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Territory in eastern South America, ruled since 1988 by the República Federativa do Brasil

Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At 8.5 million square kilometers and with over 208 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the sixth most populous. The capital is Brasília and the most populated city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states and the 5,570 municipalities. It is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language and the only one in the Americas, besides being one of the most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to the strong immigration from various places in the world.

Geographical type: Territory

Latitude: 10° S — Longitude: 52° W

Area: 8,515,767 km²

ISO 3166-2 code: BR

Measures of Freedom

Brazil | Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2022
2016: Status: Free, Aggregate Score: 81, Political Rights: 2, Civil Liberties: 2
Rising inflation, Brazil's worst economic recession in 25 years, and allegations of official corruption battered President Dilma Rousseff's administration in 2015, leading to large but mostly peaceful protests and sustained public pressure for the president to resign less than a year into her second term. Opposition parties requested her impeachment over revelations that she had manipulated the government's accounts to disguise deficit spending, and the impeachment process was expected to begin in early 2016.
Human Freedom Index [PDF], The Human Freedom Index 2021
2019: 7.22, Rank: 78, Personal Freedom: 7.64, Economic Freedom: 6.63
Level of Economic Freedom, Economic Freedom of the World
2014: 6.27, Rank: 124

Articles

Along Pennsylvania Avenue, by Murray N. Rothbard, Faith and Freedom, Dec 1954
Discusses (a) the world outlook after the 1954 Paris agreements, expressing hope "prospects for continued peace" and (b) the rise in coffee prices, pointing the finger at the Brazilian and U.S. governments
The correct answer can be found in Brazil, traditionally the source of over half the world's coffee crop. For years, the Brazilian government maintained high minimum price supports on the export price of the country's coffee. The result, of course, saw 'surplus' coffee pile up in Brazil, unsalable at the artificially high price. Only two alternatives face the Brazilian government: abandon the high price support for coffee, or wheedle a dollar loan from the U. S. Government. Abandoning coffee supports would stop the mulcting of the American consumer by the Brazilian government cartel.
Related Topics: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Germany
Better Them Than Us, by Scott McPherson, 19 Jan 2004
Discusses the Brazilian disarmament statute of 2003 and similar 1997 United Kingdom ban vis-à-vis findings by Gary Kleck and John Lott regarding gun ownership and prevalence of crime
Hoping to curb a homicide rate that puts Brazil's violent death rate above every other nation not at war, President da Silva signed the aptly termed 'disarmament act' during the Christmas week. The new law limits the carrying of handguns in public to police officers, the military, licensed security guards, and hunters; requires a background check for gun purchases; and raises the minimum age for gun ownership from 21 to 25.
Farm Subsidies Must Go, by Sheldon Richman, 30 Apr 2004
Discusses the U.S. response to a World Trade Organization ruling on a Brazilian complaint that U.S. subsidies to cotton farmers violate WTO rules
[At] last year's WTO meeting ... Mexico, Brazil and other developing countries tried to start a discussion about farm subsidies in the rich countries. They got nowhere, so they walked out ... Brazil argues that the subsidies lower costs to American cotton farmers and enable them to grow more crop ... We can't know what the world supply and price of cotton would be without the subsidies. If they were ended tomorrow and the price rose, as the Brazilians maintain it would, we could expect the higher price to summon forth additional cotton from somewhere. So the Brazilians might be no better off.
Related Topic: Farming
The Global Education Industry: Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries, by Antony Flew, The Freeman, Sep 2000
Reviews the tittle 1999 book by James Tooley, which includes surveys of "private education alternatives in 13 developing countries" as well as analysis and recommendations
In Brazil, for instance, there are seven or eight large chains of private schools, several of which also run universities and sometimes educational television stations. Not only is the private sector large in Brazil, but it is also strikingly innovative. The most dramatic example of this is provided by the COC chain. For fees of about $4,800 a year, it provides each student with a specially devised desk with a fold-away computer terminal networked to CD-ROMs, the Internet, and the teacher's 'smart-board,' a device that enables the student to take home a copy of all the teacher's blackboard writings on a floppy disk.
The Impoverishing Effects of Foreign Aid [PDF], by Manuel Ayau, Cato Journal, 1984
Analyzes the 1980s debt crisis, from the viewpoint of creditor and debtor countries, suggesting some solutions such as removing trade barriers, ending debtor government interventionist policies and creditor government foreign aid and subsidized bail-outs
In Brazil, as of 1981, one-sixth of the country's supermarkets were state-owned. For each cruzeiro spent on conventional public investment, three cruzeiros were invested in Brazil's SOEs [state-owned enterprises]. Transfers of public funds to SOEs account for 77% of total public expenditures and for more than 25% of Brazil's [GDP] ... The government is the owner of over 500 financial and industrial and commercial companies. According to Brazilian economist Paulo Ayres, these enterprises together with governmental agencies, are responsible for 70% of the nation's total foreign debt.
Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it, by Chalmers Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 Feb 2004
Lists countries where the CIA conducted subversive operations and recommends abolishing the agency.
Since the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the CIA has engaged in similar disguised assaults on the governments of Guatemala (1954); the Congo (1960); Cuba (1961); Brazil (1964); Indonesia (1965); Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1961-73); Greece (1967); Chile (1973); Afghanistan (1979 to the present); El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s); and Iraq (1991 to the present) -- to name only the most obvious cases.
A Libertarian Visits South America, by Jacob G. Hornberger, Freedom Daily, Mar 1999
Relates Hornberger's trip to give lectures and participate in debates at the Instituto de Estudos Empresariais in Brazil and the launching of the Fundación Atlas para una Sociedad Libre in Buenos Aires
The [Instituto de Estudos Empresariais (IEE) in Porto Alegre] was founded in 1984 "to encourage and prepare new leadership, based on the principles of the free-market economy, free enterprise, and the rule of law." ... I engaged in a lively debate with a philosophy professor about ... the Brazilian and American constitutions. He was an ardent defender of the so-called rights to health care, education, housing ... I first pointed out that the root cause of Brazil's economic problems was the fact that the government was constitutionally required to provide all of these "benefits" to the citizenry.
The Secret State, by Carl Oglesby, 19 Dec 1991
Details various events from the dismantling of the Office of Strategic Services after World War II to the 1991 death of Danny Casolaro, which Oglesby said are reason to be worried about "a secret and invisible state within the public state"
1964: Brazil
Two weeks after the Johnson administration announced the end of the JFK Alliance for Progress with its commitment to the principle of not aiding tyrants, the CIA staged and the U.S. Navy supported a coup d'etat in Brazil over-throwing the democratically elected Joao Goulart. Within twenty-four hours a new right-wing government was installed, congratulated and recognized by the United States.
UpdSpotlight: Founding Father, by Patrick Cox, Reason, Aug 1980
Brief profile of Leonard Read, his accomplishments, his influence and his outlook for the future of liberty
Certainly, Read has been successful. An example can be found in Brazil. Read gave a seminar there in 1958 for his friend Paulo Ayres. Ayres translated Read's Government: An Ideal Concept and circulated it widely. In 1964 Ayres, along with many of those who heard Read speak, led a bloodless coup that overthrew the Communists and instituted a free market. In an interview ..., Ayres named FEE as the reason for the revolution. Brazilians today do not enjoy the civil liberties that Americans do, but many see the institution of a free market as the first and necessary step toward full liberty.
A Three-Pronged Blunder, or, What Money is, and What it Isn't, by George Selgin, 27 Oct 2021
Examines the common, three-part textbook definition of money, offering counterarguments for the "store of value" and "unit of account" parts, reviewing what Jevons and Menger wrote about money's functions
Consider the case of Brazil in 1992. In that year alone prices expressed in Brazil's official currency unit, the cruzeiro, rose more than tenfold. But rather than express prices in cruzeiros, which would have meant changing them daily, if not more than once a day, hotels, restaurants, and many other businesses switched to posting prices in dollars. Many also kept accounts in dollars. Cruzeiros nevertheless remained Brazil's most widely used medium of exchange. So which was Brazil's "money"—dollars or cruzeiros? And, if it was dollars, what exactly were cruzeiros?
Trade Restrictions Show Hypocrisy, by Sheldon Richman, 12 Sep 2003
Discusses how U.S. and European agricultural tariffs and quotas, established at the behest of wealthy farmers in those countries, harm farmers in the developing world as well as others in the developed nations
[B]ecause of the political connections of wealthy farmers in the United States and Europe, [farmers in the developing world] are forbidden to [sell their products to willing buyers]. The Washington Post offers a poignant example from Brazil. Because of the pull of the American sugar growers, the U.S. government imposes quotas on sugar from Latin America, with a 244 percent tariff on any excess. Brazil could produce twice as much sugar if Americans were free to buy it. Because of the protectionist wall, poor Brazilians who would be working in the sugar industry today can't find jobs.
Related Topics: Farming, Free trade, Government

Podcasts

The Libertarian Student Movement, by Wolf von Laer, Aaron Ross Powell (host), Caleb Brown (host), Free Thoughts, 17 Feb 2017
Interview with Wolf von Laer, CEO of Students for Liberty, to discuss the status of the liberty movement on college campuses
Wolf von Laer: ... So you might have seen how much impact had we in Brazil. So we not only talk about Brazil, we also get a lot of stuff done. So you saw these massive, massive events on the streets, where people were protesting, and many of them were holding signs up like, "Less Marx, More Mises" in Portuguese of course. There was a whole classical liberal movement there. Many of these people now who we have trained as part of our leadership are now in state parliaments. Sure, they're not part of our organization anymore, but they are our alumni and they are still affecting change this way too.

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Brazil" as of 27 Jul 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.