Is Brazil finally ready to fulfill on its destiny as the country of the future?

http://www.webiphany.com/2010/12/14/is-brazil-finally-ready-to-fulfill-on-its-destiny-as-the-country-of-the-future/

by xrd • 16 years ago

20 43 16 years ago

BluePoints• 16 years ago

The US should follow their energy independence stance... there is no reason why they can and we can't.

muhfuhkuh2• 16 years ago

I was going to say "scale" just like every other terse response on why the US can't do anything from universal healthcare to ultra-high speed (like Korea and Japan levels) broadband Internet, to interstate public transit, and now energy independence. There's just too damn many people in the states for it to compare favorably to any other country.

Then I saw that Brazil has 200 Million people. So there goes that argument?

Moreover, I also tried to argue about it on geographic size, only to find out that the US is only nominally larger in land size than Brazil.

So, maybe it's because of culture? As in, we have so many different races and religions and creeds, all with their own individual thoughts and beliefs, and all of them can't _possibly_ get together as one and get stuff done. I know, pathetic excuse, right? I've heard that so many times about why Asia gets fast bandwidth, cheap mobile voice/data and bullet trains and universal healthcare and why we can't.

ido• 16 years ago

    So, maybe it's because of culture? As in, we 
    have so many different races and religions 
    and creeds, all with their own individual 
    thoughts and beliefs, and all of them can't 
    _possibly_ get together as one and get stuff done.

So this one is also the same as Brazil then? ;)

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

The US uses 9x as much oil as Brazil.

And the US produces 4x as much oil as Brazil uses.

The reason Brazil is able to be energy independent is because of poverty. They use less energy because fully 1/3 of the country is poor on a level that is incomprehensible in the developed world (living in shanty towns and slums without access to clean water or sewers).

hugh3• 16 years ago

Sure, if the US wanted to destroy five sixths of its economy to match Brazil's $8000 per capita GDP then I'm sure that would reduce US energy usage considerably. I'm not sure it would be a worthwhile tradeoff.

There's also the fact that Brazil has a great sugar cane growing climate which the US lacks... I'm not actually sure whether ethanol production is a significant enough factor to cancel out the fact that US oil production is nearly twice Brazil's.

Symmetry• 16 years ago

I don't really see why we should try to be indpendant in energy rather than copper or cars or anything else. Trade and specialization are important and its only nationalism to want to try to produce everything in one's own country. Now if you're saying that we shouldn't be dependant on the the particular countries that now produce oil I might agree, but what would be wrong with the US being dependant on Mexican solar energy or Brazilian sugarcane?

nwatson• 16 years ago

problem here is we choose to not depend on Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. we instead impose huge import tariffs to protect our possibly net-energy-negative corn ethanol lobby.

nostromo• 16 years ago

I think "energy independence" is often used loosely as a euphemism for "less oil dependence." At the end of the day, relying on other countries for corn ethanol, solar, wind, or hydro electricity is fine because any country can openly compete for our business. Oil production has become a natural monopoly, which makes it a huge security concern.

One way to approach this is to reduce our oil-specific energy needs (for example, gas cars) and migrate those to energy agnostic needs, so that your car can be fueled by a hydro plant in Washington State, a solar farm outside Vegas, some Brazilian Ethanol, some Virginian Cole, and some Saudi crude -- depending on each resources' availability to the grid.

quanticle2• 16 years ago

Is there any reason for the random hypenation? Its very distracting.

alexh• 16 years ago

for some reason, the hyphenation does not show up in the source. Could be a glitchy javascript library trying to do intelligent line wraps.

jwegan• 16 years ago

It appears to only be glitchy on Chrome. I opened it up in Firefox and the hyphenations were only at the line wraps.

whatever_dude6• 16 years ago

Easy answer: no.

Brazil has a lot of positive things going for it, but when you have a cultural background that's as rotten as Brazil's one is, you can count on everything to fail stupendously.

bioinformatics5• 16 years ago

Brazil has been the country of the future for at least 37 years.

dguaraglia3• 16 years ago

Once a friend of mine who happens to know someone working for the CIA said (and I quote) "this friend guy at the CIA tells me they see Brazil as 'the country of the future' and they are doing their best to keep it that way". I guess he was (partly) joking but, truth is, Brazil only started to recover when it stopped following the 'advice' coming from the IMF and started running the show on its own.

