Marco Almada

Agent A makes a contract with agent B, agreeing to pay B $X. A overspends and has difficulty paying B. A decides not to pay B. In many cases, we would say this is unacceptable and that A must pay B what is owed. At least, we think, A must go through the proper channels to declare bankruptcy if A is to not pay B what A owes B. This would be unfortunate, we are told, but bankruptcy law is needed to allow for the proper running of the economy.

Today, the U.S. government is agent A. Many libertarians seem happy with the idea of a government shut down. The government, I imagine some think, is not an ordinary agent–it is a big evil entity that had no right to make the contracts at issue and could only afford to pay what it is thought to owe B because it planned to steal the money to do so from the rest of us innocent individuals who it aggresses against. I think as much of this as I do the idea that all taxation is theft. If we are to have a government, we must have taxation in some form. Anarchists could consistently hold that all taxation is theft. For my part, though I am very sympathetic to anarchism–and sometimes find myself almost embracing it–I think there is a role for government: harm prevention and rectification. That costs money; in my view, taxation to pay for that is acceptable. But this is at least partly beside the point.

Our government does not confine itself to harm prevention and rectification. It engages in many activities no libertarian of any stripe would endorse or think permissible. So, I agree that our government taxes us wrongly. Yet I am not gleeful at the prospect of a government shut down. Perhaps you think I should be. After all, police, military, prisons, and courts will all continue to operate–the shutdown is partial, not complete–and that, some will say, means the government will, under the “shutdown,” do the things I want it to do and less of what I don’t want it to do.

But there’s the first point: its not true that the government will “do the things I want it to do and less of what I don’t want it to do.” So-called “essential” services will remain and so-called “non-essential” services will not. NASA will (mostly) be shut down, OK. But our soldiers will stay in all of the places they find themselves, regardless of whether their presence there is a matter of harm prevention or not (and police will continue to arrest people for smoking marijuana; the DEA, I think, will also remain active). The NSA will continue to record or monitor our phone calls, emails, etc. Judges will continue to hear cases about which there should be no laws. Import tariffs will still be collected. I’ll leave it to others to go make a longer list, noting merely that I do not trust that the essential/non-essential distinction will be used appropriately. And lets be honest: our so-called “representatives” in Congress know the score. They know how the essential/non-essential distinction will be used. That means that even if the programs they want cut are exactly the programs that should be cut, they are only engaging in political showmanship. And it has costs. And that takes us to the second point.

People who were promised paychecks will not get them. Some will get them late. Some will get smaller paychecks (due to furlough time). Some of these people will face tremendous difficulty. I think it fair to say they will be harmed–having planned their lives given the promise of a regular paycheck, they have legitimate expectations that are being set back. Perhaps the government should not have hired those people in the first place (after all, they are “non-essential” personnel!). But the fact is they were hired and treating them this way is wrong and makes a mockery of contract.

Put the point this way: a mobster might be wrong to extract protection money from a business, but that does not make it any less wrong for the mobster to fail to protect that business in time of need. We don’t say “wait, the mobster doesn’t have to live up to its agreement because it was wrong to make the agreement in the first place.” I think most of us think 2 things: (a) the mobster should not have extracted the protection money in the first place and (b) the mobster owes the business protection. Similarly, I think the government should not have hired people to do non-essential jobs (by which I mean any jobs not needed for harm prevention and rectification) in the first place but that because it did, the government* owes those people their salaries on the regular pay days. This does not mean we should not seek to limit government or that we are stuck forever with all of the “non-essential” personnel. It means we must work to have the government limited in scope, but limited through moral means. This may be harder, but its not impossible. (I’d start with a simple rule: No replacement hires of any personnel who do not do any work needed for harm prevention or rectification unless failure to fill the position in question would result in a direct harm to another. I realize that needs unpacking.)

I’ll add one final point. At least some of us here at BHL.com (maybe all of us) believe that the government “is significantly responsible for causing and perpetuating poverty” (I borrow that way of putting it) and that if this is the case, it would be wrong to suddenly and immediately cut programs aimed at alleviating that poverty–at least before cutting elsewhere. This is really the same point as the one made in the last paragraph: it was wrong for the government* to undertake programs that lead anyone into poverty, but since it did, it has obligations to those so lead. This does not mean we are stuck forever with helping those people (as a matter of rectification). It means that if we want limited government, we must work to have the government limited in scope through moral means.

*NOTE, meant to prevent a certain sort of objection: The government is a corporate entity. It was people in the government that acted in ways that lead other people in the government to have legitimate expectations regarding paychecks (and that lead to the policies that lead to poverty). To some extent, perhaps, we are all complicit in this. I won’t defend that claim here.

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Em entrevista à Reason, onde o jornalista pergunta sobre os subúrbios americanos (altamente incentivados pelo planejamento "carrocêntrico") ela fala:

Reason: Estou a 5 minutos de carro de todo tipo de comércio que eu preciso, mas eu não conseguiria fazer isso a pé.
Jacobs: Claro, você quer defender o carro nesses casos. É uma linha de vida. É tão importante quanto sua água.
Reason: Você não é anti-carro, certo?
Jacobs: Não. Mas eu acho que precisamos de muito mais transporte público. Mas você não pode ter transporte público na situação que você está falando.
Reason: Você não quer dizer literalmente transporte público estatal?
Jacobs: Não, todas as formas de transporte coletivo. Podem ser táxis, vans gerenciadas privadamente, qualquer coisa. Transporte onde as pessoas não precisam ser donas e possam pagar uma tarifa.
Reason: Você não é uma inimiga de um livre mercado de transportes.
Jacobs: Não. Eu gostaria que tivéssemos mais dele. Eu gostaria que não tivéssemos a noção de que precisamos de um monopólio de transporte coletivo. Eu gostaria que fosse mais competitivo -- nos tipos de veículos que se usa, nas tarifas que se cobra, nas rotas que se faz, nos horários do dia que funciona. Eu já vi isso em ilhas pobres do Caribe. Eles tem um bom serviço de peruas porque é ditado pelos usuários.

Eu gostaria que pudéssemos fazer mais disso. Mas temos tanta história contra isso, e tantas coisas institucionais estabelecidas contra isso. A ideia de que você deve usar grandes veículos monstruosos, quando o serviço na verdade funcionaria melhor se fosse no tamanho de uma perua. Isso mostra o quão artificial e tolo os monopólios são. A única coisa que salva a situação é quando coisas ilegais começam a quebrar o monopólio.

Pelo jeito não é só eu que defendo a desregulamentação do transporte: estou sentado no ombro de uma gigante.

If you were to look at the archives of Reason magazine, the premier magazine of a libertarian nature for decades, I don’t think you will find one magazine article that even references Hoppe. I have long followed the academic conferences that are sponsored by libertarians groups such as the Atlas Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies and Liberty Fund, and I don’t remember one such event sponsoring Hoppe as a speaker or one where his ideas were taken seriously.

