Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will, although operated by an intermediary, an amanuensis. He wants a dictator made in his own image.

(...)

Many popular fallacies concerning socialism are due to the mis­taken belief that all friends of socialism advocate the same system. On the contrary, every socialist wants his own socialism, not the other fellow's. He disputes the other socialists' right to call them­selves socialists. In the eyes of Stalin the Mensheviks and the Trotskyists are not socialists but traitors, and vice versa. The Marxians call the Nazis supporters of capitalism; the Nazis call the Marxians supporters of Jewish capital. If a man says socialism, or planning, he always has in view his own brand of socialism, his own plan. Thus planning does not in fact mean preparedness to coöperate peacefully. It means conflict.

If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them. We cannot expect that this problem will be solved by first communicating all this knowledge to a central board which, after integrating all knowledge, issues its orders. We must solve it by some form of decentralization. But this answers only part of our problem. We need decentralization because only thus can we insure that the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place will be promptly used. But the "man on the spot" cannot decide solely on the basis of his limited but intimate knowledge of the facts of his immediate surroundings. There still remains the problem of communicating to him such further information as he needs to fit his decisions into the whole pattern of changes of the larger economic system.

(...)

The problem which we meet here is by no means peculiar to economics but arises in connection with nearly all truly social phenomena, with language and with most of our cultural inheritance, and constitutes really the central theoretical problem of all social science. As Alfred Whitehead has said in another connection, "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." This is of profound significance in the social field. We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up.

The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use (though he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it) after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it. Through it not only a division of labor but also a coördinated utilization of resources based on an equally divided knowledge has become possible. The people who like to deride any suggestion that this may be so usually distort the argument by insinuating that it asserts that by some miracle just that sort of system has spontaneously grown up which is best suited to modern civilization. It is the other way round: man has been able to develop that division of labor on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible. Had he not done so, he might still have developed some other, altogether different, type of civilization, something like the "state" of the termite ants, or some other altogether unimaginable type. All that we can say is that nobody has yet succeeded in designing an alternative system in which certain features of the existing one can be preserved which are dear even to those who most violently assail it—such as particularly the extent to which the individual can choose his pursuits and consequently freely use his own knowledge and skill.

What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough. If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic. That is, the answer to the question of what is the best use of the available means is implicit in our assumptions. The conditions which the solution of this optimum problem must satisfy have been fully worked out and can be stated best in mathematical form: put at their briefest, they are that the marginal rates of substitution between any two commodities or factors must be the same in all their different uses.

This, however, is emphatically not the economic problem which society faces. And the economic calculus which we have developed to solve this logical problem, though an important step toward the solution of the economic problem of society, does not yet provide an answer to it. The reason for this is that the "data" from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society "given" to a single mind which could work out the implications and can never be so given.

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources—if "given" is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these "data." It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

"The Problem of Social Cost" provides more than merely a revolutionary rethinking of the question of externalities. It also suggests a new and interesting approach to the problem of defining property rights.

A court, in settling disputes involving property, or a legislature in writing a law code to be applied to such disputes, must decide just which of the rights associated with land are included in the bundle we call "ownership." Does the owner have the right to prohibit airplanes from crossing his land a mile up? How about a hundred feet? How about people extracting oil from a mile under the land? What rights does he have against neighbors whose use of their land interferes with his use of his? If he builds his recording studio next to his neighbor's factory, who is at fault? If he has a right to silence in his recording studio, does that mean that he can forbid the factory from operating, or only that he can sue to be reimbursed for his losses? It seems simple to say that we should have private property in land, but ownership of land is not a simple thing.

The Coasian answer to this set of problems is that the law should define property in such a way as to minimize the costs associated with the sorts of incompatible uses we have been discussing--factories and recording studios, or steel mills and resorts. The first step in doing so is to try to define rights in such a way that, if right A is of most value to someone who also holds right B, they come in the same bundle. The right to decide what happens two feet above a piece of land is of most value to the person who also holds the right to use the land itself, so it is sensible to include both of them in the bundle of rights we call "ownership of land." On the other hand, the right to decide who flies a mile above a piece of land is of no special value to the owner of the land, hence there is no good reason to include it in that bundle.

