Will Rare Earths Also Become “Things of the Rich”?
Will Rare Earths Also Become “Things of the Rich”?
Subtitle: Psychopathology of the Brazilian State
1. Opening — Fractal, 17 years old
Rare earths may sound distant.
But they are inside phones, satellites, chips, electric cars, turbines, and the technologies of the future.
So ask:
if this is strategic for Brazil, why hand it quickly to a few?
When something belongs to the territory, it should not become only a business for the rich.
It should become national sovereignty.
2. Deepening
Brazil is debating a policy for critical and strategic minerals. Chamber president Hugo Motta said PL 2780/2024 should move forward and argued it could generate investment in education and skilled labor. (Portal da Câmara dos Deputados)
But this is the critical point:
talking about education and social good sounds beautiful, but it does not solve the problem if the structure hands control of strategic wealth to a few.
This happened with Vale.
A strategic national asset left the hands of the State and began operating under the logic of private profit.
Now the risk repeats itself with rare earths.
PL 2780/2024 creates a national policy for critical, strategic, and rare-earth minerals; industry groups describe it as including fiscal, financial, and credit incentives for the sector. (Portal da Câmara dos Deputados)
In other words:
the State organizes, incentivizes, reduces risk, and opens the road.
But who keeps control?
Who profits?
Who pays the environmental cost?
Here appears the neoliberal fallacy.
They say the “invisible hand of the market” organizes everything better than the State.
But in practice, this invisible hand often appears as lobbying, revolving doors, pressure over public institutions, regulatory capture, poorly explained privatizations, and tax benefits for those who are already rich.
The market says it wants less State.
But it uses the State to protect its own privileges.
And when the rich do not pay proportional taxes, the famous “trickle-down” never reaches the people.
It only increases the distance between those who already have too much and those still trying to survive.
That is why rare earths cannot be treated as ordinary commodities.
Rare earths are national sovereignty.
They belong to the Brazilian body-territory.
They belong to the citizen.
And the State must explore them with responsibility, transparency, science, environmental control, and direct social return.
Here DREX Citizen becomes a key concept:
if the citizen is the unit of the State, the strategic wealth of the territory must also return to the citizen.
Not as charity.
Not as a campaign promise.
But as real economic belonging.
There are proposals pointing in this direction. PL 534/2026 proposes a temporary moratorium on rare-earth exploration based on precaution and national sovereignty, while PL 1754/2026 proposes TerraBras, a public company focused on sovereignty over critical or strategic minerals. (Portal da Câmara dos Deputados)
An inclusive State does not hand the future to a few.
It makes the citizen the symbolic, political, and economic owner of the State itself.
Rare earths are not just minerals.
They are sovereignty.
They are future.
They are body-territory.
3. Metacognition
Now bring this inward.
When you hear “privatization,” what do you feel?
Modernity?
Efficiency?
Relief?
Now ask:
who taught your body to feel that?
And when you hear “public company,” what do you feel?
Distrust?
Bureaucracy?
Delay?
Maybe your body has already been trained to love the market and distrust the State.
That is the psychopathology.
If everything public seems bad, it becomes easy to hand over everything strategic.
But without territory, there is no future.
Without sovereignty, there is no people.
Without public control, rare earths become “things of the rich” again.
The final question is simple:
does this expand Brazil’s life, or shrink the country to fit the profit of a few?
References in Didactic Order
Books
Ailton Krenak — Ideas to Postpone the End of the World
Helps think of territory as life, not as an extractive stock.Davi Kopenawa & Bruce Albert — The Falling Sky
Shows how mining can destroy living worlds, memory, and belonging.Raymundo Faoro — The Owners of Power
Explains how elites historically capture the Brazilian State.Jessé Souza — The Elite of Backwardness
Helps understand how modernization narratives can hide privilege.Coisa de Rico
Reinforces how strategic goods can be appropriated by elites under the appearance of development.Mariana Mazzucato — The Entrepreneurial State
Shows that the State can create value and should not merely socialize risk while privatizing profit.
Post-2021 Publications and Documents
Brazilian Chamber of Deputies — PL 2780/2024 / critical minerals
Shows the advance of the critical-minerals agenda in Congress and Hugo Motta’s support for voting on the topic. (Portal da Câmara dos Deputados)CNI / industry debate on critical minerals
Describes the bill as proposing fiscal, financial, and credit incentives for the sector. (INESC)PL 534/2026 — rare-earth moratorium
Proposes a pause in exploration until a clear national policy exists, based on precaution and national sovereignty. (Portal da Câmara dos Deputados)PL 1754/2026 — TerraBras
Proposes a public company and strategic regime for critical minerals, focused on national sovereignty. (Portal da Câmara dos Deputados)INESC — technical note on PL 2780/2024
Criticizes the bill as going against a national strategy for critical minerals. (INESC)
