Competition vs coordination
Posted on | February 8, 2010 | Comments Off by Aschwin de Wolf
If there is one consistent theme in the fallout of the financial meltdown it is the demand for more policy “coordination.” In the case of the sovereign debt problems in the European Union it seems inconceivable that the “low debt” countries that are negatively impacted by the “high debt” countries would respond by withdrawing from the European Union and the Euro. As an article in the Wall Street Journal notes:
It was never going to be easy to make a single currency work for so many diverse countries with very different economic models. A central bank setting interest rates in a vacuum, while constituent governments have control over fiscal and economic policy, always looked flawed.
The typical globalist politician believes that if there is too much fiscal and economic policy diversity for monetary centralization to work, then let’s destroy such diversity to remove those obstacles.
There was a time that fear of a European superstate, let alone a world government, was seen as indicative of delusional conspiratory thinking. But as more and more politicians and opinion makers actually state their preference to move in this direction such fears can no longer be dismissed in this fashion.
The 21st century may witness a political struggle that is even more fundamental than the socio-political struggles of the 20th century because what will be at stake is not just what vision of the good society will prevail in a particular country but whether anyone would be able to escape it at all.
This struggle may not necessarily reflect the classic struggle between Liberty and Power. There are those who do not hesitate to support more centralization of power if it serves the cause of Liberty. But to others such reasoning is dangerous. How can one make an empirical case against one thing or the other if political reality is increasingly made ONE?
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