If, when general legal rules were being established, we somehow knew, for all cases, what rights belonged together, the argument of the previous paragraph would be sufficient to tell us how property rights ought to be defined. But that is very unlikely to be the case. In many situations a right, such as the right not to have noises of more than X decibels made over a particular piece of property, may be of substantial value to two or more parties--the owner of the property and the owner of the adjacent factory in my earlier example, for instance. There is no general legal rule that will always assign it to the right one.

In this case, the argument underlying the Coase Theorem comes into play. If we assign the right initially to the wrong person, the right person, the one to whom it is of most value, can still buy it. So one of the considerations in the initial definition of property rights is doing it in such a way as to minimize the transaction costs associated with fixing, via private contracts, any initially inefficient definition.

An example may make this clearer. Suppose that, in the pollution case discussed earlier, damages from pollution are easy to measure and the number of people downwind is large. In that case, the efficient rule is probably to give downwind landowners a right to collect damages from the pollutor, but not a right to forbid him from polluting. Giving the right to the landowners avoids the public good problem that we would face if the landowners (in the case where pollution is inefficient) had to raise the money to pay the steel mill not to pollute. Giving them a right to damages rather than giving each landowner the right to an injunction forbidding the steel mill from polluting avoids the holdout problem that the mill would face (in the case where pollution is efficient) in buying permission from all of the landowners.

The world focuses on these events, registering alarm and clucking at what Israel has wrought. Astonishingly, however, a central reason as to why Hamas has the strength it does is simply overlooked. In all that has been published on the subject in recent days, there has been nary a comment regarding UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is responsible for the Palestinian Arabs refugees.

(...)

The High Commission is mandated to help refugees get on with their lives as quickly as possible, and works to settle them rapidly, most frequently in countries other than those they fled. UNRWA policy, however, states that the Palestinian Arabs who fled from Israel in the course of the 1948 war — and their descendants! — are to be considered refugees until they return to the homes and villages they left more than half a century ago (which actually no longer exist). The principle they apply is called the "right of return."

In truth, there is no such legal principle. According to the UNRWA mandate, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 provides the basis for this right. There are, however, several problems with this — the primary one being that GA resolutions have no standing in international law. This resolution, which in fact also suggested other alternatives in addition to return, was no more than a non-binding recommendation.

Yet, for all of these years, UNRWA has not only been telling the refugees that they have such a right, they have been promoting it actively via a variety of programs. The goal is to ensure that the refugees focus on achieving that return. To that end, UNRWA policy has also been to make certain that the refugees are not too comfortable, as this would diminish their motivation to "return." Thus, for example, when the physician who was head of medical services in Gaza for Israel's civil administration from 1967-1985 wanted to improve medical facilities for the refugees, UNRWA blocked his efforts. And when Israel wanted to move refugees out of camps and into permanent housing in the 1980s, she was prevented from doing so by U.N. resolutions.

What we have then are millions of Palestinian Arabs who live their lives in less-than-desirable conditions and in a never-ending state of impermanence. It has been made clear to them that they have an "inalienable" right to return to Israel, and that Israel thwarts this right.

This is a situation that generates rage: Fertile ground for radicalism and terrorism. The message of Hamas, which seeks Israel's total destruction, is one that speaks to them.

It is no accident that the UNRWA camps have been the source of an enormous number of terror attacks. Weapons are stored and explosives manufactured within the environs of the camps. Not only do the terrorists emanate from the camps, but UNRWA employees, who are themselves refugees, are often in the service of Hamas. Hamas even controls the UNRWA teachers' union.

Jewish settlers with assault rifles slung over their shoulders moved into two buildings in a crowded Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem on Wednesday, setting off clashes between Israeli troops and Arab residents.

Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, said the incident showed Israel was more interested in expanding settlements than in making peace. The settlers said they want to re-establish a Jewish presence in the neighborhood.

Israel says it will never relinquish the sector of the city it captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. In recent years, hawkish Jewish groups, with the backing of hardline governments and foreign investors, have bought several properties in east Jerusalem to strengthen Israel's hold there.

