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A thought Over the next two days, there are two linguistically Spanish versus Portuguese games in the World Cup: Chile plays Brazil this evening, and Spain itself plays Portugal itself tomorrow evening. Brazil and Spain are two of the favourites to win the tournament, Portugal is a good side, although perhaps without the depth of the first two, and Chile have played much more impressively than most people expected in this tournament, but are outsiders. So probably a hard fought but still one-sided game this evening, and a good game tomorrow night. Although one of course never knows.
However, disregarding the actual sport and thinking about bigger things, it seems pretty clear that the governments of the two Latin American countries are rather less profligate and rather less broke than those of the two Latin European countries.
How did we get here?
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A deliberate policy to export wealth, excellence and ability to the undeveloped world, and to engender primitivism moronic thinking and lack of confidence in the developed?
In spite of vast natural resources (incluidng new oil wealth – thank you President Barack Obama for giving billions of American tax money to Brazil to develop off shore oil while you destroy the American industry, but at least George Soros is pleased) I am not sure about Brazil.
Something smells about its recent up swing – but then I may just be biased against a country that is one of the most corrupt on Earth.
However, Chile is different.
For example, in spite of years of “centre left” rule (recently ended), one can walk in the cities of Chile with very little chance of being abducted and held for ransom (how many other Latin American nations is that true of).
And the police do not tend to work in hand in glove with criminal gangs – that is rather weird as well.
So, inspite of Earthquakes, and disputes with Argentina (and its tin pot allies to the north – especially Bolivia) I suspect that Chile has a better future than much of Europe.
Not just Portugal and so on – but Britain also.
How did we get here?
We spent more money than they did Mr Jennings – or rather the governments of Europe did (you know that).
Of course Chile did have people who were even more statist that European politicals.
But a certain military person sent a lot of them to the next world – and (perhaps more importantly) created a lot of the institutional structure that Chile still has to day.
A blood soaked man – and someone who made economic mistakes also (such as fixing the exchange rate of the currency – a TERRIBLE blunder).
But the good side (which even the right in Chile dare not mention) was also real.
Narcissism, ignorance, socialism, denial, stupidty.
Portugal entering the EEC later EU was a call to irresponsibility. They would be our bosses and we will do whatever they said, collect subsidies and we will get much much rich.
Perhaps the European states started with a larger pile of money to piss away on social programs… whereas the American states werent rich enough to be that stupid, as much as they might have wanted to be…
” . . a larger pile of money . . ” Money, in its most used and useful form, is simply a representation of wealth. (von Mises: Goods and services can only be exchanged for goods and services).
What the European states had done was built up greater technology, ability, excellence, which is what wealth is, which is represented by money.
What they had to waste was wealth built up over time, and that is now being systematically despised.
It’s worth noting that the only one of those four countries not to have been a dictatorship in my lifetime is the one most successful at football, namely Brazil.
Edward King: I thought Brazil was a dictatorship as recently as 1978, and that both Spain and Portugal had ended their dictatorships before that.