Colombia faces a fiscal problem that can no longer be treated as a temporary difficulty or as the result of decisions made by a single government. For at least the last three administrations, those of Juan Manuel Santos, Ivan Duque, and Gustavo Petro, public spending and debt have followed a persistently upward trajectory. Governments with deep differences in their political orientations ended up sharing the same trend, expanding the size and obligations of the state without making a proportional correction to its spending structure. The result is an economy in which the public sector has grown faster than the productive capacity that must finance it. The figures for the 2027 budget show how far this dynamic has gone. The proposed budget amounts to 634.9 trillion pesos, close to 30 percent of GDP. Of that total, approximately 392.6 trillion corresponds to operating costs, 155.4 trillion to debt service, and barely 87 trillion to investment. In other words, around 86 percent of the ...

We live in a paradoxical age. Never before has humanity had access to so much information, and yet rarely in recent history has verified knowledge been so threatened. Social media has radically transformed the way people, especially young people, interact with information. This interaction is intense, constant, and seemingly democratizing, but behind that apparent freedom lies a profound phenomenon: the silent replacement of traditional epistemic authority with a new form of authority based not on knowledge, but on identity and tribal belonging. For centuries, epistemic authority, that is, the legitimate right to be trusted as a source of truth, was built on verification: evidence, peer review, accumulated experience, rigorous study. Scientists, scholars, and professionals earned credibility by demonstrating that their claims withstood scrutiny. Today, in the digital ecosystem, that logic has been inverted. Authority is no longer earned through verification, it is granted through b...

Vivimos una época paradójica. Nunca antes la humanidad tuvo acceso a tanta información, y sin embargo, pocas veces en la historia reciente el conocimiento verificado ha estado tan amenazado. Las redes sociales han transformado radicalmente la manera en que las personas, especialmente los jóvenes, interactúan con la información. Esta interacción es intensa, constante y aparentemente democratizadora, pero detrás de esa aparente libertad se esconde un fenómeno profundo, la sustitución silenciosa de la autoridad epistémica tradicional por una nueva forma de autoridad basada no en el conocimiento, sino en la identidad y la pertenencia tribal. Durante siglos, la autoridad epistémica, es decir, el derecho legítimo a que se confíe en lo que uno dice como verdadero, se construyó sobre la verificación, la evidencia, la revisión por pares, la experiencia acumulada, el estudio riguroso. Los científicos, los académicos y los profesionales ganaban credibilidad demostrando que sus afirmaciones resist...

  When American forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January and flew him to New York to face trial, the immediate question was tactical: who runs Caracas now? The deeper question, the one that will actually decide whether Venezuela builds a durable democracy or simply trades one strongman for another, is structural. And history has already offered some answers, not so much from political theory as from the hard experience of countries that have walked this road before. Take Germany first. Its postwar decentralization was no accident. The framers of the 1949 Basic Law, working under Allied oversight, built a federal system meant to make a second Hitler structurally near-impossible: states with real power, a presidency reduced to ceremony, an independent constitutional court, and a handful of principles placed permanently beyond the reach of amendment. Germany already had old regional identities to build on, Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony, but it was the trauma of totalitarianism that turn...

  Cuando fuerzas estadounidenses capturaron a Nicolás Maduro en enero y lo trasladaron a Nueva York para ser juzgado, la pregunta inmediata fue táctica: ¿quién gobierna ahora en Caracas? Pero hay una pregunta más de fondo, la que en realidad definirá si Venezuela logra construir una democracia duradera o simplemente cambia un hombre fuerte por otro, y esa pregunta es estructural. La historia ya ha dejado algunas respuestas, no tanto en la teoría política como en la experiencia concreta de países que han recorrido antes este mismo camino. Empecemos por Alemania. Su descentralización de posguerra no fue casualidad. Quienes redactaron la Ley Fundamental de 1949, bajo la mirada de los Aliados, diseñaron un sistema federal pensado para que un segundo Hitler resultara estructuralmente casi imposible: estados con poder real, una presidencia reducida a lo ceremonial, un tribunal constitucional independiente y un puñado de principios blindados para siempre frente a cualquier reforma. Alem...

Colombia enfrenta un problema fiscal que ya no puede ser tratado como una dificultad coyuntural ni como el resultado de las decisiones de un solo gobierno. Durante al menos los últimos tres gobiernos —los de Juan Manuel Santos, Iván Duque y Gustavo Petro— el gasto público y la deuda han seguido una trayectoria persistentemente ascendente. Gobiernos con diferencias profundas en sus orientaciones políticas terminaron compartiendo una misma tendencia: ampliar el tamaño y las obligaciones del Estado sin realizar una corrección proporcional de su estructura de gasto. El resultado es una economía en la que el sector público ha crecido más rápidamente que la capacidad productiva que debe financiarlo. Las cifras del presupuesto de 2027 muestran hasta dónde ha llegado esa dinámica. El proyecto asciende a 634,9 billones de pesos, cerca de 30% del PIB. De ese total, aproximadamente 392,6 billones corresponden a funcionamiento, 155,4 billones al servicio de la deuda y apenas 87 billones a inversió...

  Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio is often remembered through Disney’s cheerful lens. The original, however, is darker and more instructive. The Talking Cricket is not a friendly sidekick but a stern, century-old moralist who warns Pinocchio that children who refuse wiser counsel eventually come to grief. Pinocchio responds not with gratitude but with rage: he throws a hammer at the cricket and kills him. Yet the cricket does not disappear. He returns as a ghost, continuing to offer the same warnings until, after suffering the consequences of his choices, Pinocchio finally begins to listen. This cycle of warning, rejection and delayed reckoning offers a surprisingly apt metaphor for the economic history of Argentina and, more broadly, for recurring patterns across Latin America. Argentina has never lacked its crickets. Economists, scholars and institutions have repeatedly warned against fiscal indiscipline, excessive monetary expansion and spending commit...

La novela Las aventuras de Pinocho , de Carlo Collodi, publicada en 1883, suele recordarse a través de la versión alegre de Disney. El original, sin embargo, es más oscuro y aleccionador. El Grillo Parlante no es un simpático compañero, sino un severo moralista centenario que advierte a Pinocho que los niños que se niegan a escuchar los buenos consejos terminan sufriendo las consecuencias. Pinocho no responde con gratitud, sino con furia: arroja un martillo contra el grillo y lo mata. Sin embargo, el grillo no desaparece. Regresa como un fantasma y continúa ofreciendo las mismas advertencias hasta que, después de sufrir las consecuencias de sus propias decisiones, Pinocho finalmente comienza a escuchar. Este ciclo de advertencia, rechazo y ajuste tardío ofrece una metáfora sorprendentemente adecuada para la historia económica de Argentina y, en un sentido más amplio, para algunos patrones recurrentes de América Latina. Argentina nunca ha carecido de grillos. Economistas, académicos ...

Developing economies face a persistent dilemma. When the public sector becomes the primary engine of growth, it may generate short term expansion, but often at the expense of rising debt, structural deficits, and a gradual erosion of trust in the fiscal and institutional foundations of the economy. When, on the contrary, the State withdraws and leaves development almost entirely to the market, growth can become uneven, concentrated, and excessively reliant on volatile, finite resources, such as oil, gas, mining, or low value added agricultural activities. Neither of these approaches, on its own, has consistently demonstrated the capacity to generate the sustained increase in productivity, economic complexity, and human capabilities required to transform a country's long term trajectory. There is, however, a third possibility: conceiving the State as a platform. This approach adopts the logic of the platform models developed by major technology companies, where core value does not s...