How Level is the Level Playing Field?...

Listening to Ursula Van der Leyden, EU Commission president, talk about retaining the fairness of the "level playing field" in Europe, makes me equally smile and wince...as someone who has lost work to Spain. She seems to actually believe that this Level playing field works, and is a thing...

Basically when you have an essentially "protective trade zone" or block, there arises a need for some sort of "level playing field" system and appropriate rules...as, with open borders and tariff free open trade within the block, there has to be an assurance of fair competition and a certain "equality" between the nations involved...for it to work...There are clearly no internal tariffs available to protect countries against unfair dumping of subsidised goods, for instance....

...But yes, there are almost endless problems around this, and the bigger and more diverse the EU has become, the more difficult it becomes in practice...in fact many might say that to have a LPF between an industrial powerhouse like Germany and countries like Lithuania and Greece is quite a ridiculous notion from the outset!

...Of course there is potential for stagnation when so many states have to move together as has been discussed in the recent banning of live meat exports by the UK...something difficult to agree among so many EU members, the ability of a single nation to "Lead" and take the initiative clearly being very limited...

...In fact anything connected with farming and agricultural has been, predictably, very moribund and stagnant within the EU...

.

...If tens of thousands of people a year are migrating from one state to another because their earnings increase by four times, can one really claim this points to a working LPF??...surely this points to the EU requiring basic earnings to be SIMILAR across states??...But then low wages in some types of work are a *cultural feature* of some states, and difficult to change, so it just demonstrates how many areas feed into the LPF problem...it puts it's tentacles into everything...unions, working hours, tradition, the lot!!

....Things like the UK's very property based economy feed into the LPF as well...another cultural feature, and one that helped to prevent us joining the Euro...and still does!!

.....And Germany's bizarre trade imbalance with us?...that points to problems with the LPF and that it should really cover *like for like trade" as well...if the Germans export lots of manufactured consumer products, they should be prepared to IMPORT THEM AS WELL...which they aren't, and they spend the pounds they get paid for them on services and specialized products from multinationals, which completely unbalances the distribution of trickle down and wealth...These are classic problems of GLOBALISATION, and it's wealth distortion...and in fact the EU is a "mini globalisation project" after all!!

...One might wonder why this crotchety and crumbling version of a LPF is bothered with in the EU, especially as it's constantly breached and compromised, especially with sneaky local subsidies by governments sharper and more nationalistic than ours...

...well it's the narrative I guess,...don't forget that the EU is supposed to eventually integrate into a federal Europe or "superstate", and the Level Playing Field was originally designed with that in mind...that there would be economic and cultural convergence in Europe, and we would all end up speaking English or Esperanto!!...So the EU is still labouring on under an axiomatic framework appropriate to a federal Europe...which has long been irrelevant as that project is now only coveted by a few idealistic fanatics, but ones that won't stay silent or accept defeat...

...Indeed It's become apparent that superstates and federations don't work at all well, especially in recent times, they enable tyranny, the presidents of such huge and diverse areas are a pain in the butt, at the very least!!...helping to ensure they break up amid demands for devolution and self determination...John Lennon's Utopia has never been further away, and we're still learning about the human condition, or, more likely, we forget the lessons of history....

...Mercifully it's rumoured that our departure has put further integration firmly on the "back burner" where it belongs!.. that the EU have persisted with some idealistic internationalist notion from the 1960's for all this time without reviewing it, in the light of events, is truly remarkable...But then maybe we shouldn't be surprised at the dogmatic tendency of large organisations to stubbornly adhere to their traditions and notions of their founders... Who, in the world of "jobsworth" leaders, is able to disrupt such rigid powerbases? ...One only has to look at another international organisation, the Catholic Church, which has persisted with medieval attitudes, and still manages to retain many despite severe public reproach and censure....

...Our Love of clinging to, and admiring, the apparently big and strong, termed "gigantism" by EF Schumacher in his brilliant "Small is Beautiful", is something we are only just now realising we can grow out of...after all, the population of just one state of the US is now bigger than the entire founding population...what was small, is now effectively big....

Salt in the Coffee: Sustainability and Enrolment....

