Hi folks,
Sorry for being absent for all this time. I have been busy trying to make money here, in Brazil. Speaking about making money in Brazil, it's good to know that some guys are really mad with our tax burden. It's not too late to have reactions. Many of them built this site. What's the idea? Different from U.S. and other developed countries, consumers cannot know how much of the final price is due to taxes. Believe me, that's the true.
And the idea of "Feirão do Imposto" is to show to everyone how much of the price is tax. I have to confess that I am not happy with the numbers.... |
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Jun. 9th, 2004 @ 08:26 am
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Reagan
Was Reagan a libertarian? I don't know. The Americans seems to believe that the answer is "yes". Good-bye, Mr. Reagan.
Source: http://hayekcenter.org/takinghayekseriously/ |
Lula is going the Chávez-Castro's way
For my English readers, two things. First, the NYT's reporter wrote a stupid article. No problem. This Fighter can live with this. I can argue and show, in few seconds, to any reader that our president isn't brilliant. But the alcohol's isn't his big problem. By other hand, his (in)ability to handle with diplomatic situation is becoming famous. Even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been doing a bad job trying to (deliberately?) make things worse in the U.S.-Brazil's diplomatic relationships.
The Brazilian Freedom Fighter doesn't like NYT and think the article is very bad. But as a Freedom Fighter, he thinks the Brazilian president is being coherent with his ideology: socialism.
Bad for us... |
Austrian Economics....in Portuguese?
 My friends know that I love the Roger Garrison's "Time and Money". It's the best Austrian textbook - in my opinion - to advanced undergraduate students. The approach of Hayek triangles can be criticized, and Byran Caplan did it in several pieces of class lectures or in his famous article "Why am I not an Austrian Economist"?
The Brazilian Freedom Fighter has been teaching Economics for 10 years. Several undergraduates - but not many - have been asking him about a Portuguese introduction to Austrian Economics. Well, there are many translations. But Ubiratan Iorio, a Brazilian economist did the best job with his "Economia e Liberdade: Escola Austríaca e Economia Brasileira".
What I like in the book is the careful explanation of the Hayek's triangle and the comparison with the mainstream approach. What I don't like is that sometimes Ubiratan - like many other Austrians - seems to be exaggerated in his attacks to keynesian economics. What I would like to see in a new edition of this book? Well, I know Ubiratan will not put econometrics there, but more tables about Brazilian economy or studies about austrian cycles in Brazil could be a good complement. I remember to see one unique study in an old issue of the economic journal of UNISINOS, where another Austrian economist lives (yes, he almost live there :) ): Fernando Zanella. But Zanella deserves another post.
Ok, if you are a Brazilian and if you are reading me - despite of my bad, bad English - go and buy this book. It's really good. |
Why should we go to the yellow code?
The police force of Rio de Janeiro just found 8 (eight) landmines in a drug-dealer's site. Rio de Janeiro is the capital of Rio de Janeiro, the state where our three nuclear plants are located. Why don't our authorities talk about this? The Brazilian Freedom Fighter doesn't think they are taking the necessary measures about this.
And they should do it. Urgently. |
| » The Bigger, bigger government of the Brazilian leftists |
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The bigger, bigger...
[ Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<img [...] left">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] <b>The bigger, bigger...</b> <img src="http://www.mellao.com.br/img/perfil_foto_03.jpg" width="100" height="100 align="left">It's not new the fact that leftists love bureaucracies. As they don't like markets, they think the "open discussion" with "socially interested forces" that, of course, "knows what's better for the ignorants" can fix all of our problems. <a href="http://www.mellao.com.br/">João Mellão Neto</a> is an old friend of Liberty. His <a href="http://www.psdb.org.br/agenciatucana/artigos.asp?id=3312">article</a> here is about the problems of this trend in the Brazilian federal government. As he didn't put the article on his site and the original source is now a paid site, I had to take it from the site of another political party, PSDB. I like his articles and this one is also great. PT, the party of president Lula still didn't get the right point about markets. Even after 50 years of Public Choice....The Brazilian Freedom Fighter would like to call your attention to an important fact: maybe it's not just due to the ideological way of life that the Brazilian government loves. It's about rent-seeking. Instead of give money to some guys outside the government, the smart way, now, is to give them a public employment. Try to find the numbers. Provisory public employment is, nowadays, higher than the past. Why? Well, maybe we could do a discussion group to debate this....and ask for public money.
