Ron Paul contra Paul Krugman

O grande debate sobre a política macroeconômica
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Susan Cain sobre o poder dos introvertidos

Susan Cain: The power of introverts
Veja palestra

Ficar quieto

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over brainstorming in teams. Although they are often labeled "quiet," it is to introverts that we owe many of the great contributions to society--from van Gogh’s sunflowers to the invention of the personal computer. Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. Taking the reader on a journey from Dale Carnegie’s birthplace to Harvard Business School, from a Tony Robbins seminar to an evangelical megachurch, Susan Cain charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal in the twentieth century and explores its far-reaching effects. She talks to Asian-American students who feel alienated from the brash, backslapping atmosphere of American schools. She questions the dominant values of American business culture, where forced collaboration can stand in the way of innovation, and where the leadership potential of introverts is often overlooked. And she draws on cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience to reveal the surprising differences between extroverts and introverts.
Perhaps most inspiring, she introduces us to successful introverts--from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Finally, she offers invaluable advice on everything from how to better negotiate differences in introvert-extrovert relationships to how to empower an introverted child to when it makes sense to be a "pretend extrovert."
This extraordinary book has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how introverts see themselves.
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A fundação Rockefeller como agente da manipulação da opinião pública

Early "Psychological Warfare" Research and the Rockefeller Foundation

by Prof. James F. Tracy

The Rockefeller Foundation was the principle source for funding public opinion and psychological warfare research between the late 1930s and the end of World War Two. With limited government and corporate interest or support of propaganda-related studies, most of the money for such research came from this powerful organization that recognized the importance of ascertaining and steering public opinion in the immediate prewar years.

Rockefeller philanthropic attention toward public opinion was twofold: 1) to review and establish the psychological environment in the United States for anticipated US involvement in the coming world war and 2) to wage psychological warfare and suppress popular dissent in foreign countries, particularly Latin America.

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Chamada de artigos Revista Sociais e Humanas

A Revista Sociais e Humanas, publicação semestral do Centro de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, convida os interessados a encaminhar artigos para a edição temática Políticas Públicas.Serão aceitos artigos de todas as áreas de abrangência da Revista: Administração, Arquivologia, Ciências Contábeis, Ciências Econômicas, Ciências Sociais, Comunicação Social, Direito, Filosofia, História, Psicologia relacionados a essa temática.

Os artigos devem ser enviados pelo sistema através do sitio: www.ufsm.br/sociaisehumanasaté 31 de julho de 2012.

Dinheiro como dívida

Money as Debt - Part 3
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Liberdade não é para todos

"The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies." ~H L Mencken

Educação universitária em crise

Taking Knowledge Out of College
... According to a controversial recent study, led by the sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa and summarized in their book "Academically Adrift," nearly half of all undergraduates fail to demonstrate significant improvements in critical thinking or writing skills during their first two years in college. Even more dismal, particular kinds of knowledge are largely forgotten shortly after the final exam.
Drs. Arum and Roksa say that college has become a leisure activity, with the typical undergraduate spending 40 hours a week socializing and 13 hours studying. In many large lecture halls, attendance rarely exceeds 55%.
Why, then, do we pay the exorbitant tuition? If nothing is learned, why are students and parents so desperate to get into the best schools? Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University and author of the forthcoming book "The Case Against Education," argues that colleges are more about certifying their students than actually teaching them useful skills. Their primary function is to provide "signals" of intelligence and competency, which is why they put students through a variety of mostly arbitrary and useless academic hoops. "Good students tend to be smart, hardworking and conformist—three crucial traits for almost any job," writes Dr. Caplan. "When a student excels in school, then, employers correctly infer that he's likely to be a good worker."
This suggests that the value of a college education has little to do with learning. Instead, graduates' higher salaries are a testament to the sorting mechanisms of college during the application process and in the classroom.
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O que Nietzsche já sabia antes do começo do século 20

"Madness is rare in individuals -- but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Como ganhar prominência acadêmica

Palestra de Peter Boettke na ocasião de receber o 2010 Adam Smith Award --
Remarks Read on April 11th in Las Vegas
"... My last point about building a successful career was about sticking to your guns.  You decide what you want to work on, and how you want to work on it, and then you doggedly pursue it. The list of Adam Smith winners is full of individuals who boldly pursued their own agenda in economics and political economy regardless of the scientific and ideological fashion of their time. We all need to learn from their example.  A good place to start is Buchanan’s essay “No Regrets” in Economics from the Outside In: Better Than Plowing and Beyond...."

