A few common words

The idea of the common good tends to commonly be a nuisance to those who draw inspiration from it. In a good way. Before thinking from the economic standpoint (fully integrated with biology and the human sciences, as defined by Jean Tirole), I think of the excellent section name that “common good” writes. Instead of “everyday” or “every day” — the latter, a classic of my output —, we could call news about potholes “common good,” quite trivial, quite human.

When I argue that the “common good” is a nuisance, it is because, whatever role we occupy, we are invited to suspend — even if in a limited way — our understandings of the world. Read slowly what follows. If it is what I think, it is what I think and it is mine. If it is what you think, it is what you think and it is yours. The catch is here: if it is mine or yours, it is not ours, it is not the common good.

Economia do bem comum is the title of the Portuguese edition of Tirole’s book (Economics for the Common Good), winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics. The copy that reached me is from the publisher Zahar, with the stamp of the Republic of France. Backed by economic research, the text clarified something beautiful for me: at least in the laboratory, we are more often honest and generous than selfish (except when we have very bad examples nearby). And more: we tend to engage in causes that bring us no reward that sounds like a trade, because we do not like to seem greedy. Twist: at the same time, when we go to the polls and are seen in the voting booth, we take pleasure. Mail-in voting in the United States reduced participation. People really wanted to meet neighbors on the sidewalk, wear a sticker on their chests.

A few years ago, Professor Belmiro Valverde Jobim Castor (author of Tamanho não é documento, among other titles) looked for the poorest locality in Curitiba and its metropolitan region. He used as a parameter the numbers of the Basic Education Development Index (Ideb). He came face to face with a destitute neighborhood in Piraquara. There, he installed a first-world school, with money from U.S. philanthropy. Names such as architect Manoel Coelho and journalists Aroldo Murá and Michelle Thomé signed projects. In operation, the João Paulo II Education Center began offering full-time education, with three meals a day, at the same cost the government spent per child in the public network.

Whoever recommended the reading on the common good to me was Paraná’s Secretary of Planning and Structural Works, Valdemar Bernardo Jorge. He and a state team identified the municipalities with the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) and created the Paraná Produtivo program. In that, the program resembles Belmiro’s education center, in leveling up: a business intelligence platform began operating with data collected from various sources, such as tables from the Paraná Institute for Economic and Social Development (Ipardes), to make the regions’ weaknesses and strengths clear and measurable. It only works if local actors want to take part, and if they are willing to share the advantages and risks. That is the common good.