In fact, one reason Hoppe founded his Property & Freedom Society, mentioned by Bruenig, was because the libertarian-leaning international group of academics, the Mont Pelerin Society, wasn’t keen on him. Hoppe’s “alternative” is a hodge-podge of fringe Right-wing conservatives, racists and so-called paleolibertarians—precisely the kind of people that Mont Pelerin would generally shun. That Hoppe founded this organization is not evidence he is a mainstream libertarian figure—it proves the very opposite.

I should point out that even many of the people associated with the Mises Institute have little affinity with Hoppe’s views, especially the ones singled out by Bruenig, and some have been publicly critical. For instance, Walter Block wrote a critical analysis of Hoppe in the Reason Papers, though many libertarians would think his criticisms didn’t go far enough. Block has not been alone—especially in regard to Hoppe’s perceived racism and anti-gay bigotry, perceptions I think are wholly justified.



Hoppe’s influence on modern libertarianism is extremely minor. Mr. Bruenig ignored the Mount Olympus of libertarianism and went searching in the gutter instead. The reality is that the vast majority of libertarians, if asked about Hoppe, would respond: “Who?”

Bruenig, however, pretends that no libertarian has spoken out against Hoppe and his views. “Is anyone in the libertarian community willing to denounce Hans-Hermann Hoppe as not one of them, and call him the lunatic he clearly is? Or is he still going to get an invite to the next convention?”

This is on par with: “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Both questions are dishonest because they are meant to imply something as true, which is not.

Bruenig discovers that, “Hoppe is a huge fan of discrimination of basically all sorts: racist, sexist, classist, and all the others. In fact, if there is any overarching theme in Hoppe's work, it is that the problem with our status quo society is that, because it is democratic, the majoritarian tendency reigns, and that majoritarian tendency is to protect people from discrimination.”

This is like someone taking a 747 to Boston and pretending they have “discovered” North America. Many libertarians have noted Hoppe’s prejudicial, extremist views long before progressives like Bruenig had any idea who he was. Libertarians were concerned that Hoppe was cloaking his bigotry in libertarian terms. Bruenig reveals NOTHING about Hoppe that libertarians didn’t expose first, and condemn.

If Bruenig did any research for his article he should have known this. That leaves the uncomfortable assumption that he either did very little research or he ignored the context of the libertarian movement in order to make it appear that libertarians are in lockstep—or goose-step if you prefer—with Mr. Hoppe.

Hoppe has tried to justify his petty bigotries by the claim, in twists of bizarre logic, that a property-based, free society would discriminate—coincidentally against all the very groups that Hoppe himself dislikes: non-white immigrants, blacks and gays.

Bruenig accidentally gives away the flaw in his own argument that Hoppe is the "Libertarian Extraordinaire.” He notes that Hoppe thinks some “libertarians are hopelessly confused” because “they believe that in this world of free markets and private property, gays will be super-free to love who they want to love, live how they want to live.” Actually, in my experience, that pretty much encapsulates the view of most libertarians.

Bruenig claims:

Hoppe realizes that in a world of a true lock down on private property, with no regulation on how such property might be used, there would be unbelievable amounts of social coercion to prevent people from living the lives they'd like. If you don't get on board with the dominant culture, you literally will find yourself with nowhere to live, work, eat, and will summarily die. Also, notice how old school he is even in 2001 comparing LGBTQ people to pedophiles. Bold move, Hoppe, bold move.

Bruenig says Hoppe “realizes” this because this is precisely the sort of bizarre claim that Bruenig himself wants to be true, albeit for very different reasons. Hoppe imagines this to be the case because there are people he hates and he wants to argue this hatred would be sanctioned in a property-based, depoliticized market. Hoppe does this to give approval for his own prejudices against these people. Mr. Bruenig does it because he wants to give sanction to his prejudices against markets and libertarians.

But, is this the case? Hoppe’s argumentation is wrong and Bruenig applauding his logic doesn’t make it correct. In fact we have countless examples of how markets and property have done the very opposite of what Hoppe and Bruenig seem to wish were the case.

Police harassing Stonewall customers

Gay establishments existed long before anti-discrimination laws. In fact, they existed in the face of anti-gay laws of the worse kind. The fact that individuals owned private property allowed them to set up gay establishments. Yes, those clubs were harassed and often shut down—by the government. Police harassment of gay clubs was, and to some extent still is, a problem. Private property and market-incentives created gay establishment and government closed them.

Apartheid, and its little brother, Jim Crow, were not examples of markets. Blacks didn’t ride in the front of the bus because the states passed laws making it illegal to do so. In South Africa, the laws forbade the hiring of blacks for certain professions—without the law people were hiring blacks for those very professions. The government prosecuted employers for the crime of hiring black workers.

And, as the Civil Rights struggle showed, when white business owners did try to treat customers equally they were often violently attacked by hate groups like the Klan, who were usually in cahoots with the local police department. It wasn’t the protection of private property that was the problem here, but the systematic violation of those rights by bigots who had government power behind them.

Immigrants are another favored target of Mr. Hoppe—particularly those from non-European cultures, by which Hoppe seems to mean non-Whites.

During recent waves of “illegal” immigration we had property owners and markets acting very differently from policy-makers and government. Politicians passed laws making it a crime to rent property to someone without verifying they were a citizen first. Why? This was “necessary” because without the force of government, private-property owners were quite happy to rent apartments and homes to them.


Politicians passed laws making it a criminal offense to hire these people unless they provided government papers certifying they had a “right” to work in the United States. If employers wished to discriminate they could have easily done so. Even the anti-discrimination laws would not have required them to hire “illegal immigrants” in most cases. But, employers were hiring these people and the political process had to step in forcibly to prevent it. Even with these extraordinary state interventions employers are still hiring “illegals” to this very day.

In other words, private property and depoliticized markets have been sanctuaries for victims of discrimination and bigots knew it. If this were not true there would be no need for these laws.

Bruenig ends his piece by claiming “I didn’t pull this man out of some backwater obscurity.” I would argue the lady doth protest too much. That is precisely what he did.

Beyond his blanket condemnations of libertarianism there is nothing in Bruenig’s article that is critical of Hoppe that wasn’t said first by libertarians—and said better.

Resources: Various libertarian sites have been critical of Hoppe. For instance, the Rightwatch blog had multiple exposes of Hoppe during the years it was in operation, 2005-2008. Libertarian activist and intellectual, Tom Palmer, publisheddozens of critiques of Hoppe on his personal blog. For that he was rewarded with an anti-Palmer website from Hoppe acolytes, along with numerous anti-gay slurs from Hoppe and his small band of followers. In 2005 the World Freedom Conference hosted libertarian policy analyst Oliver Marc Hartwich who gave a presentation on “The Errors of Hans-Hermann Hoppe.” What is noteworthy, but ignored by Mr. Bruenig, is that outside the limited circles of the Mises Institute, there is a shortage of academic libertarian organizations and/or publications that bother to take Mr. Hoppe seriously at all.

