The theme we are dealing with in this article concerns economic planning, which is a very important issue for every society that wants to promote its economic and social development in an environment of high complexity and often chaotic changes, such as the one we live imposed by internal economic factors and also by external economic factors resulting from the country's participation in the global economy.

1. 1
IN DEFENSE OF RATIONAL ECONOMIC PLANNING
Fernando Alcoforado*
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) can be calculated in the currency of a given country from
the sum of all its components: GDP = C + I + G + X - M. In this formula, C corresponds
to household expenditure on household goods. consumption (private consumption), I
corresponds to the expenditure of investment companies, either in capital goods (gross
fixed capital formation, GFCF), or in inventories of raw materials and products (change
in inventories, EST), G corresponds to state expenditure (federal governments , state and
municipal) in consumer goods (public consumption), X corresponds to export revenue
and M to import spending. Thus, we will have: GDP = C + GFCF + EST + G + X-M.
Based on this formula, GDP growth can be obtained by expanding private consumption
(C), increasing investment in productive activity (I = GFCF + EST) and raising
government expenditure (G). Increased export earnings (X) and reduced import spending
(M) would also contribute to economic growth.
In order to achieve economic expansion, it is essential to increase household
consumption, the private sector investment rate, state spending on investments in
economic and social infrastructure, and export revenues. To increase household
consumption (C), it is necessary to increase the population's wage bill and adopt a credit
policy that encourages consumers to buy. To raise the level of private sector (I)
investments, it is necessary to reduce the tax burden and implement a policy of tax
incentives and attractive interest for entrepreneurs. To raise state expenditure (G), it is
necessary to raise the level of investments in economic infrastructure (energy, transport
and communications) and social infrastructure (education, health, housing and
sanitation). It is important to expand private domestic savings by providing incentives for
households and businesses to save, and to expand public domestic savings by reducing
government spending, particularly cost to generate a surplus in public accounts.
Economic growth can also be achieved by raising the level of exports and reducing
imports through the policy of substituting imported goods for the expansion of economic
activities.
To achieve the expansion of the economy it is essential to increase your investment rate.
In order to raise the level of investment, private domestic savings need to be expanded by
offering incentives to households and businesses to save, as well as expanding domestic
public savings by reducing government spending, especially especially current expenses
those to generate a public account surplus. Economic growth can also be achieved by
raising the level of exports and reducing imports through the policy of substituting
imported goods for the expansion of economic activities.
The great challenge faced by governments in the contemporary era is the need to manage
their countries in a highly complex environment and often of chaotic changes imposed by
internal economic factors as well as external economic factors resulting from the country's
participation in the global economy. There are governments that plan their economies
whose principles that guide their leaders in the planning and management process are as
follows: 1) they seek to reach some stable state of equilibrium, believing that this is
possible by adapting the economy to changes occurring at home and abroad; and 2) they
believe that decisions made and subsequent actions will lead to desired outcomes based
on the principle of the relationship between cause and effect. There are also neoliberal

2. 2
governments that advocates of the minimal state who do not plan their economies and
who believe it is possible to stabilize them with minimal interference by letting them
operate according to market forces.
The management of the governments that plan their economies considers management a
negative feedback activity, that is, it establishes a strategy and leads the government in
the desired direction by correcting the deviations between the planned plan and the results
achieved. At a time when everything is changing rapidly, it can be said that the principles
governing this management model are outdated because it is impossible to achieve a
stable state or equilibrium in the economy in an external environment such as the current
one characterized by instability. In addition, decisions made by their leaders at any given
time may not lead to the desired outcome as they will be inexorably affected by mutations
that may occur internally and externally over time. The situation is even worse for the
management of governments that do not plan their economies because they are unable to
achieve a stable or balanced state in the economy in an external environment such as the
current one characterized by instability. For government action to be effective,
governments would necessarily have to take into account instability, uncertainty, with its
turbulence and its risks. Governments that plan their economies would be more likely to
cope with this situation than neoliberal governments that do not plan their economies.
In the contemporary economic environment, good examples of market turmoil and
instability are the global economic crisis in 2008 in the United States that has affected all
countries and companies globally and the 2014 economic crisis in Brazil that caused the
largest economic recession in the country's history. One of the major flaws in the planning
process of many governments is that it minimizes uncertainties when it is known that
change is the only stable rule at the present time and that the past is less and less the basis
for projecting the future. In an effort to overcome these crises, governments adopt
negative feedback trying to keep the national economy functioning as before, when it
would be right to adopt positive feedback that would imply the adoption of structural
changes in the national economy to cope with the disorder and prevent its collapse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb states in his book A lógica do Cisne Negro (The Black Swan
Logic) that the Black Swan is an “outlier” because it is outside the scope of ordinary
statistics, as nothing in the past can point convincingly to its possibility of occurrence.
The "black swan" has an extreme impact. He says: Think of the September 11, 2001 attack
that was a “black swan”: if the risk were reasonably conceivable on September 10, it
would not have happened. For Taleb, almost everything that is studied about social life is
centered on the “normal”, particularly with “bell-shaped” or Gaussian deduction methods
that reveal virtually nothing because the bell-shaped curve It ignores major deviations
and is unable to deal with them, and yet it makes us feel confident of having tamed the
uncertainty, yet makes us feel confident that we have tamed uncertainty. Taleb suggests
“thinking outside the box” that considers, in addition to normal events, the occurrence of
“black swans”, that is, unlikely events [TALEB, Nassim Nicholas. A lógica do Cisne
Negro (The Black Swan Logic). Rio: Best Business. 2015].
Capitalism is a complex, dynamic, adaptive, nonlinear system because it has many
elements or agents that interact with one another forming one or more structures that
originate from the interactions between such agents. Complex systems are systems
characterized by being dynamic that have as their fundamental characteristics their
sensitive dependence on the initial conditions whereby slight differences at the beginning

