a) drop as many barriers as possible to free movement of capital, labour and goods/services (closing economies is no longer realistic);
b) fully tax all negative externalities (including dislocation and job losses);
c)compensate the "losers" by means of massive redistribution across borders.
You'd need a global government to do it, of course.
<TV announcer voice> "Coming soon on Migeru Diaries: Global Redistribution. Don't miss it!" </TV announcer voice>
I wonder whether the "losers" would be already fully compensated by taxing the externalities. In other words, b) and c) are part of the common economic, fiscal and redistributive policy that is necessary if you have a single market (for labour, capital, goods, and services). We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
The Nation States will be dragged kicking and screaming into a global government by economic globalization.
Mig, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. We've gone through these periods of "free trade" before, and the simple truth is that it always ends badly. Economics is embedded in a social context.
When people realize that their political sovereignty is being eroded by economic integration, they rebel and force the market back into reasonable limits. This has happened twice in the past 150 years. First ,less dramatically, during the 1870s, and spectacularly during the 1930's.
The market reduces everything to commodities, and when you reduce people to objects, the inevitable result is that you've created a mindset that isn't repelled when you reduce people to objects, like the Germans did at Auschwitz.
Some things are sacred, like human dignity, and in the market nothing is sacred.
Look at the world today, and you can see the effects that market expansion have had. Nature having been reduced to a commodity is consumed without reference to its capacity to regenerate, becuase the presumption is that the market will provide a reasonable substitute when nature fails.
Oil's all used up? Switch to shale oil. Shale oil's all used up, switch to coal to liquid. And so on and so one until nothing is left.
And don't get me started on labor markets.
The market exists within and natural and social context which it denies because it did not create it. And so it destroys the things on which it depends. And then when it pushes humanity to the brink, market logic is forced back into the limited range of activities in which it is appropriate. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
You're right to a certain extent, but let's dig a little deeper.
If you look at older books economics it frequently spelled out oeconomics, which isn't a misprint. It helps reveal the origin of the word and a great deal about its true meaning.
economy c.1530, "household management," from L. oeconomia, from Gk. oikonomia "household management," from oikonomos "manager, steward," from oikos "house" (cognate with L. vicus "district," vicinus "near;" O.E. wic "dwelling, village;" see villa) + nomos "managing," from nemein "manage" (see numismatics). The sense of "manage the resources of a country" (short for political economy) is from 1651. Hence, economic (1835) means "related to the science of economics," while economical (1780) retains the sense "characterized by thrift." Economist is 1586 in the sense of "household manager," 1804 meaning "student of political economy." Economy (adj.) as a term in advertising at first meant simply "cheaper" (1821), then "bigger and thus cheaper per unit or amount" (1950).
Economy taken from its origin does not presume that one either attempts to maximize their utility, nor does it assume that the pursuit of self interest is at the heart of economics. Economics in this original sense is simply the way that a society provides for its material wants.
The market on the other hand presumes both self interest and getting as much as possible from every transaction. That's the problem.
When there are social and environmental limits on growth. When the formal presumption that the market can expand forever is shown wrong, what emerges is not voluntary exchange. If much of the economy is zero sum, that is that in order for one person to gain another must lost. Then the market is revealed as a very thin veil for redistribution in which those who have take from those who do not have.
The whole voluntary nature of the game is thrown out the window, because both parties do not gain. One must lose in order for the other to gain.
In this case, the invisible hand of the market is nothing more than naked power cloaked as economic interest. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Because the possibility of voluntary cooperation disappears where transactions are zero sum. And unfortunately, this is true of much of the modern economy.
Even Foreign Direct Investment can be a means of controlling a country.
Why go to the trouble of colonizing a country and being forced to at least keep up the appearance of providing the basic services that a government is responsible for if you can get the same thing by purchasing ownership on the market?
So if these governments can't count on resources from natural resource sales, how are they supposed to provide basic services? And if they don't sell them at fire sale prices to foreign investors, where do they come up with the money to pay their loans? And if they don't pay their loans, what happens? And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Migeru:
a global race to absolute advantage spells the end of cooperation on many levels. It's a dog-eat-dog world and there is no reason for the many who don't have an absolute advantage to agree with the few who do have absolute advantage in something in order to set up a legal [i.e., consensual] framework that reduces economic activity to the endless chase for absolute advantage. In a Ricardian world all you need is a comparative advantage, and everyone more of less) has a comparative advantage. Pity indeed.
Today's 'economics' is politics by other means. There's nothing there to understand - it's a useful rhetorical device intended to perpetuate and expand privilege and status for a small elite at the expense of everyone else.
