Reflexión de dia

"The ultimate constraint that we all face is knowledge -- what we know and don't know. The knowledge problem is pervasive and by no means trivial as hinted at by just a few examples. You've purchased a house. Was it the best deal you could have gotten? Was there some other house you could have purchased that 10 years later would not have needed extensive repairs or was in a community with more likeable neighbors and a better environment for your children? What about the person you married? Was there another person who would have made for a more pleasing spouse? Though these are important questions, the most intelligent answer you can give to all of them is: "I don't know."

Walter Williams

(Bueno si, ya se, luego de leer estas palabras y pensar un poco..parecen obvias..pero creo que olvidamos nuestra ignorancia casi todo el tiempo...)

La injusticia de la desigualdad actual

A propósito del último libro de Amartya Sen, Alejandro Gaviria destacaba las críticas en la reseña de Herbert Gintis (en la página de Amazon.com del libro):

"I have two major criticisms of this book. The first is that Sen has not updated his model of the individual or his critique of the neoclassical model of economic man since his important contributions of thirty or forty years ago. You would not discover by reading this book that there has been a virtual revolution in economic thought concerning human nature starting in the 1980's with behavioral game theory, experimental economics, and more recently, neuroeconomics. We can now go far beyond Sen's rather diffident and anemic argument that people are not always completely selfish. Perhaps Sen considers this new research deficient in some way. Or, perhaps such empirical findings do not belong in the same league as the venerable Western and Indian philosophers he quotes so liberally. We simply do not know what Sen thinks about this, or what his motives were to ignore this rich vein of research of obvious relevance to his argument.

My second problem is a bit more fundamental. I am extremely skeptical concerning the whole approach to justice that has dominated analytical philosophy since Rawls' seminal A Theory of Justice. Sen critiques John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, G. A. Cohen and other left-liberal thinkers on grounds of the impossibility of perfect justice. However, the real problem with these thinkers is that they believe justice is a matter of the distribution of wealth and income. This is not at all what justice means to most voters and citizens, who rather follow Robert Nozick in believing that justice consists in individuals getting that to which they are entitled by virtue of legitimate production, exchange, and inheritance. Serious thinkers must find the idea that ideal justice consists of complete social equality to be deeply repugnant.

In this view, justice is not fairness at all. Nevertheless, we can accept an entitlement view of justice and yet recognize that poverty, not some abstract inequality of income and wealth, is a real enemy of social wellbeing, not because it is unfair but because it is a preventable disease, like malaria, that we should not permit to inflict the young and innocent. Full social equality, then, is not a lamentable unattainable ideal state, but rather a thankfully unattainable monstrosity because it presupposes the absence of personal accountability and effectivity.

Sen's critique of the Rawlsian tradition is anemic and trivial. For this reason I find this book deeply disappointing. It is altogether too genteel in dealing with a philosophical tradition that deserves to be bitterly criticized, not gently reproached for its excessive zeal in the pursuit of an unattainable ideal."

Resulta curioso el giro que ha dado Gintis. En los 60s se le consideraba cercano al marxista y ahora termina elogiando(?) o reinvindicando las ideas de Nozick, uno de los mas famosos pensadores libertarios.

Sin embargo, fácilmente la idea de justicia de Nozick sirve para condenar la desigualdad existente en la mayoría de sociedades humanas en la actualidad y por lo tanto en un motivadoro o justificador del cambio. La distribución de riqueza actual NO esta basada para nada en "legitimate production, exchange, and inheritance"

Existieron y existen toda una variedad de elementos institucionales (leyes,subsidios directos-indirectos,falsos derechos de propiedad, etc) que han provocado la injusticia y desigualdad actual en la mayor parte del mundo por no hablar de guerras, actos de conquista y parecidas acciones de violencia.

No es cierto que el status quo de la distribución de riqueza que tenemos sea resultado de las diferencias naturales de los individuos ni que haya sido un proceso legítimo en la mayoría de los casos(y no creo que Nozick estuviera pensando en defender el status quo. El quería establecer una teoría de justicia que superara lo que percibía como errores de Rawls.).

El caso de la distribución de la tierra en Colombia es ilustrativo en este aspecto.

A nivel mundial este cuentazo de la "propiedad intelectual" es el ultimo acto de robo institucionalizado

No seré yo quien defienda el igualitarismo simplista y autoritario de Rawls. Y no lo haré. Pero vale la pena destacar que la injusticia actual en la distribución de riqueza también es fácilmente condenable con la teoría de justicia "libertaria" de Nozick.

P.D.1: Por cierto, las reseñas de Gintis en Amazon se han vuelto famosas. Aqui se pueden leer todas.

P.D.2: En este texto Gintis explica como abandonó el socialismo autoritario.

Uribe y Nuñez

Efectivamente,como escribe Alejandro Gaviria, Uribe ha manifestado varias veces su admiración por Nuñez y por sus ideas. Y es que las similitudes entre Uribe y Nuñez son varias:

-Hacen carrera en el partido liberal(Nuñez fue incluso liberal rádical) pero terminan llegando al poder y gobernando con conservadores y como conservadores. Es decir ambos llegan al poder como disidentes del liberalismo.

-Vienen de provincia (Nuñez de Cartagena, Uribe de Antioquía) y paradojicamente terminan afianzando el centralismo.

-Llegan en períodos que en los electores piden autoridad, orden, "frenar el caos"(en el caso de Nuñez el caos se suponía que era producto del federalismo a ultranza establecido por la constitución de ríonegro y las constantes guerras civiles entre los dos partidos). Uribe trae la seguridad democrática, Nuñez trajo la constitución de 1886 para reemplazar la constitución de ríonegro

- A pesar de salir de un partido tradicional como el liberal, y de aliarse con conservadores, terminan fundando partidos nuevos (Nuñez, el partido nacional. Uribe, el partido de la U) -Ambos reforzaron el poder presidencial. Nuñez cambiando la constitución y las leyes. Uribe, haciendose reelegir En la historia oficial colombiana o por lo menos en la historia conservadora y de centro, Nuñez aparece como un salvador de la unión del país, como alguien que logró el orden.

Recordará la historia a Uribe de esa forma o como el que puso punto final a nuestras instituciones repúblicanas?

Congreso desobiente

Considero positivo que el congreso haya "desobedecido" a Uribe.

Fue un ejemplo de independencia de la rama legislativa, como pocos en Colombia y muchas democracias.

Seguramente algunos dirán que simplemente la ambición burocrática o de poder de la clase política en el congreso fue lo que produjo ese resultado.

Pero en realidad el "sistema" (el estado de derecho, la república, la división del poder público) funcionó como debía: la idea de las ramas del poder público era dividir el poder, crear competencia, hasta cierta rivalidad aprovechando las ambiciones de poder inherentes a muchas personas.

