NP - Why the Euro Is a Selfish Jerk

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Ach David ... There simply is no European nation. Why don't you get it? 
No common language, thus no common public sphere. No common political 
identity ( - like you have in the US since 1865).

What we have here in (Western) Europe since 1945 is the strong will not 
to go to war with each other. And this has caused the EU and then the 
Euro. Not the other way round. Actually no war will break out in case 
the Euro fails. Those who say otherwise like Angela Merkel or the 
bureaucrats from Brussels are just trying to push an ideology. Paul 
Collier ("Exodus. Immigration and Multiculturalism in the 21. Century") 
has a thought experiment on this, directly aiming at Merkel's 
nonsensical statement ("If the Euro fails, Europe will fail"). Poland 
and Norway were both occupied by German troops during World War II. 
These days, Poland is a member of the EU and has the Euro. Norway is not 
and has its own currency. Now, is it, asks Collier, the nano-tiniest bit 
more probable that Germany will invade Norway than it is that Germany 
will invade Poland? No, the correct answer goes, for both events the 
probability lies by absolute zero. The will for peace in Western Europe 
is not (anymore) dependent on economic sunshine. It is grounded in the 
terrible experience of devastating war. And this experience goes far 
wider back in history than the 20th century. The Thirty Years' War 
(1618-1648) killed in relative numbers more people than World War II. 
Even when the new Greek government went from ugly to insane, they didn't 
threaten Germany with military force but with the announcement that they 
would pay migrants with an Islamist background the train ticket to 
Berlin. War is simply not an option anymore.

So what's the fuss about? Certainly not about poverty. There are a 
number of states in the Euro zone where the people are poorer. Slovenia 
for example. Or Estonia. People there too back up the guarantees for 
Greece with the taxes they pay. How can you explain to them that the 
Greeks want to have the cake and eat it too? Get unconditional financial 
support for their corrupted society and stay inside the Euro zone. This 
has to come to an end. And it does. For Greece it would be the best 
thing to leave the Euro zone and to reintroduce the Drachme which it 
could devalue to get some competitive capacity. If Greece stays in the 
Euro zone, it will economically crash and this time there won't be any 
bailout. It's called Grexident ...

Oh David, one more thing: If you think this is about Germans and Greeks, 
--- why don't you ask a taxpayer from, say, the Netherlands or Lithuania 
how they feel about sponsoring the never ending  Athens party?


On 17.04.2015 21:57, David Morris wrote:
> Hitting The Nail On The Head:
>
> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/euro-ingroup-bias
>
> the Euro creators should have thought harder about what social 
> scientists have learned about how compassion and cultural identity 
> interact.
>
> In asking nations to entrust their economic fate to the Euro, its 
> designers were assuming that Europeans have a reservoir of goodwill 
> among them. That goodwill was supposed to ensure, for example, that no 
> prospective member had to worry that a powerful member would use its 
> Euro-derived leverage to turn the screws on a weaker member which 
> was—to pick an example out of thin air—wracked by colossal levels of 
> debt, unemployment and economic misery 
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/10/greeces-poor-are-back-to-where-they-were-in-1980/>.
>
> But that's exactly what the Germans have done to the Greeks. Why 
> aren't the Germans overcome with sympathy for the Greeks? It's not 
> that Germans are selfish or hard-hearted: after all, they have spent 
> ten times the current GDP of Greecehelping the economically struggling 
> people of the former East Germany 
> <http://fortune.com/2014/11/09/germany-east-west-economy/>.
>
> Social psychology researchers 
> <http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2014-09886-001/> have identified a 
> powerful in group bias in willingness to help others, whether it's 
> hiring someone for a job or supporting social welfare programs for the 
> poor. Human beings are, in short, more inclined to help other people 
> whom we perceive as being a member of our tribe.
>
> Human psychology wouldn't cause as many problems for the Euro if there 
> was a strong European identity, if a West German was as likely to 
> consider an East German a tribe member as they would a Greek or a 
> Spaniard or an Italian. But when most Germans and Greeks look at each 
> other, they fundamentally see someone who speaks a different language 
> and hails from a different culture with a different history—and for 
> that matter was a military enemy within living memory.
>
> With no shared sense of tribe comes a sharp reduction in compassion 
> and attendant willingness to help.  The elites who designed the Euro 
> may genuinely have believed and even felt a sense that Europe is all 
> about "us", but the currency's recent struggles show that for too many 
> Europeans, it's more about us and them.
>

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