Gosto imenso de Jared Diamond, por isso nunca me canso de o ler e ouvir. É verdade que ele tende a realizar um trabalho altamente especulativo sobre objetos de estudo que à primeira vista poderiam ser tratados de forma mais empírica, mas é isso que o torna tão interessante, porque não hesita em trabalhar nas fronteiras das múltiplas disciplinas para encontrar novas respostas e novas formas de compreender o mundo. Neste seu mais recente livro, "Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis" (2019) Diamond faz um cruzamento direto entre a Psicologia, em particular as abordagens ao tratamento de crises pessoais, e a História Económica de países inteiros. O resultado apresentado, 12 passos para lidar com as crises, terá a sua relevância e também limitações, mas gostei particularmente das sínteses que Diamond traçou das crises dos diferentes países retratados — Finlândia, Japão, Chile, Indonesia, Alemanha, Australia e EUA.
Aprende-se imenso, nem que seja a ideia principal de que cada país é dono de um historial que o condiciona, e aquilo que serve a um não serve a outro. Neste sentido, o trabalho de Diamond poderia ser visto como inconsequente, contudo não o será. Aliás, nesse sentido justifica-se mesmo que ele não tenha feito uma seleção de países em termos objetivos, mas se tenha limitado aos países que conhece em maior detalhe, não só por neles ter vivido, mas por falar em parte as suas línguas e conhecer os seus costumes por dentro. A ideia central de um guia de 12 passos nunca pode ser o de seguir todos, mas antes o de servir enquanto ementa de possibilidades que possam ser orientadoras na tomada de decisões.
No fundo, Diamond acabad realizando um extenso trabalho de história comparativa, que servirá a muitos dos que ocupam cargos de decisão e necessitam deste conhecimento, que é conhecido na giria como
benchmarking. O exemplo da Finlândia abre a discussão porque é desde logo aquele que dita as grandes limitações que estes trabalhos comparativos têm, e por isso tudo o que se conhece sobre cada país deve ser muito bem enquadrado antes de se poder pensar em importar de forma direta para qualquer outro país.
Deixo a lista do Modelo de 12 Passos e os excertos de 3 países: Finlândia, Chile e EUA
- Acknowledging the crisis itself. After all, you can’t fix a problem if you continue to deny that it exists.
- Accepting responsibility to respond to crisis.
- Distinguishing the things that need to change from those that are so important to your identity that they shouldn’t be interfered with. This process is called selective change.
- Getting assistance from outside sources.
- Learning about the methods others have used to respond to similar crises.
- Recognizing a personal or national identity.
- Undertaking an honest self-appraisal.
- Recognizing and learning from how you’ve handled past crises.
- Showing patience in coping with failure.
- Showing flexibility.
- Identifying your core values.
- Determining the constraints on your ability to enact selective change.
Excerto sobre a Finlândia
“Finland had bitter memories that, when it actually was attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939, it had not been helped by the U.S., Sweden, Germany, Britain, or France. Finland had to learn from its history that its survival and independence depended on itself, and that Finland would be safe only if the Soviet Union felt safe and trusting towards Finland.”
“Finland’s total losses against the Soviets and the Germans in the two wars, the Winter War and the Continuation War, were about 100,000 men killed. In proportion to Finland’s population then, that’s as if 9 million Americans were killed in a war today. Another 94,000 Finns were crippled, 30,000 Finnish women were widowed, 55,000 Finnish children were orphaned, and 615,000 Finns lost their homes (..) In addition, in one of the largest child evacuations in history, 80,000 Finnish children were evacuated (mainly to Sweden), with long-lasting traumatic consequences extending to the next generation ”
“[Today] many Finnish actions do indeed horrify Western European and American observers. It could never happen in the U.S. or Germany that a presidential election would be postponed, a presidential candidate would withdraw his or her candidacy, a publisher would cancel a book, or the press would censor itself, just to avoid inflaming Soviet sensitivities. Such actions seem to violate a democracy’s right to freedom of action.”
“To quote President Kekkonen again, “A country’s independence is not usually absolute… there was not a single state in existence that did not have to bow to historical inevitabilities.” (..) “There are obvious reasons why Finland has to bow much more to historical inevitabilities than does the U.S. or Germany: Finland is small and borders on Russia, while the U.S. and Germany do not.”