Fue precisamente la ambición de poder de la oposición y de parte de la coalición de gobierno lo que motivó o incentivó la rebelión.

Y así es como se supone que debe funcionar el sistema.

Ese unanimismo o un exceso de "armonía" entre las ramas del poder público siempre es sospechoso y mas propio de regímenes autoritarios/totalitarios.

Lo sucedido esta semana, en palabras de varios parlamentarios, efectivamente (Dios lo quiera) es el entierro del referendo re-releeccionista.

También creo que es un ejemplo para el vecindario boli-chavista donde el ejecutivo tiene sometido totalmente a las demás ramas. En en países como Venezuela o Ecuador este acto de "desobediencia" ante intenciones re-eleccionistas del ejecutivo es impensable.

Tal vez si efectivamente el referendo se hunde en el congreso en los próximos meses, este acto de desobediencia parlamentaria será recordado como un hito en la historia política del pais al impedir el avance del caudillismo y autoritarismo.

Homo homini lupus

Recientemente he estado pensando cuanta razón tenía Hobbes al afirmar que "el hombre es un lobo para el hombre"

Entre mas analizo los fenomenos sociales y/o el comportamiento de las personas mas llego a la conclusión que parecería que estuvieramos programados para explotarnos los unos a los otros.

Gran parte del juego político y gran parte del comportamiento social de las personas creo que se explica por una necesidad de obtener beneficios materiales(o de otra indole) de los demás.

Mi hipotesis es que simplemente seríamos una especia egoísta y depredadora, amante del poder y el control. Pero eso sí, con una gran capacidad de disimulo y engaño para esconder nuestras verdaderas intenciones de explotar a los demás.

Mi posición no pretender legitimar la desesperanza (aunque a veces encuentro díficil no caer en ella). Mas sí pretende ser realista a la vez que esceptica sobre gran parte de las motivaciones reales, muchas veces inconscientes, de nuestro comportamiento.

Cita del dia

"be wary of the notion that smart people can solve any problem if they just try hard enough."

David Ignatius comentando sobre la vida de Robert McNamara, fallecido el dia de ayer.

Silenciando escepticos

Tal parece que la administración Obama ha intentado silenciar a un escéptico de las políticas para controlar el calentamiento global.

El escéptico llamado Alan Carlin (ver su página aquí) escribió un informe contradiciendo las creencias ya establecidas sobre el calentamiento global.

Vale la pena leer el informe. Es largo, un poco técnico, pero sin duda controversial.

El origen del Estado de Bienestar Europeo

No fue por razones ideológicas como muchos piensan:

"During the long boom period, 1945-73, there was high sustained economic growth, particularly in France, Germany, and Italy, which were then the economic motors of Western Europe. Over those years, practices developed of essentially bribing the workers. This had a clear political background. The European right was politically discredited by its association with fascism (except for in Britain, which hadn’t had collaboration). The left, and particularly the far left, was discredited because of its association with communism. In country after country, there was a leftward move, an alliance between Christian Democratic parties, with the emphasis on democracy and Christianity and a social welfare model, rather than the traditional pro-business conservative policies of the American Republicans of the 1950s-60s, let alone the blood-and-soil rightwing fascism of the type of many interwar political parties.
These parties established pro-labor social welfare policies in an effort to woo organized labor away from the left, and in particular away from communism. This was also the nature of the social welfarism that the Catholic Church strongly pushed in the 1950s-60s in Christian Democratic parties. Christian Democrats dominated Italy in what was in effect a one-party state in that period; they were extraordinarily influential in Germany, the Benelux countries, and France.
A series of social models were established in which, in effect, the real cost of providing high levels of social welfare was ignored precisely because this was a period of general economic growth. Moving cheap labor from the countryside to the towns, catch-up borrowing of American industrial technology, the ready availability of investment capital, partly from America—all helped to ensure cheap energy prices and major economic growth.

This model came to a grinding halt in the 1970s, a decade of real crisis in Europe. There was political crisis—the revolution in Portugal, instability in Greece, major problems in the transfer of authority in Spain culminating in an attempted coup d’etat in 1981—and also serious social and economic problems, both east and west of the Iron Curtain. Because the communist states, which were relatively inefficient as well as brutal, had nevertheless also benefited from the long boom. But neither the Eastern nor Western European model worked well in the 1970s. The result was a decade of high levels of social problems, economic difficulties, and political instability.

The 1970s also saw, partly as a result, an unwillingness within Europe to confront the international situation. Americans complained in particular about a dramatic under-investment by the Europeans in their defense, their reliance on the American Cold War umbrella, and a lack of certainty of where they were politically."

El origen del Estado de Bienestar Europeo puede entonces entenderse como un subproducto de situaciones de la guerra fría donde las elites europeas venían una enorme amenaza del comunismo y a la vez podrían darse el lujo, gracias al dinero y "protección " de los gringos, de no tener que invertir tanto en defensa preventiva contra la Unión Sovietica.

Curiosidades de la democracia

1.Mientras en Estados Unidos la crisis económica parece haber contribuido al triunfo de la centro-izquierda, en Europa parece estar contribuyendo a la derecha, incluso la extrema.

2. Dice la revista Semana: "Tanto Lucho Garzón como Gustavo Petro y Carlos Gaviria gozan de mayor popularidad en los estratos 5 y 6, que entre el resto de la población. En cambio, el que sí gusta en los estratos 1 y 2 es el ex ministro de Defensa Juan Manuel Santos, donde alcanza el 64 por ciento de imagen favorable. "

Las mentiras de la guerra fría y la política

Navengando en el Wall Street Journal me encontré esta curiosa e inquietante noticia:

"The past can never be predicted, and perhaps never more so than when it comes to the German left. Two years ago, we learned that Nobel Laureate Günter Grass -- the literary scourge of all things fascist, especially America -- had himself been a member of the Waffen SS. Now comes another zinger that casts the radical political and social upheavals of the late 1960s in new and revealing light.

The historical surprise concerns a turning point whose ripple effects were felt in Europe and beyond. On June 2, 1967, a West German policeman fatally shot an unarmed, 26-year-old literature student in the back of his head during a demonstration in West Berlin against the visiting Shah of Iran. Benno Ohnesorg became "the left wing's first martyr" (per the weekly Der Spiegel). His dying moments captured in a famous news photograph, Ohnesorg galvanized a generation of left-wing students and activists who rose up in the iconic year of 1968. What was a fringe soon turned to terrorism.

To them his killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was the "fascist cop" at the service of a capitalist, pro-American "latent fascist state." "The post-fascist system has become a pre-fascist one," the German Socialist Student Union declared in their indictment hours after the killing. The ensuing movement drew its legitimacy and fervor from the Ohnesorg killing. Further enraging righteous passions, Mr. Kurras was acquitted by a court and returned to the police force.