For a discussion of why depoliticized markets actually undermine conservative values—the opposite of what Hoppe and Bruenig believe—see “Conservatism versus Liberal Capitalism."

The Rime of the Data Scientist (with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Part I

It is a Data Scientist,

And he stoppeth one of three.

`By thy Python code and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

 

The classroom doors are opened wide,

And I am next one in;

The others are met, the test is set:

Mayst hear the noisy din.’

 

He holds him with his skinny hand,

“There was a cluster,” quoth he.

`Hold off! unhand me, open-source loon!’

Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

 

He holds him with his glittering eye –

The student stood quite still,

And listens like a three years’ child:

The Scientist hath his will.

 

The student sat upon a stone:

He cannot sort his list;

And thus spake on the young person,

The Data Scientist.

 

“The code was cleared, the whole team cheered,

Merrily did we drop

Unto the pub, and there to drink,

Without a thought to stop.

 

The variables were writ upon the left,

Transferred from R to C;

The code shone bright, and on the right

The data a, b, c.

 

More and more code every day,

It was a wondrous thing –

The student here did beat his breast,

For he heard the exam bell ring.

 

The examiner hath paced into the hall,

Red of face is he;

Nodding his head from side to side –

A fan of Scotch whisky.

 

The student he did beat his breast,

He forgets to sort his list;

And thus spake on the young man,

The Data Scientist.

 

“And now the data surge came, and it

Was tyrannous and strong:

It struck with massive overload,

And analysis took so long.

 

With high performance really stretched,

As who pursued with yell and blow

Still treads the shadow of his foe,

And foward bends his head,

The cluster was fast, it was a blast,

And onward aye we sped.

 

And now there were missing values and outliers,

And it grew wondrous confused:

And deleted columns, as if floating by,

Their data could not be used.

 

And through the drifts the snowy clifts

Did send a dismal sheen:

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken –

The grep was all between.

 

The grep was here, the grep was there,

The grep was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

Regular expressions could not be found!

 

At length did cross a statistician,

Thorough the fog she came;

As she had been a blessed soul,

We hailed her in Tukey’s name.

 

She saw the data we ne’er had seen,

And all around she went.

The data did split with a thunder-fit;

The programmers steered us through!

 

And a good data stream sprung up behind;

The statistician did follow,

And every day, for data or play,

Came to the programmer’s hollo!

 

In hard-drive or cloud, whatever’s allowed,

She analyzed the data mine;

Whiles all the night, with code writ right,

The programmers drank moonshine.”

 

`God save thee, Data Scientisit,

From the fiends that plague thee thus! –

Why look’st thou perchance?’ – “With a wicked glance,

I fired the statistician.”

The NYT ran an op-ed last week by philosophers of Science Alex Rosenberg and Tyler Curtain that said that (1) economics is not a capital-S Science because it has no “record of improvement in predictive success” and (2) therefore the next Fed chair should be someone who understands that economics is not a capital-S Science and instead has “wisdom” and “a feeling for the economy.”  (Interestingly, experience was not mentioned, which you’d think would be more important the more the job is a matter of craft, as R and C say, than of book learning, which is mainly what Ben Bernanke had.  R and C applaud Bernanke for his craft.)

Harvard Econ theorist Eric Maskin wrote a letter in reply and then NYT did a “Room for Debate” exchange between Maskin and other readers.  Maskin made the point that explanation can be valuable and scientific independent of whether it leads to sharp predictions in some particular domain.  But most of the readers the Times printed were not buying this at all—for them, sufficient evidence that Economics is not a capital-S Science is that it can’t predict stock market movements and crashes reliably.  Rosenberg and Curtain also seem to have this in mind as the key example.

But what you could reasonably call a scientific thought experiment is enough to show that you can’t have a Scientific Theory that reliably predicts stock market movements and crashes:  If such a theory existed that predicted a giant market collapse on date T, the collapse wouldn’t happen on date T.  Ditto for forecasting market movements from publicly available data.  In the long run, or “in equilibrium” in the sense of the developed formal models of this kind of thing, market movements and crashes should be random or unpredictable based on public information.  Yes, that’s an “idealization,” and an idealization that R and C obliquely criticize at the end of their op-ed.  But it’s an idealization that provides an important and valid insight into the kind of system an asset market is.

The reply by reader David Berman raises this issue indirectly, but he concludes that it means that Economics can’t be a “proper” capital-S Science (“if only we could [predict market crashes] without the prediction’s entirely changing the behavior of the markets! That’s the other critical difference between economics and meteorology, or physics, or any of the disciplines we properly call scientific”).  I read what R and C are saying the same way, although it’s less spelled out there.  But can that be right?  I would have thought the argument should be that scientific inquiry has clarified the reasons for why a theory that predicts specific market movements or crashes is difficult, or impossible in the long run, in contrast to theories of simple physical systems.  In other words it’s not so much a case of inappropriate hubris of Economics in trying to be like Physics, but of a scientific effort producing a better and deeper understanding of why this sort of system (an asset market, here) is different from a physical system that doesn’t have agents that condition what they do on expectations about what others will do.

Of course, not all markets—or economic, political, or social interactions—have this specific dynamic that asset markets have, so the difficulties in predicting the stock market from public information do not imply that you can’t develop theory that makes reasonably good predictions in other areas (eg., basic supply and demand analysis for prices and quantities).  R and C were making a reasonable point about choosing Fed chairs.  Sure, I’d like someone who is wise and not rigidly attached to some particular mathematical idealization.  But the broader line of argument seems wrong.

Tente imaginar uma cidade em 2025. Carros autônomos, limpos e silenciosos rondam constantemente as ruas atrás de passageiros. Utilizando um sistema descentralizado como o Waze que conhecemos hoje, os carros procuram as rotas com menor trânsito, distribuindo-os perfeitamente na infraestrutura. Taxas pela infraestrutura também são cobradas eletronicamente de acordo com a distância que eles transitam, o horário que estão nas ruas e o espaço que ocupam, impedindo a superlotação. Os carros tem gestão descentralizada e fácil acesso dos usuários, como Car2Go e Zipcar. Para chamar um deles é simples: identifique o tamanho e o modelo que você precisa através de uma listagem online, acessado pelo seu Google Glass. A qualidade do serviço pode ser avaliada através das críticas dos usuários anteriores. O preço é baixo: após a desregulamentação do trânsito em 2020 a concorrência "predatória" eliminou as empresas ineficientes, deixando apenas os melhores serviços no mercado. Além disso, seus motores elétricos são extremamente eficientes e são carregados na própria rede pública, abastecida pelas fachadas fotovoltaicas dos prédios ao invés de grandes e distantes usinas hidrelétricas que tem enorme perda na distribuição. Para serem carregados, lembrando o pequeno Roomba do início do século, os carros autônomos se direcionam à garagens na periferia da cidade, onde o custo da terra é mais baixo. As garagens atuais foram convertidas em escritórios e também em hortas hidropônicas, possibilitando comida fresca diariamente.

