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0 pointsmarcosdumay9d ago0 comments

It's just now starting to become common knowledge that the military dictatorship didn't industrialize Brazil. On most circles, saying that it deindustrialized the country will surprise every single person, and get immediately rejected as false by a large share.

Propaganda is a hell of a thing. We are not even close to start that discussion, so it mostly won't appear anywhere.

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expedition328d ago

Reminds me of the dictatorship in Suriname in the 1980s. It was not about ideology. The military was just corrupt- they even did business with drug cartels.

Generals can't fix the economy they can only use violence and repression.

kranke1558d ago

The Brazilian dictatorship did both. Just like the rest of Latin América they lost it all to high interest rates in the 70s and 80s. They lost so they quit.

marcosdumayOP8d ago

You mean it first industrialized and then deindustrialized the country?

Because if so, not really. Most of their industrializing policies had the opposite effect. What they really achieved was to reduce the industrialization pace to snail-speed, and then to turn it negative.

On the first half, it was not for lack of trying, though. It was just for lack of competence.

kranke1554d ago

You’re wrong and I can quote a number of economic histories to show so. The industrialisation push in Latin America was successful - to a degree. It followed the UN plans for developing a country under the Bretton Woods system. And it worked. But all that work was unwound by the Nixon shock and then the Volcker shock.

The only way to develop a major industrial economy under the Western system post 1945 seems to have been - be a reliable and essential US ally - be given privileges to survive the occasional systemic shock. “Kicking away The Ladder” and “How Asia Works” are good books about this.

That was true of Nixon-Volcker and it was true of 2008-COVID periods. The truth is that under the dollar monetary zone the rules are what they are, until they get changed. Those who survive relatively unscathed are generally given a permissive path to do so.

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