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Feb. 20th, 2016 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kodak2004Читаю новости и сразу же вспоминается отличное наблюдение из той самой книжки, сранивающее зону евро и брак. Британия в евро не влезла, но влезла в ЕС и теперь эти все телодвижения европейской политики напоминают отчаянные попытки спасти разваливающийся брак. Удачи, лол :)
Once upon a time, Europe got married. Over a dozen countries replaced their sovereign currencies with one common one, the Euro, as they merged their individual economies into a single mega-economy managed from Brussels. The new community would be much more efficient, the reasoning went. There would be no more patrolled borders, and all barriers to trade would be eliminated. People and goods would move easily between countries without any duties or inspections. Strong countries would pull up weaker ones, and all countries would equally share the burdens and responsibilities of the common good.
In contrast to its bloody history, Western Europe of the late 20th Century was finally at peace. War had been eliminated, and every country loved every other. Germany loved France who loved Italy who loved Spain. Why wouldn’t they want to get married? It would give them all stability and security, they told themselves. It would prove their solidarity and cooperation. At the wedding, politicians made a lot of romantic speeches about how this marriage would change history and herald a brave new era of peace and prosperity. Only crabby old Britain had reservations. Its voters rejected the Euro and decided to keep their antiquated Pound. People called Britain stodgy and behind the times. Didn’t it believe in love?
Turns out, Britain was the wiser one. The Euro marriage proved unhappy and imprudent— Big Time! It essentially gave weak and undisciplined countries like Greece a credit card based on the good credit of the stronger countries like Germany. Without any enforced constraints on its behavior, Greece happily maxed out its credit cards, buying an Olympics and lots of shiny new infrastructure it could never have afforded on its own.
Naturally, the bills came due, and Greece couldn’t pay. This was a crisis not just for Greece but for all its marriage partners, because the healthy firewalls between their economies had been dissolved. They were all now in the same boat, furiously bailing, coping with the leaks the weaker countries created. The stronger countries had no choice but to continue covering for the weaker ones, because their own future was tied up with theirs.
Sound familiar? It is the story of a million marriages! If you remove healthy boundaries between two people, the weaker party is bound to draw down the stronger one. The stronger one will have little power to respond because his control has been diluted. The weaker one avoids direct responsibility for his actions because the stronger is always there to pick him up when he falls. This isn’t just bad for the stronger party. The dysfunctions of the weaker are enabled by the common pot, allowing him to do more long-term damage to himself than he could have done on his own.
The Greek crisis would never have happened if Europe had not married. If Greece had remained single, the markets would never have allowed it to borrow as much as it did because its credit rating was so poor. Greece had poor credit for a reason: It was undisciplined. Europe couldn’t make it more disciplined just by marrying it, although this was the belief at the time. Mainline Europe made the mistake of thinking it could change Greece’s personality by devoting more love to it. Instead, it just released Greece from the immediate consequences of its actions.
If Greece had racked up unsupportable debt but remained single, it could have dealt with the crisis by devaluing its currency or defaulting on some of its debt. These would have been ugly solutions, roughly the equivalent of an individual declaring bankruptcy. There would have been plenty of pain, but only for Greece. The problems would have been resolved relatively quickly and Greece could have started over anew, as many Latin American countries did during their debt crises. These sovereign options were no longer possible after the marriage because the Greek economy was no longer an independent entity. It was part of a marriage community now, and everything one partner did intimately affected all the others.
At the time it got married, Europe failed to heed a universal truth: Individuals are defined by their economy. One of the things that makes Greece Greece and Britain Britain and you you and me me is our ability to manage our own checkbook. Every country and every adult human on Earth has the fundamental right and responsibility to balance their own budget. If you take this away, if you merge an individual’s or country’s financial life with that of another, they cease in many ways to be discrete beings. The community buffers them from the immediate consequences of what they do, so a lack of discipline and motivation is inevitable.
A country is not completely “real” unless it issues its own currency and controls its own borders. Otherwise, it is just lost in the soup of the community and has little control over its own fate. Because things are valued differently in different countries, you can’t let goods and people cross from one to the other without some gatekeeping. What a lack of borders means in modern Europe is that if you want to smuggle contraband or people into Germany, you only need to get them past the weakest border of the weakest country. After that, you’re home free!
