25.10.05

Confusing alhos with bugalhos

“Thou shall be true to thy thoughts, especially if written in a blog named O Insurgente”.
God (the real one) became an international author in the Liberalism issues, directly from Alfama’s School of Economics and despite my ludicrous ignorance I plead you, God (the real one) to read this little text as a courtesy towards yourself.
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So, dear God (the real one) the greed factor doesn’t fit in any equation. A few thousand years ago, this man named Moses came down a mountain carrying two pieces of stone. In these stones the Ten Commandments were written by God (the other one) Himself. They even say that a bush bursted in flames in the process, which I find amusing. The last four commandments can be interpreted as God’s (the other one) version of your greed factor although He called it sin. You know, there are all these different kinds of greed: greed for wealth, greed for power, greed for lust and even greed for beauty. At the last four commandments all these different kinds are condemned. The tenth is even specific about greed for other people’s beauty and wealth. From then on, through Faith and for hundreds of years, the greed factor was repressed, punished and men thought that was the right way to create God’s (the other one) idea of Man. They tried to design Man.
A couple of Centuries ago, another man, named Smith, gave the greed factor another name, he called it: own interest and for quite a while he was believed. But a curse came upon us self-called Liberals. Some men of great knowledge decided that the right way to eliminate the problem of the greed factor from their equations would be to pretend it didn’t exist and replace it by consciousness of class, race or need and by that method they’d create a new Man from whom the greed factor was scientifically removed and replaced by altruism and self-sacrifice. Although presented in different levels and interpretations it seems to me like another attempt to design Man. In the meantime another gentleman named Mises (some say he didn’t exist) said that humans act, and their actions are purposeful or motivated by what they regard as their own interest at any given moment (most of the time humans make mistakes, but basically due to the means and path chosen).
Until about twenty five years ago, hardly anybody contested the new design attempt in the mainstream of ideas. Suddenly, out of nowhere His Masters Voice Hayeck (the third one) started to be heard, and we were back to the own interest concept. I can’t express the joy I felt when I read that Alfama’s School of Economics went back to the concept’s roots and found its original name: the greed factor.
You see God (the real one), that’s what us self-called Liberals have been talking about all this time. If the greed factor exists and it can’t be used on any equation, it means that no equation applies. If no equation applies, how can you design a system? You can’t. That’s why all these men came with this pretty simple idea: If the greed factor, own interest or sin makes it impossible to write equations, what we need to discover is a clear and simple set of rules and find a higher authority to enforce them (usually we call it The State). Those simple and clear rules should apply to all humans equally, none should be above them and as long as humans act within the rules frame, nobody, not even the Higher Authority should have the right to compel people to do what people don’t want to do. Now, that creates a problem: why and how to discover the right rules, why not just create them? Why don’t we nominate a few wise men of great knowledge to create fair rules? Hayeck (the third one) answered, because no man or group of men possesses information or knowledge enough. Because knowledge is a discovery procedure and we’ve been walking this earth for so long that I am certain that most rules are already known, although they are flexible, adapt and evolve continuously...

With a sincere brotherly handshake
Yours truly

H. Femaleblacksmith *

Lota of Matosinhos School of Thought
*It’s not such a great name as yours, but still a name.