Now all that's being turned on its head. Last week, a pair of German historians unearthed the truth about Mr. Kurras. Since 1955, he had worked for the Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police. According to voluminous Stasi archives, his code name was Otto Bohl. The files don't say whether the Stasi ordered him to do what he did in 1967. But that only fuels speculation about a Stasi hand behind one of postwar Germany's transformative events.
Mr. Kurras, who is 81 and lives in Berlin, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he belonged to the East German Communist Party. "Should I be ashamed of that or something?" He denied he was paid to spy for the Stasi, but asked, "What if I did work for them? What does it matter? It doesn't change anything." Mr. Kurras may be the monster of the leftist imagination -- albeit now it turns out he is one of their own."

No conocía sobre ese personaje ni sobre ese asesinato ni su aparente relación con las protestas y la "radicalización" de los años 60s.

No es nada nuevo en realidad, para cualquiera con medianos conocimientos de historia, la perversidad y maquiavelismo de los regímenes comunistas en la guerra fría (y de los regímenes capitalistas tambien).

Pero la noticia me produjo o mejor, volvió a producirme una reflexión: ¿Cuántos hechos políticos y sociales aparentemente espontaneos o no planeados de la guerra fría en realidad erán obra de alguno de los bandos siguiendo una maquiavelica estrategia y agenda política?

Cuanto de la historia política y social "oficial" es una farsa, un tinglado montado por gobiernos y movimientos políticos?

Y peor aún, cuantos de los hechos que suceden hoy en día son así, diseñados para manipular a las masas en favor de una u otra ideología?

Jaime Garzón y Uribe

Videos Jaime Garzón opinando sobre Uribe hace 12 años:

La mentira de la semana de Samuel Moreno...

ya quedo desmentida...

Hasta se inventa datos metereológicos con tal de ocultar la ineptitud de la burocracia distrital.

La tecnocracia "desinteresada" y "altruista"

La tecnocracia obamista no tiene problemas apoyar mas y mas rescates a Wall Street pero obvio...si han recibido millones y millones de dolares de ese sector económico.

Tecnocracia desinteresada y altruista (comparada con todos estos políticos corruptos)..si claro..solo en los libros de texto de economía.

Campaña "Porte su dosis de personalidad"

"Liberal Colombiano" se una a la campaña llamada "Porte su dosis de personalidad" para defender el derecho al uso de estupefacientes ("drogas") y en particular para evitar que el congreso apruebe la ley promovida por "el caudillo" para penalizar la dosis personal.

Aunque personalmente no apoyo el uso de drogas, es natural para mí defender el derecho de cada individuo a consumir lo que le parezca.

Vale la pena recordar lo que significa la libertad leyendo esta cita de Ben Moreell:

"It must be obvious that liberty necessarily means freedom to choose foolishly as well as wisely; freedom to choose evil as well as good; freedom to enjoy the rewards of good judgment, and freedom to suffer the penalties of bad judgment."

Por que Uribe continua arriba en las encuestas?

Por la torpeza de la oposición al regalarle todo el discurso anti-farc, que es centrista, no derechista.

El paternalismo Uribista

Alejandro Gaviria escribe sobre el paternalismo del caudillo:

""Aspiro a ser presidente sin vanidad de peor… Miro a mis compatriotas hoy más con ojos de padre de familia que de político”, escribió hace ya siete años el entonces (y todavía) candidato Álvaro Uribe Vélez. El presidente Uribe dejó entrever desde su primera campaña sus inclinaciones paternalistas, su idea de despojarse de los disfraces vacuos del poder y consagrarse a la tarea noble de gobernar a Colombia con la dedicación obsesiva de un padre de familia. El paternalismo no es un subproducto de un estilo meticuloso de gobierno. Todo lo contrario: forma parte de la esencia de la doctrina uribista.
En el debate sobre la penalización de la dosis personal, el Gobierno ha reiterado sus pretensiones paternalistas. “Si una persona atenta contra su salud, el Estado debe protegerla aun contra su voluntad”, dijo esta semana el ministro Fabio Valencia Cossio. “Yo veo el tema de la legalización más como padre de familia que como Presidente. Tengo alguna inclinación más de sentimiento de padre de familia que de raciocinio frío”, ha dicho el mismo presidente Uribe. Pero el paternalismo gubernamental no termina con el tema de las drogas. Poco a poco, la política social ha ido adquiriendo un énfasis paternalista. Cada semana, en los municipios de Colombia, se reparten cheques acompañados de homilías en diminutivo por parte de un Gobierno que aspira a convertirse en una figura paternal, necesaria para muchos ciudadanos. El asistencialismo, sobra decirlo, es una manifestación natural del paternalismo."


Creo que el paternalismo no es realmente de Uribe sino de las mayorías colombianas.
Por eso tenemos un estado cada vez mas grande, mas regulador, mas entrometido en la vida de los ciudadanos,etc.
Uribe es, tal vez, el resultado de una tendencia iniciada ya hace tiempo y que marca efectivamente un punto de quiebre en el declive del liberalismo como ideología.
Por lo demás, el fenomeno caudillista tipo Uribe tambien se esta viviendo en Venezuela, Ecuador y Bolivia.
Y es un modelo viejo en america latina, solo que en Colombia era extraño. Aquí nunca afianzó el caudillismo (por las razones que dió Hommes en su columna de hoy) como en otras partes de america latina....por algo aquí intentaron matar a Bolívar cuando comenzaba a convertirse en Dictador..hasta que llego Uribe.
Aunque tal vez recordando un poco si hubo fenonemos caudillistas antes como Rafael Uribe Uribe (coincidencialmente familia de este Uribe según me parece haber leído en alguna parte) y Nuñez....pero aún asi el caudillismo siempre fue menor aquí en por ejemplo en Venezuela...
La solucíón, en mi opinión, no se logrará simplemente sacando del poder a los uribes (podría venir otro igual o peor)..sino rescatando las ideas y principios liberales...pero esas ideas y principios son extraños para gran parte de la clase educada de nuestro pais hoy en dia...empezando por la tecnocracia que es paternalista hasta decir no mas..

Testimonios sobre la causa de la crisis

"After Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan reduced interest rates at the start of the decade, banks borrowedAfter Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan reduced interest rates at the start of the decade, banks borrowed inexpensively to buy long-term assets including subprime mortgage securities, said Michael Aronstein, Oscar Gruss & Son Inc.’s chief investment strategist.
“When liquidity became free, five or seven years ago, that changed the Street: You could trade $500 million of anything in a second,” said Shawn Matthews, chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. in New York, a unit of Cantor Fitzgerald LP. "

Fuente: Bloomberg

Se acaba la obamanía?

Esta gráfica, del sitio web de la encuestadora Rasmussen, muestra en verde la tendencia de los que apoyan fuertemente a Obama y en rojo los que desaprueban fuertemente.