At daybreak Wednesday, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews lugged boxes, chairs, tables and potted plants into buildings in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem. A van packed with sofas and couches arrived, and settlers hauled a water tank onto the roof of one building and set up a generator.

Settlers said eight families are to move into the buildings — a seven-story apartment building and a smaller house — which investors bought for them. The Arab owner of the smaller house said his property was seized unlawfully.

The Clinton administration deserves more scrutiny because it was in control for eight years, rather than eight months, but no one can claim with a straight face that the Bushies saw what was coming; or did enough to stop it. All that should be exposed as thoroughly as possible. But what matters now in a political year is how the Bushies responded afterwards; and, to my mind, they did about as good a job as possible. The way some people are now talking, you'd think the White House hadn't targeted Afghanistan and al Qaeda before Saddam. But they went to al Qaeda's base first, taking the war to the enemy patiently and determinedly - with enormous success first against the Taliban and then against Saddam. Millions are now liberated from unspeakable tyranny; reform is afoot in the Middle East; al Qaeda has been seriously wounded. Not a bad start. But I agree with the Washington Post yesterday that the more worrying sign is the way the White House has responded. They have been close to hysterical, defensive to an absurd degree and therefore unpersuasive. Their response to Clarke evokes far more doubts about their pre-9/11 conduct than anything Clarke could have mustered by himself. More evidence that they're losing it. I think they realize they're in trouble and don't know quite how to right themselves. Hence the policy lurches - from Mars to marriage to steroids. The only inference I can draw is that their internal polling data is even more worrisome than the external stuff.

Primeiro o público: a média de idades das mais de 1.500 pessoas presentes deveria rondar os 60 anos. Era a velha esquerda que ali estava. Não, não estou a falar de nenhuma área política ou partidária. De esquerda, estava gente de todos os quadrantes. É mesmo de uma geração que falo. A geração que fez o 25 de Abril e o 25 de Novembro. Ela estava toda ali, em caras conhecidas e anónimas. E os aplausos disseram quase tudo do sentimento que dominava a sala: contra «os políticos», contra «esta democracia», contra «o sistema». Nenhuma esperança. Só amargura e desespero.

Saramago lá deu uma facada indecente no seu partido, ao dizer que fazia parte das suas listas «apenas por uma questão de fidelidade». Uma fidelidade que confessa em público a sua traição era bem dispensável, mas adiante. O apelo já claro e sem rodeios que Saramago fez ao voto em branco, a um protesto legítimo mas que nada constrói, é que marcou toda conversa. E caiu bem, mesmo que ninguém tivesse muito ar de o querer seguir. Era mais uma catarse colectiva. O que Saramago propunha era que os cidadãos «uivassem», que gritassem «estamos fartos», usando as suas próprias palavras. Ou seja, que confessassem a sua derrota a ver se «eles» (os políticos) ouviam. Eles, indistintamente. Os outros, sem nome nem culpa.

Este populismo que tomou Saramago é só a rendição final de uma geração de esquerda. E esta esquerda nega-se a si própria a obrigação de construir a alternativa. Quer ser passiva e desalentada. Estava ali uma geração que já não tem nada a perder. Estava ali uma esquerda rancorosa e cansada, de todos os partidos. E verdade seja dita, Saramago representa-a como poucos.

Concordo com os princípios. Na verdade concordo com quase tudo. No entanto, se não nos cabe a nós ir "libertar" nações que funcionam bem e cuja responsabilidade última de manter ou mudar depende das próprias populações, também não nos cabe a nós impedir os EUA, por exemplo, de irem "libertar" países que funcionam mal. Quanto muito, essa decisão caberia aos habitantes dos EUA, que são quem pagam os custos dessas intervenções. O CN tende a aceitar os problemas das ditaduras como problemas internos, mas pela mesma lógica terá que aceitar que a política externa de uma democracia como os EUA é igualmente um problema interno e que uma guerra entre os EUA e o Iraque é um problema bilateral.

(...)