3. 3
of any process can lead to completely opposite situations over time. The opinion of Ervin
Laszlo, Ph.D. by Sorbonne, presented in his book O Ponto do Caos (The Point of Chaos)
(São Paulo: Editora Cultrix, 2006), is that a dynamic system, whether it occurs in nature,
in society or in a simulation of computer, is governed by attractors.
Examples of stable attractors in the capitalist system include household consumption,
business investment, and foreign trade (exports minus imports) that operate to promote
economic growth, income, and employment. When household consumption, business
investment, and foreign trade gains decline, there should be a mechanism for government
feedback and control through public spending and monetary, exchange rate, and fiscal
policies to act to compensate for the aforementioned decline and, therefore, ensure the
stability of the economic system. This was the model proposed by Lord Keynes that
formulated the so-called Keynesian model of economy management. Because it is a
dynamic system, “weird” or chaotic attractors can emerge that can destabilize the system
even if there is government feedback or control. These “strange” attractors may be
situated in the country's economic realm, such as high public debt, high balance of
payments deficit, high public spending, high level of inflation and recession or internal
economic depression, in the country's political realm, for example, the instability of the
political system, in the social sphere of the country, such as mass unemployment, high
level of crime and social upheaval, also in the external sphere of the country, such as the
outbreak of a new world crisis like that of 1929 and 2008 and a new world conflict.
"Strange" or chaotic attractors can lead to the destabilization of a country's capitalist
system.
Chaos theory explains the workings of complex and dynamic systems. It is from Ervin
Laszlo the claim that systems enter a state of chaos when fluctuations that were hitherto
corrected by negative self-stabilizing feedback are out of control. The trajectory of
development becomes nonlinear: prevailing trends collapse and, in their place, several
complex developments emerge. Chaos is rarely a prolonged condition. In most cases, it
is just a transitory epoch between more stable states. When fluctuations in the system
reach levels of irreversibility, the system reaches a critical point where it collapses or
rapidly evolves into a state that is resistant to the fluctuations that have destabilized it
(revolutionary advance). If this path of revolutionary advancement is selected, the system
evolves into a state in which it has more flexibility, greater structural complexity, and
additional levels of organization.
Figure 1 shows what happens when a dynamic system is subject to “fluctuations” such as
a country's economic system that is brought to a bifurcation point from which the system
reaches new dynamic stability or collapses. At the bifurcation point, the system has to be
restructured or it will collapse. This is the situation experienced by the economy of many
countries of the world after the crisis that broke out in 2008 in the United States and
spread across the planet and the one experienced by Brazil after the 2014 economic crisis
that caused the largest economic recession in the history of the country and not there has
been a restructuring of their economic systems. This restructuring would require the
adoption by each country of measures that would contribute to the elimination of
“strange” attractors that may be situated as already mentioned in the economic, political
and social spheres of the country, and also in its external sphere. The “strange” or chaotic
attractors that lead to the destabilization of the capitalist system in each country need to
be eliminated for it to evolve or it will be collapsed.

4. 4
Figure 1 - Dynamic Systems
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System,
member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional
Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of
strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the
books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os
condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora
Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos
na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica,
Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate
ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores
Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo
e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As
Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba,
2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua
convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro
para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
System
State
2
1
3
Fluctuations
(Crises)
Dynamic Stability
New Dynamic Stability
Revolutionary
Advancement
Collapse
Time
Bifurcation
Point
Beginning of
Fluctuations