[hackernews2000]

Yet people are conditioned in schools to love the state and hate the "all evil" capitalism.

In Brazil it's political suicide to suggest cutting government expenses such as bloated programs and agencies (even though they are known to be infested by corruption). People are hit hard by our extremely high taxes but don't make the connection to the government inefficacy and corruption. They keep asking for more government services and programs. People hate our postal service (which has a monopoly on some sorts of deliveries), yet freak out at the idea of opening it to the free market.

The current president attempted to end the "ministry of culture" (which basically is a money gateway from our pockets to already-rich artists with political connections) and replace it with a smaller department. Teachers and university students brainwashed by the state-worshiping religion kept protesting until the president gave up and bought the ministry back. That has been happening to all his attempts at fixing things.

[brbrodude]

Perfect reading and reproduction of the market-fundamentalist-pamphlet! Who are you to call anyone brainwashed? Talking in truisms, uncharitable to any disagreeing point of view, turning anyone who opposes your points of view into caricatures. Give me a break.

[andrenth]

Your reply is a good fit for that caricature though. No substance, not a single argument to oppose his points. Is anything said by the parent false?

All you did was giving an angry retort.

[meira]

It's funny how idiots here in Brazil thinks that the neoliberalism BS is a serious econômica thesis. Parent post probably studied in a federal university, but hates "big bad state".

[brbrodude]

Well I think the biggest problem is that we're not really used to reading and trying to understand stuff more deeply, and debating etc so we need simple truths to cling to and for quite a long time there was something homogeneous here, everybody had the same information, everybody watched Jornal Nacional and Novelas, etc. But when you start to read and honestly try to develop understanding of stuff you need to deal with conflicting ideas without cracking lol, and you start to see it's a lot of work and it takes time... But this shouldn't be something for "college people" only, it should be for everyone(and I'm not one of the humanities or who is from the universities). But now we're getting anti-intellectual like the US...

[brguy]

I'm sorry, but I can't see how being pro free markets is being anti intellectual. Using myself as an example, I used to believe government intervention was usually a good thing if done right. But then this whole mess happened in Brazil and I started to actually study economics to understand what was going on, and that changed my view completely.

[brbrodude]

Economics is not the only issue at play in this whole thing, there's a lot more. This talk of "state worship", "school indoctrination", plus the all sorts of mcarthism, left-dehumanizing(also important to note: center-left) and etc is 100% pure authoritharianism. If you're capable of being charitable to different arguments, seeing the nuances, recognizing the valid points someone from another point-of-view can provide and etc it's one thing but there's a lot of people that are way over the edge.

[brguy]

Well, I do think Brazil has a serious problem with state worship and school indoctrination. I can't remember being exposed to any sort of liberal economics thinking when I was at school or in college. Many of my colleagues never really questioned the ideas they learned, and some of them deepened them during their college years. I don't think that pointing this out as a problem is dehumanizing nor authoritarian. For one, I'm completely against the "Escola sem Partido" project, because it is actually authoritarian and limits freedom of speech.

I do agree, though, that many people with right wing ideals dehumanize progressives, but those are more linked with the conservative and religious right than with libertarian or classical liberal ideals.

I consider myself a classical liberal and when exposing my views to left wing people have been called a fascist and many other adjectives that actually are dehumanizing and are the extreme opposite of what I believe in. I just don't care when people say that, because it just shows they don't have a clue of what my ideals are about and don't even care to listen.

[andrenth]

State worshipping and school/university indoctrination are very real things in Brazil, though.

The center-left that you mention is demonized as "neoliberals" by the extreme left here, so I'm not really sure what your point is about that.

[andrenth]

The fact that you use the "neoliberal" card on disagreeing opinions and resort to ad hominem attacks shows how deep you understanding of economics is.