Este é um cenário possível para a cidade de 2025, mas muito improvável. Improvável porque é impossível prever se essas tecnologias, todas existentes hoje, realmente vão ter esse tipo de uso, ou até mesmo se vão ser legalmente permitidas - maioria delas hoje não são. Também é improvável porque até 2025 teremos muitas outras tecnologias, inovações que ainda não foram inventadas, além de possivelmente passarmos por crises econômicas, ambientais, sociais, imprevisíveis para qualquer planejador atual. A cidade de 2025 é inimaginável.

Minha última postagem tangenciou o tema de tecnologia nas cidades e como a regulação atual não permite que a cidade se adapte às transformações e aos imprevistos ao longo do tempo. Quando planejamos demais a cidade ela perde a capacidade de absorver positivamente às transformações, criando um ambiente suscetível a desastres ainda maiores. Como explica Nassib Taleb no seu último livro Antifragile, um sistema complexo e orgânico se torna cada vez mais frágil à mudanças se você tentar tirá-lo do seu caminho natural e protegê-lo demais. Se deixarmos um ser humano deitado na mesma cama durante anos, quando ele se levantar estará fraco e sensível à qualquer mudança no ambiente e no seu corpo: o mesmo se aplica para cidades.

Se você achou o cenário tecnológico que eu elaborei muito sonhador, esta postagem serve para atualizar você, leitor, mostrando o que já existe hoje e provando a necessidade de permitir dinamismo para a cidade do futuro, pois tecnologias além dessas surgem a cada semana, a cada dia. Escolhi, assim, algumas das principais tecnologias que interferem diretamente na cidade atual. Não pretendo explicar a fundo cada uma delas, mas passar um resumo de como funcionam e como podem impactar nas nossas cidades.

Carsharing

Enquanto pesquisava para a reportagem sobre teorias da conspiração que saiu na edição de julho da revista Galileu, encontrei alguns artigos de psicólogos e cientistas políticos que mencionavam o fenômeno da polarização: em linhas gerais, quando um grupo de pessoas que têm uma opinião comum, ainda que moderada -- digamos, que o Lula não foi um presidente assim lá tão bom quanto se diz, ou que o capitalismo é um sistema que tem lá seus problemas -- se reúne para conversar, existe uma tendência muito forte de que, ao fim do papo, todos saiam do encontro um pouco mais radicalizados do que entraram.

Timmy’s still drinking.

Places Actually Discovered by Europeans

An important new paper (Sean Roberts & James Winters, "Linguistic Diversity and Traffic Accidents: Lessons from Statistical Studies of Cultural Traits", PLOS ONE 2013, is explained clearly in a blog post by one of the authors, "Uncovering spurious correlations between language and culture", a replicated typo 8/15/2013:

James and I have a new paper out in PLOS ONE where we demonstrate a whole host of unexpected correlations between cultural features. These include acacia trees and linguistic tone, morphology and siestas, and traffic accidents and linguistic diversity.

We hope it will be a touchstone for discussing the problems with analysing cross-cultural statistics, and a warning not to take all correlations at face value.  It’s becoming increasingly important to understand these issues, both for researchers as more data becomes available, and for the general public as they read more about these kinds of study in the media (e.g. recent coverage in National Geographic, the BBC and TED).

One of my favorite bits is the following  (and not only, or even mainly, because they link to one of my posts!):

Everyone knows that correlation does not imply causation, but there are other problems inherent in studies of cultural features.  One problem that is often discounted in these kinds of study is the historical relationship between cultures.  Cultural features tend to diffuse in bundles, inflating the apparent links between causally unrelated features.  This means that it’s not a good idea to count cultures or languages as independent from each other. [...]

Our paper tries to demonstrate the importance of controlling for this problem by pointing out a chain of statistically significant links, some of which are unlikely to be causal.  The diagram below shows the links, those marked with ‘Results’ are links that we’ve discovered and demonstrate in the paper.

For instance, linguistic diversity is correlated with the number of traffic accidents in a country, even controlling for population size, population density, GDP and latitude.  While there may be hidden causes, such as state cohesion, it would be a mistake to take this as evidence that linguistic diversity caused traffic accidents.

Read the whole blog post (and also the paper), if you're interested in things of this sort.

 

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Brandon Valeriano of the University of Glasgow and Ryan C. Manes of the University of Chicago, Illinois. Brandon asked if we could run a bibliography on Cyber Security, and we happily agreed. If anyone else is interested in submitting bibliographies to be archived at the Duck of Minerva, drop us an email.

It is that time of the year again – that time when everyone considers updating their syllabus. So you have an interest in cyber security but have not taken the time to develop a reading list. Well here it is, I have, unfortunately, dived into the topic. The following includes a one day-version and then a more detailed list to can be used to develop a class, graduate seminar day, or to prep for a debate.

(Thanks to Hans-Inge Langø for asking the original question that promoted this post and suggesting a few things I was missing)

Of course I may have left some things out. This is a developing literature so we will update as time goes on. Feel free to  tweet suggestions to @drbvaler. We attach many of our own writings here, mainly because we are a glutton like that but also because our book on Cyber Conflict is not out yet. The premium here, at least for us, is on social-scientific and peer-reviewed articles and books rather than popular speculation. Our goal is to present the entire range of the field, from the cyber threat hype folks, to the more measured reactions, to the cyber skeptics.

Short Version (The Essentials)

“Cyber Pearl Harbor,”New York Times
“War in the Fifth Domain,” Economist

(The book on cyber hype and fear) Clarke, Richard A. and Robert K. Knake. 2010. Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It.  New York: Harper Collins.

(A more measured evaluation) Hersh, Seymour. 2010. “The Online Threat: Should We Be Worried About Cyber War?” New Yorker.

My Perspective

Media and Cyber

Valeriano, Brandon. “Cyberwar and Skyfall: Bond Enters the Digital Age,” Duck of Minerva, 11.10.2012

Public Opinion and Cyber

Valeriano, Brandon and Ryan Maness. “Perceptions of the Cyber Threat,” Duck of Minerva, 1/30/2013

Countering Hype with Evidence

Valeriano, Brandon and Ryan Maness.  2012. “The Fog of Cyberwar: Why the Threat Does not Live up to the Hype,” Foreign Affairs. (11.21.2012) Snapspot

Foreign Policy and Cyber Events

Maness, Ryan and Brandon Valeriano. “Cyber Events Data and Foreign Policy Reactions,” Duck of Minerva, 7/24/2013.