I hear the right-wing free-marketeers crying "regulation! socialism! welfare state! high interest!" and the rest. Yet, what works best for the US might not be what works best for Brazil. Just saying.

quanticle2• 16 years ago

Though, I have to wonder if it is actually that hard to change a culture of corruption as the critics on this page say it is. I'm not Brazilian, I'm Indian. At one point India had the same culture of corruption that Brazil does today. Yet, thanks to the efforts of a few far-seeing government officials (e.g. Manmohan Singh) a significant amount of corruption has been eradicated. Sure, there's a lot left, but the trend has shifted decisively in the right direction.

I'm wondering if the same thing could work in Brazil. A leader that decides to pursue anti-corruption almost to the exclusion of other duties could do a lot if the people are sick of having to deal with the extra hassle that corruption imposes on everyday life. The question is, are the Brazilian people ready?

oldgregg2• 16 years ago

No, it's not. Most of my extended family is in Brazil so my wife and I decided to work remote from Brazil for a couple months this fall. It's hard to really understand how crippling the culture of bureaucracy and corruption is until you experience it.

Internet. $200/mo USD for a theoretical 1MB connection. That's assuming the power stays on. Lots of people use the internet (mostly at cafes) but it's only for games and social networking -- nobody thinks of it as legitimate way to make money.

Crime. In many parts of Sao Paulo and Rio people don't even stop at stoplights because the risk of getting shot and carjacked is too real.

Education. Completely broken. Cheating is so rampant most teachers don't even try to prevent it from happening. That's at the private schools where my cousins have attended-- public schools are apparently far worse.

Entrepreneurs. Most people literally don't even have a mental category for this. At best they make vague negative associations about you being a "capitalist." The dream job is either working for the government or getting an engineering position at some multi-national corporation.

All of this is unfortunate because the Brazilian people are really delightful and quite creative. My wife is a designer and she says some of the best design is coming out of Brazil right now. Unfortunately corruption and regulation has completely driven out the spirit of innovation and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

bioinformatics5• 16 years ago

"risk of getting shot and carjacked is too real"

check and check, when I was 17 and 20.

Your whole assessment is perfect, enumerating most of the reasons that made me leave.

whatever_dude6• 16 years ago

Funny - same here, but 18 and 30.

lzm• 16 years ago

How did you leave, if I may ask?

I have a feeling that it is very hard to emigrate to a better country.

jj-sucuri• 16 years ago

I really agree with you.

The issue is in the culture itself, where corruption happens everywhere (top and bottom of the chain). This leads to a corrupt police, corrupt government and everyone trying to gain advantage on top of the others...

The public schools are really bad, but the private ones are ok. But the issue is not education, but this terrible culture of corruption.

ryetoasthumor4• 16 years ago

This masquerades as a sincere personal connection to the country when it is simply a short sighted rant. Brazil is coming into its own on the world stage, but not following the same paradigms as India and China. Goldman Sachs and other investment banks are moving hi-freq shops into the country because the margins are exponentially higher than in US. This information alone bodes well for the country as the government and these global corporations cooperate in developing the necessary infrastructure to support their operations especially i.t.o. internet pipelines.

The advent of Rio as host for the olympics is further evidence of restructuring that the Brazilian government has achieved. And despite the inevitable cost of the infrastructure development outweighing short term gains, the long term gains (see Shanghai Expo 2010) will catapult Rio into the same stratosphere as an India or a China.

On entrepreneurship, I'll be honest I am not up on details, but there have been significant articles about particularly financial start ups, which confirm the rapid evolution Brazil is undergoing.

whatever_dude6• 16 years ago

All fair and well, but no amount of Olympics or World Cup hosting will change the fact that the country has problems that are so deeply ingrained into its culture that they have a huge halting impact on everything else. The culture of corruption and advantage-seeking is a big part of the Brazilian's way of life and that's what leads to every other problem - bureaucracy, slow development, bad education, etc.

You can't solve the country's problems with faster internet pipes; when phone companies form a country-wide lobby just so each can have their own monopoly on specific states, it's not a problem of technology or investments anymore, it's a problem of a government that overlooks things like that and of a population that ignores the issue. And this is just one example (of many).

We tend to read a lot of positive things about Brazil in the news. But after living in the country for a bit more than 30 years, I've come to understand how these are usually just overly positive spins, optimistically ignoring the larger picture of how crippling the country's culture is to any effort that is trying to move it forward.

