About on Ed Barros

Career

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Jiu-Jitsu

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

There is a moment, in every fight, when someone is on top of you. Not a figure of speech. Eighty, ninety kilos resting on your chest, a forearm looking for your neck, the air coming in by halves. The clock does not stop. The body screams to do something — anything, now. And the first lesson of jiu-jitsu, the one that takes years to sink in, is exactly this: do not do just anything. Breathe. Protect what needs protecting. Wait.

Barbecue

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

It starts before the meat. It starts with the firewood, with deciding who is coming, with the message in the group that asks "Saturday?" and gets three thumbs-up before it finishes loading. It starts with tereré in hand while the fire still does not know what it will be, and with the first person who arrives too early and stands watching the embers as if they were television. Barbecue, for me, is that: a hobby that gives the people I like an excuse to show up.

Libertarianism

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

An opinion, and I am not asking permission. No spreadsheet attached, no footnotes, no think-tank study. I will say what I think, the way I think it, because that is what a page with my name on it should do.

Taxation is theft

Start with the bill. Income tax, tax on industrial goods, on circulation of goods, on services, on vehicles, on property, on transfers, on inheritance, on financial operations; social contributions on revenue, on profit, on payroll; a levy on fuel; and a fee for everything the taxes forgot. There is a board in the centre of São Paulo that adds up, in real time, what the country collects — and it never runs backwards. You work months of the year for the state before you work a day for yourself. Call it what you like; I call it by its name. Taxation is theft. Theft with a law, a payment slip and a barcode, but theft: someone who produced nothing takes what you produced, and you do not have the option to say no.