Norms and Cyber

Valeriano, Brandon. “The Cyber House Rules: Justice and Ethics in the Fifth Domain” The Conversation, 7/26/2013

Long Version

Key Books

Nye, Joseph. 2011. The Future of Power. New York: Public Affairs. (quick summary)

Schmitt, Michael. 2013. The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare. NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Center for Excellence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (online version)

Choucri, Nazli.  2012. Cyberpolitics in International Relations. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (summary of book)

Reveron, Derek, ed. 2012. Cyberspace and National Security: Threats, Opportunities, and Power in a Virtual World. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Rid, Thomas. 2013. Cyber War Will Not Take Place. London, UK: Hurst & Company. (summary with links to)

First Cyber Article

Arquilla, John and David Ronfeldt. 1993. “Cyberwar is Coming!” Comparative Strategy. 12 (2): 141–165.

Cyber Hype

Farwell, James P. and Rafal Rohozinski.  2011.  “Stuxnet and the Future of Cyber War.” Survival. 53 (1): 23-40.

“Cool” War

Rothkopf, David. 2013. “The Cool War.” Foreign Policy. 2/20/2013.

Types of Cyber Strategies

Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt, eds. 1997. In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Andres, Richard. 2012. “The Emerging Structure of Strategic Cyber Offense, Cyber Defense, and Cyber Deterrence.” In Cyberspace and National Security: Threats, Opportunities, and Power in a Virtual World. Derek Reveron, ed.  Washington D.C., Georgetown University Press.

Libicki, Martin C. 2009. Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009.

Cyber Weapons

Rid, Thomas and Peter McBurney. 2012. “Cyber Weapons.” The RUSI Journal 157 (1): 6-13.

Best Take on Stuxnet

Sanger, David E. 2012. Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. New York: Random House. (New York Times summary with links)

Cyber War Will not Happen

Rid, Thomas. 2011. “Cyberwar Will Not Take Place.” Journal of Strategic Studies. 35(1): 5-311-28.

Rid, Thomas. 2013 “Cyber Sabotage is Easy” Foreign Policy

Gartzke, Erik. 2013. “The Myth of Cyberwar: Bringing War on the Internet Back Down to Earth.”  Forthcoming, International Security. (working paper; Monkey Cage blub)

Valeriano, Brandon and Ryan Maness. 2013.  “The Dynamics of Cyber Conflict between Rival Antagonists, 2001-2011” (working paper version;  Monkey Cage blub)

Yes it will, but…

Stone, John. 2013. “Cyber War Will Take Place!” Journal of Strategic Studies  36(1): 101-108

McGraw, Gary. 2013. “Cyber War is Inevitable (Unless We Build Security In).” Journal of Security Studies 36 (1): 109-119.

Government Strategy and Reactions

White House.  2011. International Strategy for Cyberspace: Prosperity, Security, and Openness in a Networked World.  May 2011.

Shactman, Noah. 2012. “Darpa Looks to Make Cyberwar Routine with Secret ‘Plan X’” Wired.

Markoff, John and Thom Shanker. 2009. “Halted ’03 Iraq Plan Illustrates U.S. Fear of Cyberwar Risk.“ New York Times Online 8/1/2009,

Brenner, Joel. 2013. “Grey Matter: How to Fight Chinese Cyber Attacks without starting a Cold War.“ Foreign Policy.  March 8, 2013.

Guitton, Clement. 2013. “Cyber insecurity as a national threat: overreaction from Germany, France, and the UK?“ European Security 22 (1): 21-35.

China

Inkster, Nigel. (2013) “Chinese Intelligence in the Cyber Age.“ Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 55 (1): 45-66.

Case Study- pre data Chapter

Valeriano, Brandon and Ryan Maness. 2012.  ”Persistent Enemies and Cybersecurity: The Future of Rivalry in an Age of Information Warfare“ in Cyber Challenges and National Security, edited by Derek Reveron, Georgetown University Press.  Pgs. 139-158.

Data chapter will all Cyber Disputes and Incidents Listed

Valeriano, Brandon and Ryan Maness. “The Dynamics of Cyber Conflict between Rival Antagonists, 2001-2011“ (Under Review)

Securitization

Hansen, Lene and Helen Nissenbaum. 2009. “Digital Disaster, Cyber Security, and the  Copenhagen School.“ International Studies Quarterly. 53(1155-1175).

Ethics

Dipert, Randall. 2010. “The Ethics of Cyberwarfare.“ Journal of Military Ethics. 9(4): 384-410.

Eberle, Christopher. 2013. “Just War and Cyberwar.“ Journal of Military Ethics.  Forthcoming.

Cyber Arms Races and Military Spending

TBD – Nothing decent I am aware of

Other Cyber Articles and Appearances by Valeriano and Maness can be found here.

Image Source

Nicholas Christakis, a medical scientist perhaps best known for his controversial claim (see also here), based on joint work with James Fowler, that obesity is contagious, writes:

The social sciences have stagnated. They offer essentially the same set of academic departments and disciplines that they have for nearly 100 years: sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology and political science. This is not only boring but also counterproductive, constraining engagement with the scientific cutting edge and stifling the creation of new and useful knowledge. . . .

I’m not suggesting that social scientists stop teaching and investigating classic topics like monopoly power, racial profiling and health inequality. But everyone knows that monopoly power is bad for markets, that people are racially biased and that illness is unequally distributed by social class. There are diminishing returns from the continuing study of many such topics. And repeatedly observing these phenomena does not help us fix them.

I have just a couple comments here. I’m no economist so I can let others discuss the bit about “monopoly power is bad for markets.” I assume that the study by economists of monopoly power is a bit more sophisticated than that!

I have studied racial profiling, and I can assure you that this work is not about the claim “that people are racially biased.” I can also assure you that, whatever it is we have learned, it’s not true that “everyone knows” it.

As Duncan Watts has written so memorably, it’s easy to say that everything is obvious (once you know the answer).

Regarding the question of illness being distributed by social class: Is it really true that “everybody knows,” for example, that Finland has higher suicide rates than Sweden, or that foreign-born Latinos have lower rates of psychiatric disorders. These findings are based on public data so everybody should know them, but in any case the goal of social science is not (just) to educate people on what should be known to them, but also to understand why. Why why why. And also to model the effects of potential interventions.

The study of the contagion of obesity is just fine. In fact, I was once part of an NIH panel where where we recommended funding some of this research. But to say that this is the real stuff, and then to dismiss studies of monopoly power, racial attitudes, and variation in disease rates—that’s just silly.

