The tissue of social relations in Brazil and economic complexity

 I often miss meeting people with an inner world. They are out there, but even as you get through them it’s usually hard to dive into their inner world.  There’s some magic to happen when this kind of people can put the whole world into their inner world, artists are great at doing that. But most of the time people like that just end up trying to fit in some fucked up reality. Brazil itself has a structure where peoples personality is usually built through other eyes, money is made through social relations, and there’s a lack of thinking in Brazilian economic structure. If someone gets rich, it probably was through some kind of “buy and sell” stuff. So social relations usually don’t tend to move towards economic complexity, with the building of ideas and thinking as a product.

Kind of interesting, how I get the feeling that the main problem in Brazil is in the tissue of social relations, where most of the human relations are meaningless, guided only by social animal instincts. If there ain’t complexity, thought building on the human relations itself, it seems out of touch with reality to expect that some economic complexity will grow out of nowhere.

I’m far from being a eugenics guy, but the reality is that there’s not much, so if people don’t create anything, there will never be anything. Not saying that we will end up going back into the caves, but if human relations are not guided towards the building of collective thinking things won’t go anywhere.

And lately, I get to be fascinated, but how the main difficulty on organizations is precisely on the matter of doing things in a group. Someone can always do the whole planning alone, and on simple commercial activities that is usually the case, but the building of complex thought in-group/companies that would be the base for economic complexity seems somewhat harder.

Those are just some initial thoughts, but maybe there are some insights from Yuval Noah Harari that could be applied to the building of economic complexity. The whole Peugeot thing being one of the most interesting ones.

A DARPA-like state

 

What is that make science actually means? As now I’m going through Ibn Khaldun, I get back on to some really basic questions. Should it actually have some objective, other than some natural human curiosity from the researcher? Don’t think the actual answer matches what people usually tell. On our utilitarian times someone has to justify everything, wherever if it to get funds, or just to allocate time to its research. Those fund schemes on themselves, end up imposing a bias on our collective knowledge.

Recently, I put aside the economics literature, and started reading the history that it is trying to tell in some apolitical shape.

I can say that US has become a science-driven society as through the DoD, you could find a path to justify almost any research, or someone could put this same statement under some scientific sector bullshit from Economic Development Theory.

It works for the US, however, that isn’t some stuff that can be exported without the Scientific-Technocratic DoD apparatus.  

Most of what I see, for the future of a successful China, come from  a perspective that the CCP is trying to create this kind of Scientific-Technocratic apparatus to be the central state. It’s like if the DoD wouldn’t need to go in the congress sell some far away war for budget.

I’m yet not sure if this kind of Scientific-Technocratic structure would be efficient on its base. The level of oversight in central projects usually isn’t the same in secondary projects. On the DoD framework it's like if all projects are somewhat “central”.  Even if I couldn’t make myself fully clear until now: It’s a management problem.

How to create management structures that are able to take small/local questions seriousness, as much as they take big/national questions? On the military/national/big questions, the Sovietic Union was very successful, the problem was the other questions, as the for the US there was DoD money flowing in the lower levels of society, to allow “market” solutions, Besides that, military institutions tend to be very efficient in the offer of some hands-on knowledge that is usually called technical schools (at least in Brazil).

As for sciences, if you have specific questions, you get specific answers. If those questions already come from some field issues, and there is already a filter in the funding allocation process…well you end up with a successful product.

When countries around the world, and the US itself, tries to copy the DARPA research model, that’s what they are trying to recreate. China seems to be a step ahead trying to create some kind of DARPA-like state infrastructure.

Don’t think China is following some traditional econ manual, most likely they are rebuilding themselves as a civilization, economic success ends up being just one of the outcomes. By now, there’s already an entire DoD (thinking on PPP terms) for the Silicon race. Most of the scientific progress comes from the 0-1 (first stages) in research, that’s what China is doing by now, after the 0-1 there are usually only incremental advancements (thinking on the Bell Labs experience).

For the science, I’m yet not sure if the utilitarian approach is the best, its efficient, that’s for sure.

A growing number of governments hope to clone America’s DARPA | The Economist

The End of AT&T's Bell Labs and Why Big Companies Can't Birth Big Innovations | TIME.com

What’s the real challenge in economics?

What’s the real challenge in economics? If you got through a few couple initial chapters of Marx in Das Kapital, you are already well equipped to acknowledge that money is meaningless. And The reality of economics as a science is to build up some good lie that people can live within. As of capitalism, in the way we see it today…just some bullshit propaganda from the 50-60s.

How to move to move people towards value creation is the real question in economics? To this day, nothing has proven to be so effective on value creation as of scientific progress…however capitalism in its current status has guided our societies to  a scenario where you can only fund basic research through governmental channels…on the perspective of a company that has to conciliate spreadsheet shareholders and basic research with uncertain results… well if your country ain’t the place to where foreign value goes to grow on some speculative silicon valley bubble…. You are screwd.

Governments should identify problems and guide money towards the solution of those problems. If you are a government that is facing some foreign capital influx, well there is your basic research fund. But if you as a government aren’t having any foreign capital influx, how would you guide society towards value creation? Print some currency that nobody wants, ain’t a good answer. Debt? Well…if there isn’t value creation there’s not much of a reason for someone to lend you money.

Not saying, I’m against capitalism, just saying governments should take a bigger role, on the matter of guide society toward value creation.  

If we look to the capitalism we have today, it has achieved the target (thinking on the terms of Bretton Woods) …we are already on the edge of something like a global society…we are starting to see private money taking its form as a global integrator. However, value creation is so unevenly distributed throughout the world that it seems like a time bomb that could lead to some rethinking of the system.

I can just expect we won’t fall for some government vs private bullshit again.

Value creation can be achieved under both, however, irrational nationalism can lead to some dangerous outcomes.

How to decentralize value creation? How to create space for arbitrage beyond cultural and linguistic borders?

We got some good results on the whole covid thing…what can we learn from that?