Amor Incondicional

Amor incondicional

A me colocar

Nos confins de minha consciência,

Entre o sentir e o pensar.

Sangue do meu sangue,

Porque pensamos tão diferente?

És a ferida que amo.

És o reduto da desigualdade que o Brasil proclama.

És a injustiça fardada em beca.

És, a um só tempo, meu repúdio e minha meca.

Em 2014 vou torcer para a Argentina!

"Sociologia do Futebol - Richard Giulianotti (2010)"

"O autor de sátiras romano, Juvenal, foi quem primeiro desenvolveu a tese de que oligarquias políticas podiam ser sustentadas fornecendo pão e circo (panem et circenses) para as massas (...) Umberto Eco pergunta a respeito de sua Itália nativa: 'A luta armada é possível no domingo da Copa do Mundo? É possível ter uma revolução em um domingo de futebol?' (...) Em Portugal, durante a revolta para depor o regime de Salazar, em 1974, o número de pessoas presentes nos jogos de futebol foi reduzido à metade - indicando que envolvimento com esportes e agitação política eram duas práticas mutuamente excludentes" (GIULIANOTTI, 2010, p.32).

Para além de invocar, de maneira leviana, a lógica panis et circenses, gostaria de pontuar que a reedição do "maracanazo" me faria sorrir de orelha a orelha. 

Há vários críticos ao pensamento de Juvenal, argumenta Giulianotti, e o futebol em alguns momentos foi uma empresa com externalidades positivas sobre o campo político. Durante o apartheid sul africano,   o futebol teve suma importância para a organização dos africanos, que tinham grandes dificuldades de se reunir para debater os rumos de seu país. Outro argumento é de que "o jogo jamais consegue eliminar o conflito causado pelas grandes desigualdades de riqueza. Em algumas ocasiões, os clubes de futebol foram organizações de vanguarda para promover a democratização do Brasil" (ibid, p.32).

Portanto, não obstante seja simplificação grosseira afirmar que o futebol é o ópio do povo, creio ser possível argumentar que há uma associação inerente entre os resultados da seleção nacional e o sentimento que os indivíduos de um país têm de suas instituições.

O futebol não é pão e circo, mas, muito menos, um instrumento de conscientização política. 

Quando respondemos às questões de forma binária geralmente nos equivocamos, Aristóteles iluminou nossa realidade mostrando que devemos refletir todas as questões buscando o caminho do meio.

Mas, se tivesse (E TENHO) que me posicionar sobre qual desses extremos caracteriza o esporte em suas relações sociais, fico com a primeira alternativa, e, como corolário:

En 2014 soy hincha de argentina!

(43 -49) I bring my tale to a close

This week I’ll post miscellaneous comments about Robinson Crusoe’s final chapters:

1)               Economies of scale:

“I had now been on the island twenty-seven years. My man Friday had been with me about two years, and these had been the happiest of my life. I had everything to make me comfortable and happy”.

If Robinson and Friday had worked together, we should except economies of scale, for their average cost to product should diminish as two workers can handle harvesting much more efficiently and so forth. However, since Friday became Robinson’s servant rather than his friend, and wouldn’t let his master do any of the hard work, at the end we cannot argue that there were scale efficiency gains.

2)               Keynes and Functions of Money:

“And so, on the 19^th of December, 1687, we set sail for England. I had been on the island twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days. I took on board with me the money that had been by me so long and had been so useless”

When Robinson kept this money I found it extremely curious. That made me think about the intrinsic value of money that Keynes has pointed, and how people valuate money independently of the goods it may buy. However, once Robinson left the island all that gold (money) that he kept made sense, for Keynes has pointed other functions of money, including its role as store of value over time.

