The Fake Knowledge Society
I come from a country known for its bureaucracy. Brazil is a country where opening a company takes on average 11 procedures and around 90 days of work. It ranks 124th in ease of doing business (sandwiched between Senegal and Paraguay). Companies willing to pay correctly their taxes employ 100-people tax departments just to be sure that it is filed correctly. It is a country that has a whole industry dedicated to paper-pushing (called “cartórios”). And another to speed up document issuing (called “despachantes”). It wasn’t long ago that the families running it were the richest ones in town. Nothing here is new — as many underdeveloped countries, the public sector creates difficulties to sell facilities. The gigantic amount of non-sense documents needed justifies the inflated number of employees. And the high budgets these offices boast.
The examples are everywhere. I was lucky enough to have graduated from a public Federal University. These Universities are known for their academic excellence and are accessible to only a small percentage of the population. Usually the same population that was already blessed with conditions to graduate a good high school.
The country recently had a big discussion on University funding and the government’s…