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A lei

"O que é então a lei? É a organização coletiva do direito individual de legítima defesa.
Cada um de nós tem o direito natural, recebido de Deus, de defender sua própria pessoa, sua liberdade, sua propriedade. Estes são os três elementos básicos da vida, que se complementam e não podem ser compreendidos um sem o outro. E o que são nossas faculdades senão um prolongamento de nossa individualidade? E o que é a propriedade senão uma extensão de nossas faculdades"?

~Bastiat, Fréderic, A Lei

A guerra civil da atualidade

Epidemia carcerária

Por Rodrigo Constantino·

O que tem sido responsável por uma epidemia que destrói a vida de milhões de americanos como um vírus, separando famílias, fazendo jovens cheios de energia passar a vida longe de trabalhos produtivos e até mesmo matando inúmeras vítimas? Para Ernest Drucker, esta epidemia, que tem devastado tantas vidas nos últimos 35 anos, chama-se “prisão”.
Autor de A plague of prisons, Drucker sustenta que a guerra contra as drogas, desde o governo Nixon em crescente escalada, produziu enorme custo a milhões de pessoas acusadas de crimes sem vítimas, afetando especialmente os mais pobres.
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A nova divisão das classes

Palestra de Charles Murray sobre a nova divisão das classes na América.
Charles Murray, one of America's most influential social policy thinkers, has come out with a widely discussed new book called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which argues that Americans are splitting into two divergent classes, and that this growing divide could end American life as we have known it.
A self-described libertarian, Murray started his career as a liberal Democrat who spent six years in the Peace Corps and voted for Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election. His political transformation came while he was researching his landmark 1984 book, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, which marshaled exhaustive evidence that American welfare programs were harming the very people they were supposed to be lifting out of poverty.
Losing Ground was fiercely denounced by the political left, but soon won mainstream acceptance that the War on Poverty was failing. The simple fact is there wouldn't have been welfare reform in the 1990s without Losing Ground.
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Murray's 1994 collaboration with Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein, was more controversial. The book maintained that differences in genes contribute to differences in IQ, which in turn play a significant role in the life outcomes of individuals. Most controversially, Herrnstein and Murray argued that various ethnic groups have distinct differences in inherited intelligence. (Economist James J. Heckman reviewed The Bell Curve for Reason back in 1995: http://reason.com/archives/1995/03/01/cracked-bell/singlepage)
Murray has written more than 20 books, including What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation, and he's currently the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute .
Reason's Ronald Bailey sat down with Murray in March for a wide-ranging discussion of how his earlier work informs Coming Apart, why he remains libertarian in his outlook, and whether younger Americans face an relentlessly negative future.
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Approximately 35 minutes.

Legalizar e gamhar em vez de criminalizar e pagar

Hundreds of Economists: Marijuana Prohibition Costs Billions, Legalization Would Earn Billions

NORML image

Ezekiel Edwards & Rebecca McCray
ACLU

Over 300 economists, including three Nobel Laureates, recently signed a petition that encourages the president, Congress, governors and state legislatures to carefully consider marijuana legalization in America. The petition draws attention to an article by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, whose findings highlight the substantial cost-savings our government could incur if it were to tax and regulate marijuana, rather than needlessly spending billions of dollars enforcing its prohibition.

Miron predicts that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement, in addition to generating $2.4 billion annually if taxed like most consumer goods, or $6 billion per year if taxed similarly to alcohol and tobacco. The economists signing the petition note that the budgetary implications of marijuana prohibition are just one of many factors to be considered, but declare it essential that these findings become a serious part of the national decriminalization discussion.

