Marcos Lisboa wrote that the reforms of the Brazilian State, in the 1990s, were ‘institutional reforms that sought to strengthen the impersonal mechanisms of the state at the service of the common good’
When Machiavelli wrote Lourenço II, around 1512, a treaty that analyzed the characteristics of principalities and their rulers of the time, which became a world literary classic with the book The prince, He did not write about an ideology or how political actions and governments should work. He wrote about the nature of the political leaders of the time. Nicholas Machiavelli wrote and described the reality.
However, today, those who have conduct and produce actions like it described, are called “Machiavellian”, as if Nicholas had published an ideology or a manual of how to achieve and maintain power. Faced with the stupid nature of humans, unfortunately, this is what became directly or indirectly the provocative book of the sixteenth century.
This reality, at the time and, nowadays, is sustained, paraphrasing and contradicting Rousseau, as above, the stupid nature of the human being. Rather, it is adopted a foundation to emphasize any pre-judgment of the reader with an initial design made by Robert Musil in his brief rehearsal “on stupidity”: Those who venture today to talk about stupidity in a way run the risk of ruining themselves, which can be interpreted as a presumption and even as a disturbance of contemporary development.
Musil also points out that “prefers to admit my weakness from stupidity: I don’t know what it is. ” I thus use the same way not to conceptually limit stupidity, but, as Robert did, I seek to bring provocations to delimit, yes, the first nature of what has long been conducting the Brazilian state And why we are so locked before the trajectory of human and institutional improvement.
Starting from the beginning: the state does not exist. Formal institutions, public organizations, none of this exists. What is there are people. Professor Lúcia Helena Galvão brilliantly weaved this fundamental provocation in the middle of 2023: “Nature makes no jumps, and there is no way to change humanity. Change institutions? Institutions, legal entities, are fantasies. What really exists is humans. Changing humanity without changing the values of each human being, one by one, is a utopia, it is crazy that will never happen. We are always expecting legal entities, institutions, a change, when we ourselves, we do not propose to change our life values, it is an illusion. ”
Paraphrasing, then, Rousseau with Thomas Sowell who brought us that “a first lesson of the economy is scarcity ”, I bring: The nature of man is scarcity; The nature of man is ignorance. From scarcity, ignorance, stupidity, advance to stiffen the provocation: what they once described as the “7 capital sins”, seeing this article, was someone, in fact, describing the soul and the human spirit: Gula, greed , lust, wrath, envy, laziness and pride – here, the nature of men.
Thus, for a second part of this rambling that brings an obvious answer to every complaint of us, tax -paying citizens: Why does politics look like chaos? Why do we generally have poor public services? Why is so much time in everything we are going to do in public agencies? Why is a place in day care? Why are we in the worst positions in education rankings? Why so much privilege and stewardship to state members?
For, here is the nature of those who governs and lead state institutions and, at the end of the day, has the ability to define our lives, for the immense power it has. And what makes all this serious is that all this stupidity is sustained by money taken from wage earners, workers, traders, businessmen, domestic, masons and butchers.
At the end of the day, we understand why Douglass North came to the conclusion, in summary, analyzing the state’s institutional role in the economic system, which developed countries are those that were able to build institutional arrangements that guarantee economic development. These “institutional arrangements” are political-administrative structures, limitation norms, control regulations, instruments of segregation of powers, protection of individual freedoms and private property, etc., which are capable of limiting, mastering and resolving human stupidity when in the face of state power.
In other words, Marcos Lisboa wrote that the reforms of the Brazilian state, in the 1990s, were “institutional reforms that sought to strengthen the impersonal mechanisms of the state at the service of the common good. ”
While the fruit does not mature, here we come to a rational encounter for a reform in search of impersonal and impartial institutional and institutional arrangements, mechanisms, and impartial devices that are capable of prevailing over human nature, which is not good. Still, as Lisbon narrated: “Institutional construction requires weights and balances. And it requires, above all, the capacity for self -restarting to ensure the freedoms of all. ”
Or, if you prefer, as Roberto Campos answered to Roberto D’Ávila, when asked if he did not believe people: “No, I prefer to believe in institutions. The construction work of the institutions is much more important than the work of exaltation of people ”.
* Rodrigo Zara was mayor of Conquest (MG), is a political consultant and postgraduate degree in Leadership and Public Management (MLG)
This publication is a partnership of young Pan with Livres
Livres is a non -profit civil association that brings together liberal activists and academics committed to public policies by expanding freedom of choice
*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the young Pan.
