Brazilianization of the World

* Article: Alex Hochuli. The Brazilianization of the World. American Affairs Journal,

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Summary

Chor Pharn:

"What Hochuli actually argues (the load-bearing theses)

• End of high modern feedback. The twentieth-century state—“confident machines forged in war”—no longer delivers coordinated outcomes; legitimacy and capacity decay in the capitalist core, exposed by Covid and persistent policy paralysis.

• Brazil as preview, not exception. The traits long associated with Brazil—inequality, precarity/informalization, patrimonial elites, clientelism, and “inclusion through consumption”—are spreading into the North. “Ideas out of place” (Schwarz): liberal forms persist where material bases have vanished.

• Modernity without development. We inhabit one temporality now: WhatsApp + favelas, e-commerce + open sewers. The world is modern but “not modern enough,” stuck between aspiration and structural limits.

• Dualization: Belíndia. Rich Belgium over poor India—produced and reproduced by the new economy; the “inside” depends on exploiting the “outside,” and the political class entrenches this duality.

• Politics of irresolution and cynicism. From lawfare to technopopulism, the system manages antagonisms rather than resolving them; anti-politics and judicialization replace programmatic contests; “it all ends in pizza.”

(https://thecuttingfloor.substack.com/p/modernitys-afterlife)