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Corrupção nas ciências

Big Pharma's Ghostwriters

Why Are These Fraudulent Papers Unretracted?

by MARTHA ROSENBERG

According to Science Times[1], the Tuesday science section in the New York Times, scientific retractions are on the rise because of a “dysfunctional scientific climate” that has created a “winner-take-all game with perverse incentives that lead scientists to cut corners and, in some cases, commit acts of misconduct.”
But elsewhere, audacious, falsified research stands unretracted–including the work of authors who actually went to prison for fraud!
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Ron Paul sobe "restaurar América"

Palestra de Ron Paul em Austin, Texas

2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul attracted an impressive 6,000-plus supporters and undecided voters at his University of Texas at Austin town hall meeting.
At the event, Dr. Paul discussed his platform of constitutionally-limited government, the restoration of economic and civil liberties, and provisions of his path-breaking 'Plan to Restore America.'

STF confirma cotas

Sistemas de cotas é considerado constitucional por maioria do Supremo

Por Daniella Jinkings, da Agência Brasil

A reserva de vagas em universidades públicas com base no sistema de cotas raciais foi considerado constitucional pela maioria dos ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF). O ministro Cezar Peluso foi o sexto a votar favoravelmente e, com isso, garantiu a legalidade do sistema de cotas nas universidades públicas.

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O maior concebível despotismo

„Eine Regierung, die auf dem Prinzip des Wohlwollens gegen das Volk als eines Vaters gegen seine Kinder errichtet wäre, d. i. eine väterliche Regierung (imperium paternale), wo also die Untertanen als unmündige Kinder, die nicht unterscheiden können, was ihnen wahrhaftig nützlich oder schädlich ist, sich bloß passiv zu verhalten genötigt sind, um, wie sie glücklich sein sollen, bloß von dem Urteile des Staatsoberhaupts, und, daß dieser es auch wolle, bloß von seiner Gütigkeit zu erwarten: ist der größte denkbare Despotismus“ (A 236). „Der Souverän will das Volk nach seinen Begriffen glücklich machen, und wird Despot; das Volk will sich den allgemeinen menschlichen Anspruch auf eigene Glückse-ligkeit nicht nehmen lassen, und wird Rebell“ (A 261).

Imanuel Kant: „Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis“(1793)

Tirania da maioria

John Stuart Mill explica:

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism. — On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.7.

Conferência da Escola Austríaca 2012

O maior evento de economia do Brasil em 2012        

               

