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MaxQue
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« Reply #25 on: November 25, 2012, 10:58:01 PM »

we'll see how long the continent can tolerate the monetary hit without us.

Right, because your (yeah, Cameron's, but still) insane austerity policies have been helping the EU economy a lot lately...

well, i can agree on his policies being insane, but the uk still pays in an absolute fortune. i fail to see how left wingers can defend the european union though, given its anti-democratic nature and the corporatism involved. they ruled against workers rights in the laval and viking cases because workers rights violates 'free movement of labour' due to all countries having to comply (though admittedly, britain's ridiculous union laws don't help)

There is a difference between supporting the idea of EU and supporting the EU as it is.

i acknowledge that. the problem as i see it is that the european union is too inflexible to reform without drastic measures.

It might be... But my philosophy has never been "when something doesn't work well enough, let's break it", but rather "let's fix it to the best we can". If all left-wingers who are dissatisfied with the current State of the EU joined together in demanding a major overhaul of the EU's governance and policies, we'd have a fair chance to succeed.

You're really naive if you think than anything can happen while Queen Merkel (or Germans, really) are still here.

All EU decisions are made for the economical interest of Germany industry. Even in subjects that are surprising, like regulation of chemical products.

How do you plan to fund anything without our money?

Don't be surprised than there is an anti-German behaviour in Europe, if the Germans continue to be that arrogant.

I don't really see much anti-German "behaviour" except from the countries that want more money. I view the position that we're obligated to support them as arrogant, quite honestly.

We can argue all day on whether it makes sense to spend more money on it. All in all, it might be the least bad option, but you really should get rid of this sense of entitlement.

I'm not talking of Greece or anything.
I'm just saying than if EU doesn't work on cooperation, it will fail in the long term.

It can't continue to be a way than German corporations use to racket other countries.
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Velasco
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« Reply #26 on: November 26, 2012, 04:28:11 AM »

I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU, and gradually improve the severely flawed union we now have in order to build something better out of it. Is this naive? Maybe. But I also think it's the only alternative we have to the utter economic and social collapse of Europe. I'd rather cling to an unlikely utopia than resign myself to this nightmare.

I prefer to be naive instead of falling in the cynical pessimism that dominates in Europe nowadays. Such set of mindsets only drives to the precipice, in some countries in a more dramatic form than the others. My opinion is that decadence is inevitable in the set of Europe if we continue for this route. Also the problem is that socialdemocracy in Europe lacks of alternative proposals and it's in a state of shock and electoral weakness. There's a terrible lack of ideas in general and the short-term thinking dominates all the way. We should be conscious of this to see which is the way of exit. I'm not even very optimistic about the almighty Germany.
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politicus
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« Reply #27 on: November 26, 2012, 06:50:16 AM »
« Edited: November 26, 2012, 07:41:33 AM by politicus »

I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU, and gradually improve the severely flawed union we now have in order to build something better out of it. Is this naive? Maybe. But I also think it's the only alternative we have to the utter economic and social collapse of Europe. I'd rather cling to an unlikely utopia than resign myself to this nightmare.

I prefer to be naive instead of falling in the cynical pessimism that dominates in Europe nowadays. Such set of mindsets only drives to the precipice, in some countries in a more dramatic form than the others. My opinion is that decadence is inevitable in the set of Europe if we continue for this route. Also the problem is that socialdemocracy in Europe lacks of alternative proposals and it's in a state of shock and electoral weakness. There's a terrible lack of ideas in general and the short-term thinking dominates all the way. We should be conscious of this to see which is the way of exit. I'm not even very optimistic about the almighty Germany.
In many ways the Social Democratic model is up against the wall. You cant keep up high taxes combined with capitalist ownership because capital just moves away. So either you turn left and introduce some kind of economic democracy, where workers/cooperatives/unions etc. control production or go right and become softcore liberals. Since the 70s/early 80s no-one has no-one has dared turning left and therefore SocDems are in a perpetual defensive position.
Social democracy in the old sense with big welfare states financed by milking the capitalist economy will never really return as a viable option. But the movement keeps pretending that it can and keeps moving to the right ceding more and more territory to the neo-liberals. So basically they have to either accept the fact that they are social liberals or come up with an idea on how to make a market based socialism work in the real world and on a national/continental level and no-one has really been able to do that. So yeah, I don't see them pulling trough.  
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #28 on: November 26, 2012, 09:19:18 AM »

I think David Cameron is pond scum and I'm certainly not automatically anti-EU, but I don't see why we should be paying even more money into the expense accounts of fourth rate bureaucrats at a time of massive cutbacks - instigated, we should not forget, to a considerable extent by that very same David Cameron - to services and Lord knows what else here.
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ingemann
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« Reply #29 on: November 26, 2012, 03:58:24 PM »

I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU, and gradually improve the severely flawed union we now have in order to build something better out of it. Is this naive? Maybe. But I also think it's the only alternative we have to the utter economic and social collapse of Europe. I'd rather cling to an unlikely utopia than resign myself to this nightmare.

