Europe according to Germany
Euro lesson: not America nor Israel
From a post at the PRO COMMERCE blog
The euro will be a 21st century failure much the same way as communism and socialism were in the 20th century.
I expect the European financial union to fall apart slowly over the next decade. In the end we will have several strong currencies the Deutsche mark and the Frank as we did before and a number of weak currencies. What was wrong with the model of the European financial union?
In the 20th century we found that communism didn’t work because people cannot be remade as individuals by their government. The lesson in the failure of the euro is that governments cannot be remade into a unified structure that will have new and desirable characteristics. Putting governments together is not like making soup or salad. A combination is not positive. The new national entity has the same shortcomings as the individual nations. The Greeks remain just as lazy and democratically unwilling to bear the cost of government or control costs as they did before the union was created.
The founders of the Euro looked at the examples of the United States, Israel and the British colonies and saw the remarkable economic vitality of mixing different nationalities. The problem with this model is that (except for India in the British colonies) we are talking about new population settlements. These were nations that were settled by individuals with vast national differences; but tthey were able to coalesce slowly to form a coherent population and a functioning society.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the Euro except the wonderful American, Canadian and Israeli examples are misread as a synthesis of nations rather than a national synthesis of ethnicities.
Posted by Michael Phillips
COMMENT:
I expect the European financial union to fall apart slowly over the next decade. In the end we will have several strong currencies the Deutsche mark and the Frank as we did before and a number of weak currencies. What was wrong with the model of the European financial union?
In the 20th century we found that communism didn’t work because people cannot be remade as individuals by their government. The lesson in the failure of the euro is that governments cannot be remade into a unified structure that will have new and desirable characteristics. Putting governments together is not like making soup or salad. A combination is not positive. The new national entity has the same shortcomings as the individual nations. The Greeks remain just as lazy and democratically unwilling to bear the cost of government or control costs as they did before the union was created.The founders of the Euro looked at the examples of the United States, Israel and the British colonies and saw the remarkable economic vitality of mixing different nationalities. The problem with this model is that (except for India in the British colonies) we are talking about new population settlements. These were nations that were settled by individuals with vast national differences; but tthey were able to coalesce slowly to form a coherent population and a functioning society.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the Euro except the wonderful American, Canadian and Israeli examples are misread as a synthesis of nations rather than a national synthesis of ethnicities.
Posted by Michael Phillips
COMMENT:
This is part and parcel of Europe losing its intellectual -- and therefore moral and political -- faculties in favor of the Arab model: Remember only what makes you feel good. If that fails, make sh*t up.
I have had many wonderful personal, professional, and cultural contacts with Europeans. Start talking about politics, geopolitics, economics, or (gasp!) defense policy, and suddenly it's like talking with an Arab about whether or not Sharia law is a good idea. Of *course* culture is hereditary; it is the sole property of the ethnic nation-state, and we Yanks don't have much except what our fathers brought (from Europe, natch). Of *course* the US is the biggest threat to world peace -- look at the money we spend on our horrible, awful, archaic military! Capability equals intent. Full stop. I run into this time after time, both in person and online.
No one knows, or cares, that all three Baltic states have a higher murder rate than the US, or that the violent crime rate in Britain is something like 200%+ the US rate. No one ever caricatures them as a society of weapon-toting aggressive hoodlums. The Americans are the most violent b*stards on the planet. It is a fact. No one knows, or cares, that the German, French, and British governments have all the same powers enumerated under the Patriot Act, and have had since the Sixties (with no sunset clause, mind). It is the neo-fascist fearmongering Americans who are throwing their civil rights away. It is a fact. No one remembers that going after WMD's in Iraq was Tony Blair's idea; that it was the price of British admittance, and that we bent over backwards to accommodate our allies. It is the warmongering Americans who started an illegal war in search of WMD's that didn't exist, and all for oil, and nevermind that the French and Chinese wound up with the lion's share of the oil contracts afterwards....