Apr. 17th, 2004 @ 01:08 pm
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| » Good Project, Mr. Borhausen |
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Shut up, government!
The senator Jorge Bornhausen is, after years of a virtual alliance with the Brazilian presidents, in the opposition. It's interesting because he is from a party that intend to be a conservative-libertarian party, PFL. The Brazilian Freedom Fighter knows that PFL isn't the ideal libertarian party. But mr. Bornhausen has a good point now. We can't know if he is just playing with our preferences, but the proposal to extinguish the official (and compulsory) diary radio program of the federal government is great. At least to the Brazilian Freedom Fighter.
Let's see how it works.
Apr. 17th, 2004 @ 12:36 pm
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| » Mont Pelerin by Margaret Tse |
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Mont Pelerin Society
 Dra. Margaret Tse has some good thoughts about the last meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. The Brazilian Freedom Fighter would like to enphasize the importance of the lack of attention devoted to the spreading of the individualism as Mr. Guy Sorman (quoted in the article above) said.
This is, maybe, one of the most important problems that we, Brazilian libertarians, face. Many (that think they are true) libertarians seems to be impatient about the ignorance of the public and calls for non-libertarian solutions (military dictatorship, for example). It's better to educate the people, teach them. To call for external coercive forces is the same sin we see in totalitarians (nazis, communists, etc). And Mrs Tse, I have to say, has been a great force in the advance of libertarian ideas in Brazil. And that's great! I hadn't thought about it before...but is she a Mao Tse Tung's relative? I hope not!! :) :)
Apr. 16th, 2004 @ 09:40 am
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| » New books for you! |
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Capitalism and Anti-Globalization
Two good translations: (i) Salvando o Capitalismo dos Capitalistas; (ii) Antliberalismo 2000.
Wow! Amazing books for any Brazilian libertarians! The Brazilian Freedom Fighter recommends both!
Apr. 10th, 2004 @ 01:58 pm
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| » Where is the information in Brazilian press? |
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Do you like History?
 A well-known religious conservative (and an often ally of Brazilian lilbertarians) is Olavo de Carvalho. I don't agree with him in all of his thougts, but this isn't an impedment to admire him for his original and corageous position in Brazilian press.
Today, Olavo called my attention to a highly important book, at least for me: The Secret World of American Communism (Annals of Communism). However, Olavo didn't tell us the whole story (as I know him, this was just due to space problems in the newspaper). This book is just part of a bigger project, the Annals of Communism Project, which have many researches trying to show us the real dimension of the soviet's actions outside the "iron curtain" (and you can find useful eletronic texts there!!).
I don't go with Olavo when he says that almost all the Brazilian historians don't want know about it. He is not totally wrong, however. I don't have the names here, but I think that some guys can go back to the reason when properly exposed to the facts (remember, the Brazilian Freedom Fighter is an optimistic about the rationality of the mankind...).
By the other hand, Olavo is right when he criticizes our press. Thesee guys weren't able to show us a simple information like this (of the existence of this highly relevant project). For a country where the teenagers love to use Che Guevara's t-shirts and where people think Fidel Castro has good intentions (..so let him kill some bad guys), the absence of any single word about this project is, of course, a very dangerous matter. That's the reason of the subject of this topic: "do you really like history"? Because, if you like, you can't ignore the soviet annals anymore. Wake up, pal!
Thanks for Olavo to giving me the clue: now I have the official link and useful information...
Apr. 10th, 2004 @ 08:23 am
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