Como se ve en la gráfica los que lo apoyan fuertemente han caído unos 10 puntos desde el 20 de Enero(día de la posesión de Obama) pero los que los desaprueban fuertemente han aumentado casi 20 puntos.

En conclusión la luna de miel de Obama parece que fue bien corta (todavía no ha cumplido el hito de "los 100 días") dado un aumento tan importante de los que lo desaprueban fuertemente.

y según Rasmussen los datos completo de apoyo y rechazo son: "Overall, 56% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far. Forty-three percent (43%) disapprove."

El problema con los economistas

Ya salió un paper explicando porque la mayoría de los economistas no previeron la crisis.

La hipotesis no es nueva:"The economics profession appears to have been unaware of the long build-up to the current worldwide financial crisis and to have significantly underestimated its dimensions once it started to unfold. In our view, this lack of understanding is due to a misallocation of research efforts in economics. We trace the deeper roots of this failure to the profession’s insistence on constructing models that, by design, disregard the key elements driving outcomes in real-world markets. The economics profession has failed in communicating the limitations, weaknesses, and even dangers of its preferred models to the public. This state of affairs makes clear the need for a major reorientation of focus in the research economists undertake, as well as for the establishment of an ethical code that would ask economists to understand and communicate the limitations and potential misuses of their models.......We believe that economics has been trapped in a sub-optimal equilibrium in which much of its research efforts are not directed towards the most prevalent needs of society. Paradoxically self-reinforcing feedback effects within the profession may have led to the dominance of a paradigm that has no solid methodological basis and whose empirical performance is, to say the least, modest. Defining away the most prevalent economic problems of modern economies and failing to communicate the limitations and assumptions of its popular models, the economics profession bears some responsibility for the current crisis. It has failed in its duty to society to provide as much insight as possible into the workings of the economy and in providing warnings about the tools it created. It has also been reluctant to emphasize the limitations of its analysis. We believe that the failure to even envisage the current problems of the worldwide financial system and the inability of standard macro and finance models to provide any insight into ongoing events make a strong case for a major reorientation in these areas and a reconsideration of their basic premises."

Justin Wolfers comenta sobre el paper en el blog de Freakonomics:"The claim is that academic macroeconomists have become mired in a particularly fruitless equilibrium, in which each is engaged in the search for ever-greater levels of formal elegance, at the expense of empirical relevance. There’s definitely something to this.Today’s macroeconomists write for other macroeconomists. If you aren’t using the right tools, you aren’t part of the club."

En otras palabras se convirtió en jueguito de status para ver quien sabe es mas formal, mas elegante matemáticamente. Hay que tener en cuenta que ese jueguito puede tener graves consecuencias para la sociedad (un magister en economía ( y MBA y Phd en estadística) fue el creador de la "formula que mató a Wall Street")

El problema tambien parece que tiene que ver con el "sesgo de publicación":

"The more I look at empirical results, the closer appear the flaws of a data-centric worldview. Data never speak for themselves, and the process of their interpretation is every bit as political as other forms of analysis. But when you analyze data, you focus on the minutae of your dataset, so you're further divorced for the subject matter. You can make all sorts of crazy claims that would never slide if you were forced to present your views in a clear manner in front of a lay-audience remotely familiar with the subject matter.

The problem is that empirical claims are generally accepted or rejected on the basis of statistical tests meeting a certain treshold. But creating such a treshold gives researchers a pole to vault; when they manage to do so, they publish, when they don't, they do not publish. Instead of statistical tests revealing anything about the state of the world, they only reveal what researchers could torture the data into saying.

Brad DeLong makes the case that virtually all economic hypotheses are wrong, and the results from other meta-analyses are also worrying."


El economista James Galbraith (hijo de John Kenneth) es aún mas duro en su crítica:

"So what is modern economics about? It seems to be, mainly, about itself: The AEA meets to celebrate the importance of its members, their presence in high public positions, their influence in foreign lands, and the winning of the Nobel Prize. Female and black members have won the right to organize sessions about gender and race--thus domesticating some of those who might otherwise complain. Radicals and Keynesians, on the other hand, appeared only on panels organized separately, by an alphabet soup of splinter associations. What was therefore most conspicuously missing from this meeting of America's premier social science organization, was any actual discussion of economic ideas.....Leading active members of today's economics profession, the generation presently in their 40s and 50s, have joined together into a kind of politburo for correct economic thinking. As a general rule--as one might expect from a gentleman's club--this has placed them on the wrong side of every important policy issue, and not just recently but for decades. They predict disaster where none occurs. They deny the possibility of events that then happen. They offer a "rape is like the weather" fatalism about an "inevitable" problem (pay inequality) that then starts to recede. They oppose the most basic, decent, and sensible reforms, while offering placebos instead. They are always surprised when something untoward (like a recession) actually occurs."

Sin embargo, me parece que la mejor crítica viene de Nassim Taleb:

"We are good at fitting explanations to the past, all the while living in the illusion of understanding the dynamics of history.

My claim is about the severe overestimation of knowledge in what I call the " ex post" historical disciplines, meaning almost all of social science (economics, sociology, political science) and the humanities, everything that depends on the non-experimental analysis of past data. I am convinced that these disciplines do not provide much understanding of the world or even their own subject matter; they mostly fit a nice sounding narrative that caters to our desire (even need) to have a story. The implications are quite against conventional wisdom. You do not gain much by reading the newspapers, history books, analyses and economic reports; all you get is misplaced confidence about what you know. The difference between a cab driver and a history professor is only cosmetic as the latter can express himself in a better way.

There is convincing but only partial empirical evidence of this effect. The evidence can only be seen in the disciplines that offer both quantitative data and quantitative predictions by the experts, such as economics. Economics and finance are an empiricist's dream as we have a goldmine of data for such testing. In addition there are plenty of "experts", many of whom make more than a million a year, who provide forecasts and publish them for the benefits of their clients. Just check their forecasts against what happens after. Their projections fare hardly better than random, meaning that their "stories" are convincing, beautiful to listen to, but do not seem to help you more than listening to, say, a Chicago cab driver. This extends to inflation, growth, interest rates, balance of payment, etc. (While someone may argue that their forecasts might impact these variables, the mechanism of "self-canceling prophecy" can be taken into account). Now consider that we depend on these people for governmental economic policy!......

If you look closely at the data to check the reasons of this inability to see things coming, you will find that these people tend to guess the regular events (though quite poorly); but they miss on the large deviations, these " unusual" events that carry large impacts. These outliers have a disproportionately large contribution to the total effect.
Now I am convinced, yet cannot prove it quantitatively, that such overestimation can be generalized to anything where people give you a narrative-style story from past information, without experimentation. The difference is that the economists got caught because we have data (and techniques to check the quality of their knowledge) and historians, news analysts, biographers, and "pundits" can hide a little longer."

