Gas prices soaring and other wonders

The market, which would function as "an invisible hand" according to Adam Smith's deistic view, is based on the rationality that Weber designated as wertrationalität (instrumental, objective, or even calculating rationality) that underlies possessive individualism, economic liberalism, and many other "isms." This is a logic that should be contained, but unfortunately was not, by reasoning based on values ​​(ethical, religious, and even aesthetic), corresponding to substantive rationality (vertrationalität in Max Weber's original German).

Therefore, in modernity, the economy abandoned its original meaning of oikos nomos, a dimension that dealt with "household norms" or, in other words, that was related to meeting basic needs and the small joys of life, becoming instead a market economy, where everything has a price, everything is reduced to a commodity, and where the "good functioning of the economy" is the great objective.

With the exclusionary logic of the market prevailing, economic equilibrium has taken precedence over social justice and has become the main objective worldwide. Consequently, we have achieved great economic, scientific, and technological development, especially in central countries, in parallel with misery and poverty afflicting a third of the world's population, in addition to extraordinary aggression against nature.

As one might expect, post-coup Brazil "functions" under this perspective. We are under a neoliberal government (moving towards anarcho-liberalism) that has achieved astonishing results: indiscriminate freezing of spending, minimum wage below inflation, privatizations, labor reform, rising unemployment, increased inequality, increased poverty and misery, etc.

In this distressing scenario, one fact deserves special mention because it affects the daily lives of the population, directly impacting the cost of living (and death) – the price of fuel, which has been readjusted with alarming frequency. In the last 17 days, there have been 11 increases.

But, indifferent to the perverse consequences of his petroleum derivatives pricing policy, the usurper President came forward to explain:

"Now, regarding pricing policy, Pedro Parente has been telling me for some time that it's better to follow international prices because that provides a lot of legal certainty for those who invest in Petrobras and this activity. And this monitoring of international prices, sometimes there's an increase, sometimes a decrease. But it also gives a lot of credibility and legal security to investors."

For whom does Temer govern? Is there any doubt left?

Very well (or very badly), with this pricing policy, Brazil stands out as having the second most expensive gasoline among the 15 countries that produce the most oil in the world, according to a survey by the consulting firm Air-Inc. This is despite the pre-salt reserves, the largest recent oil discovery.

And the absurdity is so great that while they punish the population, they make Petrobras pay US$2,95 billion in compensation to American investors, without having been convicted in court. This amount is 6,5 times greater than the money recovered by Operation Lava Jato and returned to the oil company's coffers. Legal certainty or vile sell-out?

The fact is that, in these strange times, a large part of the population, subjected to a daily and mesmerizing bombardment by the mainstream media, remains as if anesthetized in the face of the absurdities sponsored by the coup-mongering frenzy. Not even the imminence of the World Cup, once so important to our people, can dispel the torpor into which we have been thrown.

Sometimes, however, a few flashes bring some recent facts to mind. Regarding the price of gasoline, for example, like a lightning bolt passing through our minds, we remember that the adjustments in fuel prices, at much lower percentages than the current ones, were one of the driving forces behind the campaign by conservative media and the groups supporting the coup.

I understand that times of crisis, such as the current one in Brazil, represent, on the other hand, an opportunity. As the thinker Jessé de Souza very well stated, in a crisis all legitimacy loses its "naturalness," and in this sense the figure of the Brazilian as a cordial man, in the terms put forth by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, begins to be negated.

The people's patience has its limits. Take the truck drivers as an example. So combative against Dilma, their hearts overflowing with the hatred that had been instilled in them, now tormented by the prices imposed by the Temer/Parente duo, they are back on the streets, this time driven by reason – they know they were deceived and used as pawns.

Or, in another blatant display of popular revulsion against the illegitimate Temer, when he demagogically tried to express solidarity with the people affected by the fire in the Antônio Godoy Building in downtown São Paulo, the people reacted vehemently. Temer had barely gotten out of the car when he was immediately expelled from the scene amidst boos and protests.

But, beyond the practical aspects that impact the life of the Nation, there is another very serious consequence – the coup caused the population to lose faith, to lose confidence not only in political actors, but in the very nature of Politics.

For all these reasons, in addition to undoing the concrete injustices of the coup, the great challenge ahead of us is to reinstate the political dimension as fundamental (and not the economy), recognizing that we are first and foremost "anthropos physei politikon zoon," in the perspective of Aristotle.