One puzzling phenomenon is the enthusiasm for the EU I have witnessed in my highly educated European friends. Once I carefully explained the damage certain to be caused by the Maastricht monetary agreements to some pen pals in Finland who looked at me as if I didnt get it. For them, joining the Euro was a chance to prove to the world that formerly poor, isolated, colonized Finland had arrived in the big time. I am certain that the same sort of thinking was repeated in many of the other small entrants to the EU from Estonia to Portugal. This was a point of national pride. Unfortunately, the neoliberalism of Maastricht was designed to take advantage of the small and weak who were joining a yacht club they could not afford to join. The fact that income inequality is a global phenomenon pretty much proves how effective these economic policies are in redistributing wealth upward. Of course, the poster child for all the bad things that can happen to the little fish who joined the EU is Greece. Now they have elected a government that promises to abandon the EU-mandated austerity measures that are crippling their country. But they still want to stay in the club. Veblen was right—the desire for status emulation is such a powerful motivation, it is even more powerful at times than survival instincts. Example umpteen-hundred is Greeces Syriza Party. Palast mocks this silliness so much better than I could. Does Tsipras really think he can change neoliberal Europe? This should be interesting to see. (But by then, a fully-fascist, industro-feudal US will gobble it all up the way Rome did Greece, and Persia Mesopotamia. Nothing happens in isolation.)
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:38:27 +0000