---

Peter Schiff, Jeffrey Tucker, Walter Block, Philipp Bagus, Helio Beltrão, Ubiratan Iorio, Antony Mueller e Fabio Barbieri estarão em São Paulo nos dias 12 e 13 de maio para a III Conferência de Escola Austríaca realizada pelo Instituto Ludwig von Mises Brasil. Peter Schiff, investidor, autor e comentarista financeiro americano que ganhou fama internacional ao prever com grande precisão a crise de 2008, palestrará sobre o presente e o futuro da economia americana e suas implicações para a economia mundial.
O professor Walter Bock, "lenda viva" dentro do austro-libertarianismo, fará duas palestras: uma sobre libertarianismo, sindicalismo e discriminação, e a outra sobre monopólios, bens públicos, externalidades e a inexistência de falhas de mercado.
Jeffrey Tucker, o mais eloquente defensor do livre mercado da atualidade, fará igualmente duas palestras: uma sobre a questão da propriedade intelectual e a outra sobre a liberdade na era digital.
Philipp Bagus, talvez o maior especialista sobre o sistema do euro, falará sobre tudo o que está acontecendo na Europa, como toda a encrenca começou, o que poderá ocorrer em breve e como tudo tende a terminar.
O professor Fabio Barbieri abordará a crítica de Mises ao sistema intervencionista complementando a tese misesiana sobre a instabilidade do intervencionismo com as ideias de Ikeda, que incorpora ideias hayekianas para formular uma teoria de ciclos intervencionistas. Incorpora-se, em especial, discussões sobre a ideologia intervencionista e seu papel no ciclo.
O presidente do IMB Helio Beltrão falará sobre o sistema financeiro brasileiro, o Banco Central, o monopólio da moeda e todos os efeitos (quase nunca discutidos) deste arranjo sobre nossas vidas.
O professor Ubiratan Iorio explicará por que keynesianos e monetaristas, ao ignorarem por completo a questão do tempo, fazem com que suas análises econômicas sejam completamente ilógicas.
O também professor Antony Mueller discutirá um dos assuntos mais prementes do atual momento brasileiro: o capitalismo de estado, arranjo em que o mercado é suprimido e os burocratas do governo decidem quem serão os vencedores e quem serão os perdedores.  E tudo com o nosso dinheiro.
Por fim, o professor José Manuel Moreira, de Portugal, esclarecerá a genuína distinção entre conservadorismo, liberalismo e socialismo.
Com a recente crise mundial de 2008, a Escola Austríaca ganhou atenção mundial, pois não apenas foi a única a apresentar uma explicação completa e consistente sobre as causas da crise, como também foi a única a prevê-la com anos de antecedência.  Enquanto todas as outras escolas de pensamento econômico seguem fracassando fragorosamente em apresentar qualquer explicação coerente, lógica e convincente não apenas para a atual crise econômica, como também para todas as outras crises econômicas já ocorridas, a Escola Austríaca vem acertando há mais 100 anos — e não poderia ser diferente, dado que se trata de uma ciência apriorística, cujas proposições são verdades irrefutáveis.  Não é à toa que a EA é a escola de pensamento econômico que mais cresce em todo o mundo (ao passo que as outras, embora ainda dominantes, seguem definhando).
E é neste momento em que os olhos do mundo inteiro estão em busca de explicações sólidas para os atuais fenômenos econômicos, que a Conferência de Escola Austríaca ganha ainda mais notoriedade.  Após o enorme sucesso de suas duas conferências anteriores, o IMB fará sua terceira conferência com a certeza de que esta será a melhor e mais completa de todas.
Um evento indispensável para todos que buscam aprimorar seus conhecimentos acerca dos acontecimentos mundiais. 
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Teoria da justiça social

Can libertarians care about social justice? John Tomasi argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls, Tomasi presents a new theory of liberal justice. This theory, free market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor.
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O tamanho do estado de bem-estar americano

The U.S. Welfare State Is Bigger than You Think

By Randall Holcombe | Friday April 20, 2012 at 8:54 AM PDT

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This article from The Globalist argues that the welfare state in the United States is roughly the same size as in Europe, where Americans tend to think the welfare state has spiraled out of control. The main reason the US welfare state is closer in size to the welfare states in EU countries than at first it appears is that while the benefit payouts are not as great, taxes that are paid on those benefits are much larger in the EU. Government gets back in the form of taxes a much larger share of what they distribute in the EU than in the US.
The article notes that in Sweden and Denmark about 25% of benefits paid to transfer payment recipients end up being directly repaid in income taxes and other direct taxes. The Value Added Tax (VAT) in all EU countries will take another 20% or so of those transfer payments when recipients purchase something with the money. The US has no VAT, and sales taxes are at much lower rates than the European VAT.
The article says, “When public social spending is calculated on an after-tax bases, rather than a gross basis, social spending in the United States increases to 17.6% of GDP. This is close to the OECD average of 17.8%...”
After noting a number of other differences in the US and EU welfare states, the article concludes “...that the U.S. and European welfare states are a lot more similar in magnitude than is commonly supposed.” Food for thought.
Fonte

Vale aprender lingua estrangeira

The Foreign-Language Effect Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases

1. Boaz Keysar ,
2. Sayuri L. Hayakawa and
3. Sun Gyu An

+ Author Affiliations

1. The University of Chicago

1. Boaz Keysar, University of Chicago—Psychology, 5848 S. University Ave., Chicago, IL 60637 E-mail: boaz@uchicago.edu

Abstract

Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue? It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases. Four experiments show that the framing effect disappears when choices are presented in a foreign tongue. Whereas people were risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses when choices were presented in their native tongue, they were not influenced by this framing manipulation in a foreign language. Two additional experiments show that using a foreign language reduces loss aversion, increasing the acceptance of both hypothetical and real bets with positive expected value.  We propose that these effects arise because a foreign language provides greater cognitive and emotional distance than a native tongue does. 

