sábado, junho 21, 2014

"é preciso proteger os campeões nacionais"

Há dias, a propósito do leite, voltei a usar esta imagem:
Ontem, ao final da tarde, durante mais uma caminhada, li mais um trecho de "Why Nations Fail" e percebi que esta figura não é universal.
"All three countries were ruled by relatively absolutist monarchs: Elizabeth I in England, Philip II in Spain, and Henry II in France. All were battling with assemblies of citizens—such as the Parliament in England, the Cortes in Spain, and the Estates-General in France—that were demanding more rights and control over the monarchy. These assemblies all had somewhat different powers and scopes. For instance, the English Parliament and the Spanish Cortes had power over taxation, while the Estates-General did not. In Spain this mattered little, because after 1492 the Spanish Crown had a vast American empire and benefited massively from the gold and silver found there. In England the situation was different. Elizabeth I was far less financially independent, so she had to beg Parliament for more taxes. In exchange, Parliament demanded concessions, in particular restrictions on the right of Elizabeth to create monopolies. It was a conflict Parliament gradually won. In Spain the Cortes lost a similar conflict. Trade wasn’t just monopolized; it was monopolized by the Spanish monarchy."
Numa sociedade habituada ao poder da Coroa/Estado, as instituições extractivas, as elites extractivas, fariam pressão junto do poder para pôr ordem naquele ciclo lá de cima. E volto outra vez a Acemoglu:
"powerful groups often stand against economic progress and against the engines of prosperity. Economic growth is not just a process of more and better machines, and more and better educated people, but also a transformative and destabilizing process associated with widespread creative destruction. Growth thus moves forward only if not blocked by the economic losers who anticipate that their economic privileges will be lost and by the political losers who fear that their political power will be eroded.
Conflict over scarce resources, income and power, translates into conflict over the rules of the game, the economic institutions, which will determine the economic activities and who will benefit from them."
Por cá são muitas centenas de anos a impedir, ou a minimizar o funcionamento daquele ciclo lá de cima... é preciso proteger os campeões nacionais...

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