Kairos 2.1
As a follow-up, I came across couple of interesting points / ideas:
- I am a bit suspicious of Varoufakis: he has tendency for self-aggrandization sometimes but I really liked how this time he makes a good point by turning ‘conventional wisdom’ upside down:
“The task of unifying Europe and preventing its disintegration will, therefore, be well served by abandoning talk of solidarity and appealing, instead, to rationality.
Suppose for a moment that, out of solidarity, Germany were to share its stimulus with the southern countries that lacked its fiscal space. The macroeconomic benefit would be negligible, because the German monies would be spread too thinly across the rest of the eurozone. In short, solidarity is not only a poor argument for Eurobonds; it is also a macroeconomically irrelevant policy. Worse, calls for more of it are likely to be self-defeating to the extent that they divide Europe further and destroy what solidarity there is.
Dutch and German savers need to recognize that their savings would be much, much lower had indebted Italians, Greeks, and Spaniards not shared the euro with them. After all, it is southern deficits that keep the euro’s exchange rate low enough for Germany and the Netherlands to maintain their net exports. Eurobonds’ merit thus has nothing to do with solidarity.”
I think this is an excellent framing.
2. As an extension of this, I liked the idea of “European Recovery Fund” financed by taxation on corporations (tech giants, energy companies etc) at the European level. Something similar is floated by the Spanish government. I picked this up in BBC World Service’s business daily radio show hosted by Manuela, who is half-Dutch and half-Italian :)
I do acknowledge federalist bias in both of these options which suits my personal tendencies* but what are the alternatives?
*No, european federalism doesnot equate with the centralisation of power, but rather dispersion. Ditto when it comes to more powers for the UN, something likes of Russell and Einstein have been pleading for decades. Noam Chomsky recently published collection entitled, Internationalism or Extinction… okay, bit of a hyperbole there but metaphors are important.
I really like António Guterres. It is life affirming to see people like him are able to represent humans despite institutional structures designed to incentivise our worst impulses. I picked up first signals in this chat at Davos: it was remarkable that he appeared to be sincere in his willingness to listen to the young people (as opposed to merely paying lip service):
His more recent commentary lives up to the responsibilities of his office:
I liked this podcast about the overall UN capabilities and response:
Some tangetial references:
I ignored Bret and Heather for couple of years assuming they must be racist if they were kicked out of the university for that reason. Quite the opposite:
I am loving their podcasts about this whole pandemic thing from evolutionary biology perspective. I am afraid their predicament is the reflection of the American decadence that is so obvious in this crises:
I am once again, extremely Eurocentric and I do not refer to terrible crises about to unfold in other parts of the world but I come from the perspective that strong EU alliance capable of integrating traditional wisdom from around the world is the ying + yang for our age.
Given the limited bandwidth, this is all I can do at the moment, I am afraid…
Had a strange dream last night. I was talking with Sabestian Kurz at the dinner table and he appeared to be a human. On a serious note, I think it reflects somewhat my continued frustration of personal impotence / lack of contributions. But hey, it could be worse:
In infinite succession light and darkness shift.
And years vanish like the morning dew.The dead are gone and with them we cannot converse.
The living are here and ought to have our love.I want to go home, to ride to my village gate.
I want to go back, but there’s no road back.
- extract from The Nineteen Pieces of Old Poetry (~ 1 BC China)