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A função dos lucros

David Ricardo: "Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits."

Tiradentes - um libertário brasileiro

Um milhão de dólares para um penny

$1 million for a penny; one of world’s rarest coins sold at auction

By Eric Pfeiffer | The Sideshow – 4 hrs ago

Click photo to view more images. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)One of the first pennies ever produced by the U.S. Mint was put up for auction Thursday night and reportedly sold for more than $1 million.

Bids for the 1792 Silver Center penny reached $1.15 million Thursday night, according to Heritage Auctions, which conducted the sale. The U.S. Mint itself was founded in April, 1792.
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Ron Paul mais popular que nunca

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFUIy4vAO74

A corrupção da ciência moderna

Cancer industry total fraud exposed: Nearly all 'scientific' studies fail to be replicated

Thursday, April 19, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035616_cancer_industry_scientific_fraud_studies.html#ixzz1sXzraRNu

The vast majority of so-called scientific studies focused on cancer research are inaccurate and potentially fraudulent, suggests a new review published in the journal Nature. A shocking 88 percent of 53 "landmark" studies on cancer that have been published in reputable journals over the years cannot be reproduced, according to the review, which means that their conclusions are patently false.

C. Glenn Begley, a former head of global cancer research at drug giant Amgen and author of the review, was unable to replicate the findings of 47 of the 53 studies he examined. It appears as though researchers are simply fabricating findings that will garner attention and headlines rather than publishing what they actually discover, which helps them to maintain a steady stream of grant funding but deceives the public.


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035616_cancer_industry_scientific_fraud_studies.html#ixzz1sXzeZUHb

Dinheiro

"All money is a matter of belief." ~ Adam Smith

Como o consumidor americano gasta o seu dinheiro

Já sabia?

Entenda política

A luta contra a pobrez que não funcionou

Tax and Spending Issues

April 16, 2012

How America Spends Nearly $1 Trillion a Year Fighting Poverty -- and Fails

Forty-eight years after President Johnson declared war on poverty, the number of poor people in the United States remains stubbornly high. Various administrations have increased the number of programs helping those with incomes below the poverty line, but no such institution has had much success, says Michael Tanner, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.
This trend is particularly surprising because of the rapid increase in spending and the number of programs that has occurred over the time period in question. Since Johnson's time, dollars allocated to fighting poverty at both the federal and state level have increased rapidly, but to no avail.

• Total welfare spending in constant 2011 dollars (including state and local funds) has risen from $256 billion in 1965 to $908 billion today.
• Measured as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), total welfare spending nearly tripled from 2.19 percent of GDP to 6 percent.
• In 2011, there were 126 antipoverty programs administered by seven different cabinet agencies and six independent agencies.

Measured in per capita terms, the dollar figures make it clear that in terms of fighting poverty, the government is clearly doing something wrong.
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Onde de suicídio na Itália

Selbstmordwelle erschüttert Italien

Politiker machen Montis Sparpolitik für Verzweiflungstaten verantwortlich

In Italien wird die Liste der Menschen, die sich das Leben nehmen, von Tag zu Tag länger. Es wird vermutet, dass diese Verzweiflungstaten mit den finanziellen Schwierigkeiten infolge der Wirtschaftskrise und der Sparpolitik zusammenhängen.

