Merging many states into one is never a good idea. Still the EU is here to stay (for a while, at least). What is the best libertarian option, the most advicable course of action to be taken now that the EU exists? Seccesion or Reform?
PS: Hope there are some europeans in the forum [:)]
Secession. It is a tyrannical organisation and people in all the member state countries should encourage their respective governments’ to leave. All teh reform groups have failed and will failed. The goal is a one European state and the boat is going to get there. The only way to sto stop it is to jump ship and hope no-one is there when it gets there.
Secede while you can. Avoid the American way.
That, and exposing the fact the organisation in question was founded to subvert European national identity to a new European ideal, a goal to which it is already proceeding. Wake people up from the cheap-travel less-convoluted currency bread and circuses nonsense, and show them the actual detrimental effects of EU policy on it’s member nations and what effect it has on them.
I was quite anti the EU but then I read this in “Bureaucracy” by Ludwig Von Mises:
If all trade barriers between member states were to be eliminated in Europe, a centralisation of political power would surely be the innevitable result? There are many things that the EU has achieved (or is striving to achieve) that most libertarians should approve of: Removal of trade barriers, free movement of capital and people, etc. If Mises was right, then we should expect to see a centralisation of political power across the EU. And if we are minachists like he was, we should welcome it as a good thing.
Now anarchists on the other hand would be bound to take a different view. I suppose they would prefer to break up nation states into smaller and smaller units, a continuous decentralising of power until the state has disappeared entirely.
But I am not an anarchist. I guess I should be in favour of the EU but focus on reform to stop the growth in the concentration (rather than centralisation) of power. Probably a futile hope, I know.
Mises is wrong on this account. I point to two Austrians: Thomas Woods with Theodore Roosevelt lectures and Tom DiLorenzo with Abraham Lincoln lectures. The two most pro-active centralizing presidents the ‘United States’ has experienced. These men made epic changes in the basic uniformity of thought concerning a monolithic state.
You may well be right on that point but his central point remains intact, for all trade barriers to come down, in order to become a single economic unit, you cannot have different tax systems, legal systems, monetary policies, etc. in effect.
The best solution is not to join. As far as I can see, there is no advantage. THe EU is GENERATING REGULATIONS FASTER than the US Government. At some time the individuals in the EU will have more centralized regulations than in the US and keep all of their local regulations as well.
A better alternative for the individuals of the EU would be a gold back currency and dissolve the EU. This will put those individuals on top of the world as nations would deluge the EU with products, take the gold and then be forced to reinvest it in the EU, what else does one do with it? It is this Fascist-Mercantilist policies of central government and banks that hurt individuals.
Well taxation should be done away with where ever it stands. Legal systems can cooperate in a international capacity and monetary policies are a simple feat compared to the legal systems. For a trade barrier to come down…all that is necessary is the elimination of the state apparatus and thus fall the invisible lines..
Well, you’re obviously an anarchist so I wouldn’t expect you to agree with me, but given that a minarchists doesn’t want to completely abolish the state, that it is necessary for the proivision of certain services (such as the judiciary), some amount of taxation is necessary along with a universal system of property rights.
I will propose the same question to you that was proposed someone I greatly respect. It turned him from being where you are into an anarchist.
What is the legitimate basis for your lassize-faire government being confined solely to defense of person and property?
I really don’t want degenerate this thread into an anarchist/minarchist debate but I’ll have a quick stab at this.
By “legitimate basis” I presume you mean morally? Basically I think that unless our basic rights are universally recognised and enforced, irregardless of one’s ability to pay, then it is not a free market or society. I guess I am an egalitarian as far as that goes. We should all be equal in the eyes of the law with equal rights. That’s where liberty begins (in my opinion) and in it’s absense there is no liberty.
Tradign is difficult in a multy-state environment?!
