um rigoroso inquérito

I would like in this post to describe briefly the process through which innovators are discouraged and ultimately destroyed in a free market, Catholic society. The key instrument in this cultural process of destruction is maledicency or badmouthing.

Consider then a free, competitive industry for product P in a Catholic society. As I argued earlier, for the vast majority of producers, market freedom is of no use to them for they are unable to think independently. There are exceptions, though. Thus, let us assume that one of the few people with independence of mind develops a new technology that lowers his costs of production. As a result, he is now earning profits which are higher than those of his competitors.

How will his competitors react to this new situation? It must be recalled that his competitors are men who do not believe that anything new can come out of a man's mind. If it cannot come out from their own minds, how could it come out from another man's mind? It surely cannot. Thus, if that man is earning higher profits than his competitors in the production of product P the only plausible explanation is that he is cheating on the rules or is doing something ilegal.

Soon, in this very personalized society, rumours will arise that this man does not pay his taxes. Others will say that his money comes from drug dealing or from corruption. Some raise suspicions of him being gay, others deny those suspicions stating convincingly that, although he has been married for twenty years, everybody knows that he keeps an amante in Lisbon. Denunciations, often anonymous, will reach the tax authorities, the criminal police or some other government agency. Everybody in the sector will now be calling for a full investigation (um rigoroso inquérito, as they say in Portuguese) of this entrepreneur's activities and firms. Further, everybody is now calling too for government regulation to prevent future ilegalities as those this man has commited.

Sooner or later a rigoroso inquérito will be launched on this man's activities. The following day it reaches the front page of the town newspaper. If his reputation had not been ruined before, it will be definitely ruined this day. From now on, everybody will refrain from doing business with him, and he will go through a period of severe personal and economic stress. Probably, his wife will leave him because of the rumours and his lack of money. Several years later, the rigoroso inquérito comes to an end. Nothing is proved against him, except that he once had lunch with the chief of his local Repartição de Finanças and that the nephew of his second-degree cousin is a convicted drug dealer. The damage, however, has already been done a long time ago.