"A Arte da Fuga" ("Die Kunst der Fuge", BWV 1080) é uma obra-prima de Johann Sebastian Bach: um único tema musical persegue-se, a si mesmo e as múltiplas variações, num diálogo musical intenso desenvolvido a diversas vozes, rico de simetrias, inversões, ritmos e tempos diferentes. Fugas para aartedafuga@gmail.com
Ex-VP Al Gore says the snowstorms that paralyzed much of the U.S. this week are more evidence of manmade global warming.
A scientific hypothesis that's essentially unfalsifiable -- cold corroborates "global warming," heat corroborates it, nothing really falsifies it -- is worse than useless. It's a scientific poseur, properly classified as a belief system, like religion. And the implication that there's an optimal earth temperature, or range of temperatures, or that global warming is destructive, not possibly beneficial, is just further evidence that there's more going on here than pure science.
And all of it—the jobs, the pay raises, the pensions, the health benefits, the sick days, the workers compensation insurance, the paid vacations— all of it, every penny of it, comes from the private-sector workers who earn less, receive fewer benefits, and have almost none of the job protections that government workers enjoy.
I hope government workers who read this might understand why things cannot continue as they have these past few decades. Government workers are bleeding the rest of us dry.
What would happen if tax victims, rather than tax-feeders, were to go on strike? If Madison -- or the capital city of any of Leviathan's other 49 regional administrative units -- were over-run by thousands of productive people who decided that they would no longer consent to be plundered on behalf of unionized government employees, would their revolt be promoted by sympathetic media outlets, and supported by the president and his political machine?
The most logical move to neutralize these power seekers is to eliminate the power center themselves. In the case of education, education should be left in the hands of the free market, with no government role at all (not even vouchers). Calling for one power group to take control versus another is still a case of choosing a dictator, rather than freedom. The free market option would eliminate the dictator and allow education to flourish the way the cell phone and personal computer industries do today, with aggressive competition, falling prices and a thousand more options than could ever develop out of a bureaucracy.
In recent years the IMF has shown itself to be a prime example of our bailout culture .. This has opened the floodgates to massive European bailouts .. The IMF's counterproductive efforts have made financial crises much worse ..
Rather than encouraging pro-growth policies, IMF loans foster a culture of dependency among developing nations. It has created a horde of loan addicts. More than 70 countries have relied on IMF loans for more than 20 years, and most of these countries are left with massive debts that they cannot afford to pay, which only escalates poverty and instability.
The IMF has spent decades propping up some of the most repressive regimes in the world. So far, there has been no correlation between IMF loans and growth.
Well, there's two sides to every story, or to quote a less banal maxim, history is written by the winners. That's the philosophy behind "The Last Ringbearer," a novel set during and after the end of the War of the Ring (the climactic battle at the end of "The Lord of the Rings") and told from the point of view of the losers.
In Yeskov's retelling, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science "destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men!" He's in cahoots with the elves, who aim to become "masters of the world," and turn Middle-earth into a "bad copy" of their magical homeland across the sea. Barad-dur, also known as the Dark Tower and Sauron's citadel, is, by contrast, described as "that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic."
The government union issue is coming to the forefront because states, facing huge deficits, are desperate to reform their budgets and cut pensions. Wisconsin is just one of several states where legislatures, empowered by Republican victories last fall, are finally tackling one of the root causes: the ability of public-sector unions to squeeze taxpayers for exorbitant benefits. In states that have unionized workforces, needed reforms are facing huge and aggressive anti-reform lobbying campaigns by the unions.
Unions certainly have free speech rights to voice their opinions about public policy. But collective bargaining gives unions the exclusive right to speak for covered workers, many of whom may disagree with the views of the monopoly union. Thus, collective bargaining is inconsistent with the right to freedom of association.
The founding fathers of the EU, Maurice Schuman (France [born in Luxembourg]), Konrad Adenauer (Germany), and Alcide de Gasperi (Italy), all German-speaking Catholics, were followers of the classical-liberal vision of Europe.[2] They were also Christian democrats. The classical-liberal vision regards individual liberty as the most important cultural value of Europeans and Christianity. In this vision, sovereign European states defend private-property rights and a free-market economy in a Europe of open borders, thus enabling the free exchange of goods, services, and ideas.