Hm, history does think otherwise. From the last Napoleonic Wars in 1812 to the Crimean War in the 1860’, Europe had many independent states, some of which where on a civil law system, others on common law systems. Moreover taxes where not only varied in rates but likewise in nature. Some countries taxed trade, others businesses. You see, one can hardly find any commonwealth, pardon the term, more varied within itself that XIX century Europe. Still that was the high point of European (and indeed global) Minarchism, the era of deflation, gold standards, mild fractional reserve banking, low taxes, free capital and people movement, scientific progress, low regulation, and NOT A SINGLE GOD-DAMNED WAR. How to account of that? (an other example, Chinese culture and science flourished when the country was most deeply divided in small states)
Why on earth should trade and capital movement be blocked if the trader needs to pay two kind of taxes? I’d rather submit that such an arrangement promotes trade, in as much as it allows for competing tax systems.
Mises had a great insight: without competition calculation is impossible. Well, why does he fail to implement his idea here? Without a measure of capital and human em/immigration how can, say, the UK understand whether it’s tax policies are decent or not? How can Brown calculate, rationally, the “optimal tax system” (if there is such a thing).
How can any minarchist even think of doing away with microstates and unlimited secession (again , an idea of Mises) without falling into the trap of the impossibility of calculation and economic chaos? Or else, how can a Minarchist speak of decent state role, even in thiis very thread, wihtout having a competitive measure of its ideas?
Finally, do you truly believe that world-wide trade is possible only if a single World Government exists? Check out you local store and you’ll see differently.
International trade is anarchic (i.e. efficient) precisely because no single government regulates it. Holding the contrary would be hardly consistent with libertarianism, even if the guy speaking the works is the Great Mises.
Remarkable! Simply remarkable! You bring up law and law enforcement and you sound like a hard core Marxist.
The same argument is made about education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc… Of course, everyone forgot that before there was law and healthcare, there was food!
Political integration is most definitely not needed for economic integration… esp. since political integration is more akin to merging semi-competing law providers into one big monopoly with no challenge to its power, whereas integrating markets is usually more about removing statist impediments to their smooth functioning and exchange between them. The EU must fall.
Oh we can’t ?
Say hello to the Louisiana legal system, which is based on civil law instead of common law like the other states.
You know, I am not sure how familiar you are with Rothbard’s work, but he claimed that the logical outcome of minarchism is a one world monarch government. I say you’re proving his point.
I would rename it the Eastern American Empire.
So I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, do you believe in taxation without representation then? And second of all, do you believe in government without consent of the governed? If you do believe in government only with consent of the governed, how do you rectify that with your belief that there has to be a small government?
No I mean by what right do you establish a government?
Please allow me to just clarify my position. I am not saying that trade is not possible or even particularly difficult between markets operating under different legal, fiscal and monetary systems. But I do think that Mises is right in that there will exist a tendancy for such systems to become harmonised where there exists free trade and movement of capital and labour. Just in the same way that price differentials across a market will tend to become harmonised through arbitrage, insitutional differentials will likewise be under a similar pressure because capital and labour will just migrate away from those areas with more punitive taxes or those areas that fail to protect property rights effectively. Etjon Basha raises a good point about competition between institutional frameworks being desireable in order to determine which form of setup is better. But on the other hand, it might lead to protectionst policies. Either the institutional frameworks will tend to harmonise or protectionist barriers will be imposed. And if it’s the former, then you will end up with a system that for all intents and purposes is a monolithic institution.
In defence of an egalitarian legal system, I would say that in most arguments I have with socialists tend to rely pretty heavilly on the notion of property rights and their universal application. i.e. removing all this regulation won’t lead to disaster if we have a proper system of property rights in place. I realise that this is kind of utalitarian reasoning but I don’t think I can defend a system that doesn’t guarantee property rights to all independently of their ability to pay for it. Otherwise how does one, starting out with nothing ever better themselves? They have a chance if they happen upon people who are willing to respect contractual arrangements with them or not engage in behaviour towards them that towards anyone else (who can afford it) would constitute a violation of their rights. Otherwise they could be enslaved with no recourse to the law.