(no subject)

[naath]

Sundays are for arguing with phoning my parents.

So today's annoyance is that Dad hates the EU. Go the EU! (I can't seem to come up with a natty chant). True it could be better - like, it could be more democratic, for instance; but a lot of the ways I think it could be be better mean more EU not less.. But it's beet >50 years since the Germans have been at war with the French, that has to count for something right?

It's not that I find euroskepticism entirely impossible to understand mind, I just disagree with it.

(Bring on the USE :-p)

Comments

[gerald_duck]

The EU's population is half a billion. There are only three nations on Earth anything like that large: China, India and the USA.

Which of those is the best model for the kind of USE you'd like to live in? Alternatively, if you have in mind some alternative utopian vision, can you give some credible reason why history wouldn't repeat itself? :-p

(Did you happen to read http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18789154">this BBC article about how the economic divisions in the EU closely reflect the religious ones, by the way? I found it an interesting eye-opener.)

As I said two years ago, I'm in favour of a World Government that exists mainly to centralise military force and create a framework within which groups of countries can create enforceable treaties. That's enough to keep the peace, but leaves the sovereignty of individual nations intact.

At a time when Scotland's about to vote not to be in the same country as England, when Belgium recently looked like it might split into Walloonia and Flanders leaving a strange island called Brussels DC in the middle, when the USA is yet again a nation divided against itself, I don't know why people are interested in trying to create larger countries, or larger co-dependent economic zones. What's so great about larger countries, anyway?

[naath.livejournal.com]

I think the USA largely seems to work, and be democratic, and stuff. I mean, I don't like the detail of a lot of their politics but I don't think that that history would have to repeat itself that closely.

I hadn't read that article, I will. Looks interesting.

I'm not big on the idea of "sovereignty" as an abstract concept.

Oddly I'm totally in favour of smaller *states* within the USE - and one of the things I think a USE would be good for would be that small regions that want to be states not part-of-bigger-states would have fewer problems with splitting off because the minimum size for a state within a larger entity is probably smaller than the minimum size for a nation that has to cope on its own.

So far the EU has been very good for stopping us going to war with the Germans or the French. I don't think that should be taken lightly considering our history :-p Growing cooperation probably lessens the chances of war, not least because we know each other better now. Of course the USA has had a civil war, but it did only do that once (which is doing better than the UK; but maybe we've had longer in which to do it).

Brussels 'DC' would "obviously" be the capital of the USE :-p

A larger economic area has a better chance of spending more time with some sub-areas having a good time of it - for instance at the moment whilst Greece is seriously hosed Germany is actually doing quite well. I am in favour of transferring money from Germany to Greece to support the Greeks in their time of need. On, mostly, I guess the principle that the Germans have the ability and the Greeks the need. I think this sort of thing works better within countries than between them.

[chess]

Depends how you define a 'country'.

What's great about larger _markets_ is that labour and capital mobility increases, monetary policy harmonisation and asset transfers can bring lower-infrastructure areas up to greater productivity, and no-one has to cut public spending in a recession because everyone owes each other money in a big circle.

But once you have a single market / a single economic policy, then the knock-on effects of various social policies start to cause unfairness / hobble some areas and cause them to need disproportionate funding, etc. So you also need to bring social policy closer together (generally starting with industrial policy like working hours and conditions and health and safety and consumer protection, but gradually spreading through all areas of life.)

At that point I'm not sure you haven't got a country in all but name, although names and flags are quite important to people and shouldn't be entirely discounted.

[gerald_duck]

When talking about the Common Market or similar, I think it's important to distinguish two kinds of commonality.

The first is free trade areas — a freedom from import or export duties, such that manufacturing can be mobile within a community. The second is consumer harmonisation, in particular laws that good offered for sale in country A must be purchasable by residents of country B.

The latter is actually somewhat problematic. While it might seem unfair, say, for a DVD player to cost more in the UK than in Greece, and for the manufacturer to prohibit Greek models being bought mail-order by Brits, this does serve the important purpose of downregulating the cost of living in Greece, while still allowing the manufacturer to make a profit.

If their profit has to be the same on any unit they sell to any EU citizen, we in the UK get cheaper DVD players, but the Greeks end up paying more. It's a fallacy that the manufacturer can sustain that lower profit margin across all their sales.

Similarly, mobility of labour is a pretty big problem. A couple of years ago I was driven from my office to the garage where my car was being serviced by a Czech guy who used to be an I.T. Manager. He was clearly well educated and articulate in English, and freely admitted he wanted a job more suited to his skills. But he was driving a taxi because he could earn more driving a taxi in the UK than managing I.T. in the Czech Republic. The net effect is that the UK has too many taxi drivers and the Czech Republic has a shortage of I.T. Managers.

Harmonisation itself doesn't cause equality, as the current fubar in Greece shows quite clearly. There need to be strong redistributive policies like the ones Germany adopted on reunification. But for those to be politically acceptable there needs to be a strong social bond between the people making the sacrifice and the people receiving the benefit. Germany reunified because it was ideologically important: there was a strong sense of a nation divided rather than two nations. I can't imagine the Germans being prepared to take a huge hit in GDP for a decade in order to unify with Greece.

[chess]

I'm thinking of a different kind of consumer harmonisation to you, I think. I'm thinking of the kind of consumer harmonisation where the DVD player that you make in Greece and sell in the UK has to be up to the same safety and quality standards as the DVD player that you make in the UK and sell in the UK...

But then again I support strong redistributive policies (they even upgrade the total world productivity, generally, I think?).