In direct opposition to the classical-liberal vision is the socialist or empire vision of Europe, defended by politicians such as Jacques Delors or François Mitterand. A coalition of statist interests of the nationalist, socialist, and conservative ilk does what it can do to advance its agenda. It wants to see the European Union as an empire or a fortress: protectionist to the outside and interventionist on the inside. These statists dream of a centralized state with efficient technocrats — as the ruling technocrat statists imagine themselves to be — managing it.
The classical-liberal and the socialist visions of Europe are, consequently, irreconcilable. In fact, the increase in power of a central state as proposed by the socialist vision implies a reduction of the four basic liberties, and most certainly less individual liberty.
Vivemos em um país em que um empresário pode gerir a empresa às três pancadas desde que tenha uma boa relação com o Poder, quer seja Central ou o Local.
Em Portugal temos empresários de qualidade comprovada, os mais adequados para o mercado Português, para o mercado e sistema que os políticos e as elites construíram. Para termos mais dos outros, vai levar tempo e precisamos de novos políticos e elites que queiram mudar o sistema e as regras de mercado. Enquanto tivermos políticos e elites que, como receita para os problemas da intervenção do Estado, apresentam mais intervenção do Estado, teremos cada vez mais empresários que sabem que o o principal factor de sucesso empresarial em Portugal é a capacidade de gerir o Estado.
Estamos em um país que não gosta de empresários. São capitalistas exploradores de trabalhadores. São ladrões que fogem ao fisco. São egoístas que não procuram o bem social.
Não temos falta de empreendedores, temos é falta um meio em que valha a pena ser empreendedor. Quanto o tivermos, os mesmos que tomam a decisão certa de ficar no emprego com rendimento certo, tomarão a decisão de criar e arriscar, de empreender.
Líbia, massacre nas ruas e liderança humanitária nas Nações Unidas
Poucas pessoas saberão que a Líbia — onde o massacre de protestantes ocorre neste preciso momento (Libya unrest death toll 'tops 200'), faz parte do honrávelHuman Rights Council das Nações Unidas — esse organismo patético de inspiração socialista, que todo o ano faz de veículo de legitimação dos piores regimes do planeta.
Eis uma intervenção patrocinada pela ONG UN Watch, que revela bem como se faz gato-sapato de qualquer noção de decência institucional:
You're a libertarian because you abhor violence...
When a neighbor isn't willing to contribute as much to a social project as you are, you'd never think of:
Using a gun to force him to contribute;
Hiring an armed gang to threaten to kidnap him or confiscate his money if he didn't contribute;
Using the government in place of the armed gang if he didn't contribute – because every government program, in the final analysis, involves violence against those who don't comply.
If two people have agreed to engage in voluntary behavior between them, with no violence involved, you'd never think of:
Using a gun to stop them;
Hiring an armed gang to threaten to kidnap them if they didn't stop;
Using the government in place of the armed gang to stop them.
If a company and an individual have agreed to engage in voluntary behavior between them, with no violence involved, you'd never think of:
Using a gun to stop them;
Hiring an armed gang to threaten to kidnap them if they didn't stop;
Using the government in place of the armed gang to stop them.
If a foreign government is not attacking America, you'd never support the idea of initiating violence against the foreign country.
As one who abhors violence, you're willing to tolerate anything that's peaceful, and you practice the principle of live and let live – opposing the initiation of force (violence) against anyone for any purpose.
That’s right: Many of the marchers/protesters in Wisconsin are simply outraged that they may actually have to pay for the goods and services they’re used to forcing others to purchase for them. And they’re so blinded by their learned dependency on big government handouts that they can’t understand that Governor Walker is simply asking all employees in the state to carry their own weight for a change, because taxpayers in Wisconsin can’t do it any more: it’s financially untenable.
.. Mr. Walker would require that public-employee unions be recertified annually by a majority vote of all their members, not merely by a majority of those that choose to cast ballots. In addition, he would end the government’s practice of automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. For Wisconsin teachers, union dues total between $700 and $1,000 a year.
Mr. Walker’s argument—that public workers shouldn’t be living high off the hog at the expense of taxpayers—is being made in other states facing budget crises. But the left observed the impact of the tea party last year and seems determined to unleash a more aggressive version of its own by teaming up with union allies ..
