The Only Good Deal For Greece Is NO Deal
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Ben Shahn Sideshow, county fair, central Ohio 1938 The only thing that would really go towards beginning to solve the problems with Greece is for Athe
[See the full post at: The Only Good Deal For Greece Is NO Deal]What we’re witnessing is the contraction of the trust horizon, leaving international institutions as stranded assets from a trust perspective. When the trust is gone, so is the political legitimacy, and with it effective governance. Effective organizational scale is going to get a whole lot smaller over the next few years pretty much everywhere. That is what we always said would happen.
That NO will have to come from the Greek Parliament as a collective NO. The enormity for any single government minister including PM is just too great a responsibility but acting together Parliament has the gravitas to counter the troika institutions of the EU / EMU. Should that not happen, the probability Syriza continues holding office diminishes rapidly as anti-EU extremist likely replace forming a new government that the EU will have no ability to deal. At that point Greek participation in EU affairs is likely over as well as Greek membership in OTAN/NATO (without massive cash transfers or credible existential threats or combination thereof). The EU will be trading the difficult devil for the impossible devil, hear what LePen in France has to say, as a guide for the imagination. It’s not hard to see why the Greek people wish to remain in the EMU given the stabilising effect it has on national governments, particularly wayward ones, but there are limits to such acceptability which are likely passed at this point, the costs now far surpassing gain; but that is yet in the future should it come to pass. Interesting times these.
Nicole
I agree about a contracting ‘trust horizon’ but Greek majority opinion apparently still stays in the ‘trust zone’? Ditto in Eire.
Continuing youth unemployment, particularly across the Eurozone, may prove to be the ‘killer’ factor, but it could take a while yet. And ‘floating’ currency is no guarantee of anything; see https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/05/european-economy-guide
best
PhilAn excellent explanation of why central power must be pushed down to the lowest effective level.
In general, the Left believes in Statism, in centralized power, in ordering people around for their own good, as represented by Technocrats, Socialism, and the blizzard of regulations put out by the EU bureaucracy. Ironically, this shows a deep lack of belief that people are pretty good and if left to themselves will be okay–or at least no worse than otherwise. Of course the Right believes in war, and that a lack of government will lead to increased morality. This is not the “lowest effective level” of enforcing rules, but rather “let’s have no checks on power.” But ironically, the Right, who presents as suspicious of others, has a deep belief that if people were left alone they’d more or less organize themselves no worse than now…but a lot cheaper.
In either case, Left and Right are two feet of the same duck, headed in the same direction. There is no party representing decentralization, non-statism, and Liberty. Liberty is distinct from Freedom for in Freedom, you do whatever you want: the law of the jungle, the strongest prevails. But Liberty is the Freedom to do what you want, so long as it does not infringe the Freedom of others–that is, Freedom + Responsibility. And law. And therefore a means to agree upon and enforce that law. For example, you have the right to say mean and dumb things. The other guy also has the right to say mean and dumb things. But you do not have the right to PREVENT him from saying mean and dumb things. However, he does not have the right to transform his meanness into violence against you. It’s a restraining force with the minimum of involvement (which is cheapest, and also errs on the side of Freedom), but which protects the individual, the minority, and has the smallest, most decentralized power, so the centralization of power doesn’t lead to the different peril we now see in Greece and Europe. (With the note that Democracy, which we clearly don’t have in Europe, protects no one, as seen in the French Revolution. Any 51% mob can do anything, and the rights–and lives–of the 49% have no protection whatsoever. Made far worse if the mob opinion is engineered by a centralized media.)
When all this falls apart, they’re going to ask for MORE concentration, centralization, and absolute authority. There is so much said about what is wrong and how it isn’t working that sometimes we should keep our eyes on the goal of what has worked and we can all agree on. And get back there, quickly.
Diablo
You have yet to tell us where your Dr came from or is that a figment of your imaginary world as well.
It is so convenient how you have ordered your world view as to what your opinion of left and right are about. Please inform of some examples please, if you can find any. YOur deposits here are not even worth the value of manure which can actually grow plants and other lifeforms.
You pretend to lecture the readers here about your acquaintance with power where obviously the only contact you have had with power comes from watching hollywood movies and listening to libertarian tracts on youtube. You don’t have the slightest idea of what life is like for Europeans, nor their education, or their social conditions, or their economy. All you have is some opinion based on some delusion you have. Please stop putting forth that you know anything. You know nothing. You are a charlatan. You are a fraud. Your opinions are without worth. You seem to want to prove your ignorance beyond all doubt. If that is your goal, go ahead and keep it up. It’s your call.
T-Bear:
A very astute observation. Tsipars cannot do it, the big NO, can’t even be seen as doing it. But at the same time, it will never be the entire Parliament. The other parties smell their shot at another stint in the Big House. Pro-euro demos are carefully scripted with flashy pamphlets and all, people tell me.
Nicole is of course very right – isn’t she always? – it’s about trust, as I wrote:
“None of these institutions, IMF, EU, ECB, has any raison d’être or any claim to fame unless there is explicit trust in what they represent. That trust is now gone, and it’s hard to see how it can ever be recovered.”
I might as well have said it’s impossible to see. We’ve passed beyond the trust horizon, we just don’t know it yet.
Greece can shake the EU on its foundations. France can topple it. The third dog in the bone fight is Italy. Spain can do a lot of damage.
@ Ilargi reply # 21817
Is it not 50% + 1 to enact in Parliament? Syriza was in coalition with another party for making a majority government. Surely there are enough extraneous sympathetic votes to maintain that majority position as well given most politicians are adept at reading their political auguries – this time the sacrifice being augured is their own future.