“The end result is that, in the 70 years since the end of World War Two, Finland has come no closer to becoming a Soviet or (now) a Russian satellite. Instead, it has succeeded in steadily increasing its ties with the West while still maintaining good ties with Russia. At the same time, Finns know that life is uncertain, and so military service is still compulsory for Finnish men and voluntary for Finnish women.”
“In order to make productive use of its entire population, Finland’s school system aims to educate everybody well (..) even those few Finnish private schools receive the same level of funding from the government as do public schools and are not permitted to increase their funding by charging tuition, collecting fees, or raising endowments! (..) Finland has the world’s highest percentage of engineers in its population. It is a world leader in technology. Its exports account for nearly half of its GDP, and its main exports are now high-tech (..) Finland’s combined private and government investment in research and development equals 3.5% of its GDP, almost double the level of other European Union countries (..) The result of that excellent educational system and those high investments in research and development is that, within just half-a-century, Finland went from being a poor country to being one of the richest in the world”
“Kekkonen’s defense of Finland’s policy was summarized in the phrase “Finlandization is not for export.”
Excerto sobre o Chile
"Developments in Chile from 1970 onwards were guided by two consecutive leaders who represented opposite extremes in politics and personality: Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet.
Allende was a quintessential Chilean professional, from an upper-middle-class family, rich, intelligent, idealistic, a good speaker, and endowed with an appealing personality (...) Allende rated as moderate by Chilean socialist standards.
(...) what policies did Allende adopt upon becoming president? Even though he knew that his candidacy had been supported by only 36% of Chilean voters (..) he rejected moderation, caution, and compromise (..) His first measure, with the unanimous support of Chile’s Congress, was to nationalize the U.S.-owned copper companies without paying compensation
(...) He nationalized other big international businesses. He horrified the Chilean armed forces (…) by carrying a personal machine gun given to him by Fidel Castro, and by inviting Castro to Chile for a visit that stretched out to five weeks. He froze prices (even of small consumer items like shoe-laces), replaced free-market elements of Chile’s economy with socialist-style state planning, granted big wage increases, greatly increased government spending, and printed paper money to cover the resulting government deficits.
The result of Allende’s policies was the spread of economic chaos, violence, and opposition to him. Government deficits covered by just printing money caused hyperinflation, such that real wages (i.e., wages adjusted for inflation) dropped below 1970 levels, even though wages not corrected for inflation nominally increased. Foreign and domestic investment, and foreign aid, dried up. Chile’s trade deficit grew. Consumer goods, including even toilet paper, became scarce in markets, which were increasingly characterized by empty shelves and long queues. Rationing of food and even of water became severe.
“Allende fell because his economic policies depended on populist measures that had failed again and again in other countries. They produced short-term benefits, at the cost of mortgaging Chile’s future and creating runaway inflation.” Many Chileans admired Allende and viewed him almost as a saint. But saintly virtues don’t necessarily translate themselves into political success.
The long-expected coup took place on September 11, 1973
By default, the new army chief of staff became Pinochet (…) When the junta took power, Pinochet himself announced that its leadership would rotate. But when it came time for Pinochet to rotate off and to step down as leader, he didn’t do so.
As soon as the junta took power, it rounded up leaders of Allende’s Popular Unity Party and other perceived leftists with the goal of literally exterminating the Chilean left-wing. Within the first 10 days, thousands of Chilean leftists were taken to two sports stadiums in Santiago, interrogated, tortured, and killed.
Pinochet personally ordered a general to go around Chilean cities in what became known as the “Caravan of Death,” killing political prisoners and Popular Unity politicians whom the army had been too slow at killing. The junta banned all political activities, closed Congress, and took over universities. It set up networks of secret detention camps, devised new methods of torture, and made Chileans “disappear” (i.e., murdered them without a trace).
Whatever the motives, the resulting free-market policies included the re-privatization of hundreds of state-owned businesses nationalized under Allende (but not of the copper companies); the slashing of the government deficit by across-the-board cuts of every government department’s budget by 15% to 25%; the slashing of average import duties from 120% to 10%; and the opening of Chile’s economy to international competition.
(…) the results were that the rate of inflation declined from its level of 600% per year under Allende to just 9% per year, the Chilean economy grew at almost 10% per year, foreign investments soared, Chilean consumer spending rose, and Chilean exports eventually diversified and increased (…) The economic benefits for Chileans were unequally distributed: middle-class and upper-class Chileans prospered, but many other Chileans suffered and found themselves living below the poverty level.