Resources are limited, and I think it’s good to have open discussion about scientific priorities. So I applaud Christakis for sticking out his neck to participate in this debate. Even though I don’t agree with his particular recommendations.

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Consider this a Robin Hanson-style post.

Basic textbook economics says that workers’ wages are determined by marginal productivity. (Here’s a quick explanation from Mankiw intended for a popular audience. Deep in this column you can see Krugman saying the same thing.) Now, one of the major issues in labor economics is to what degree this basic model holds. We know there are all sorts of distortions and strange things going on in the real world. I won’t get into the debate at great length in this post, but, just to get started, I’d recommend you Google and read debates about, e.g,, A) sticky wages, B) whether the output recovery without employment recovery following the great recession showed that many workers had zero marginal product, C) how immigration restrictions are massively inefficient and keep third world wages incredibly low. (I’m not taking a stand here on A or B, though I have endorse C in print and continue to do so.) And of course there’s Frank’s famous paper here and the hundreds of reactions to it.

Many of the responses to my previous post (which purposefully kept the economics simple in order to ask a moral question) have been rather obviously ideological. I discussed a case where I stipulated that a particular worker’s marginal product was extremely low, lower than whatever someone might reasonably consider a living wage, in order to ask whether employers still owe that worker a living wage, even at a net loss to themselves. Many libertarians took that to mean I decisively refuted the Walmart living wage argument, even though I warned them I had not, while many left-wingers had various fits and tantrums.

If you’re on the Left, you might be tempted to believe something like the following: “With the exception of a few disabled people, perhaps, all adult workers are productive enough that their potential employers can hire them at a living wage [however you might define that] and still make a profit.” If you find yourself thinking something like that, ask, did you come to this conclusion after studying labor economics closely, or did you come to it because it would be convenient for your ideology? Unless you define the “living wage” as very low, it would be pretty surprising if this were true. So, for instance, this website defines a living wage for a single adult living alone in the District of Columbia as $13.68/hr, a single adult with one child living as $26.37/hr, and one adult with 2 children as $32.97/hr. Do you think many low-income workers in DC are producing $32.97/hr?* Even in DC, that doesn’t seem very plausible. Is it even plausible to think that all potential employees will produce $13.68/hr? Many low-income workers are dysfunctional, badly behaved, or just not very skilled. Sorry.

If you’re a libertarian or a conservative, on the other hand, you might be tempted to believe that whenever someone gets a low wage, this is because she has low productivity. This is probably often the case. But you don’t have to accept Marxian whack-a-doodle-nomics–you can look at real social science–to see arguments that some workers are getting paid low wages because they have a bad bargaining position or because there is a market or government failure. (C above is just such an example. Sweatshops would be far less sweaty with open borders.) It’s awfully convenient, ideologically, if it turns out that all poorly paid people are just doing low productivity work. But, if you’re going to argue that, you’d better be prepared to answer a string of objections from labor economists who claim that econ 101 marginal productivity theory frequently doesn’t hold in the real world. Libertarians will have an easier time ideologically with this than conservatives, though, since many of them already hold that corporate rent seeking causes market distortions that bias wages down.

Relatedly, Will Wilkinson responds here, in the Economist, making a further case for social insurance over the living wage. Sam Freeman says Rawls rejected the minimum wage:

He [Rawls] thought we ought to get rid of a minimum wage and let the labor market just go as low as it would and let employers just pay two, three dollars an hour if they could and let the government come in and supplement that.

…So he supported – he would support wage subsidies…

So, for all the unfortunate angry mood affiliation and team signaling that’s taking place here, Rawls appears to be on my side on this.

UPDATE: Skoble has a winning comment: “Of course, in DC, many high-income workers don’t produce $32.97/hr either.”

We welcome this guest post from NYU political scientist Patrick Egan.

*****

“Half a loaf is better than none,” goes the saying.  So let’s call the Supreme Court’s pair of rulings yesterday on same-sex marriage what they really amount to: half a loaf for the marriage equality movement.  Yes, U.S. v. Windsor allows the federal government to recognize state-sanctioned same-sex marriages, and it appears that the upshot of Hollingsworth v. Perry will be that gay couples again have the right to marry in California.  But full marriage rights will now exist in only a baker’s dozen of the states; most of the remainder explicitly ban same-sex marriages altogether.   The federal government is no longer forbidden from recognizing same-sex marriages, but is it required to do so?  And what happens to gay couples who marry in one state and move to another?

The fact that Windsor and Perry leave a two-tiered legal regime in place for most gay couples begs an even bigger question: why didn’t the Court simply establish marriage equality as the law of the land?  The five justices making up the Court’s majority in Windsor clearly empathize with gay people and attest that gays and lesbians are entitled to Constitutional protection.  But when given not just one, but two chances to vastly improve the circumstances of gay couples in states that could take decades to extend marriage rights on their own, why did they punt?

The most likely explanation is that the justices who support marriage equality are haunted by the aftermath of decisions like Roe v. Wade, which struck down abortion laws in 46 states when it was decided in 1973.   As shown in the figure below, as the Court deliberated Roe, public opinion trends on abortion (plotted in red) looked awfully similar to recent shifts in attitudes on gay marriage (plotted in blue).  Support for legalizing elective abortion (here measured with a question from the National Opinion Research Center about whether abortion should be legal for a pregnant woman who is “married and does not want any more children”) was rising rapidly, particularly among the youngest generations.  It was not unreasonable to think at the time that Americans were moving toward a national consensus on an issue framed as a matter of personal liberty and gender equality.

Of course, that didn’t happen.  Roe helped catalyze the pro-life movement and moved the abortion debate to the front-and-center of the American political stage.  As shown on the graph, support for legal abortion plateaued at exactly where it was in the Roe era, and  Americans have been deeply divided on the issue for four decades since.  (For more on Roe and opinion trends on abortion, see the excellent chapter contributed by Samantha Luks and Michael Salamone to Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy, a book I co-edited with Nathaniel Persily and Jack Citrin.)

There is hard evidence that at least one of the five justices in the Windsor majority—Justice  Ruth Bader Ginsburg—feels exactly this way about Roe.  A proponent of abortion rights, Ginsburg recently stated publicly that Roe “seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change.”  A narrower decision—perhaps applying only to the Texas law before the Court—would have preserved this momentum, said Ginsburg.  Narrow decisions are exactly what the Supreme Court delivered yesterday, even though legal experts said it had many options at its disposal, including a sweeping ruling striking down all state marriage bans on equal protection grounds.