The government hasn't achieved any "restructuring". That anyone believes that is baffling and almost offensive to me. And I'm not talking about the current or previous presidents; this is not because of an individual or a group, but rather something that is really part of the country and will take decades to change, if at all.

No one can really understand Brazil until they understand Gerson's Law: http://bit.ly/glzY06

BoppreH• 16 years ago

Brazilian here. That is all very true. Except about the broadband, it's not that expensive (unless you are in a very remote location).

But you forgot to mention the electronics from 2007 sold at 4 times the price of modern ones.

Now you can all see why we are in love with the internet. It's the greener grass.

oldgregg2• 16 years ago

I was up in Manaus so I can see how the internet would be more expensive up there. The internet really is a great equalizer -- seems like a special economic zones for internet companies could have an amazing effect.

dguaraglia3• 16 years ago

American, although mostly Argentinian (long story!) living in Brazil here.

To be honest, I can't see much of what you say, but then I live in Southern Brazil (Santa Catarina) which is, at least on average, a much more developed part of the country.

Sure, internet and electronics are still expensive but it's very safe when compared to Rio/São Paulo and the schools some of the best in the country. A very good place, generally speaking.

The only point where I have to strongly disagree is your statement about entrepreneurs in Brazil. In fact, when compared with other countries I know (Argentina, the UK, et al.) Brazilians are the closest to the American entrepreneurial soul I've seen. Sure, you have a bunch of people that want to work for the government because of the stability that provides and loyalty for 'the company' is still very deeply ingrained, but in general every Brazilian dreams of having their own business and the government is doing the best it can (short of cutting taxes, unfortunately) to make that dream come true.

(Lastly, and off-topic, I'd like to point out that the perception of 'regulation' as something bad is a very American concept. 'Regulation' is what keeps 'us', the consumer, safe from 'them', the faceless and impossible to sue corporations. Not the oppressive force the American free market pundits make it out to be. Corruption is a bitch though.)

jgalvez2• 16 years ago

"$200/mo USD for a theoretical 1MB connection"

Brazilian here. That seems odd.

In Sao Paulo I pay ~R$150 (~US$90) / mo for 4mbit ADSL.

jgalvez2• 16 years ago

I should add that for real quality of life in Brazil, you have to live in one of the dozens of medium-sized towns in every state, never the capital. They're just as resourceful as the capitals but air quality, crime rate and housing prices are just insanely better.

The potential for growth in Brazil is amazing, but we're still very far from 1st World status. We're mostly definitely a good bet, tho ;)

xrd• 16 years ago

I don't deny your experiences.

I see a marked change in Rio and Sao Paulo when I visit. People in Rio seem much more relaxed, I see women using $1000 smartphones openly on the buses and subways.

Every single cab driver I talk to is positive about the war happening on the German Hill, which every here I've talked to agrees is simply to clean up the city before the World Cup and Olympics.

My point is not that everything in society has improved. It is just that there is a significant shift, and there is an immense opportunity for Internet businesses here that was not there before.

I don't agree with you about your take on entrepreneurship. I personally know many entrepreneurs here, and they are in the same boat as many of us in Portland: limited access to capital and mentorship.

lhorie2• 16 years ago

I'm seeing a lot of (justified) negative feelings towards Brazilian culture, but I think dismissing the tech scene in Brazil outright is a bit like talking about the american redneck stereotype and forgetting about this little place called Silicon Valley.

I recall seeing an article a while back about some successful entrepreneurs from Brazil and I know a guy that is trying to get a VoIP startup off the ground there. If anything, I'd say that technology is Brazil's best chance at becoming the eluded "country of the future". I mean, voting machines and Lua came from there, so it's not like there isn't potential.

whatever_dude6• 16 years ago

The techs are alright. Both things you mention are two prime examples (I'm still flabbergasted how well the voting machines thing worked out, because it had all the reasons in the world to fail).