Once upon a time, Europe got married. Over a dozen countries replaced their sovereign currencies with one common one, the Euro, as they merged their individual economies into a single mega-economy managed from Brussels. The new community would be much more efficient, the reasoning went. There would be no more patrolled borders, and all barriers to trade would be eliminated. People and goods would move easily between countries without any duties or inspections. Strong countries would pull up weaker ones, and all countries would equally share the burdens and responsibilities of the common good.
In contrast to its bloody history, Western Europe of the late 20th Century was finally at peace. War had been eliminated, and every country loved every other. Germany loved France who loved Italy who loved Spain. Why wouldn’t they want to get married? It would give them all stability and security, they told themselves. It would prove their solidarity and cooperation. At the wedding, politicians made a lot of romantic speeches about how this marriage would change history and herald a brave new era of peace and prosperity. Only crabby old Britain had reservations. Its voters rejected the Euro and decided to keep their antiquated Pound. People called Britain stodgy and behind the times. Didn’t it believe in love?
Turns out, Britain was the wiser one. The Euro marriage proved unhappy and imprudent— Big Time! It essentially gave weak and undisciplined countries like Greece a credit card based on the good credit of the stronger countries like Germany. Without any enforced constraints on its behavior, Greece happily maxed out its credit cards, buying an Olympics and lots of shiny new infrastructure it could never have afforded on its own.
Naturally, the bills came due, and Greece couldn’t pay. This was a crisis not just for Greece but for all its marriage partners, because the healthy firewalls between their economies had been dissolved. They were all now in the same boat, furiously bailing, coping with the leaks the weaker countries created. The stronger countries had no choice but to continue covering for the weaker ones, because their own future was tied up with theirs.
Sound familiar? It is the story of a million marriages! If you remove healthy boundaries between two people, the weaker party is bound to draw down the stronger one. The stronger one will have little power to respond because his control has been diluted. The weaker one avoids direct responsibility for his actions because the stronger is always there to pick him up when he falls. This isn’t just bad for the stronger party. The dysfunctions of the weaker are enabled by the common pot, allowing him to do more long-term damage to himself than he could have done on his own.
The Greek crisis would never have happened if Europe had not married. If Greece had remained single, the markets would never have allowed it to borrow as much as it did because its credit rating was so poor. Greece had poor credit for a reason: It was undisciplined. Europe couldn’t make it more disciplined just by marrying it, although this was the belief at the time. Mainline Europe made the mistake of thinking it could change Greece’s personality by devoting more love to it. Instead, it just released Greece from the immediate consequences of its actions.
If Greece had racked up unsupportable debt but remained single, it could have dealt with the crisis by devaluing its currency or defaulting on some of its debt. These would have been ugly solutions, roughly the equivalent of an individual declaring bankruptcy. There would have been plenty of pain, but only for Greece. The problems would have been resolved relatively quickly and Greece could have started over anew, as many Latin American countries did during their debt crises. These sovereign options were no longer possible after the marriage because the Greek economy was no longer an independent entity. It was part of a marriage community now, and everything one partner did intimately affected all the others.
At the time it got married, Europe failed to heed a universal truth: Individuals are defined by their economy. One of the things that makes Greece Greece and Britain Britain and you you and me me is our ability to manage our own checkbook. Every country and every adult human on Earth has the fundamental right and responsibility to balance their own budget. If you take this away, if you merge an individual’s or country’s financial life with that of another, they cease in many ways to be discrete beings. The community buffers them from the immediate consequences of what they do, so a lack of discipline and motivation is inevitable.
A country is not completely “real” unless it issues its own currency and controls its own borders. Otherwise, it is just lost in the soup of the community and has little control over its own fate. Because things are valued differently in different countries, you can’t let goods and people cross from one to the other without some gatekeeping. What a lack of borders means in modern Europe is that if you want to smuggle contraband or people into Germany, you only need to get them past the weakest border of the weakest country. After that, you’re home free!