Salt in the Coffee: Sustainability and Enrolment....: It's clear that there is a failure of established economic models such as socialism and capitalism to address sustainability issues ...

Sustainability and Enrolment....

It's clear that there is a failure of established economic models such as socialism and capitalism to address sustainability issues directly....How do we enrol a population in a vast project to improve our sustainability on the planet when they are often disconnected from the effects, and issues, yet are asked to make real changes to their lives??....

London summer...a packed Thames side 

....Indeed it's the motivational aspects of these idealised systems that really get to their essence....and those motivations are inextricably tied in with work, and the work ethic, with consumption, as the engine of modern economies....

I consider sustainability to be far more fundamental and intrinsic to our evolved state....There are clearly sustainable groups living in the World today, we may label them "primitive" or "under developed", but they clearly remind us that we in the West, in particular, have taken a very different turn somewhere, where sustainability actually seems to have "evolved out" of our human condition.... ...We may be all too aware of our sustainability via pressing issues currently, but we in the West can certainly trace a big change going back to the industrial revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries, energy became dense and far more usable, with coal, Industry increased with communications, population exploded, and extended societies with large dependency on trade with the remote, including urban areas and large cities formed........and hence a necessity for "empire" or "empire like networks" ....these networks ensuring survival, without self sufficiency, but also encouraging over exploitation and a precarious existence should these networks fail...and wars to maintain them...

....However Sustainable living tends to be associated with populations where there are strong connections with the means of supply and availability, and consumption and industry are more directly linked to these....

...we tend to think of sustainability as linked to "connectedness" and "awareness" in a society...as one would find in small societies such as communes, kibbutz or even small countries....and it is indeed in these naturally better "connected" and "inclusive" societies where forms of socialism, relying as it does on the individuals motivation of the betterment of society rather than just themselves, tends to work far better...

...Indeed altruism involving self sacrifice, without personal connection, has been shown to be something of a myth...even in recent scientific studies... ...Polls where people are asked if they will sacrifice anything for the environment, for instance, have resulted the majority being unashamedly unwilling to do so...and I would suggest that's why "authoritarianism" and big government have had to be part of socialist systems in large and extended societies, and indeed these have generally failed due to people's desire for greater freedoms....

....So it becomes clear that this approach leads to a rather despairing situation on the face of it, as our large and extended communities would appear to be incapable of connecting individual ordinary citizens, and even leading figures, to a mission or project as huge as attaining sustainability, in effect a huge paradigm shift.....

....This is something we often encounter, when we actually see people saying "the problems are so huge and terrifying, I simply can't connect with them, they are outside my ability to relate"...possibly they will even trigger "cognitive dissonance" or even denial in individuals...possibly based on them joining an opposing tribal mindset....

....So this is the position that many environmentalists find themselves at, and their tendency, if not despair, is to blame "capitalism" or take a more negative, resigned, approach from which there is little way forward ....

....The problem with blaming capitalism is clearly that no other system is offered which really deals with the basic problems of society as outlined, as far as sustainability goes...whilst not throwing up other shortcomings...or really being more of the same... ...We often note that basically Left leaning groups, such as Vegans, are conspicuously absent in blaming capitalism for environmental damage, as they have become all to aware of far more basic failings in society and the state of people, that have made it an uphill struggle to enrol them into their mission...whether they be capitalists or indeed socialists, or from states with those systems....

But there is another option albeit a radical one, and that is to try and emulate a small society within a large one, indeed, cause people to behave as if they are living in community where they are enrolled and connected, and that they can identify with, rather than an extended and seemingly endless urban one....then we have an environment in which the awareness which could lead to sustainability, might be realised....

...This may all sound rather idealistic, but I would venture it's really nothing much more than the society that existed in the UK before the 1970's, when "community" went so strongly into decline...

....Shorter and more conventional working hours enabling participation in events, ready availability of good community facilities, corporate sponsorship and better provision of clubs and education within companies, more co-operatives, citizens assemblies, and even recognition of, and payment to, local community leaders who previously went unpaid....when combined with good town planning and devolved government should go some way to restoring that level community which encourages people to spiritually engage with larger mission...as a part of even larger mission in this case....