La ideología "desarrollista" de los economistas

Recientemente escribí sobre el desarrollismo y coincidencialmente me encontré hoy con esta excelente reflexión de Murray Rothbard:

" In recent years economists and journalists alike have been heavily emphasizing a new concept—“growth,” and much eco­nomic writing is engaged in a “numbers game” on what per­centage, or “rate of growth,” “we” should have next year or in the next decade. The discussion is replete with comparisons of the higher rate of country X which “we” must hurriedly counter, etc. Amidst all the interest in growth, there are many grave prob­lems which have hardly been touched upon. First and foremost is the simple query: “What is so good about growth?” The econ­omists, discoursing scientifically about growth, have illegitimately smuggled an ethical judgment into their science—an ethical judg­ment that remains unanalyzed, as if it were self-evident. But why should growth be the highest value for which we can strive? What is the ethical justification? There is no doubt about the fact that growth, taken over as another dubious metaphor from biology, “sounds” good to most people, but this hardly constitutes an ade­quate ethical analysis. Many things are considered as good, but on the free market every man must choose between different quantities of them and the price for those forgone. Similarly, growth, as we shall presently see, must be balanced and weighed against competing values. Given due consideration, growth would be considered by few people as the only absolute value. If it were, why stop at 5 percent or 8 percent growth per year? Why not 50 percent?

It is completely illegitimate for the economist qua economist simply to endorse growth. What he can do is to contrast what growth means in various social conditions. In a free market, for example, every person chooses how much future growth he wants as compared to present consumption. “Growth,” i.e., a rise in future living standards, can be achieved, as we have implicitly made clear throughout this volume, only in a few definable ways. Either more and better resources can be found, or more and better people can be born, or technology improved, or the capital goods structure must be lengthened and capital multiplied. In practice, since resources need capital to find and develop them, since technological improvement can be applied to production only via capital investment, since entrepreneurial skills act only through investments, and since an increased labor supply is rela­tively independent of short-run economic considerations and can backfire in Malthusian fashion by lowering per capita output, the only viable way to growth is through increased saving and investment. On the free market, each individual decides how much he wants to save—to increase his future living standards —as against how much he wants to consume in the present. The net resultant of all these voluntary individual decisions is the na­tion’s or world’s rate of capital investment. The total is a reflec­tion of the voluntary, free decisions of every consumer, of every person. The economist, therefore, has no business endorsing “growth” as an end; if he does so, he is injecting an unscien­tific, arbitrary value judgment, especially if he does not present an ethical theory in justification. He should simply say that, in a free market, everyone gets as much “growth” as he chooses to obtain; and that, furthermore, the people as a whole benefit greatly from the voluntary savings of others who do the saving and investing."

He notado que un gran número de economistas aún los que se las dan de mas cientificos y alejados de ideologías, típicamente asumen que el "crecimiento económico" no es un valor mas sino que es algo deseado por TODOS los individuos dentro de una sociedad.

Pocas veces realizan un análisis realmente objetivo sin que recomienden aquello que en su opinión llevará a un mayor crecimiento.

Esta es la ideología que me gusta llamar "desarrollismo" aunque este termino es usado para nombra una teoría económica del subdesarrollo tercermundista.

Esta el Estado declinando?

Eso dice Martin van Creveld, profesor de historia de la Herew University y autor de el libro "The Rise and Decline of the State":

"Somewhere between 1945 and 1975, the type of political construct known as the state and characterized, above all, by the separation between the ruler and the organization peaked and may have gone into decline. As previously, this process was not the making of individual rulers, however powerful and...benevolent. It was not as if the people at the top suddenly became less power-hungry or more willing to let the people at the bottom do their own thing. Once again, the well-nigh global character of the changes indicates that they were produced by anonymous forces over which scarcely anybody could exercise any control. And in relation to which, indeed, the entire question of morality becomes almost irrelevant.

Perhaps the most important factor, and one that is taken so much for granted that it is often overlooked, was the introduction and subsequent proliferation of nuclear weapons. For the first time in history, nuclear weapons permitted those who possessed them to annihilate each other and, of course, those who did not possess them as well. To date all attempts to change this fact by discovering some kind of antidote have failed; indeed they scarcely even got off the ground. Nor do I think that the current plans to build a ballistic missile defense system are going to make a difference in this respect. While this is not the place to argue the case in detail, against so-called "rogue states" such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran it is not needed. Against a first or even second class power with a full nuclear arsenal at its disposal it is useless.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons has affected war, and large scale war as waged by the state in particular, in two opposed ways. First, to the extent that the opponent also possessed a second strike capability it turned warfare into suicide, thus negating Clausewitz’s definition of it as a continuation of policy with an admixture of other means. It used to be that states went to war in order to extend or defend their interests. By definition, though, the interests of a state are less important than its existence--indeed it is only that which exists that can have interests in the first place. To put it in a less abstract way, it is hard if not impossible to think of an "interest" that will justify putting Washington D.C., or New York, or Moscow, or Beijing, or New Delhi, or Tel Aviv, at risk of instant and complete annihilation. As Bernard Brodie wrote as long ago as 1946, nuclear weapons cannot, should not, be used. If they have to be used, then they have already failed in their purpose which can only be to deter. As a result, whereas during the centuries before 1945 war was a major instrument used by states to increase their power at the expense of other states, since then it has been waged almost exclusively between, or against, non-nuclear states; in other words, such states as were not first or even second rate players in the international system.

The second reason why nuclear weapons have had a dampening effect on major interstate war is psychological. As the late Moshe Dayan once said, nothing is more exciting for men than war; as he well knew but did not say, nobody is more likely to command the admiration of women than warriors. In so far as nuclear weapons make it impossible to resist and can indeed eliminate entire societies in the twinkling of an eye, however, there is nothing exciting about them. By the speed with which it kills and destroys even more than by its sheer power, nuclear war simply does not offer any room for the exercise and display of such qualities as pride, honor, courage, determination, endurance, and self sacrifice. Briefly, it does not provide scope for heroism; whereas from the time that the first woman gave birth to the first baby (thus demonstrating to men how useless they really are) heroism has been what war is all about.

Concomitant with the retreat of major interstate war states also began dismantling some of the systems with which, since 1850 or so, they have built up in order to hold their populations in check and secure their loyalty. To a large extent, their doing so was a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict which brought on the Energy Crisis and plunged the world into a recession. Recession and unemployment overburdened the welfare system. This in turn led to inflation; and inflation in turn meant that the state had to rob some of its citizens in order to maintain payments to the rest. Even where rising oil prices did not constitute a major problem, Austrian economics--and here I agree with the ideas presented by the Mises Institute--would have predicted that the very success of the welfare state in creating more extensive education systems, more expensive health services, more old people, and more single mothers would cause its size to increase and its cost to skyrocket. By 1980 even Switzerland, that bastion of sound money, had a budget deficit amounting to more than 5 percent of GNP."

