Intervenções no blogue 'The Lisboners' (III)

1) Portugal should want a federal Europe. A federal Europe accountable to European citizens. It should therefore support all moves in that direction, such as the promotion of a European public sphere, European political parties, European civil society organisations, European taxes.

The European Union needs to be about freedom, equality of opportunity, sustainability, and cosmopolitanism.

2) Outside Europe, we should not forget that Portugal has a seat at the UN Security Council, and we should use it properly. That means we cannot use it to cozy up to dictators. It means we need to keep voting ‘Aye’ when it comes to helping peoples that want democratic change and are being brutalised by dictatorships for wanting that change.

We need to promote human rights, free trade, sustainability and (long term goal) reform of the global governance model.

3) and 4) Our economic development model needs to go beyond GDP growth (though that is certainly a key goal right now). We need an economic development model focusing on quality of life and sustainability – or even happiness. (I’m thinking about this kind of thing:http://www.beyond-gdp.eu/)

That means, in my opinion, the model should focus on freedom and equality of opportunity. Though we can try to find ways of measuring ‘quality of life’ or ‘happiness’ objectively, and we certainly should, we also need to accept that those two concepts are also highly subjective. We need a system that gives people the freedom to choose what they consider to be best for themselves and their loved ones, and equal opportunities to pursue those goals.

That means vigorous competition and consumer rights policies, for a start. It also means a working judicial system, housing market (including the market of houses for rent), labour market, and a simplified tax code (that includes closing loopholes and addressing excessive tax expenditure). And it means the State needs to know how to run the public purse!

Portuguese people can be highly productive. Portuguese business can be highly competitive. We have many examples of that. (Look at what’s happening with cork right now!)

We need to stop protecting uncompetitive, unproductive businesses with public money (e.g. through public contracts for extremely expensive infrastructure projects, but also through mass subsidisation – in other words, we need to end corporate welfare). We need a State that is concerned with the public interest, not private interests, and we also need regulatory agencies that are truly independent and have the necessary tools to do their job.

We need more autonomous public schools where children and young adults obtain wide-ranging knowledge on a variety of subjects, including Citizenship. People need to be aware of their rights and duties as citizens, of how the political system is meant to work, and they need to learn how to take part in public debates, and they also need to learn languages, mathematics, hard sciences, History, geography, philosophy, etc.

I could go on, but this is a rather large comment already. Suffice it to say that I believe we need the State to do what it does best, the private sector to do what it does best, and we need to keep private interests away from the public interest, and we need to keep the State away from things that jeopardise its ability to do its job well.

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