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Pós-marxismo

A crise global revigorou o marxismo, diz sociólogo

Göran Therborn: "Marx será relido e reinterpretado ainda muitas vezes no futuro. O que é duvidoso é se haverá uma identidade coletiva para os marxistas"

Desde que o prefixo "pós" se antepôs a todos as categorias do pensamento contemporâneo, ainda nos anos 1950, houve uma expansão intensa do seu uso. Do pós-moderno nas artes plásticas à pós-modernidade como generalização de todos os pensamentos que pretenderam, ao longo do século XX, superar os conceitos modernos, foi um salto de poucos anos e muitas denominações. Pós-estruturalista, pós-humano, pós-gênero, pós-feminista, pós-capitalista - era como se o "pós" pudesse revigorar de conteúdo conceitos que pareciam estar ultrapassados em suas principais características. Uma vez revistos e atualizados pela mágica do "pós", esses conceitos retomam seu lugar de valor para o pensamento.
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Ron Paul continua lutar

Why Ron Paul is still in the presidential race

Recent delegate counts show that Ron Paul is picking up a part of the anti-Romney protest vote, and he remains popular among young voters, but it's unclear if that will amount to anything.

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / April 16, 2012

But Paul remains in it, if not to win it, then to promote his ideas. He’s long said that he wants to build a political movement as much as anything else, and if you look at his upcoming events, they remain heavy on appearances at colleges, which remain his most fertile ground for winning converts.
On April 18 Paul is scheduled to speak at the University of Rhode Island, for instance. On April 19 he’s supposed to be at Cornell. On April 20 the venue is the University of Pittsburgh.
This emphasis on youth points out one of Paul’s remaining electoral strengths – he’s relatively strong in the 18-to-34 demographic ...
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Sociedade de consumo à la brasileira

Brasil rompe a barreira dos 250 milhões de celulares

Agência Estado

Com 3,2 milhões de novas habilitações em março, a telefonia celular no Brasil rompeu a barreira dos 250 milhões de linhas ativas no mês passado, totalizando 250,8 milhões. De acordo com dados divulgados nesta terça-feira pela Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações (Anatel), a chamada teledensidade no País chegou a 128 acessos para cada 100 habitantes.
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Reagan sobre governo

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan (1986)

O valor financeiro da educação universitária

Why College Isn't for Everyone

By Richard Vedder

A person who compares the annual earnings of college and high school graduates would no doubt conclude that higher education is a good investment—the present value of the college earnings premium (the better part of $1 million) seemingly far outdistances college costs, yielding a high rate of return. But for many, attending college is unequivocally not the right decision on purely economic grounds.
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Special Report

• College Investment: Does It Pay?

• Student Loan Debt, With Little to Show for It

• Best Colleges for Return on Investment

• College ROI: What We Found

• Measuring College ROI

Educação pública ou privada para os países pobres?

Quem pode levar a “educação para todos”?

Por Magno Karl·12 Abril, 2012·Parece consenso que a educação é um meio desejável para melhorar a qualidade de vida da população mais pobre do planeta. No meio intelectual, entre as organizações internacionais e os governos, o consenso é que o objetivo de colocar a educação ao alcance dos pobres só pode ser atingido por meio de um único método: através das escolas públicas e gratuitas, comandadas pelos governos.

Na palestra que apresentou ao TEDxGlasgow, Pauline Dixon desafia esse consenso. Ela apresenta dados de suas pesquisas em países pobres, onde escolas privadas são uma alternativa viável à má qualidade das escolas públicas, mesmo nas regiões mais miseráveis, mesmo para as famílias que só podem pagar mensalidades baixíssimas.
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Veja vídeo palestra de 15 minutos
The Beautiful Tree

Corrupção

Paradoxia fundamental

Declínio americano

Christie: Americans ‘on couch waiting for government check’

By David Edwards

Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says that American are turning into couch potatoes, just sitting around waiting on their next check from the government.
Speaking to the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York City on Tuesday, the first-term governor said that he had “never seen a less optimistic time in my lifetime.”
“I think it’s really simple. It’s because government’s now telling them ‘stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you.’ We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society,” Christie explained.
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Dilma é libertária?

