I'm in favour of an eventually united Europe[0] - I'm just not a fan of the current EU.
Note that I don't think all decisions should be made by a single all-encompassing bureaucracy, but I think that there are some decisions that would benefit from that. Giving everyone the same rights, and subjecting everyone to (basically) the same set of laws, would seem to be a good idea. So centralising legislation gets my vote. On the other hand, it makes sense to enforce the law as locally as possible, escalating only where the crime itself becomes non-local.
I think a centralised currency is a good idea too. Do you think the USA would be better off if every state had its own currency, and US citizens had to exchange New York Dollars for New Jersey Dollars or California Dollars (with a percentage going to the exchanges every time around) to do business across state lines? I think that'd be a massive drain on their economy, and they'd be crazy to do that. By analogy, you could say that the problem with the Euro isn't the Euro, it's the lack of a centralised monetary policy. So why don't we look at fixing that instead?
Now, I realise that this is not something that can necessarily be done immediately, but I think it should be something we're working towards. If monetary policy realistically can't be centralised soon, and the Euro is causing too much pain without it, then maybe it might be a good idea to temporarily revert that particular bit of integration. The operative word here is "temporarily"; and the principle is that even if the Euro is before its time, that doesn't automatically negate the benefits that we do get from the EU.
What's the alternative? Undo all the work that's been put in already, break it apart, and start from a clean slate?
no subject
Note that I don't think all decisions should be made by a single all-encompassing bureaucracy, but I think that there are some decisions that would benefit from that. Giving everyone the same rights, and subjecting everyone to (basically) the same set of laws, would seem to be a good idea. So centralising legislation gets my vote. On the other hand, it makes sense to enforce the law as locally as possible, escalating only where the crime itself becomes non-local.
I think a centralised currency is a good idea too. Do you think the USA would be better off if every state had its own currency, and US citizens had to exchange New York Dollars for New Jersey Dollars or California Dollars (with a percentage going to the exchanges every time around) to do business across state lines? I think that'd be a massive drain on their economy, and they'd be crazy to do that. By analogy, you could say that the problem with the Euro isn't the Euro, it's the lack of a centralised monetary policy. So why don't we look at fixing that instead?
Now, I realise that this is not something that can necessarily be done immediately, but I think it should be something we're working towards. If monetary policy realistically can't be centralised soon, and the Euro is causing too much pain without it, then maybe it might be a good idea to temporarily revert that particular bit of integration. The operative word here is "temporarily"; and the principle is that even if the Euro is before its time, that doesn't automatically negate the benefits that we do get from the EU.
What's the alternative? Undo all the work that's been put in already, break it apart, and start from a clean slate?
Whenever you have a system that's grown over time, it's easy to spot the flaws and say "It's a big hairy mess [...] I'd like nothing better than to throw it out and start over." It's so tempting to bulldoze the place flat and build something new. But it's harder to see what's working, because those parts just melt into the background. When you throw away [a system] and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of [...] work.
So I'm tempted to say let's get in there and put in the effort to make it work, one problem at a time.
[0] OK, a united world/solar system/galaxy. Humanity vs. the black.