No one cares to mention that it is the EU, not the US, that signs horrifyingly restrictive trade agreements with starving African nations, and forbids them upon pain of losing their foreign aid to accept gifts of evil American Frankenfood grain during times of famine -- even though it's the exact same foodstuffs we've been buying at Safeway for a decade, with no apparent ill effects. It is the Americans that are killer capitalists. It is a fact, in Europe. And no one, not one maverick newspaper editor or politician or so-called intellectual, bothers to bring any of this up, ever. Not for the sake of defending those filthy Yankees, but just for the sake of intellectual honesty.
Rank and file Europeans are some of the most self-obsessed, information-crippled boobs I have ever encountered. Our own bumbling nitwit society looks pretty sharp by comparison.
Comment by Phil Ossiferz Stone
10 comments:
Scratching my head as to the relationship of that article with the headline and the map. I thought when all that EU stuff started it would be Germany that would be expected to prop up those other nations. That has transpired. I now believe, if you look at the balance of military power in the world today, and the balance of natural resources, it's time for Germany (and Japan for that matter) to militarize. They're an ally to the United States and we need them in our corner. If they're not really in our corner, then we're pretty much screwed anyway.
The EU collectively was a far bigger threat to us than a sovereign and independent Germany. Just my opinion.
I may not have addressed your point. But as I said at the start, I couldn't tell what your point was.
Mr Stone is simply describing the centuries-old Euro tradition of scapegoating.
The EU's most remarkable accomplishment was to fully Europeanize the UK, which I admit came to the Euro hot bed as a re-virginized harlot, blushing over her big panties, wool outfit, corrective shoes and bad breath, but fully experienced in Yank-bashing and the seduction of Anglophiles with money.
This was, I think, due to Britain's experiment with subsidized mass secondary education...they made it so cheap, any old yob could pose as a Euro snob because he was a student, and could adopt the mannerisms and bullshittery of the upper classes.
I've always thought that the EU was an effort to re-assert feudalism for various peoples who are horrified by the uncertainties of freedom.
It failed, in some part because its assumptions were based on the nature of post-war, docile, defeated societies. What can go wrong now? Everything.
they have learned zero lessons my friend...sheesh....can u say frustrating!!!?
"Rank and file Europeans are some of the most self-obsessed, information-crippled boobs I have ever encountered. Our own bumbling nitwit society looks pretty sharp by comparison." = Score.
Rhod, "bullshittery" is not a word. Europeans know this and would dismiss you as a rube for talking this way.
I suspect that the British are damned happy that they kept the Pound Sterling rather than cave to EU demands that they convert to the Euro.
The Swiss, ever wise and circumspect, never budged and kept their sovereignty and their own currency.
The Swiss, for the most part, also kept their own teeth, which is a lot more than I can say for the Brits.
DC, complaints about bullshittery will be just a lot of twittery.
The Brits (the Liberal Labour Party anyway) base their crime estimates on an incredibly flawed process, the British Crime Survey. This takes a sample (about 40,000 households or so) and asks how people feel about crime as well as asking of anyone has been victimized. Until recently the BCS completely excluded all crimes committed against children between the ages of ten and fifteen.
Last year it was discovered that over 2 million crimes against children were ignored in a 12 month period, including over 166,000 serious assaults. British children are three times more likely to be victims of crime than adults.
As recently as ten years ago, a UN report listed Scotland as the country where you are most likely to get the everloving crap kicked out of you. Wales was #2. Scotland still has some of the highest crime rates in the developed world but yet sends fewer people to prison than most. But,due to the flawed BCS, police officials maintain that crime is at a 30 year low. Madness.
Rhod, dude, are you on Twitter?
I read a great analogy to this. The lifeguard.
The first swimmer calls for help and the LG (lifeguard) goes out and brings him back handily.
The 2nd calls for help and again the LG goes out and brings him back.
The 3rd calls for help and the LG goes out, and brings him back but is a little winded.
The 4th calls for help and the LG struggles to get out and come back.
The 5th calls for help and the LG is now seriously worried about his own life.
And yea, as I understand Germany is the only LG.
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