Dilma Rousseff: eu acredito nos princípios libertários que fundaram os EUA 

A função do sistema de preços

11 Abril, 2012

A função do sistema de preços

Quando Ludwig von Mises, em 1920, publicou o seu ensaio sobre a impossibilidade do cálculo econômico no socialismo, muitos dos seus colegas estavam convencidos de que uma economia socialista poderia funcionar. Não eram poucas as pessoas que não somente acreditavam …

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O problema de verdade

Stalin recebe um novo museu

GORI, Georgia — A museum that has honored Josef Stalin in Georgia since 1937 is being remodeled to exhibit the atrocities that were committed during the Soviet dictator’s rule.
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Nearly 30 million prisoners passed through the Soviet Union's labor camps in their more than 60 years of operation. This remarkable volume, the first fully documented history of the gulag, describes how, largely under Stalin's watch, a regulated, centralized system of prison labor-unprecedented in scope-gradually arose out of the chaos of the Russian Revolution. Fueled by waves of capricious arrests, this prison labor came to underpin the Soviet economy. Applebaum, a former Warsaw correspondent for the Economist and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, draws on newly accessible Soviet archives as well as scores of camp memoirs and interviews with survivors to trace the gulag's origins and expansion. By the gulag's peak years in the early 1950s, there were camps in every part of the country, and slave labor was used not only for mining and heavy industries but for producing every kind of consumer product (chairs, lamps, toys, those ubiquitous fur hats) and some of the country's most important science and engineering (Sergei Korolev, the architect of the Soviet space program, began his work in a special prison laboratory). Applebaum details camp life, including strategies for survival; the experiences of women and children in the camps; sexual relationships and marriages between prisoners; and rebellions, strikes and escapes. There is almost too much dark irony to bear in this tragic, gripping account. Applebaum's lucid prose and painstaking consideration of the competing theories about aspects of camp life and policy are always compelling. She includes an appendix in which she discusses the various ways of calculating how many died in the camps, and throughout the book she thoughtfully reflects on why the gulag does not loom as large in the Western imagination as, for instance, the Holocaust.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Gulag--a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners--was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost. Applebaum intimately re-creates what life was like in the camps and links them to the larger history of the Soviet Union. Immediately recognized as a landmark and long-overdue work of scholarship, Gulag is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history of the twentieth century.
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Os pais de pensar

"There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other---by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought." -- Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist," 1891

Perdoar

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. Mahatma Gandhi

Capitalismo de estado

State capitalism is a regime where the state exerts direct control over a large part of the economy. It is the preferred system of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes because it facilitates the ruling class to keep power. Yet it state capitalism is also not rare in so-called democratic counties. The principle of state capitalism bribery; it is a system which bribes itself to power and keeps itself through bribery at the power. The beneficiaries of the bribery range from corporations to trade unions and to specific state sectors such as the military for example or the education establishment. State capitalism shows up as the welfare-warfare state whereby one or the other tendency may preponderate. Among the many varieties of state capitalism there is the authoritarian and the democratic variant, the welfare variant and the warfare variant, the plutocratic, corporatist and cleptocratic variant.

US state capitalism is biased towards warfare and corporatism, for example

welfare warfare democratic authoritarian plutocratic  corporatist cleptocratic 

US                        x           x           x                 -              x                 x                 -

Denmark               x           -           x                 -              -                 -                  -             

Nigeria                  -            x          -                 x              x                 -                 x

Russia                   -            x           x                x              x                 x                 x

Brazil                     x           -           x                x              x                 x                 x

China                    -            x           -                x              x                 x                 x

Fonte: Antony Mueller: "State Capitalism is the Problem, not the Solution", em preparação

A máquina da liberdade

David Friedman: The Machinery Of Freedom: Illustrated summary
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Estudar economia com prazer

“Reading the wonderful book Living Economics by Peter Boettke made me start loving economics, and I am sure it will inspire many more readers to do the same. It makes me optimistic for the return of real economics.”
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Finance and Risk Engineering, New York University Polytechnic Institute; author, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
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História

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. Winston Churchill