustar qualquer pessoa razoavelmente sensata - o que, claro, não inclui nossos jornalistas.
postado por Alvaro Velloso 11:39 AM

Too Many Guns?
Jacob Sullum, sobre a ridícula idéia (acolhida por um tribunal americano) de que os fabricantes de armas devem ser responsabilizados civilmente por crimes porque sabem que seus produtos acabarão nas mãos de criminosos:
"No wonder Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, called the Illinois Appellate Court's decision 'the gun industry's worst nightmare.' But gun makers are not the only ones who should be worried. The same logic that condemns them could also be used against manufacturers of any product used by criminals.
"Doesn't Chrysler know that its cars will be used in bank robberies and drive-by shootings? Can't Rawlings foresee that thugs will use its baseball bats to deliver vicious beatings? Isn't Stanley aware that adolescent toughs (not to mention hijackers) use its box cutters as weapons?
"All these companies, and many others, could be said to 'oversupply' their markets, making more of their products than is needed for legal uses. If suing them seems more ridiculous than suing Smith & Wesson, perhaps it's because guns are widely perceived as less legitimate than cars, baseball bats and box cutters."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 11:34 AM

The history of drinking
"People have enjoyed alcoholic drinks since prehistoric times, making drinking one of the few strands that runs throughout the history of western civilisation. Appreciating the art, music or literature of long-vanished cultures can require years of study; recreating their drinks, and comparing them to what we enjoy today, is simple in comparison, not to mention more fun. The consumption of alcohol is so widespread in history, says Patrick McGovern, an archaeological chemist at the University of Pennsylvania, that drinking is, in effect, 'a universal language'.
"At the same time, of course, different cultures' attitudes to alcohol provide a window on a wide range of social and cultural practices. Alcoholic drinks have always been prized for their supposedly medicinal qualities, though exactly what these qualities were, and how best to take advantage of them, has only become clear in modern times. In short, the drinks of history are familiar enough that we can understand and appreciate them, while different enough to teach us something about the time and place in which they were originally drunk. Some of them can even be recreated at home, with commonly available ingredients."
Essa excelente matéria traça a história de algumas bebidas - descrevendo, por exemplo, como eram a cerveja na Mesopotâmia e o vinho no império romano - e como surgiu o xerez, o forte vinho que até hoje é muito popular na Inglaterra e que foi o primeiro vinho introduzido nas Américas, trazido por Cristóvão Colombo.
postado por Alvaro Velloso 11:32 AM

Internet Shopping Without Shipping
Uma idéia que funcionou para o comércio na internet: associar as vendas online com entregas na própria loja. O consumidor compra o que deseja no site e o produto fica reservado para ele numa loja "real". Isso serve para desmentir a idéia de o "e-commerce" é inteiramente dissociado do comércio normal; na verdade, os consumidores foram atraídos porque as lojas estavam oferecendo o melhor dos dois mundos - a compra online (sem filas ou vendedores idiotas) e a entrega imediata (dispensando os "serviços" dos correios, ineficientes por definição, como os de todo monopólio estatal, e, aliás, atualmente mais caros e mais lentos do que nunca, nos EUA tanto quanto aqui).
"The extended sales season comes courtesy of a feature that a growing number of online retailers are looking into: in-store pickup.
"When customers bought last-minute items at CircuitCity.com, for instance, they were able to drive to the store and pick up their purchases at a designated area, without battling the throngs in the aisles or checkout lines. But Ken Cassar, an analyst with the Internet consulting firm Jupiter Media Metrix, said that for Circuit City and Amazon.com, which sells goods on behalf of CircuitCity and others, the pickup feature is important for reasons that go beyond last-minute shopping.
"For instance, he said, the service should appeal to customers who hate the idea of paying big shipping and handling fees for merchandise obtainable with a short drive. According to a recent Jupiter survey, Internet users who do not shop online cite the high costs of shipping and handling as the biggest obstacle.
"The in-store pickup option serves a shopping need that few Internet analysts had anticipated in the early days of e-commerce days. Many analysts and executives expected shopping to be an either/or proposition, with consumers either buying online or shopping in stores. It seemed counterintuitive to expect consumers to buy something online and pick it up in a store, when much of the presumed appeal of Internet shopping was that it would eliminate trips to the mall in the first place.
"But this theory was wrong. According to another Jupiter survey, 69 percent of consumers shopping at stores that have both an offline and online presence say they would be willing to order products online and pick up the items themselves - at least some of the time."
postado por Alvaro Velloso 11:26 AM