(...) the junta announced another plebiscite in 1988 that would extend Pinochet’s presidency for yet another eight years until 1997, when he would be 82 years old. This time, though, Pinochet miscalculated and was outmaneuvered (…) the “No!” campaign prevailed, with 58% of votes cast. (…) But—42% of Chileans had still voted for Pinochet, in that free election of 1988.
Once the alliance of the 17 “No!” groups had thus won the referendum, the alliance’s leftists faced the necessity of convincing the alliance’s centrists of the Christian Democratic Party that a new leftist government wasn’t to be feared and wouldn’t be as radical as Allende’s leftist government had been. Hence leftist and centrist parties joined in an electoral alliance termed Concertación. Leftists agreed that, if the alliance could win the 1990 election (which it did), they would let the presidency alternate between a leftist and a centrist, and would let the Christian Democrats fill the presidency first. Leftists agreed to those conditions because they realized that that was the only way that they could eventually return to power.
In fact, Concertación proceeded to win the first four post-Pinochet elections, in 1990, 1993, 2000, and 2006.
In 2010 Concertación was defeated by a right-wing president (Sebastián Piñera), in 2014 socialist Bachelet returned to power, and in 2018 right-winger Piñera again. Thus, Chile after Pinochet reverted to being a functioning democracy still anomalous for Latin America, but with a huge selective change: a willingness to tolerate, compromise, and share and alternate power."
Excerto sobre os EUA
“Each political party is becoming increasingly homogenous and extreme in its ideology: Republicans are becoming more strongly conservative, Democrats more strongly liberal, and middle-of-the-roaders are declining in both parties."
"Surveys show that many Americans of each party are increasingly intolerant of the other party, see the other party as a real danger to the U.S.’s well-being, wouldn’t want a close relative to marry a supporter of the other party, and want to live in an area where other people share their own political views."
"If you are an American reader of this book, you can test this pulling-apart of America on yourself: how many people do you personally know, and count among your friends, who told you that they were voting for the other party’s presidential candidate in the 2016 election?”
“Thus, the question to answer isn’t just why our politicians are becoming more uncompromising, independently of their constituents. We also need to understand why American voters themselves have become more intolerant and politically uncompromising. Our politicians are merely obeying their voters’ wishes. As for that political polarization of American society as a whole, one explanation frequently suggested is “niche information. “When I was a teenager, cable TV didn’t exist; the first TV program of any sort didn’t come to my city of Boston until 1948; and for years thereafter, we Americans got our news from just three big TV networks, three major weekly newsmagazines, and newspapers. Most Americans shared those same sources of information, none of which was clearly identified with conservative or liberal views, and none of which slanted its information heavily. Now, with the rise of cable TV, news websites, and Facebook, and with the decline of broad-market weekly print newsmagazines, Americans choose their source of information according to their pre-existing views. Looking at my monthly cable TV bill, I see that I can choose among 477 channels: not only Fox News or MSNBC depending on whether I prefer a conservative or a liberal slant, but also channels devoted to Africa, Atlantic Coast college sports, cooking, crime, France, hockey, jewelry, Jewish life, Russia, tennis, weather, and myriads of other narrowly defined subjects and viewpoints.”
“I can thereby choose to remain strictly tied to my current interests and views, and not be distracted by other subjects and unwelcome views. The result: I lock myself into my political niche, I commit myself to my own set of “facts,” I continue to vote for the party that I’ve always preferred, I don’t know what’s motivating the supporters of the other party, and of course I want my elected representatives to reject any compromise with those representatives who don’t agree with me."
"Most of the U.S. population now uses social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Two unrelated friends of mine, one of whom happens to be a Democrat and the other a Republican, explained to me separately how their Facebook account serves as their main information filter. The Democrat (a young man) posts news items and comments to his Facebook friends, who in turn post items of their own, and whom he has selected in part because they share his views. When someone posts an item with a Republican point of view, he “unfriends” that person, i.e., drops her from his list of Facebook friends. The people whom he unfriended included his aunt and uncle, whom he also stopped visiting in person because of their Republican views. He checks his Facebook account on his iPhone frequently throughout the day, and uses it to identify and read on-line newspaper articles aligned with his views, but he doesn’t subscribe to a print newspaper or watch television. My other friend, who happens to be Republican, gave me a similar account, except that the acquaintances whom she unfriends are those who post items with a Democratic point of view. The result: each of my friends reads only within his or her already-determined niche.”