1) aprova que se roube? 2) e se forem mais os ladrões do que os roubados? 3) e se os ladrões roubarem "por uma boa causa"? 4) e pagar a outros que roubem? 5) e votar para que outros roubem "por uma boa causa"?
O erro está em considerar que a opção pela democracia acarreta em si mesma valores finais, não funcionais. É que uma sociedade pode ser funcionalmente democrática, mas isso não significa que ela opte por adoptar os valores próprios de uma Democracia Liberal, ou de um Estado de Direito onde imperem a Separação de Poderes ou o Laicismo do Estado, condições essenciais para a afirmação de um ambiente de liberdade e de efectivo pluralismo.
A crise é o processo de cura da doença constituída pela bolha prévia induzida e alimentada temporariamente por uma expansão de crédito não baseada em poupança prévia, o que conduz ao sobre-investimento e sobre-consumo e sub-poupança, um ciclo insustentável que em última análise consome capital ou poupança. Será tanto melhor que comece mais cedo do que mais tarde, se começar mais tarde que se deixe a reafectação de recursos, os ajustamento de preços (em queda) operarem na maior velocidade possível, encurtando o período de recessão a um mínimo de tempo e a uma qualidade máxima.
Mas partindo da habitual expressão PIB = C + I + G + X - M, e fazendo um exercício no campo do sempre falível campo dos agregados macro-económicos, será uma boa notícia a descida do valor do PIB:
1. Se a despesa do Estado (G) descer, libertando recursos 2. Se as Importações (M) resultarem de aquisição de capacidade produtiva futura 3. Se o Investimento descer por estar em curso um processo de liquidação pós-bolha 4. Se o Consumo descer para poder suportar os prejuízos inevitáveis numa crise 5. Se as Exportações (X) temporariamente forem menores do que seriam, devido ao fim de programas de apoio que desvirtuam a concorrência e distorcem os incentivos. 6. Se o C e I descerem nominalmente (e em termos reais) para recomposição de saldos monetários devido à desconfiança bem racional, da solidez do sistema monetário.
Here's the truth of it: You don't need an $80-billion-plus budget and a morass of 17 intelligence agencies to look at the world and draw a few intelligent conclusions. Nor do you need $80 billion-plus and that same set of agencies to be caught off-guard by developments on our sometimes amazing planet.
This is simply stunning. A quick parsing of the data released every ten days by the National Bureau Of Statistics of China indicates that the average price of food in 50 cities in the January 21-31 period has increased by 4.6% compared to the prior 10 day period (and 416% annualized)!
Southern Weekly, a Chinese language publication, recently noted: China has not only been the country that prints money at the fastest rate but also been the country with the largest money supply in the world in the past decade. China’s M2, a broad measure of money supply, was up 19.46% at the end of November from a year earlier...This compares with 3.3% and 2.5% of annual M2 growth in the US and Japan respectively over the same period…
Come the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 – with five of the twelve Fed banks down the trunk of the prairie, from Minneapolis to Dallas – a big new federal institution was ready to throw money around. And that it did. From 1913 to 1919, the Fed doubled the dollar supply as the economy barely grew at all ..
Dollars were showering the land, the cross of gold was history, and somehow farmers only got killed as never before. The doubling of the money supply increased the price level by a factor of two, halving the real income and assets of farmers, not to mention everyone else. Debt service was cheaper, but the things credit could buy cost twice as much. It is well-known even today in the Midwest that the 1920s were as desperate a decade as went the livelihoods of farmers as any, including the Great Depression years of the 1930s.
Ordinarily covering populations of only several thousand, parish councils started to take over the municipal tasks that had traditionally been performed by churches—hence the religious terminology—in the 19th century. Despite the fete-organising stereotype, in villages and some towns and cities they are responsible for more serious matters, such as public toilets, playing fields, road humps and youth clubs. Their members are elected and they can charge a “precept” that is added to the borough council tax.
.. Ainda que se reconhecesse ao Estado – não a seus agentes – o direito de usar o sistema de ensino para difundir uma agenda moral, esse direito não poderia inviabilizar o exercício da prerrogativa assegurada aos pais .. e isso fatalmente ocorrerá se os tópicos dessa agenda estiverem presentes nas disciplinas obrigatórias.