But might abortion rights and Roe be the wrong analogy to the controversy over gay marriage?   What if instead the proper parallel is interracial marriage—and Loving v. Virginia, the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling this right throughout the nation?   Stanford Law School’s Jane Schacter has noted several similarities between the trajectories of the two issues, including the fact that bans on interracial marriage were being struck down by state high courts in the decades before the issue reached the Court.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving was anything but narrow: it struck down miscegenation laws still on the books in 17 states in 1967.  And as shown in the figure, interracial marriage was anything but popular: only a minority of Americans supported legalizing interracial marriage when Loving was issued—and an even smaller share  “approved” of such marriages.  Nevertheless, public opinion continued to march steadily upward after Loving toward the near-universal levels of acceptance where it stands today.  (In fact, the consensus is so strong that the biennial General Social Survey ceased asking its question about interracial marriage in 2002.)

If interracial marriage is the correct analogy to gay marriage, then justices who favor marriage equality have little to fear from issuing a sweeping ruling.  By contrast, if abortion is the proper parallel, then the careful path pursued by the Windsor majority is the right one.  In my next post, I’ll argue why the former is much more likely than the latter—and thus why in future rulings on gay rights and marriage equality, the Supreme Court can afford to be more bold than it has thus far.

Here are some recent phrases that entered the policy lexicon in the last few years that I absolutely hate – “whole of government” and “game changer.” There is a faddishness to tropes in the policy arena that proliferate, that capture a certain sentiment of the moment that soon become over-used. Earlier, it was “tipping point.” I kind of hated that one too.

These words are useful short-hand. Ah yes, a game-changer, that which changes the game, a dramatic development that upends our understanding of what will transpire. Yet, strung together with other stock phrases, you end up with policy pablum. 2013 was a game changer, and now we are at a critical crossroads. We need a whole of government response to the events of recent months, which represent a tipping point in the events (in Syria, North Korea, Iran, Brazil, Turkey). Gag. We should be offended by such writing, as it demeans the craft of writing, turns policy language in to rote speech.

We do need a common vocabulary. Why do I hate game-changer when words like anarchy and civil society are also bandied about as short-hand? Here is use of the phrase in an otherwise exemplary 2012 study for the National Academies Press on climate change and national security. These references take place within a couple of pages:

We agree with the need for a whole-of-government approach and note that the effort should include improved knowledge and monitoring of changing vulnerabilities as well as of climate trends.

A whole-of-government approach to understanding adaptation and vulnerability to climate change can advance the objectives of multiple agencies, avoid duplication of effort, and make better use of scarce resources.

The intelligence community should participate in a whole-of-government effort to inform choices about adapting to and reducing vulnerability to climate change.

The U.S. government should begin immediately to develop a systematic and enduring whole-of-government strategy for monitoring threats connected to climate change. This strategy should be developed along with the development of priorities and support for research.

What the hell does “whole of government” mean beyond greater inter-agency coordination? Do we need a new phrase for something that is already supposed to be happening? Something about the use of whole of government always seems to imply that it is an inherent good, that there are never downsides of bringing more agencies in to coordinate (as if there are not collective action problems associated with actors with heterogeneous preferences). Maybe asking for all the agencies to work together isn’t always a solution.

Perhaps I’m developing my slow, steady descent into grumpy old man-dom, but I tell my students that when I see these kinds of phrases in their work that they inspire an extremely negative reaction. Why? The point of higher education is to foster critical thinking, the ability of our students to develop a set of concepts and tools to understand the world. The boilerplate, the catch-phrases du jour seem to me the opposite of that. You reach for such words as filler and fluff. Words like anarchy have a richer conceptual underpinning that mean something.

What are the phrases and fad words that infuriate you? Is my reasoning off?

My last two posts have explained what I take to be Rawls’s philosophical project and the main errors in that project. Now I can state in a relatively straightforward fashion why I think libertarians should take Rawls seriously. I’ve explained why in earlier posts, but I weave them together here.

(1)   Historical Accomplishments – libertarians should appreciate Rawls’s great historical accomplishments. He played a major role in reviving political philosophy as a legitimate discipline in the 1960s and 1970s. Second, he saw the need for a systematic alternative to utilitarian politics. Finally, Rawls convinced a great many academics that Marxism was wrong to assert that social order was inevitably a story of conflict until the completion of revolution. One of Rawls’s great insights was that society is a cooperative venture for mutual gain.

(2)   Consequence-Sensitive Deontology – I have repeatedly stressed in my posts the importance of developing a non-utilitarian approach to justice that is nonetheless sensitive to consequences. Rawls helped contemporary moral philosophers see the need for such a theory.

(3)   Contractualism – contractualism is an attractive moral and political theory. And it provides an attractive foundation for liberalism based on the recognition that the norms of political life should be acceptable to all. Rawls was one of the first proponents of the view.

(4)   Institutionalism – Rawls saw that institutional conflicts raise a unique problem above and beyond questions of individual conduct. While Rawls used this point to motivate applying principles of justice primarily to society’s basic structure, allowing him to develop an account of social justice, libertarians also appreciate that moral and economic problems arise at higher levels of social organization. What libertarians can learn from Rawls is that one of these problems is a problem of justice, or so I (controversially) argued here.

(5)   Reasonable Pluralism – Rawls recognized that the free exercise of practical reason leads to systematic disagreement about matters of ultimate importance and that political theory must begin by recognizing this social predicament. Many libertarian theories fail to recognize this critical fact (I have called these mistaken views Enlightenment libertarianisms).

(6)   Public Justification – Respect for persons requires that all instances of coercion be subject to public justification. Rawls brought this idea into clearer focus than anyone in history up to that point. He also made possible Jerry Gaus’s classical liberal account of public reason in The Order of Public Reason, which one prominent review described as “the most complete and rigorous defense of classical liberalism” to date (Kindle version now only $16.50!).

(7)   Liberal Neutrality – Rawlsian political liberalism provides an attractive account of liberal neutrality. Libertarians have always stressed the importance of a non-perfectionist politics (even if they buy into a perfectionist political theory): it is not the business of the state to promote a particular conception of the good. Rawls provides us with a method of justifying such restraints on state power.

(8)   Respect for Religion – Rawls’s last work “The Ideal of Public Reason Revisited” (pdf here) reveals his most mature thoughts on the place of religion in liberal institutions. His view is far more tolerant and thoughtful than views of religion held by many libertarians, who cannot see religious belief and practice as a rational phenomenon. I think Rawls’s view can be marshaled to defend religious liberty, or so I argued here. I argue the same in more detail in my forthcoming book.

(9)   Liberalism – Rawls defended liberalism against all comers. He placed an enormous amount of weight on the importance of liberal liberties, arguing that they could not be sacrificed for any reason save to protect some from the others. Even if this is too strong, libertarians should be able to appreciate Rawls’s emphasis.

(10)  Neo-Rawlsian Libertarianism – Rawls’s work made possible classical liberal interpretations of his theory, some of which are philosophically persuasive. I have outlined my own preferred version here. John Tomasi has the most well-known account.

