[....] His view of his seven years trying to run the state of California can be summarized as follows. He [Arnold Schwarzenegger] came to power accidentally, but not without ideas about what he wanted to do. At his core he thought government had become more problem than solution: an institution run less for the benefit of the people than for the benefit of politicians and other public employees. He behaved pretty much as Americans seem to imagine the ideal politician should behave: he made bold decisions without looking at polls; he didn’t sell favors; he treated his opponents fairly; he was quick to acknowledge his mistakes and to learn from them; and so on. He was the rare elected official who believed, with some reason, that he had nothing to lose, and behaved accordingly. When presented with the chance to pursue an agenda that violated his own narrow political self-interest for the sake of the public interest, he tended to leap at it. “There were a lot of times when we said, ‘You just can’t do that,’ ” says his former chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat, whose hiring was one of those things a Republican governor was not supposed to do. “He was always like, ‘I don’t care.’ Ninety percent of the time it was a good thing.”
T wo years into his tenure, in mid-2005, he’d tried everything he could think of to persuade individual California state legislators to vote against the short-term desires of their constituents for the greater long-term good of all. “To me there were shocking moments,” he says. Having sped past a do not enter sign, we are now flying through intersections without pausing. I can’t help but notice that, if we weren’t breaking the law by going the wrong way down a one-way street, we’d be breaking the law by running stop signs. “When you want to do pension reform for the prison guards,” he says, “and all of a sudden the Republicans are all lined up against you. It was really incredible, and it happened over and over: people would say to me, ‘Yes, this is the best idea! I would love to vote for it! But if I vote for it some interest group is going to be angry with me, so I won’t do it.’ I couldn’t believe people could actually say that. You have soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they didn’t want to risk their political lives by doing the right thing.”
[....]I notice on his shelf a copy of Fortune magazine, with Meredith Whitney on the cover. And as he talked about the bankrupting of Vallejo, I realized that I had heard this story before, or a private-sector version of it. The people who had power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death. The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans.
A while ago two of my students said they were going to 'turn over' a large house in a wealthy area near them. I asked why? They said they had it tough, they wanted a new TV, and it was something to do.I listened, and then explained that just because they were poor they didn't need to rob a house. I told them that I didn't even have a TV, which amazed them. I explained to them how my Grandparents grew up in the East End during the great depression. There were few jobs, no money and no welfare. They went without food on occasion, suffered discrimination and had to deal with fascism, yet they emerged from poverty. I explained how they did it: They worked hard, sacrificed for the future, educated themselves, showed respect for the law and other people, had strong families and never gave up. The two boys looked thoughtful for a while and then one said: 'Yes, but I never had a father to tell me that'.
"[....] a prática que existia no século XIX em muitos bares norte-americanos, e também nalguns ingleses, de oferecer a comida (‘free lunch') aos clientes que comprassem pelo menos uma bebida. O almoço era grátis, apenas era necessário pagar as bebidas. Aparentemente, a comida não importava. Obviamente que nos locais onde havia esta prática comercial as bebidas eram mais caras do que naqueles onde não havia 'almoços grátis'.Na primeira metade do século passado, o acrónimo ‘tinstaafl' (‘there is no such thing as a free lunch') começou a ser popularizado, explicitando a ideia que mesmo que alguma coisa pareça grátis existe sempre um custo a pagar por alguém. O custo pode ser indirecto ou não ser imediatamente evidente, mas existe. Em muitas áreas, ‘tinstaafl' procura evidenciar o custo de oportunidade ao tomar-se uma decisão. Se uma pessoa ou grupo beneficia de algum bem ou serviço de graça, seguramente haverá alguém a pagar por esse benefício.Em Portugal, o acrónimo tem sido pouco divulgado. E não se tem querido entender a ideia subjacente. A rede de estradas que temos; os estádios de futebol construídos; a quantidade de serviços públicos e empresas públicas que existem sem uma justificação clara; a facilidade com que o Estado (essa entidade mítica) proporciona uma casa grátis, ensino universitário (tendencialmente) grátis, prestação de cuidados de saúde grátis, acessos viários grátis, etc., são exemplos [continuar a ler ...] .
. 
offers an effort to bring together the evolutionary history of the species with a philosopher's analysis of moral reasoning.) 
)."Looking across Europe and the United States, progressives have two strengths going for them. The first is that modernizing demographic forces are shifting the political terrain in their favor. Consider these trends:
The rise of a progressive younger generation
The increase in immigrant/minority populations
The continuing rise in educational levels
The growth of the professional class
The increasing social weight of single and alternative households and growing religious diversity and secularism.
All these factors favor the broad center-left of the political spectrum in America (the Democratic Party) and in Europe (the social democrats, the greens, the far left and liberal centrists). Put simply, progressives are the natural beneficiaries of modernity and that, combined with their still substantial base among the working class, puts them in a potentially dominating political position.
Progressives’ second big advantage is the intellectual and policy bankruptcy of conservatism. Their approach to the problems afflicting today’s complex global capitalism still relies heavily on laissez-faire and is completely devoid of creative ideas for taming the immense power of this economic system for the common good. The assumption that capitalism left to its own devices is both self-regulating and productive of the best economic outcomes would be laughable at this point if the actual outcomes had not been so tragic."
"... é assim que o mundo acaba - não com uma explosão, mas com uma lamúria".
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." - Edmund Burke- citado em RealClimate
PS: Aproveito para referenciar um artigo interessante de Pedro Magalhães sobre as temáticas das próximas eleições europeias: Outras Margens: A Europa possível. A comentar, eventualmente, um dia destes.
PS (2009.03.26): E este Timothy Garton Ash: The G20 summit in London will be missing one great power. Europe Comment is free The Guardian
).
). 