3)               Brazil, Sugarcane and Tobacco

“By chance I learned that my plantation in Brazil was doing well. The man whom I had left in charge of it had made much money from the tobacco he had raised. He was an honest man, and when he heard that I was still alive he wrote me a long, kind letter (…) he also sent me a large amount of money”

Prior to being cast away on the Island, Robinson lived in Brazil for a short while. Actually, the reason he was cast away was exactly an attempt to buy slaves for his production in Brazil. He bought some land and noticed that it was very fertile and it would be easy to grow sugarcane and tobacco. Twenty-eight years later his predictions were met.

If only economists were as good in predictions as our friend Robinson…

4)               Idleness doesn’t suit Protestantism nor Robinson:

“I was now a rich man. I might have settled down to a life of ease and idleness; but such was not my wish. Soon I was wandering from one place to another, seeing much more of the world. I had many surprising adventures, I assure you; but I need not tell you about them. You would think any account of them very dry reading compared with the story I have already related. And so, looking back with regretful memories to the years which I spent on my dear desert island, I bid you a kind good-bye.”

Endereço novo:

Av. dos Economistas, s/n - Cidade Universitária - Recife, PE

Uma gota de Gini

Caviar tem gosto de bala perdida.

(38 - 42) Friday and Asymmetric Information.

Notes on Robinson Crusoe, chapters 38 through 42

Microeconomics isn’t an unrealistic / useless science. It’s true Varian’s Intermediate Microeconomics  textbook addresses market failures vaguely, but I believe we must walk before we can run, and, therefore, it didn’t bother me to think the economic world surrounded by hypothesis for a while prior to aiming at the complexity of human being. I’m not saying my gun is loaded and ready to shoot, but, little by little, as I keep trying to merge different analytical tools or scientific viewpoints (if you will) and widen the analytical framework in which I view the world, I dare take a look at the human being as irreducible.

Anyway, Varian’s last chapter discusses one sort of market failure: Asymmetric Information. That’s the only chapter that loosen the Perfect Information hypothesis, for Asymmetric Information means that buyer and seller aren’t equally informed about the product in transaction; one would except that seller knows much more information than buyer about the good’s quality.

Asymmetric Information leads to Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard, but, as these concepts aren’t met by Robinson Crusoe through chapters 38 and 42, I shan’t talk about them.

A different implication of Asymmetric Information, however, comes into Robinson’s mind this week: the role of incentives.

“We turn now to a slightly different topic, the study of incentive systems. As it turns out, our investigation of this topic will naturally involve asymmetric information (…) The central question in the design of incentive systems is ‘How can I get someone to do something for me?’ ” (Varian, 2006, p.641).

That’s exactly what Robinson was asking himself the day before he met Friday, I.E., Thursday (Friday was named after the day he was saved by Robinson).

Precisely, after having a queer dream in which Robinson saved a savage from being eaten and he became his servant, Robinson started wondering whether that could actually happen. 

What kind of incentive would be necessary so that his servant would put maximum effort into work, or, in other words, what would cause a servant to by loyal and help him sail back home?

“If I could only get hold of a savage and teach him to love me, things might turn out just that way. He must be one of their prisoners and I must save him from being eaten; for then it will be easy to win his friendship”

One and half year later Robinson’s dream came true. Everything happened like he dreamt and Friday became his loyal servant.

The asymmetry of information regards knowledge about the ocean’s local conditions. Even though Robinson was a good sailor, he didn’t know the tide patterns at that particular region, actually he didn’t even know where he was. Therefore, Robinson figured that a savage would be necessary so he could get back home. However, also did he know, he needed a savage that was willing to help him, or else the savage could take him back to his tribe. He needed a servant / friend.

Saving a savage from death, thought Robinson, was the only incentive that could make a savage work for him with his maximum effort. 

He figured it right, for Friday would do everything to please Crusoe from that day on…

3 gotas narcísicas

Três feridas narcísicas à racionalidade econômica:

Copérnico; e a Terra não é mais centro do Universo.

Darwin; e o Homem não é mais centro da criação.

Freud; e a consciência não é mais centro da razão.