No estoy convencido de esta teoría sobre el declive del Estado. Las causas que menciona Van Creveld aunque importante no me parece que tengan la suficiente fuerza para generar un proceso descentralización que lleve a un declive del Estado.

Incluso creo que lo peor del dominio del Estado en realidad esta por venir.

Links variados

1. Las triquinuelas de Obama I

2. Las contradicciones del Estado Colombiano (por un lado pico y placa y mayores impuestos de rodamiento, por otro lado subsidios para prestamos de compra de vehiculos)

3. Una nueva palabra en el diccionario: Obamatons

4. Un cambio estructural detras de la perdida masiva de empleos en Estados Unidos?

5. Mutualismo.org, blog libertario anti-capitalista

La prosperidad es cuestión de valores?

Eso parece concluir la regresión dibujada en estas gráficas publicadas por el economista William Easterly (experto en desarrollo):


Sin embargo, la existencia de "valores individualistas" no implica necesariamente la existencia de menos estado. De hecho, la evidencia histórica sugiere que todos los paises que se desarrollaron tuvieron cierto tipo de intervencionismo estatal. Aunque claramente no al estilo sovietico o cubano.

De todas formas, la busqueda del desarrollo o del crecimiento económico es un simple argumento utilitarista que usa un tipo de "liberalismo" economicista que en realidad no interpreta la esencia del ideario liberal/libertario.

La visión liberal esta basada en la justicia, en la moral, en que la libertad es valiosa por sí misma, no como un mero instrumento para alcanzar mayor prosperidad, desarrollo (u otro objetivo si fuera el caso). Es el gran problemas del liberalismo utilitarista como lo explicaba Murray Rothbard:

"For whereas the natural-rights libertarian seeking morality and justice cleaves militantly to pure princi­ple, the utilitarian only values liberty as an ad hoc expedient. And since expediency can and does shift with the wind, it will become easy for the utilitarian in his cool calculus of cost and benefit to plump for statism in ad hoc case after case, and thus to give principle away."

Claudia Lopez quiere el centro

Claudia Lopez escribió otra columna brillante explicando que la mejor (yo diría que la menos mala) opción presidencial en el 2010 sería el centro no la derecha uribista ni la izquierda "revolucionaria" (yo la llamaría estatista-chavista).

Lo mejor es que Claudia Lopez efectivamente entiende la conformación de las diferentes fuerzas políticas y la realidad de sus posiciones:

"El Polo Democrático es una amalgama mayoritaria de socialdemócratas que se la dejaron montar de la suma del clientelismo anapista, el Moir anticapitalista y la minoría comunista. A los primeros, lo único que les importa es llenarse los bolsillos y la ambición con Bogotá, y los segundos siguen creyendo que la revolución viene en el Sumapaz y son expertos en ubicar una figura pública reputada que los represente sin asustar. Por eso reeligieron a Carlos Gaviria.

El congreso del Polo concluyó que su gran contribución política es liderar un frente anti- uribista, ni siquiera antirreeleccionista, porque les gusta la reelección de Chávez en Venezuela y la de Carlos Gaviria dentro del Polo. Un partido que se gasta tres días para llegar a esa sesuda conclusión y que elige una directiva incapaz de representar a sus mayorías internas no tiene ningún chance de representar las mayorías del país....

De otra parte, lo que llaman uribismo es una amalgama de diferentes derechas: la vieja y neoconservadora, el ala política del paramilitarismo, lo más variopinto del clientelismo y muchos que se niegan a ver o se resignan a todo lo anterior. La mayoría vive de la imagen, de la burocracia y de los contratos del gobierno Uribe, de declararse enemigos de las Farc y de recitar que adoran la seguridad democrática, haciendo caso omiso de las violaciones que se cometen en su nombre.

La captura de instituciones como el DAS por paramilitares con el resultante asesinato de dirigentes sindicales y sociales; la criminalización y persecución a la oposición, a los medios de comunicación y a las Cortes por denunciar los vínculos de miembros de la coalición de gobierno con los narcoparamilitares; y el asesinato de cientos de inocentes para presentarlos como guerrilleros muertos en combate, son algunos de los crímenes cometidos bajo la seguridad democrática, pese a lo cual hay quienes la quieren volver política de Estado, sin decir ni pío al respecto, y sin asumir responsabilidad política o judicial por esos hechos."

Me pregunto quien representa el centro o la alternativa a estas dos fuerzas: Fajardo, Rafael Pardo, Mockus?

Otra mentira de Obama

Otra mentira que le pilla al nuevo gran líder del mundo libre, Obama I

Actualización: David Brooks comenta lo que esta sucediendo con la administración de Obama:

"President Obama has concentrated enormous power on a few aides in the West Wing of the White House. These aides are unrolling a rapid string of plans: to create three million jobs, to redesign the health care system, to save the auto industry, to revive the housing industry, to reinvent the energy sector, to revitalize the banks, to reform the schools — and to do it all while cutting the deficit in half."

La hipocresía gringa sobre el TLC

La hipocresía gringa en acción.

Para los que creen que las razones de los democratas para oponerse al TLC tienen algo ver con motivos humanitarios.

Por si acaso, vale la pena aclara que ese tratado, aunque tiene sus aspectos positivos, realmente no es libre comercio y por el contrario incrementa el proteccionismo con mas "propiedad intelectual" a medicinas por ejemplo.

Creo que en últimas es mejor oponerse a ese tratado, mal llamado de "libre comercio".

Pensamientos liberales del dia

"... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ..."

-- Benjamin Franklin


"The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good."

-- Fredrich August von Hayek

Links variados

1. Tio Sam necesita que el dragón le siga prestando

2. La receta del desastre: la formula que mató a Wall Street

3. Keynes no era Keynesiano

4. El origen del termino capitalismo

Recordatorio del dia

"Banks, at least the behemoths, were public-private partnerships before the crisis. Deposit insurance, access to the Fed's lending, and the implicit (now explicit) government guarantee for banks "too big to fail" all constituted a system of financial corporatism. It must be ended not extended."

GERALD P. O'DRISCOLL JR en el Wall Street Journal

Que es lo que esta haciendo Obama y la Fed?

Jeffrey Sachs lo explica de manera fácil:

"President Barack Obama’s economic team is now calling for an unprecedented stimulus of large budget deficits and zero interest rates to counteract the recession. These policies may work in the short term but they threaten to produce still greater crises within a few years. Our recovery will be faster if short-term policies are put within a medium-term framework in which the budget credibly comes back to balance and interest rates come back to moderate sustainable levels. "

Pero en realidad solo se esta aplicando "continuismo de políticas" como lo explica el mismo Sachs:

"Looking back to the late 1990s, there is little doubt that unduly large swings in macroeconomic policies have been a major contributor to our current crisis. The lessons of the high inflation of the 1970s had supposedly chastened policy makers against trying to fine-tune the economy. The quest for never-ending full employment had contributed to high inflation in that decade, which required years of economic pain to wring out of the system. Monetary policies thereafter were supposed to be “steady as she goes,” not trying to smooth out every fluctuation and business cycle in the economy.