I prefer to be naive instead of falling in the cynical pessimism that dominates in Europe nowadays. Such set of mindsets only drives to the precipice, in some countries in a more dramatic form than the others. My opinion is that decadence is inevitable in the set of Europe if we continue for this route. Also the problem is that socialdemocracy in Europe lacks of alternative proposals and it's in a state of shock and electoral weakness. There's a terrible lack of ideas in general and the short-term thinking dominates all the way. We should be conscious of this to see which is the way of exit. I'm not even very optimistic about the almighty Germany.
In many ways the Social Democratic model is up against the wall. You cant keep up high taxes combined with capitalist ownership because capital just moves away. So either you turn left and introduce some kind of economic democracy, where workers/cooperatives/unions etc. control production or go right and become softcore liberals. Since the 70s/early 80s no-one has no-one has dared turning left and therefore SocDems are in a perpetual defensive position.
Social democracy in the old sense with big welfare states financed by milking the capitalist economy will never really return as a viable option. But the movement keeps pretending that it can and keeps moving to the right ceding more and more territory to the neo-liberals. So basically they have to either accept the fact that they are social liberals or come up with an idea on how to make a market based socialism work in the real world and on a national/continental level and no-one has really been able to do that. So yeah, I don't see them pulling trough.  

Interesting analyse, and it seem rather intuitive. But here's the problem with it, it's not like the parties left of the European SocDems shows an alternative. Their solution is just transferring more money from people who work to ones who doesn't or just borrowing the money. If they instead tried to come with some suggestion for radical reforms of our societies rather than that, I would say we had a real alternative. As example we have SAS (Scandinavian Airlines, not the British special forces) which is on the way to collapse right now, here the left could suggest that the workers took over the company instead (as it's the workers SAS owes the most money to), but no there's no attempt at any solution from there either, only empty rhetoric. This is just an example, I don't demands that they should suggest that, but it would be nice, if they had some realistic idea how society in the future should work or how we should transfer the means of production to the workers.

If SocDems are ideological bankrupt it's not the only party on the left which suffer from that.
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ingemann
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« Reply #30 on: November 26, 2012, 04:07:57 PM »

I'm not talking of Greece or anything.
I'm just saying than if EU doesn't work on cooperation, it will fail in the long term.

It can't continue to be a way than German corporations use to racket other countries.

German companies treat the Euro zone as what it is, a common market with a single currency. The solution is not that Germans should be forced to lower their productivity, but that other countries either raise their productivity or find areas where they do better than the Germans. If the German productivity fell enough to make Greece or Spain competitive on the German market, it would not lead to increase imports to Germany from Spain, it would lead to increased imports from China.


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politicus
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« Reply #31 on: November 27, 2012, 06:57:18 AM »
« Edited: November 27, 2012, 06:34:22 PM by politicus »

I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU, and gradually improve the severely flawed union we now have in order to build something better out of it. Is this naive? Maybe. But I also think it's the only alternative we have to the utter economic and social collapse of Europe. I'd rather cling to an unlikely utopia than resign myself to this nightmare.

I prefer to be naive instead of falling in the cynical pessimism that dominates in Europe nowadays. Such set of mindsets only drives to the precipice, in some countries in a more dramatic form than the others. My opinion is that decadence is inevitable in the set of Europe if we continue for this route. Also the problem is that socialdemocracy in Europe lacks of alternative proposals and it's in a state of shock and electoral weakness. There's a terrible lack of ideas in general and the short-term thinking dominates all the way. We should be conscious of this to see which is the way of exit. I'm not even very optimistic about the almighty Germany.
In many ways the Social Democratic model is up against the wall. You cant keep up high taxes combined with capitalist ownership because capital just moves away. So either you turn left and introduce some kind of economic democracy, where workers/cooperatives/unions etc. control production or go right and become softcore liberals. Since the 70s/early 80s no-one has no-one has dared turning left and therefore SocDems are in a perpetual defensive position.
Social democracy in the old sense with big welfare states financed by milking the capitalist economy will never really return as a viable option. But the movement keeps pretending that it can and keeps moving to the right ceding more and more territory to the neo-liberals. So basically they have to either accept the fact that they are social liberals or come up with an idea on how to make a market based socialism work in the real world and on a national/continental level and no-one has really been able to do that. So yeah, I don't see them pulling trough.  