But when you need to invest 4x more on hardware and software to have something that is 2 years older than standard hardware and software, all inside a bureaucratic state that adds dozens of legal impediments or delays to anyone who wants to make some honest money, it's easy to see why any potential entrepreneur has to tread much more dangerous waters in Brazil than it would anywhere else.

lhorie2• 16 years ago

On the one hand I agree that there's a lot of complications on the non-tech side of things over there, but on the other I can't help thinking that many successful tech efforts had some non-trivial roadblocks to overcome, e.g. google (who needs another search engine?) and youtube (how are they possibly going to monetize that?) come to mind.

dguaraglia3• 16 years ago

BTW, what the heck is it with all the misplaced hyphens? It's kind of annoying.

ryetoasthumor4• 16 years ago

Blaming a country's problems on its "culture" however you are defining that is a cop out. India has these exact problems at 5 times the scale. Have any of you tried to start an education company there, all the government officials I spoke to wanted a minimum 1 million dollar bribe, yet it would be idiotic to say that India is doomed when their rapid development is staring you in the face.

Brazil doesn't suffer from novel and "culturally" inherent problems. You would never say that Brazil is culturally inferior to another country because that is bigotted and ridiculous. The country is suffering the same developing bottle necks that others have and continue to face. Look at where the country has come from, look at where it is now, and I implore you to actually compare Brazil to the other (B)RICS etc. since they offer the best contextual comparison.

The most incredible thing about Brazil is that despite the insurmountable odds whether it is the wheels of capitalism, passionate people, or government involvement - or perhaps a hybrid - Brazil is not lost.

Cynicism has its place too, but in an objective analysis of Brazil's prospects on the world stage, leave it out. I respect your experiences and what you have contributed, but the points of information you have provided are without the global context necessary to understand Brazil's place.

Will Rio offer the world the next Silicon Valley? Only time will tell, but its clear to me that it has a damn good shot.

whatever_dude6• 16 years ago

How long have you lived in the country, other than seeing 'articles' about it?

ryetoasthumor4• 16 years ago

My father grew up in the favellas without parents, his mother (my grandmother) died when he was just a kid and he never knew is father, as is common in the slums. He was able to support himself through pickpocketing and any other way to feed and clothe himself. Sometime in his late teen years, through a gang connection, he was placed in a job at a factory. He worked his ass off at jobs like this for twenty years.

He has never told me how, but one day he left his job and started a small manufacturing business, partnering with the manager from his very first job who he had befriended.As soon as he could afford it, he took my mother and sister and moved to the United States.

I lived in Brazil for almost five years after grad school. My father passed away just last year, and I promised him to go back and look for entrepreneurs like him to fund with micro loans.

My father represents the entrepreneurial spirit that you claim is lacking in Brazil. I know that you are wrong when you say Brazilian culture cannot support a Silicon Valley.

evanlh• 16 years ago

American, been following Brazil since I studied there in college. I am cautiously optimistic about Brazil's prospects, I believe a lot hinges on how quickly they're able to reduce their inequality and fix education. Bolsa familia is an innovative step and education, though terrible, is improving: http://www.economist.com/node/17679798. Right now most of their GDP growth is based on China's commodity demand so a lot depends on how stable that remains.

I see the corruption issue largely as a result of the massive inequality-- which, like the U.S.'s inequality, tends to fall along racial lines-- and politicians have been great at exploiting it to their advantage with help from the monopolistic mass-media. Ideally a shift towards internet and social media will increase transparency and reduce corruption and the social programmes will smooth out inequality in the long run. IMO the Brazilian culture of jeitinho, taking advantage of opportunity where it arises, is very close to the America entreprenuerial spirit but adapted for an environment with a weak rule-of-law.

So the optimism is because all the fundamentals are there -- a growing, young, tech savvy population that loves social media & open source and a government using a commodities boom to invest in education and social programmes. There are plenty of startups-- http://www.predicta.net, for instance, or follow this blog: http://startupi.com.br/ Obviously it's all very fragile but I remain hopeful, the people are amazing and there's nothing I'd like more than to be able to go back.

ryetoasthumor4• 16 years ago

I agree wholeheartedly with your point. China and India are in a similarly precarious position especially in regards to inequality. The urban centers and their peripheral regions in all three countries are lightyears ahead of the rural countryside. China as many before has pointed out has approx 200 million migrant workers. They have no permanent employment prospects in the cities they are migrating to and they are coming out of abject poverty to begin with.

India is in the same position. Cheating is of no consequence when they aren't enough schools to accomodate the population. And the disparity is not minor, it is catastrophic.

These middle income countries are all in a precarious position, so writing any one or all of them off is uneducated and foolish.

Is Brazil finally ready to fulfill on its destiny as the country of the future?

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