During the decade from 1995 to 2005, then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan over-reacted to several shocks to the economy. When financial turbulence hit in 1997 and 1998—the Asian crisis, the Russian ruble collapse and the failure of Long-Term Capital Management—the Fed increased liquidity and accidentally helped to set off the dot-com bubble. The Fed eased further in 1999 in anticipation of the Y2K computer threat, which of course proved to be a false alarm. When the Fed subsequently tightened credit in 2000 and the dot-com bubble burst, the Fed quickly turned around and lowered interest rates again. The liquidity expansion was greatly amplified following 9/11, when the Fed put interest rates down to 1 percent and thereby helped to set off the housing bubble, which has now collapsed.

We need to avoid reckless short-term swings in policy. Massive deficits and zero interest rates might temporarily perk up spending but at the risk of a collapsing currency, loss of confidence in the government and growing anxieties about the government’s ability to pay its debts. That outcome could frustrate rather than speed the recovery of private consumption and investment. Deficit spending in a recession makes sense, but the deficits should remain limited (less than 5 percent of GNP) and our interest rates should be kept far enough above zero to avoid wild future swings...................

Most important, we should stop panicking. One of the reasons we got into this mess was the Fed’s exaggerated fear in 2002 and 2003 that the U.S. was following Japan into a decade of stagnation caused by deflation (falling prices). To avoid a deflation the Fed created a bubble. Now the bubble has burst, and we’ve ended up with the deflation we feared! Panics end badly, even panics of policy; more moderate policies will be safer in the medium term. "

Una nueva crisis o la prolongación de la actual se esta gestando con las medidas que se han venido tomando en ya casi dos años.

"Hecha la ley.........."

"Hecha una ley estupida....hecha la trampa"

El Estado con sus permanentes prohibiciones solo termina convirtiendonos en "delincuentes" que creamos negocios clandestinos, "underground", en el "mercado negro".

Las prohibiciones absurdas son el refugio de una clase política autoritaria y sin imaginación.

Palabras anti-Farc del dia

Nada menos que del auto-proclamado marxista Jose Saramago, premio nobel de paz:

"Que si el secuestro y la muerte son los métodos para cambiar la sociedad, las Farc no nos ofrecen más que lo que el poder ha venido haciendo siempre, a lo largo de la historia: ejercer fuerza contra los débiles. Actuar como en las guerras medievales, como en todas las guerras, en las que mueren los soldados rasos de un lado y otro y arrasan por donde van pasando, no es ninguna buena señal de futuro. Con esta base, ¿qué garantía de respeto por el ser humano presentan? Si en el futuro tuvieran capacidad para gobernar el Estado, ¿lo harían manteniendo el secuestro y la muerte como línea de actuación? ¿Para eso es necesaria una revolución? ¿No es eso lo que el poder hace en tantos lugares del mundo? ¿No actúan de forma tan criminal como Bush? ¿Qué diferencia hay entre los secuestros de Guantánamo, las guerras preventivas contra Irak, las torturas de las cárceles secretas y lo que ellos hacen? ¿Que unos son estado y otros grupos militarizados? A los muertos, secuestrados y arrasados, ¿cómo se les explica que uno es terrorismo de estado y otro terrorismo revolucionario? Yo no puedo."

Sobre los sistemas de aseguramiento de salud

"As John Stossel goes over in Bad Medecine (21 SEP 2007, NY Sun), insurance is the worst way to pay for medical care invented. Prior to the war-time subsidies via tax-code, Americans looked after their own health care directly. Most individuals went uninsured and some purchased forms of what today would be considered 'catastrophic care' plans, although most would fall under the 'accidental death and dismemberment' concept of insurance. Health insurance, itself, while not unknown was not widely used and the need for individuals to understand their own health limited the utilization of health practitioners and medications to chronic diseases or immediate ailments. It should be noted that even the Influenza Epidemic did not cause a rush to 'health insurance', even with the death toll that came with it. By requiring individuals to pay their own way, health care costs were minimized and, yes, often at the expense of long-term health. This did not prevent overall life expectancy to continue to rise even without 'health insurance'. Today the cost of overhead to the 'health insurance' system is entirely due to the 'insurance' part and not the health part. Actual costs to the individual for actual doctor treatment time and not paying for paperwork has changed very little in America. What has changed is the need to keep and manage health insurance records, fill out forms, undergo third party governance of what is and is not good for one's health and, generally, time and effort spent in trying to keep track of all of this. That overhead has now changed the system itself to a document management system that, as a minor function, also delivers a little health care."

Nunca había caido en cuenta del fenomeno que menciona la ultima parte que de este texto.

Indudablemente nuestros sistemas de aseguramiento en salud requieren tal nivel de burocracia y papeleo que el objetivo parece haberse distorsionado.

Pensamiento liberal del dia

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."

Ayn Rand

Sobre el individualismo

El individualismo frecuentemente es confundido con egoísmo o con vivir de forma asocial o incluso anti-social.

No es el caso. Individualismo simplemente implica respecto por la dignidad del individuo, por sus derechos.

En realidad es el colectivismo el que es anti-social. Como lo explica Charles Johnson:

"Individualism is not a philosophical rationale for antisocial attitudes or for indifference or hostility toward your fellow creatures. It is the collectivist, not the individualist, who sees human beings as naturally truculent creatures who don’t care enough about each other to get along peacefully and who need to have plans for collaboration forced on them from the top. Promising social harmony and security, collectivism delivers dissonance and violence.

Individualists believe in individualism precisely because we believe that human beings can and should be both social and civilized to each other at the same time—that community and social life don’t require shoving people around or bullying them into following one big plan. What Brooks fails to see is how—individually—we can peacefully, freely, and naturally form communities, institutions, and invisible social bonds as we make our way through the world."

Los tres mayores problemas económicos del pais

Alejandro Gaviria en la revista Dinero resume los que el cree son los tres mayores problemas económicos del pais: falta de empleo, mala calidad de la salud pese a aumento de gasto y rezago en la infraestructura y/o falta de ejecución del gobierno en ese frente.

A mi juicio las posibles causas de estos tres problemas (no entró a juzgar sin en realidad son los tres mayores) son respectivamente:

1. Para la falta de empleo:

• Distorsiones en el mercado laboral que crean barreras de entrada para la mano de obra no calificada, encarecen los costos de contratación muy por encima de la productividad real e imponen rigideces en la contratación.
  