Interesting analyse, and it seem rather intuitive. But here's the problem with it, it's not like the parties left of the European SocDems shows an alternative. Their solution is just transferring more money from people who work to ones who doesn't or just borrowing the money. If they instead tried to come with some suggestion for radical reforms of our societies rather than that, I would say we had a real alternative. As example we have SAS (Scandinavian Airlines, not the British special forces) which is on the way to collapse right now, here the left could suggest that the workers took over the company instead (as it's the workers SAS owes the most money to), but no there's no attempt at any solution from there either, only empty rhetoric. This is just an example, I don't demands that they should suggest that, but it would be nice, if they had some realistic idea how society in the future should work or how we should transfer the means of production to the workers.

If SocDems are ideological bankrupt it's not the only party on the left which suffer from that.
True. But thats not really a critique of the analysis, just an extension of it. Most of the Euro left has been SocDem +10-20% for decades (which makes them left wing populists).

(but since this thread has another purpose I wont pursue this any further)
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MaxQue
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« Reply #32 on: November 27, 2012, 07:09:22 AM »

I'm not talking of Greece or anything.
I'm just saying than if EU doesn't work on cooperation, it will fail in the long term.

It can't continue to be a way than German corporations use to racket other countries.

German companies treat the Euro zone as what it is, a common market with a single currency. The solution is not that Germans should be forced to lower their productivity, but that other countries either raise their productivity or find areas where they do better than the Germans. If the German productivity fell enough to make Greece or Spain competitive on the German market, it would not lead to increase imports to Germany from Spain, it would lead to increased imports from China.




No.
German companies are using European regulations to kill any concurrence, or to racket it, like with REACh, in which the German chemical industry forces the other businesses to pay them forture to have to right to transport their products in Europe.

German racket and other unfair methods are unacceptable.
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Franzl
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« Reply #33 on: November 27, 2012, 07:18:52 AM »

I'm not talking of Greece or anything.
I'm just saying than if EU doesn't work on cooperation, it will fail in the long term.

It can't continue to be a way than German corporations use to racket other countries.

German companies treat the Euro zone as what it is, a common market with a single currency. The solution is not that Germans should be forced to lower their productivity, but that other countries either raise their productivity or find areas where they do better than the Germans. If the German productivity fell enough to make Greece or Spain competitive on the German market, it would not lead to increase imports to Germany from Spain, it would lead to increased imports from China.




No.
German companies are using European regulations to kill any concurrence, or to racket it, like with REACh, in which the German chemical industry forces the other businesses to pay them forture to have to right to transport their products in Europe.

German racket and other unfair methods are unacceptable.

I just read a short summary on REACH, and it seems like a relatively sensible regulation. In what way is it not and in what way does any one country profit from it "unfairly"?
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ingemann
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« Reply #34 on: November 27, 2012, 04:00:29 PM »

I'm not talking of Greece or anything.
I'm just saying than if EU doesn't work on cooperation, it will fail in the long term.

It can't continue to be a way than German corporations use to racket other countries.

German companies treat the Euro zone as what it is, a common market with a single currency. The solution is not that Germans should be forced to lower their productivity, but that other countries either raise their productivity or find areas where they do better than the Germans. If the German productivity fell enough to make Greece or Spain competitive on the German market, it would not lead to increase imports to Germany from Spain, it would lead to increased imports from China.




No.
German companies are using European regulations to kill any concurrence, or to racket it, like with REACh, in which the German chemical industry forces the other businesses to pay them forture to have to right to transport their products in Europe.

German racket and other unfair methods are unacceptable.

I just read a short summary on REACH, and it seems like a relatively sensible regulation. In what way is it not and in what way does any one country profit from it "unfairly"?

I'm with Franzl here, I fail to see precisely how REACH create a racket.
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Gustaf
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« Reply #35 on: November 28, 2012, 01:05:20 AM »

We can have this discussion over and over again, SwedishCheese. Please, I am well aware that my ideas are out of the mainstream and that the system I support isn't likely to become reality anytime soon. I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU, and gradually improve the severely flawed union we now have in order to build something better out of it. Is this naive? Maybe. But I also think it's the only alternative we have to the utter economic and social collapse of Europe. I'd rather cling to an unlikely utopia than resign myself to this nightmare.

You don't care about the fact that it is this vision that has created the collapse? Thanks to the idiotic overreach of the federalists all the progress made since WWII when it comes to free trade and freedom of movement is now in jeopardy.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #36 on: November 28, 2012, 01:16:36 AM »
« Edited: November 28, 2012, 01:18:51 AM by Fillon, laisse pas béton ! »

We can have this discussion over and over again, SwedishCheese. Please, I am well aware that my ideas are out of the mainstream and that the system I support isn't likely to become reality anytime soon. I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU, and gradually improve the severely flawed union we now have in order to build something better out of it. Is this naive? Maybe. But I also think it's the only alternative we have to the utter economic and social collapse of Europe. I'd rather cling to an unlikely utopia than resign myself to this nightmare.