Há também aqui uma espécie de paradoxo liberal. Se defendemos que todas as comunidades têm direito à não ingerência nos seus assuntos internos, então temos que aceitar que essa regra é válida para todas as subcomunidades dentro dessa comunidade, e a menor de todas as subcomunidades é o individuo. Segue-se que cada individuo, ou cada subcomunidade, dentro de uma ditadura, tem o direito de se aliar a uma potência estrangeira, formando com esta uma nova comunidade, o que está em contradição com o princípio de não ingerência.

O que é ser conservador? O que caracteriza o conservadorismo? Segundo Oakeshott, ser conservador é antes de mais, uma questão de disposição. É a disposição que observamos no homem que tem a noção que pode perder algo que lhe é caro. É, muito simplesmente preferir o “familiar ao desconhecido, o tentado ao nunca tentado, o actual ao possível, o facto ao mistério, o próximo ao distante, o limitado ao ilimitado, o suficiente ao superabundante, o conveniente ao perfeito, o riso presente à utópica felicidade” (previno o caro leitor que a beleza da escrita de Oakeshott perde com a tradução que acabei de fazer). Tudo isto se torna visível em atitudes dos indivíduos perante a mudança e a inovação.

A disposição conservadora é avessa à mudança, pois esta acaba com aquilo a que o conservador se habituou, a que ganhou afeição. Afeição é algo que, obviamente, o conservador não pode ter pelo que é novo, porque obviamente lhe é desconhecido. Mas a mudança é algo que não pode ser liminarmente rejeitada, sendo algo a que temos de nos acostumar. Mas, devido ao que atrás foi dito, o conservador prefere a mudança gradual, aquela que lhe permite uma melhor assimilação daquilo que é novo. Já a ideia de inovação está relacionada com a ideia de melhoria. Mas para o conservador, os eventuais ganhos que ela possa trazer devem ser medidos em comparação com as perdas que inevitavelmente os acompanharão. Ser conservador é acreditar que um “bem” conhecido não deve ser abandonado em prol de um “melhor” desconhecido, de forma leviana.

(...)

A missão do governo não é, para o conservador, cumprir um determinado fim. Não é conseguir a justiça social. Não é proporcionar a felicidade aos cidadãos. Não é conduzi-los ao estado de perfeição da sociedade, que o conservador considerará impossível de ser atingido, nem que seja por esta simples razão que Oakeshott avança: um governo que não possua a lealdade dos seus sujeitos é um governo que não serve para nada, pois dessa forma estes não cumpriram as suas regras. Um governo que procure conduzir os cidadãos em direcção à “Verdade”, sob os desígnios da “Razão”, não obtém essa lealdade, a não ser pela força, e mesmo assim existirá rebelião, pois haverá cidadãos que não concordarão que essa seja a “Verdade”, e não quererão por isso seguir esse caminho. A missão do governo, para o conservador, é de ser um moderador, através da lei e da seu cumprimento, das “paixões humanas”, não porque estas sejam um “vício” e a moderação uma “virtude” (poderão ser ou não, mas isso não interessa para o caso), mas porque a moderação é indispensável para que as paixões não façam com que os indivíduos choquem entre si.

O Parlamento Europeu (PE) exige esta semana aos Estados-membros da União Europeia que garantam o acesso ao aborto "seguro e legal" por parte de todas as mulheres, um "direito" que considera não existir nalguns países comunitários.

(...)

O documento traça uma radiografia geral sobre os direitos fundamentais na União e verifica que, em muitos casos, continuam a existir claras situações de desrespeito.

Uma delas é o facto de, "na União Europeia, muitas mulheres não usufruírem ainda do direito ao aborto". Sendo esta uma questão de "respeito da dignidade", os Estados-membros devem garantir "a igualdade de acesso de todas as mulheres - incluindo as jovens, pobres e imigrantes - ao aborto seguro e legal", defende o Parlamento Europeu.

What is our enemies' ultimate agenda? Judge them by what they say and then do: Any who champion women are targeted. Those who are Jews should die. Expressing tolerance for other religions is a capital crime. Secular law and government are a betrayal. Apostasy from Islam justifies murder. Hypocrisy does not matter — whether that means using a hated Western computer or flocking to a despised Western capital. This craziness is actually an agenda of sorts, proclaiming to the wretched, "Purge yourself of the modern West (sort of) and fool yourself into thinking that you will have power, honor, and wealth as never before."