Além disso, se a família deve desfrutar da “especial proteção do Estado”, como prevê a Constituição, o mínimo que se pode esperar desse Estado é que não contribua para enfraquecer a autoridade moral dos pais sobre seus filhos.
Impõe-se, portanto, que as questões morais sejam varridas dos programas das disciplinas obrigatórias. Quando muito, poderão ser veiculadas em disciplina facultativa, como ocorre com o ensino religioso. Assim, conhecendo previamente o conteúdo de tal disciplina, os pais decidirão se querem ou não compartilhar a educação moral de seus filhos com especialistas de mente aberta ..
A poco que uno cite a este gigantesco pensador, la izquierda saca a relucir esa opinión suya, tan cierta y tan políticamente incorrecta, de que la democracia y el liberalismo son cosas distintas, por lo que no tienen por qué ir de la mano. La izquierda ve ahí una abierta justificación del autoritarismo: ¡albricias, para esta vaca sagrada del liberalismo puede haber dictaduras liberales!
Por supuesto, la advertencia hayekiana no va ni mucho menos dirigida a destacar la posibilidad de esa rara avis que sería una autocracia respetuosa con las libertades individuales, sino a alertar contra la involución liberticida que pueden (y suelen) padecer las democracias. Es decir, lo que Hayek –en perfecta sintonía con Tocqueville– pedía es que no olvidáramos que la democracia puede perfectamente atentar contra las libertades individuales, por cuanto no es más que un mecanismo de ordenación de la toma de decisiones colectivas... que no entra en qué limites han de ponerse a tales decisiones.
In this case, the idea that a loose network of people with shared values and varying skill sets can provide substantial help to a population abroad is seen as quixotic - or even unseemly - by many of those who have failed to understand the past ten years, as well as those whose first instinct is to attack a popular revolt rather than to assist it.
.. Anonymous and entities like it will become far more significant over the next few years than is expected by most of our similarly irrelevant pundits ..
This is the future, whether one approves or not, and the failure on the part of governments and media alike to understand, and contend with the rapid change now afoot, ought to remind everyone concerned why it is that this movement is necessary in the first place.
Peter unleashes a torrent of flaming truth upon the communist usurper that calls herself Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, in this epic debate. I highly recommend listening to this epic smackdown of monetarist theory.
Brown is left totally confused about the effects of printing money and where money comes from.
People that don’t have the first clue about what money actually is shouldn’t be writing books about how government should print endless amounts of money to fund its escapades.
..If one were to look at the 20th century, the heavyweight economic champion of the world was clearly the United States of America .. because it was a society that was based off of rugged individualism with free market principles.
How did America, a once mighty nation, become reduced to economic chaos. Easy, America has lost its way. It’s no longer a nation built off of rugged individualism, but it’s now based off of a collectivist state ..
.. America went from being the largest creditor nation in the world, to the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. American citizens no longer have sufficient savings, and are up to their eyeballs in debt. Prices have gone through the roof, the value of the dollar has dropped drastically, manufacturing and industry have left the US, entrepreneurship is dying, and things don’t look good for the foreseeable future in the US. Taxes, regulations, an ever growing government, and social programs have destroyed the US economy.
The real reason that China is growing, while the US is declining, is that China is embracing Capitalism and free markets, while the US is running away from it. Also China is telling their citizens to save their money, while the US is trying to get them to spend it. China is becoming what the US use to be, and that is a nation that is based off of production, savings, and under consumption.
No matter what country, what hemisphere, or what continent an economic battle is fought in, it is Capitalism, that was, is, and always will, be the heavyweight champ of the world.
Reporter, narrating: China used to have a universal, efficient, publicly provided health system, with medical care provided by the government for free, and each village or farm having full-time medical staff under government salary. Now, however, China has moved to a “free market” system, with devastating consequences. Medical care has become far more expensive, beyond the means of many working class Chinese.
Reporter speaking to Chinese citizen: How do you feel about the medical care you receive today, compared to the days when the Chinese government provided the care?