It won’t do to simply ignore or trash Rawls. Libertarians have a lot to learn from him.

Passageiros entram em ônibus privado na Av. Javier Prado. [Oscar Durand para NextCity]

O NextCity, que já havia defendido a desregulamentação do transporte coletivo no ano passado, acaba de postar uma história bastante completa sobre o sistema de Lima, que desregulamentou o transporte em 1991, removendo barreiras de entrada para competidores privados assim como controle de preços das passagens.

Manifestantes oferecem flores aos policiais durante o protesto na Av. Paulista [O Globo]

Esta é a continuação da minha própria postagem, uma mensagem para o outro lado dessa bizarra sociedade polarizada. Infelizmente quem leu a primeira e gostou provavelmente não vai gostar dessa, e vice versa.

Assim, ao Estado que está reprimindo os manifestantes pela redução da passagem pelo Brasil inteiro: o que poderia ser uma forma de atender às demandas de grande parte da população está polarizando a sociedade. Muitos de nós solidarizamos pela causa global: transformar cidades em espaços mais fáceis de se locomover, mais seguros, com um transporte coletivo eficiente.

O Prefeito Haddad fala que não vai dialogar em uma situação de violência, explica que é para manter o controle. Se fosse assim, não vai dialogar em momento algum, já que a própria existência do estado pressupõe o uso da força para coagir o povo. Veja as fotos na imprensa, todas elas. Quem mais faz uso da violência? Manifestantes com flores, bombinhas e cartazes ou policiais militares com fuzis, cacetetes e bombas de gás lacrimogênio? Haddad utiliza uma retórica falha, ainda mais para um grupo de pessoas que provavelmente foi sua maior base aliada durante as últimas eleições.

O uso da força é uma tentativa deliberada para manter o status quo, obviamente falhado. Haddad abriu uma nova licitação para renovar os contratos, mas muda alguma coisa? Do meu ponto de vista, nada. Continua sendo um sistema que privilegia um determinado grupo de empresas, proibindo empreendedores a entrar no mercado de transporte coletivo. Criminaliza perueiros, vans e caronas compartilhadas dos pobres da periferia, quando o sistema atual é totalmente deficitário no atendimento dessas pessoas. Manter as concessões é manter a autoridade estatal sobre o transporte coletivo, que conseguiu, através séculos de monopólio sobre o sistema, iludir a população de que transporte é algo que deve ser centralizado, com custos socializados. A descentralização e desregulamentação do sistema não entra em pauta nem na mídia e nem pelos manifestantes, que esqueceram que podem reivindicar o direito de eles mesmos transportarem passageiros de forma mais barata e eficiente, hoje proibido.

O uso da força no nível que o Haddad lidou com a situação vem pelo medo de aceitar a derrota. Medo de aceitar que o Estado é um incompetente na gestão do transporte público e que o sistema de concessões não funciona. Medo de aceitar que os próprios cidadãos teriam capacidade de fazer o sistema funcionar sem a sua autoridade ao invés de com ela.

E assim usam equipamentos militares contra jovens desarmados, generalizando-os como vagabundos e vândalos. Conheço muita gente que foi nessas passeatas. Na maioria são apenas jovens sonhadores, cansados com o fracasso do sistema atual, que não vêem outra alternativa senão uma manifestação para chamar atenção. Esse cenário deve ser compreendido para procurar diálogo e convergência, ao invés de espancá-los e prendê-los assim como fazemos com delinquentes e verdadeiros criminosos. Um político influente poderia facilmente se colocar à disposição dos organizadores, reunindo todas as pessoas que fossem necessárias para conversar e resolver o problema, antes mesmo das pessoas saírem às ruas. Mas Haddad decide pela repressão, uma briga que nunca trará respeito, muito menos consenso.

Funcionários do Metrô removem vidro quebrado por manifestantes durante protesto na avenida Paulista [Folhapress]

Aos revolucionários que estão manifestando pela redução da passagem do ônibus pelo Brasil inteiro: o que poderia ser uma forte mensagem de conscientização está polarizando a sociedade. Muitos de nós solidarizamos pela causa global: transformar cidades em espaços menos direcionados para o automóvel individual, mais verdes, com mais opções de transporte coletivo, de maior qualidade e preços mais justos.

Mas o trabalhador que está preso no ônibus por causa da manifestação - que muitas vezes tem sua passagem paga pelo empregador e se importa mais com seu emprego do que pelo preço da passagem - não está feliz. O paciente (ou o médico) que está tentando chegar no hospital muito menos. E nem vou falar da ala direitista que simplesmente acha que vocês são o demônio. Onde a primeira ideia era melhorar o trânsito e lutar por uma causa comunitária, em primeira instância piora o trânsito e deixa a comunidade triste. Suas reivindicações provavelmente tem apoio de todos, mas não os meios que vocês estão usando para atingi-las.

Em primeiro lugar, seria interessante um primeiro entendimento de porque o preço das passagens aumentou, evitando reações imediatistas de simplesmente gritar pela sua redução. Entendam que governo municipal proíbe qualquer tipo de inovação e concorrência em transporte coletivo, favorecendo e subsidiando um grupo fechado de empresas. Vans, perueiros e redes colaborativas de caronas compartilhadas são vistas como crime, não como solução. Além disso, planeja as cidades incentivando transporte individual (o que mais ocupa espaço nas vias) ao limitar densidades demográficas, zonear atividades de bairros e focar suas obras infraestruturais em viadutos e largas avenidas, todas oferecidas gratuitamente aos usuários com custos socializados. Na questão financeira, para realizar estas grandes obras infraestruturais o Governo Federal simplesmente imprime mais dinheiro, diminuindo o valor de cada nota que você possui e, assim, contribuindo ainda mais para que todos os preços (não só do ônibus como o do tomate) aumentem.

Por que não conscientizar a população destas distorções, mudando o sistema para que gere benefícios de longo prazo para a cidade e a população? Onde vocês estão quando os perueiros lutam pelo seu direito de trabalhar? Quando os moradores das regiões centrais barram novos empreendimentos que poderiam ajudar a adensar seus bairros, evitando o alastramento da periferia? Quando são sugeridas políticas para taxamento de congestão? Ou quando Guido Mantega se colocou no comando de uma política inflacionária irresponsável? Não podemos agir com o coração antes de parar para estudar o sistema atual, suas consequências e possíveis soluções. Atacar os problemas que afetam nossos interesses diretos sem um entendimento dos interesses alheios é irresponsável e improdutivo (e a mensagem também vale para quem vê vocês como malucos que só querem destruir a cidade). Garanto que não teremos mudanças de longo prazo enquanto houver provocações pessoais daqueles que tem opiniões diferentes ao invés de buscar uma convergência, e enquanto soluções práticas e economicamente sustentáveis não entrem no debate para que as ideias sejam respeitadas.