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Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

#41
post #22

I read a lot of economics blogs. A lot of them seem to have the joke, "Brazil is the country of the future, and it always will be!" The meaning is that Brazil should be a more successful country. Great location, favorable demographics, lots of natural resources, peaceful neighbors, large population, mostly stable government. But it just never quite becomes successful. But in could, in the future! But that's what peop…

What are some of the best economics blogs? Interested in learning more.

Lyn Alden's, just brilliant

Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

#42
I'm Brazilian, currently living abroad in Europe. However, I'm back often to visit family, so I'm not out of touch with the country. I love Brazil and miss it a lot.

Brazil is a unique country. Like every country, including rich ones, it has its own set of advantages and challenges. I think that most people have an excessively negative image of Brazil, because of the reputation of it being unsafe. In reality, even though it's not as safe as Europe or Japan, it's not nearly as bad as people generally think. Outside of the big cities it's totally fine.

The main problems in Brazil in my view are wealth inequality and corruption. Brazil needs a big political reform to make it really hard for government officials to commit crimes without going to jail. Corruption is a problem because it's not punished, and people at the lower income levels see how this works and see no good way to get out of poverty. It's the main reason many turn to crime, because they see no future. Most people have a good heart and care for each other, though. Brazil has a kind of human warmth which is hard to find elsewhere. That's why many foreigners that go to Brazil say that the best of Brazil is its people, and they are right.

For people curious about Brazil, I recommend going to YouTube and just doing a search for "Brazil" (or "Brasil", for local videos). Recently, with the opening of visa free travel for a few countries, like USA and Japan, a lot of YouTubers started to visit and discover Brazil as a destination, and their videos can give you a rough idea of what to expect if you go. There are also many foreigners that moved to Brazil and make videos about their experience as well. Rio is very beautiful and all, but I don't understand why the obsession with it, I think it's much better to visit somewhere off the beaten path, like Florianopolis, or the Northeast, where Brazilians themselves go for tourism.

For other Brazilians, what I have to say is that Brazil also has many things to be really proud of, like being one of the greenest economies on Earth for its size, with over 80% of electricity coming from renewable sources, and increasing over time. Most cars in Brazil can run on any mixture of Gasoline and Ethanol, due to locally developed flex fuel technology, and I believe EVs will take a back seat to fuel cell ethanol vehicles in the future, so don't feel bad there aren't so many Teslas around. Ethanol is already available everywhere, unlike EV charging stations.

Brazil produces 6x more food than it consumes, so it helps to feed the world (see also Embrapa). However, it also produces airplanes, and other high tech products, even having its own small semiconductor industry. Brazil has a very advanced banking system that puts many developed markets to shame.

Brazil has if not the best, close to the best food in the world, including our local variations on Italian, Japanese and other cuisines, along with our own unique dishes, fruits, etc, which are not found elsewhere. Our culture is rich, with many genres of music unique to Brazil, like choro, which is unfortunately not so well known outside.

Brazil has tremendous biodiversity, and natural beauty in many forms. There are so many places worth to visit, like: Jalapão, Iguaçú falls, Lençóis Maranhenses, Chapada Diamantina, thousands of kilometers of beaches, beautiful islands like Ilha Grande, Ilhabela, Fernando de Noronha, too much to list all here.

Brazil is, paradoxically though, very closed, isolated. Search YouTube for the interesting custom car scene in Brazil to try to understand this a bit. Asianometry also recently put out an excellent video on Brazilian computer industry. In part there is this excessive protectionism, which leads to some commercial isolation, but also immigration is not like in the past when lots of Japanese and Europeans came, even if more recently more and more people are moving to Brazil. Things are more expensive in Brazil in part because of this strategy, which I actually do understand, because Brazil is one of the few countries that can be self-sufficient on most things (tech being a sore exception). When there are wars like now, not being too dependent on the outside world provides the country with stability.

When I retire, I'd like to go back to Brazil. If you mostly ignore the government like most people, and have enough money to be at least in the middle class, I think Brazil is a really great place to live, and I say that having lived in various parts of the developed world.

Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

#44

I ran an American office in brasil. The best developer community! But drug down by bureaucracy. The reality is that running a company in brasil is about 1000x harder than the US. Much stronger rights for the enployees. We had employees essentially start protesting against “imperialism” (ie against the american company employing them) and stopped working and would disrupt meetings with passionate speeches anbout gende…

My Brazilian brother (we unofficially adopted him after he lived with us in the US as an exchange student) worked for an American tech company in Brazil. He was trained as a lawyer in Brazil. And, yes, this is exactly what happens in Brazil. It feels like extortion to me and I generally feel like I side with labor when there is a dispute against (especially tech) companies. I would never want to want to run a tech company in Brazil and I love Brazil and have lived there.

Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

#45
post #30

I read a lot of economics blogs. A lot of them seem to have the joke, "Brazil is the country of the future, and it always will be!" The meaning is that Brazil should be a more successful country. Great location, favorable demographics, lots of natural resources, peaceful neighbors, large population, mostly stable government. But it just never quite becomes successful. But in could, in the future! But that's what peop…

This is controversial I'm sure but I think the language keeps them isolated. No one else uses Portuguese so it's like a weird island. I speak (Mexican) Spanish and I can't really understand a Brazilian at all, unless they speak English ;P

As someone who grew up near Mexico and learned mostly Mexican Spanish I can agree but having moved to Japão I had to adapt to the fact Brazilian is more common in the area I live in. Several months of dabbling in it has made Spanish look like the odder language. I read Spanish and feel like it is poorly written Português. I don’t know if anyone else can relate to this.

Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

#46

I read a lot of economics blogs. A lot of them seem to have the joke, "Brazil is the country of the future, and it always will be!" The meaning is that Brazil should be a more successful country. Great location, favorable demographics, lots of natural resources, peaceful neighbors, large population, mostly stable government. But it just never quite becomes successful. But in could, in the future! But that's what peop…

What I don't get is why Argentina's economy has so much problems and inflation compared to Brazil, what is it they are doing differently? Why don't they do whatever it is Brazil is doing to be stable?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

#47

I ran an American office in brasil. The best developer community! But drug down by bureaucracy. The reality is that running a company in brasil is about 1000x harder than the US. Much stronger rights for the enployees. We had employees essentially start protesting against “imperialism” (ie against the american company employing them) and stopped working and would disrupt meetings with passionate speeches anbout gende…

> This was the result of learning their American engineer counterparts made 3x more than them when they converted their salaries from reals.

I once felt bad about that as well. Then I learned all I could about the cost of living in the US and didn't feel so bad anymore. It's possible to live extremely comfortably here if you get paid in USD. With enough money, it even becomes possible to just ignore the numerous problems plaguing this country.

No idea why they'd give up that opportunity over worker rights. Were it not for the labor arbitrage opportunity, the american company probably wouldn't have been offering those jobs in the first place. Brazilian companies aren't offering more.

Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

#48

I think Brazil seems cool in so many ways, but it seems very politically corrupt. Also, one one observation is if there's a Reddit video clip of some crazy random shooting or assassination or off-duty policeman shooting, it seems to almost always be coming from Brazil, which is pretty scary.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you see Brazil?

#50

I read a lot of economics blogs. A lot of them seem to have the joke, "Brazil is the country of the future, and it always will be!" The meaning is that Brazil should be a more successful country. Great location, favorable demographics, lots of natural resources, peaceful neighbors, large population, mostly stable government. But it just never quite becomes successful. But in could, in the future! But that's what peop…

What I don't get is why Argentina's economy has so much problems and inflation compared to Brazil, what is it they are doing differently? Why don't they do whatever it is Brazil is doing to be stable?

Don't be fooled. Brazil may seem stable right now but the future's not looking too good. Government spending went through the roof this year. To me it seems like the only thing keeping the country afloat is the monstrously high interest rate. It's only a matter of time before they get rid of that as well.

Brazil suffered many times the exact same hyperinflation Argentina now faces. We have gone through several currencies now. If you search HN for Brazil, one of the top posts is about the creation of the real and how they convinced the population that this time it was somehow going to be different.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1757716

The real is merely 30 years old and has already inflated about 1100%. 1 BRL@1994-07 is about 12 BRL@2023-10. Somehow salaries don't seem to increase as much.

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