Greece is the keystone position now. Should that give way, the rest of the arch will follow. Either Italy or Spain following the Greek path will finish the present form of the EMU. France would finish the concept altogether. Once the EMU is destroyed, nothing like it will be possible again, or at least given the present state of economic knowledge. Whether a quantum jump is possible from the present conditions is questionable, it certainly is not from the present political environment and levels of public education required for reaching rational consensus. The problem is that of complex system dysfunction and collapse of complexity. Go figure a way out of that.
Trust was what was violated, unspoken assumptions of trust growing from the disaster of the Second World War. The grandchildren had no memory of those requirements fundamental to the structures they inherited. Instead they sold their birthright to the neoliberals for a handful of beans and promises and handed over the reins of political power in exchange. Whether this can be undone or not is the question.
This is an ad hominem attack. What is my error and what is your counter-proposal for where we should be headed?
How is “Libertarianism” different than what Raul describes of the many problems of centralizing in Europe, or Nicole about the urgency of smaller organizational scale?
To me Left and Right are a false paradigm and hazy to the point of being meaningless. I only brought them up because Raul mentioned that unwavering belief in the EU project as presently constituted is a weakness of the “Left”—whatever the faults of the Right, which are many. Like our host, I’m equally describing the faults of the Right and Left. Like our host, I am of the opinion that concentrating power attracts the wrong sort of people and leads to problems. From the Wiki: “Libertarians generally share a skepticism of authority…however, they diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing political and economic systems [and] offer a range of views…” I share that skepticism, and like everyone I have a personal view that is similar to some and different from others. That view cannot be European, as I am not from Europe. However, my view is that countries and people should do as seems best for them, and have no need to follow an American model, or even one that represents freedom or democracy if they don’t wish to.So how would you construct a successful Europe? With more concentration or less? With more representation or less? With more personal Freedom and autonomy or less? And with more responsibility corresponding to that freedom, or less? With power that is more restrained, or less? Proceeding from the present pattern, or with criticism and skepticism of the present authorities? The article above from our host suggests he believes in less centralization, more freedom and autonomy, more community responsibility, with oversight of power and a healthy skepticism of the present powers; all principles that I agree with.
Dr. Diablo is a name having a high degree in being the Devil’s Advocate, asking difficult, disturbing, or uncomfortable questions, and presenting views the most when they are least wanted. The opposite of the popular person and the popular view. Sounds like at least one of those worked.
Trust? Trust requires ethics, a sense of fairness, and good faith by all parties concerned. Since when have these been operant values in civilization? Even imagining trust in the current environment takes the wildest leap of naivite. The problem is that most people in the West are not suffering ENOUGH yet. The activation energy has not yet been realized. Like all self-appointed Messianics, the current Western “leader-puppets”.. and their “system”.. will ultimately be seen as delusional, but they will cause a lot of pain on the way down and the DEGREE of damage will be worse the longer the reversion to the mean is postponed. So let’s get on with it and stop procrastinating. We can only hope that the accelerating hubris of TPTB will make their evil so obvious that less destruction will be unleashed to prevent more destruction.
@ diablo
This is ad hominem ad ignorantiam and it will only happen once.
To begin, you are applying an amerikkkan construct with your dichotomy of left/right. Would it surprise you to find out in the small village where I live there are some twenty political parties presented to the voters just for election to the city council? and about three thousand voters on the register? Your comments never consider spectrum of political opinion but usually some attack on target du jour, for some perceived misdemeanour you imagine they commit. Most of your pronouncements are fact free, speculative, judgmental or censorious, having no connection to any single or consistent school of thought. Your modus operandi is to set up straw-men and proceed to disparage your construct. A passage from Moon of Alabama puts it succinctly with a minimum of modification:
To “deny, disrupt, degrade/denigrate, delay, deceive, discredit, dissuade or deter” is exactly what Internet trolls are doing in the comment sections of blogs and news sites. … The more these [from: So The Spy Services Are The Real Internet Trolls] services grow and their methods proliferate the less possible will it become to have reasonable online discussions.
my emphasis and insertion of post title
If you had not noticed, your opinion was shown not to have substance and added nothing to the host’s post and was in general distracting from discussion at hand, your assumptions are those of sophomoric understanding of economic, political, historical or legal subjects, your education is obviously incomplete and sadly deficient, not your fault for sure but nonetheless affecting your ability to write coherently – look at the gibberish in your paragraph starting “How is …” and ending “… if they don’t wish to”, and they thought Sarah Palin did word salads and was grand-master of incoherency.
If you are going to write of economics and politics, both of which require a firm basis in history, sociology and the legal system, then you are needing to start studying and coming to some firm understanding of the nature of those things. This deficit is painfully obvious to anyone reading your diatribes and should be made known to you. If you are deluded about what your history was, you are deceived about where you are now and haven’t the foggiest chance of directing where you wish to go. There is an aphorism that might stand you in good stead:
It is far better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt.
by the by, what you wanted was not Dr., the Latin is: advocatus diaboli, you can take it from there, if you’re able.
That was ad hominem.
Martin Armstrong wrote an article today that nicely supports Nicole’s comment, but from a slightly different angle.
T-Bear: Recognize that this is just a comment section – – a chat room – – and Ilargi allows all viewpoints here. Comments rarely stick to Ilargi’s topic in any rigorous way, so why the vituperative attacks? You’re not looking smart. A smart reader skips the commenters he doesn’t like and spends his time more wisely. Quit taking yourself so seriously, take a deep breath and give it a rest. I, for one, will be skipping your comments in the future if you keep wasting my time.
T-Bear. I’ve been reading automatic earth for about a year now. It is only now that I decided to register and comment. Do you enjoy being an arrogant, condescending, trolling douche-bag? Diablo’s comments seem spot on. Perhaps you could try growing up (a lot), being a bit more mature, reasonable and not such an asshole?
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