It's not supposed to optimise resource use, create sustainable outcomes, lift poor people out of poverty, enhance personal freedom, improve quality of life and freedom of choice, or even make sense.
It pretends to be objective and 'scientific' and inevitable, but that's only so it can appear more persuasive. In reality there's no there there.
The best previous example is the medieval church, which had people believing all kinds of bizarre things in order to make a minority powerful and rich.
What's needed isn't scientific approval for economics, but a re-Enlightenment which exposes how ethically crippled and ridiculous it is and replaces it with something less cynical and more generous and thoughtful.
But cheap energy is not going to last forever. Peak oil may be a liquid fuels problem (which in and of itself causes major problems for transport), but the days of really cheap energy is probably counted anyway.
The question is, will we get a global government before increasing transport costs forces a relocalisation of the economies? A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Goods depend on value, luxury items (which is bought for status) has always been traded from afar. But it will make no sense that fish-sticks in my store has traveled around the world first.
Capital, ay there is the rub. For what is capital? In some sense - and possibly the most destructive one in decapitalising economies - it is goods. And thus what applies to goods applies to this capital.
But it is more, the means of production and all of that. Knowledge, skills, social relationships. But can the worlds economies be ruled from a tax paradise in the bahamas connected with high speed communications? A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
In effect, EU is doomed unless it develops into a state, including a social side. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Unless the EU becomes develops a national identity all its own, the whole thing might collapse if there's a serious economic crisis. We've already heard rumblings about the Italians leaving the euro zone.
And once you start backpedaling, Monsieur Monnet's bicycle starts to falter, and may just fall down. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
You and Barbara are prime examples of why this may happen. You're Spanish, she's Czech and you live in London. Now without the free movement of labor in Europe do to the EU would you all be where you're at now?
Now again, during the period before the First World War, there was a great deal of internal and extracontinental migration from Europe. Hungarians moving to France, Poles to Germany, etc. But those mass flows stopped after the First World War.
Few remember, that prior to the First World War, most international travel occured without passport including migration. 4 million Europeans migrated to Latin America between 1870-1914. An even larger number went to the United States and Canada.
Ultimately, assmilation occurred. I mean recognize the irony that Sarkozy is the grandson of Hungarian immgrants calling second generation Arabs and Africans "racaille."
But the EU is a case where you have the conscience construction of a transnational identity much like you had in the Holy Roman Empire prior to 1806. And in that case, sovereignity at the national level is limited.
So does the EU die, or does it grow into an explicit political union? How many people have to be shifted around if the EU dissolves and suddenly all the Polish plumbers and Spanish polymaths are kicked out of the UK?
The whole other thing is that countries like the UK and Belgium are starting to show serious internal strains. What happens if Flanders goes on it's own? Scotland declares independence? One thing is that in the case of serious military threats from say a resurgent Russia have to be dealt with either through a European military or dependence on through alliance with the US. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Piratbyrån - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Piratbyrån ("The Bureau of Piracy") is a Swedish organization (or think tank) established to support the individuals fighting against current ideas about intellectual property by sharing information and culture freely. Piratbyrån itself is not involved in illegal activities, but rather wishes to give another point of view about spreading information than the current lobby groups do.
The Pirate Bay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Pirate Bay (often abbreviated TPB) is an Internet site that bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker" and also serves as an index for .torrent files that it tracks. ThePirateBay.org is ranked 192 (as of October 6, 2007) in the Alexa ranking list of the world's most-visited internet sites.[1] The Pirate Bay was started by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån ('The Pirate Bureau') in early 2004, but since October 2004 it has been a separate organization.
The Pirate Bay was started by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån ('The Pirate Bureau') in early 2004, but since October 2004 it has been a separate organization.
Pirate Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Pirate Party (Swedish: Piratpartiet) is originally a political party in Sweden, which has given rise to groups with similar goals internationally. The party strives to reform laws regarding intellectual property, including copyright, patent and the protection of design. The agenda also includes support for a strengthening of the right to privacy, both on the Internet and in everyday life.
Young Pirate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Young Pirate(Ung Pirat) is the youth organisation of the Swedish Pirate Party. It was started in December 2006.
And there is also (but not on wikipedia yet) Piratbio - Pirate Cinema - that simply shows movies.
And none of the organisations are banned outside Sweden (afaik). There exist Pirate parties in a number of countries, ten or so EU countries, and Pirate Groups (similar to Piratbyrån) in at least Norway and Denmark. My take on it is that if you are young or poor (or both) and have anything (including a t-shirt) packed that can identify you as anti-establishment, freedom of movement does not exist during EU summits. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