Chinese Citizen [assumedly the most anti-“free market” citizen the reporter could find]: It’s much better now, we have access to educated doctors and Western medicine .. It was free, but it was terrible. The “doctor” assigned to our village had only a sixth grade education, and was more likely to kill you than to heal you .. We were all poor, and we were all free to die in this quack’s care .. sometimes it is very hard to pay, but at least if you can borrow the money, you can save a sick child. In the past, the child had no hope.
Reporter, narrating: So we see that China has moved from an equitable, fair system in which there was universal health care to a free market system in which the rich get good medical care and the poor are left to their own devices.
The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to parliament and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever.
Esta análise sugere fortemente que o mix de despesas do estado em educação deveria ser radicalmente diferente. Seria muito mais racional recorrer em maior proporção à operação privada do sistema. Isto não quer dizer necessariamente que as reclamações das escolas com contrato de associação estejam correctas. Não é obrigação do estado assegurar a viabilidade económica de uma ou outra escola privada. Mas a contra-argumentação de que o público sai mais barato ou que no privado "há lucro" é ainda mais disparatada. Um sistema baseado na liberdade de escolha, potencialmente recorrendo a um sistema de vouchers, com possibilidade de suplemento privado, não só sairia mais barato para os contribuintes, como provavelmente possibilitaria um alargamento da oferta.
1. The Austrian Business Cycle Theory is necessary but not sufficient to explain the recession. Think of it as a car pile-up. Imagine we see an enormous rise in the number of traffic accidents in a major city. Cars keep colliding at intersections as drivers all seem to make the same sorts of mistakes at once. Is the most likely explanation that drivers have irrationally stopped paying attention to the road, or would we suspect that something is wrong with the traffic lights? Even with completely rational drivers, malfunctioning traffic signals will lead to lots of accidents. Keeping interest rates artificially low is like getting all the lights stuck on green.
2. The crash has nothing to do with greed. Or, rather, greed is no more to blame for these bad mortgages than gravity is to blame for plane crashes. Gravity is always present, just like greed.
3. Blame artificially low interest rates .. they wrongly incentivise borrowing, causing a boom followed by a bust ..
4. Deregulation was not the culprit. From 1980-2009 in the US, there were 4 new regulatory policies for every 1 deregulatory policy.
5. Lessons for recovery. Bailouts and stimuli are not the answer.
.. Focusing on the supply of money, and the rate of interest and debt, is a rival theory which says the problem was the bubble – and the banks were a needle. We should not ask what pricked the bubble, but what inflated it in the first place ..
.. if we still calculated inflation the way we did when Jimmy Carter was president, the official inflation figures would look about as bad as they did when ... Jimmy Carter was president .. if we counted inflation under the old system the official rate wouldn't be 1.5%. It would be closer to 10%.
We are flooding the world with extra dollars. The Fed simply invents as many as it likes. In the past couple of years, to try to keep the economy out of a tailspin, it has more than doubled the size of the so-called monetary base .. if you drastically increase the number of dollars without a commensurate increase in the number of goods and services, each dollar must, by definition, be worth less. That's another way of describing inflation.
Methamphetamine has been around since 1893 and to this day is approved by the FDA for treatment of both ADHD and obesity. How can its recent surge in popularity as a recreational drug be explained? Why would anyone choose to use a drug that is widely known, even by its users, to be one of the most dangerous and difficult to quit of all the illegal drugs? ..
.. During cocaine's heyday, meth was nearly extinct on the illegal market.
.. The initial shock of the war on drugs sent black-market entrepreneurs back to the drawing board; they needed to reduce their risk and their costs. What they came back with included highly potent marijuana, crack cocaine, and crystal meth.
.. Increased enforcement of drug laws, backed by increased penalties, led to higher prices and decreased availability of preferred recreational drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. High prices and periodic shortages led drug dealers and consumers to find substitutes ..
The scourge of crystal meth is another example of the "potency effect" or what has been called the "iron law of prohibition." When government enacts a prohibition .. it inevitably results in substitution to more adulterated, more potent, and more dangerous drugs.
.. a certain portion of society will, regardless of legal restrictions and enforcement, choose to use drugs. So the solution is quite simple, really: end the drug war. Less enforcement and lower penalties would reduce the price of marijuana and shift demand from crystal meth back to marijuana, a drug that has few of the problems associated with meth.
It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.
