From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 22 2002 - 20:24:57 MDT
On Thursday, August 22, 2002 8:37 PM Charlie Stross charlie@antipope.org
wrote:
>> See
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST080202.html
>>
>> What do the fans of the EU on this list have
>> to say about the above?
>
> Whingeing about CAP is nothing new. It's on
> the agenda for a fix -- a big, painful fix -- but it's
> not really different from, say, GWB's recent huge
> subsidies for the farming lobby.
I didn't say it was. Remember, I don't root for government period,
whether they be based in America or Europe or Pantagonia. My point in
sending this was to show that big governments -- the EU and the US are
both example -- usually have big problems like this. At least, with
smaller governments, it's harder for things to get that far out of
control simply because the resources aren't there. You can't lose a $US
1 trillion if your whole budget is only $US 10 million.
And the US farm subsidy is a bad thing. It's not good for the economy.
Saying it's bad, does not magically make EU farm policy suddenly better.
They are bad.
(One good thing about the EU, though, is that it might balance against
Washington's hegemony. That remains to be seen, but that would act as a
check on Washington's power in the world, which might be a very good
thing. However, this is a very tiny positive to balance against all the
negatives. A much quicker way to lessen Washington's power would be for
European nations to get out of NATO and ask US troops to leave. The
latter would certainly cut down on the incidence of rapes, injuries, and
deaths caused by US military forces in Europe.)
>> It
>> looks to me like this higher level
>> organization is partly just a way of
>> extracting wealth from society. In
>> other words, parasitism. Is such
>> extranational parasitism Extropian?
>> My belief is it's not. It puts a drag
>> on social production/coordination
>> and increases socio-economic
>> entropy.
>
> Ah, but the EU does other things.
> For starters, it's globalization done
> right -- with free movement of labour
> alongside free movement of goods
> and services.
That could be done without an EU. In fact, it was done in the 19th
century without one. All one needs is government to not restrain such
movement -- easily done by restraining government.
> Efficient trade requires
> some degree of standardization
> of, for example, weights and
> measures, labelling, quality metrics,
> and so on: these are things the EU
> is good at.
That remains to be proved. Good as compared to what? To the previous
government restrictions on such? Perhaps... To free market evolved
standards? I doubt it.
> The single currency is also
> a good idea, in principle --
> arguments about it breaking
> down under the economic
> differential between regions
> should be listened to with a
> pinch of salt, after all the US
> dollar works equally well in
> South Carolina and California,
> despite huge income disparities.
First, gold did pretty much that until the 20th century.
Second, having one monetary authority lessens competition and actually
is leading to inflationary policies. It has done this in the US. It's
also done this in Europe, though the Germans were quite restrained and
competition with the dollar kind of kept things from getting too out of
hand. I expect more inflation which is economically discoordinating.
> And one thing we don't
> hear a lot about is the size of
> the EU bureaucracy -- which, in
> total, employs fewer officials
> (for a population of 320 million
> people) than the Scottish Office
> of the UK government in
> Westminster (which duplicates
> many functions carried out by the
> separate Scottish parliament and its
> authorities -- for 5 million people).
The EU bureaucracy commands a lot more money and power than its sheer
size would lead one to believe. I also _predict_ the EU bureaucracy
will grow and grow and grow.
> Summary: the EU has problems but we'd have bigger problems without
the
> EU, and the problems are probably fixable.
I agree there are bigger problems, such as physical mortality.:) I also
agree they can be fixed -- by eliminating the EU.
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html
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