You don't care about the fact that it is this vision that has created the collapse? Thanks to the idiotic overreach of the federalists all the progress made since WWII when it comes to free trade and freedom of movement is now in jeopardy.

What? LOL no.

My vision never "created" anything because, as Swedish Cheese himself put it, it never prevailed.
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MaxQue
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« Reply #37 on: November 28, 2012, 07:21:47 AM »

I'm not talking of Greece or anything.
I'm just saying than if EU doesn't work on cooperation, it will fail in the long term.

It can't continue to be a way than German corporations use to racket other countries.

German companies treat the Euro zone as what it is, a common market with a single currency. The solution is not that Germans should be forced to lower their productivity, but that other countries either raise their productivity or find areas where they do better than the Germans. If the German productivity fell enough to make Greece or Spain competitive on the German market, it would not lead to increase imports to Germany from Spain, it would lead to increased imports from China.




No.
German companies are using European regulations to kill any concurrence, or to racket it, like with REACh, in which the German chemical industry forces the other businesses to pay them forture to have to right to transport their products in Europe.

German racket and other unfair methods are unacceptable.

I just read a short summary on REACH, and it seems like a relatively sensible regulation. In what way is it not and in what way does any one country profit from it "unfairly"?

The problem with REACh is the "lead registrant" system. For each product in which you import in sufficant quantity in Europe, you must join the forum related to that product. That forum is a place to exchange information, especially on toxicity.

Nothing of that is wrong. The problem is in the details.

The problem is than those forum has an high yearly membership cost (we are in the 5 figures, here), which are paid to the "lead registrant" (usually a German company, given than most European chemical industry is German).

The system itself isn't bad, but, it's used for German protectionnism and/or increase artificially the profits of German corporations.
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Gustaf
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« Reply #38 on: November 28, 2012, 07:34:21 PM »

We can have this discussion over and over again, SwedishCheese. Please, I am well aware that my ideas are out of the mainstream and that the system I support isn't likely to become reality anytime soon. I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU, and gradually improve the severely flawed union we now have in order to build something better out of it. Is this naive? Maybe. But I also think it's the only alternative we have to the utter economic and social collapse of Europe. I'd rather cling to an unlikely utopia than resign myself to this nightmare.

You don't care about the fact that it is this vision that has created the collapse? Thanks to the idiotic overreach of the federalists all the progress made since WWII when it comes to free trade and freedom of movement is now in jeopardy.

What? LOL no.

My vision never "created" anything because, as Swedish Cheese himself put it, it never prevailed.

Your vision, as stated by you: " I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU"

That's what's behind the euro and that in turn has played a huge part in putting us where we are now.

(well, not us so much, since we were thankfully sensible enough to vote no, but those European countries foolish enough to adopt the euro)
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Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
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« Reply #39 on: November 28, 2012, 08:17:06 PM »

We can have this discussion over and over again, SwedishCheese. Please, I am well aware that my ideas are out of the mainstream and that the system I support isn't likely to become reality anytime soon. I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU, and gradually improve the severely flawed union we now have in order to build something better out of it. Is this naive? Maybe. But I also think it's the only alternative we have to the utter economic and social collapse of Europe. I'd rather cling to an unlikely utopia than resign myself to this nightmare.

You don't care about the fact that it is this vision that has created the collapse? Thanks to the idiotic overreach of the federalists all the progress made since WWII when it comes to free trade and freedom of movement is now in jeopardy.

What? LOL no.

My vision never "created" anything because, as Swedish Cheese himself put it, it never prevailed.

Your vision, as stated by you: " I still think it is possible, little step by little step, to advance a federalist and Social-Democratic vision of the EU"

That's what's behind the euro and that in turn has played a huge part in putting us where we are now.

(well, not us so much, since we were thankfully sensible enough to vote no, but those European countries foolish enough to adopt the euro)

While some Social-Democrats might have supported the Euro with this spirit (and, yes, I could rank among them), I don't think they were the main force behind its adoption. Sure, there was Delors, but my brand of Social-Democracy has never really been a dominant force among the countries of the Eurozone. I'm pretty sure prospects of economic benefits were the key reason behind its adoption by countries like France and Germany. And indeed the Euro had some positive economic repercussions for them in the past decade.

Anyways, while I understand why an Euroskeptic would blame the current debt crisis on the Euro, you have to acknowledge that, in our perspective, the problem is the lack of budgetary integration between countries. If we had European bonds with which to back the currency in case of speculations, nothing of this crisis would have ever happened.
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