The exercise of power awakens a whole series of primitive instincts and atavistic behaviors, the effects of which must be controlled both formally and informally to prevent glaring incompetence, endemic poverty, and perhaps a ritualized and persistent dictatorship.
The separation of powers, the primacy of the Law, the stability of public employment, and administrative organization are just some of the mechanisms that seek to guarantee democratic legitimacy in the exercise of political power and economic rationality in everyday political decision-making.
The fundamental pillar of economic rationality in public policies can only be assured if there is a consensus on the need for technical competence in constructing political decisions, rather than a lingering general tolerance for the bizarre notion that, in politics, the concept of technical competence does not apply.
You will tell me that technical competence is a requirement for rationality in decision-making across every domain of social life and is not an autonomous demand exclusive to political decision-making. Indeed that is true, but in a country where the predominance of the public sector over the private has a very strong historical tradition, the risks of technical competence in the exercise of public power amplify losses exponentially, given the weight and influence of the State in all fields of social life, particularly the economic one.
Managing a company or any other organization essentially means understanding the effects of actions and omissions over a given period—the annual fiscal year, the project deadline, the useful life of a structure, the amortization period, the payback period of an investment—because this determines what can and must be done or avoided.
This management of time implies certain auxiliary sciences and does not tolerate the creeds of individuals who despise such knowledge. Because those who do not know are like those who cannot see, and there is no worse excuse for a poor political decision-maker than this idea of “not seeing” the obvious implications of what they do.
The blindness of incompetent individuals called upon to decide in economic policy is often amplified by two phenomena quite dangerous to lucidity. The first is the ambition to “make History” at any cost, which leads the decision-maker to imagine that every gesture of theirs will be sculpted in marble by posterity, and therefore, the best stone must always be bought. The second is faith in a sort of “grace of State,” which convinces the decision-maker that, while in office, they benefit from an infusion of divine providence that protects them against error and treachery.
As can easily be understood, the combination of these two delusions possesses a brutal destructive power, because it generates completely irrational economic decisions, ignoring the technical knowledge necessary to determine probable effects over time and supported solely by petty ambitions for recumbent statuary. We only need to look around us to find examples.
Paulo Fidalgo
CEO of Marketividade
