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Exactly, this is not stated enough. We have to grow up with our relationship with political systems, authoritarianism even dictatorship: it happens because of s

Exactly, this is not stated enough. We have to grow up with our relationship with political systems, authoritarianism even dictatorship: it happens because of some population dynamics which we may or may not be currently be participating in or regularly encounter. So sure, the question of why cashless has taken off there is interesting, but maybe more importantly we need to think about the current state, what could be the next moves (the consequences), do we want to influence it and targeting what? ... But thinking about currencies and economy in europe is always kinda doomed because the euro is double-locked. No national economic policy actually has a meaning since at most your gonna leverage some power to influence the ECB, but you're never gonna be the one to actually decide. So there is a complicated combat to do cross european countries saying ok we have to re-found the mission and the organization of the ECB, the relationship with national economies. How do we want to keep down inflation: just maintain growth in face of other world economies that actually grow or make ourselves more independent, what do we do when countries have diverging interests, how do we make sure it's regulated and we keep control on it? I would vouch for a system where euro exists but is restricted to cross-country corporate business and easy traveling: common credit card system where you can transparently withdraw any participating national money at the current nation negociated exchange rate (eg federating by having a star topology instead of a complete graph for exchange rates: "we treat all the others the same"). Additionally the BCE should have a second decision instance (two-chamber-like) basically being the european budget commission but elected by people, not chosen by governments, to ease cross-country political action. And on a more technical/practical level we have to rethink about wire transfers. I don't know much about how SEPA works but it's probably interesting to take a look.

pmontra 8y ago
Every country in your system would have to use their own currency again because if banknotes are the same and (example) the German Euro is stronger than the French one (that would mean everything on Germany is cheaper than in France), the French would hoard all the Euro banknotes they can get their hands on and buy stuff in Germany. Traveling to Germany is not for everybody but there would be companies doing mass transfers of money and goods for the rest of the population. By the way, this is why the Eurozone authorities try to make every country align on debt, growth, etc, which is pretty hopeless given so many governments with different pools of voters and agendas. Like having the USA with a powerless president (who knows who's the EU president), camera and senate and governors trying to agree on everything with basically no cross country political party. It also looks a little like those countries with their own national currency but also everyone accepting USD. Tourists can carry dollars, lose a little by unfavorable rates at every payment, maybe end up with change in the local currency to use in the next shop. I remember that on vacation in Uzbekistan.
- lapinot 8y ago
  I'm not sure i understand your scenario: germany arguably has a more powerful economy than france, so DM would have a lower exchange rate towards euro than FF towards euro. So imho things in france would actually be cheaper (as seen from germany). Anyway, for that we have customs (everyone has some sort of customs, this doesn't mean strong borders for people). And more generally i don't want any "US of europe": the ratio between in-country similarity and cross-country similarity is far to high across europe to let down economic sovereignty (different demographics, different cultures, different economies, i mean this is great but it implies some restrictions on what political structure can reasonably work). If we have a unique economic policy, this will just end up simply being the policy of some dominating nation inside EU (and that's currently the case, more or less around a strong germany), and this ends up destabilizing politically all the others. I believe that a well functioning european union should be a federation of states that eases any wanted coordination and not a single federated state enforcing unwanted coordination (which benefits no one but the nation that happens to be in a de facto power position in the federation). A wannabe strong federated state would only exacerbate power positions, thus weakening the power of the group with regard to the outside world[#]. [#] This is a well-known social/evolution dynamic: group selection. Bees suicide when attacking: individually it's a weak behavior, but globally it makes the group more resilient. The balance between cooperation and competition is a balance between individual power and group power. Europe is a group of groups, so the balance is weirder but having too strong cooperation at the top level (eg enforcing a common economic policy) will weaken countries. But only some countries because of non-homogeneity, thus destabilizing everything by lowering local national resilience (to specific local concerns, which do exist). So i believe we have to accept that we need slightly stronger countries to make the european union stick together.

pmontra 8y ago

Every country in your system would have to use their own currency again because if banknotes are the same and (example) the German Euro is stronger than the French one (that would mean everything on Germany is cheaper than in France), the French would hoard all the Euro banknotes they can get their hands on and buy stuff in Germany. Traveling to Germany is not for everybody but there would be companies doing mass transfers of money and goods for the rest of the population. By the way, this is why the Eurozone authorities try to make every country align on debt, growth, etc, which is pretty hopeless given so many governments with different pools of voters and agendas. Like having the USA with a powerless president (who knows who's the EU president), camera and senate and governors trying to agree on everything with basically no cross country political party. It also looks a little like those countries with their own national currency but also everyone accepting USD. Tourists can carry dollars, lose a little by unfavorable rates at every payment, maybe end up with change in the local currency to use in the next shop. I remember that on vacation in Uzbekistan.

lapinot 8y ago
I'm not sure i understand your scenario: germany arguably has a more powerful economy than france, so DM would have a lower exchange rate towards euro than FF towards euro. So imho things in france would actually be cheaper (as seen from germany). Anyway, for that we have customs (everyone has some sort of customs, this doesn't mean strong borders for people). And more generally i don't want any "US of europe": the ratio between in-country similarity and cross-country similarity is far to high across europe to let down economic sovereignty (different demographics, different cultures, different economies, i mean this is great but it implies some restrictions on what political structure can reasonably work). If we have a unique economic policy, this will just end up simply being the policy of some dominating nation inside EU (and that's currently the case, more or less around a strong germany), and this ends up destabilizing politically all the others. I believe that a well functioning european union should be a federation of states that eases any wanted coordination and not a single federated state enforcing unwanted coordination (which benefits no one but the nation that happens to be in a de facto power position in the federation). A wannabe strong federated state would only exacerbate power positions, thus weakening the power of the group with regard to the outside world[#]. [#] This is a well-known social/evolution dynamic: group selection. Bees suicide when attacking: individually it's a weak behavior, but globally it makes the group more resilient. The balance between cooperation and competition is a balance between individual power and group power. Europe is a group of groups, so the balance is weirder but having too strong cooperation at the top level (eg enforcing a common economic policy) will weaken countries. But only some countries because of non-homogeneity, thus destabilizing everything by lowering local national resilience (to specific local concerns, which do exist). So i believe we have to accept that we need slightly stronger countries to make the european union stick together.