(...)

The terrorists have been routed from their sanctuary of Afghanistan and cannot come back as long as the United States and its allies are determined to stay the course. They are being slowly drawn and quartered inside Pakistan, where the Musharraf government has finally agreed to begin to close down its frontier border sanctuary. Terrorists' ties with rogue regimes like Saddam Hussein's and Khaddafi's Libya are now cut. Saudi, Syrian, and Iranian subsidies and sanctuaries of old are now under scrutiny. Reformists in all of those countries are organizing.

The United States has imposed a global crackdown on terrorist funding, and muscled suspect regimes like Yemen and Jordan into deporting or jailing jihadists and their sympathizers. Pakistan and India are talking, which is bad news for the fundamentalists in Kashmir and the badlands along the Afghan border. The Palestinian killers have brought only misery to their people and now a wall — ensuring that their constituents will soon have a chance to enjoy from Mr. Arafat the same good government that the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and the Iranian clerics extended to their similarly isolated people.

(...)

The problem is not "getting the message out," but having the intellectual courage to tell the truth and not to be browbeaten by faux intellectuals who talk monotonously of mythical pipelines and Zionist aggression. The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom — never.

Do Hospital de Seia, enviam-no para o de Coimbra com suspeitas de pneumonia ou enfarte de miocárdio.
Do Hospital de Coimbra devolvem-no para o de Seia muito pior de saúde do que lá chegou e sem nenhuma razão aparente. Os sintomas tinham-se agravado sobremaneira, entretanto.
Do Hospital de Seia enviam-no para o da Guarda porque cá não há Pneumologia
Do Hospital da Guarda enviam-no novamente para o de Coimbra, sem sequer entrar na Pneumologia e sem conhecimento dos familiares.
Do Hospital de Coimbra enviam-no... para a morgue.

E tudo isto sem um único tratamento, a não ser... soro!

Fica aqui o relato dos últimos 5 dias de vida do meu Pai que, acredito, possam servir a alguém que passe pelo mesmo.
Quanto mais não seja para evitar que o Serviço Nacional de Saúde mate por absoluta negligência um seu ente querido, tal como fez com o meu.

(...)

Escrevo o que aconteceu para alertar quem ler esta triste história para o estado a que chegaram os Hospitais em Portugal.

Para terminar, o pior: toda a gente conhecida que eu lá tinha, no Hospital, me perguntou: mas porque é que tu não me deste um toque? Eu acompanhava o teu pai e a coisa de certeza que não acabava assim...

Isto é que dói.
Descobrir que a medicina, no Serviço Nacional de Saúde, só funciona minimamente quando há "conhecimentos" e "amizades" entre o corpo clínico.

What is the legitimate purpose of the nation-state? Surely its chief function is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. At least that's the best justification for taxing citizens to support a police force and courts and a military. "Nation-state" is in many ways a fancy term for what is essentially a tribe with a flag. The police are supposed to catch and the courts to punish tribe members who violate personal and property rights of their fellow tribe members. The relatively modern innovation of police and courts has the salutary effect of derailing the ever-escalating blood-feuds that bedeviled earlier tribes. Meanwhile the military is supposed to stomp on tribes who attack or threaten the home tribe. But what about attacks on the life and property of tribe members by outsiders who are not sponsored by another tribe? Non-state freelance aggressors, if you will.

(...)

Most of us are rightly concerned about giving the power to determine whether or not to kill someone who poses a grave threat to U.S. security to shadowy and largely unaccountable intelligence and military officials. Of course, if non-state aggressors are captured inside our borders, they are subject to our normal judicial process. For those beyond our borders, why not adapt the judicial innovations of the modern civilized nation-states to handle them? For example, we could establish a formal transparent judicial procedure, perhaps a special court, in which non-state freelance aggressors accused of murder can be tried and if found guilty, convicted in absentia. If convicted, federal agents, including, most especially, the military would be duly authorized to capture or even kill the killer. Other nation-states may not agree with our determinations, but they would be open for all the world to scrutinize. This may sound utopian, but what's the alternative? Unending global blood-feuds?