Sobre mercados e gestão pública

Três apontamentos, para memória futura, cada um deles o mais interessante. O conteúdo dos dois primeiros é inesperado, mas não trivial, e tem ver com o mercado: como as pessoas convivem com ele, e a sua efectiva extensão nos dias que correm. O terceiro fala-nos da deficência da gestão pública em efectivar, em implementar de modo eficaz e eficiente, as políticas do Estado (pois!):

•  Who’s afraid of the big, bad market?  - "Over at Wronging Rights, Amanda asks “Why do so many people respond so negatively to the idea of markets?“: I don’t think it’s an actual discomfort with exchanging goods or services for money. We all engage in market transactions all the time, every day. Markets are where we get everything from our toothpaste to our cheesy Richard Curtis movies, but I don’t think many people feel oppressed or exploited every time they buy a tube of Colgate Total. I wouldn’t dismiss discomfort. Impersonal, non-cooperative markets are a recent invention. Even 50 years ago, most of Western intelligentsia doubted the batty-sounding system could work. Fifty years later, most of us believe in markets only because we see the wreckage of other systems each time we lean close to the precipice ourselves. Liberal ideology helps us rationalize the rest. [...]"

• What We’ve Learned: Our (Increasingly) Non-Market Economy - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com  - "Economists haven’t gotten many things right lately, and we don’t even agree on what we’ve gotten wrong. Paul Krugman argues that we have underestimated the flaws and frictions of the market. I would go further. We have overestimated the size and significance of the very thing we call “the market.” [...]"

• Economist's View: "The Crisis of Public Management"  - "Jeffrey Sachs says our public management systems need an overhaul: The Failing U.S. Government--The Crisis of Public Management, by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Scientific American: The crisis of American governance goes much deeper than political divisions and ideology. The U.S. is in a crisis of policy implementation. Not only are Americans deeply divided on what to do about health care, budget deficits, financial markets, climate change and more, but government is also failing to execute settled policies effectively. Management systems linking government, business and civil society need urgent repair. [...]"