• Subsidios impositivos al capital que incentivan la sustitución de trabajo
• Aumento del salario real por encima de la productividad debido a factores como la devaluación del dolar (que ya se revirtió) y aumentos del salario mínimo por encima de la inflación (aunque en el último año no sucedió así)
• Aumento demográfico en las ciudades debido al desplazamiento de campesino por la violencia en el campo
  

2. Para el mal sistema de salud:

• Sistema capitalista (es decir que promueve la concentración de capital) corporativista semi estatal, semi-privado, que entrega enorme poder de negociación al Estado y a las EPS privadas con respecto a profesionales de la salud y pacientes.
• Poco poder de negociación de pacientes impide mejoras reales en productividad y calidad
• Corte Constitucional activista solo busca aumentar el gasto y solucionar el problema vía coerción sin tener en cuenta productividad, restricciones presupuestales. Salud como un "derecho"
• Dada la falta de empleo, sistema contribuitivo esta subfinanciado lo que hace que regimen subsidiado tenga que financiarse con mas dinero del presupuesto

3. Rezago en infraestructura y falta de ejecución:

• "Rezago en infraestructura" se percibe ahora como un problema y no antes debido a necesidad reciente de competitividad en comercio exterior. Políticas economicas proteccionistas y de sustitución de importaciones en decadas pasadas (al menos desde los años 30) propiciaban desarrollo "hacia adentro" a las zonas de alta concentración demográfica (Bogota, valle de aburra, cali y valle del cauca). Productos de exportación como cafe y petroleo tenían en el caso del cafe una ventaja de marca y en el caso del petroleo si se construyó la infraestructura (oleoductos). Flores tambien tienen ventaja geográfica (sabana de bogota especialmente apta) y se transportan por avión.
• Dueños del capital no quieren trasladar estructuras productivas cerca de las costas por los costos que implica. Prefieren "socializar costos" de infraestructura trasladandoselos al Estado, es decir a los contribuyentes
• Estado colombiano apenas esta contruyendo capacidad técnica de ejecución de obras de infraestructura. Antes no se requería.
• Luego de la venta de gran parte empresas públicas, del fin del seguro social, de la privatización de empresas de infraestructura (electricidad,agua,telefonía) clientelismo y corrupción se ha concentrado en presupuesto de obras y en los puestos de los organismos de control. Construcción de infraestructura sigue politizada y poco técnica.
  

"Por que lloran los niños?"

"Bienaventurados los niños porque ellos heredaran la deuda nacional":

La mejor defensa de mercado...

que he leído hoy:

"A lot of global growth during the boom came in countries where the government owned or influenced the domestic banking sector and thus influenced the domestic allocation of credit. And policies that kept exchange rates lower than they otherwise would also indirectly encouraged private investment in those countries export sectors as well as discouraging investment in the export sectors of other countries. Governments were playing a significant role in the allocation of capital even before there was any talk of nationalizing the financial sector of key G-7 countries. Those who attribute the growth of the past several years solely to the market miss the large role the state played in many of the world’s fast growing economies. Conversely, those who attribute all the excesses of the past few years to the market miss the role that governments played in financing many of those excesses"

Bueno en realidad es una verdad que los propagandistas del estatismo no quieren reconocer: la crisis actual no se ha originado en un mercado libre sino en un mercado intervenido por el Estado o donde este ha actuado asignado recursos y tomando decisiones económicas.

Por qué tantos jovenes no encuentran trabajo?

En la edición de mañana el diario Portafolio publica una noticia sobre el desempleo entre los jovenes (18 a 26 años):

"La tasa de desocupación en este rango etáreo llegó a 28,9 por ciento en el 2006. Los jóvenes están en el peor de los mundos del mercado laboral: son casi la mitad de los desempleados y no alcanzan a ser la cuarta parte de los ocupados.Según las últimas cifras del Dane, del trimestre agosto-octubre del año pasado, la tasa de desempleo nacional fue de 10,8 por ciento mientras que la de los jóvenes fue de 19,9 por ciento. Los ocupados en todo el país sumaron 17,6 millones, de los cuales, 3,9 millones eran menores de 26 años."

El tema ni siquiera es exclusivo de jovenes pobres aunque a estos los afecta aún mas el tema del desempleo:"La tasa de desempleo entre los jóvenes pobres era de 28,9 por ciento, mientras que la de los jóvenes ricos fue ligeramente superior a 18 por ciento."

Mis preguntas:
Cuales son las causas de esto?
En que esta fallando la educación o para que esta sirviendo tanta inversión en educación si entre 1/5 a poco menos de 1/3 de los jovenes no consigue trabajo?
En que esta fallando las regulaciones del mercado laboral?

El precio mínimo del trabajo no estará muy alto para incentivar contratar trabajadores con poca experiencia como son los jovenes?

Las implicaciones de este fenomeno podrían ayudar a explicar tanta delicuencia y la persistencia del conflicto armado en Colombia.

Si el desempleo en Colombia ya de por si es altisimo, para los jovenes es alarmante.

Colombia es el pais del absurdo.

Colombia es el pais del absurdo.

Al paso que va la gasolina extra va a ser mas barata que la corriente.Ayer la refinería de cartagena anunció que le bajará 600 pesos a la extra (ya le había bajado 1000 pesos en Enero) quedando así los precios(de refineria no de gasolinera que incluye los margenes del mayorista, de la gasolinera y los impuestos):

3.956,53 la corriente
4.056,53 la extra

Solamente 100 pesos de diferencia vale la mejor calidad de la gasolina extra?

Por supuesto que no.

La gasolina corriente debería bajar con respecto a la extra para reflejar su menor calidad.

Pero esto es Colombia.......

Sobre las revoluciones

Esto escribe Yoani, del blog Generación Y:

"Mientras se preparan extensos dossiers sobre los cincuenta años de la Revolución Cubana, pocos se preguntan si lo celebrado es el cumpleaños de una criatura viva o sólo el aniversario de algo que ocurrió. Las revoluciones no duran medio siglo, les advierto a los que me preguntan. Terminan por devorarse a sí mismas y excretarse en autoritarismo, control e inmovilidad. Expiran siempre que intentan hacerse eternas. Fallecen por querer mantenerse sin cambiar."

Pareciera que Yoani propone alguna especie de revolución permanente.

Pero creo que el problema de las revoluciones es dos:

1. El intentar un gran cambio rapidamente siempre estará destinado al fracaso. Y como los revolucionarios no quieren fracasar se ven obligados a usar mas y mas la coerción. Todos los cambios reales requieren tiempo y suceden muchas veces de forma sutil e imperceptible en el corto plazo.

2. Las "revoluciones" generalmente buscan acceder al poder para cambiar radicalmente una sociedad. Usualmente no buscan redistribuir o devolver el poder a los ciudadanos. Por lo tanto se vuelven autoritarias y conservadoras.