[Peace-discuss] Re: Euro vs. Dollar

[Paul M. King]

> Taken in the longview, the US is nearing the catastrophic
> end - not the beginning - of a protracted economic decline. 

Right, this is my opinion too. And the kind of system that
remains can be a compelling thought exercise: Where will power
reside and how will it be administered? Life could become
quite brutal for those without a corporate warlord, er - I
mean, sponsor.

> [America] reconstructed its [WW II] defeated rivals in
> its own image so as to avert revolution in Europe and
> East Asia, and so as to find markets for the enormous
> production of its factories and fields.

Perhaps we can hope for a similar favor in return as the
Europeans gently solidify their firm grasp on the world's
dominant global economy.

Which brings me to my first thought. The dominant global
economy does not need to be the only option for conducting
commercial transactions. Strong local economies will certainly
buffer communities against larger economic stresses, crashes
and meltdowns. Essential to a vibrant local economy, though,
is a /currency/. That, it seems to me, is why the dollar is so
important. The economy and the currency are integrally
related. Local currencies could dramatically boost local
economies, thereby providing a very effective means of
challenging and undermining American hegemony (achieved
through compulsory taxation for foreign wars) as well as
protect citizens against the consequences of these doomed
policies. Local currencies, therefore, have multiple
synergistic benefits. I believe this to be a very powerful
idea and the peace movement should embrace it as work to be done.

> Had Iraq reentered the world economy, which was likely to
> happen, it undoubtedly would have done so in the economic
> orbit of western Europe.  It would have financed its
> considerable international oil trade in euros, thus putting
> new pressure on the dollar, US capitalism, and setting an
> unacceptable precendent.

And this, I believe, is also the real issue behind our recent
belligerence towards Iran, which seeks to establish a
euro-based oil bourse that would compete with New York's NYMEX
and London's IPE. The nuclear issue is a red herring.

> But we must draw the implications from such an analysis.
> For the peace movement to be successful, it must direct
> itself toward the root causes of war and police-state
> repression:  capitalist expropriation and its political
> byproducts, including the nation-state.

OK, here are my thoughts. Capitalism is fundamentally flawed
because it seeks to extrapolate and hoard surplus value. As
such, it is inherently non-sustainable. A new vision, however,
must nevertheless include the activities of business and
commerce primarily because commerce has become so damn
efficient and is very good at coordinating economic resources
in highly complex ways. We cannot expect people to change
unless the alternatives make their life easier in some way.

Establishing business practices that are sustainable seems to
be the only path out of our extinction cul-de-sac. That is,
business needs to increase the wealth of all stakeholders,
including the public and the environmental as well as the
shareholders.

I’m sometimes struck by the very dangerous genius in the
radical proposition of complete privatization. Would we be
able to responsibly manage our relationships and environment
by accounting for every square inch of the natural world? My
gut says no, but I can see no other way out. The nation-state
has birthed a more powerful organizational form of wealth
expropriation and accountable democratic governance is waning.
How long can we conscientiously persist in grasping onto such
notions while they consistently fail us? The success of the
nation-state in its role of benefactor and steward for human
and environmental rights seems quite spotty to me. Perhaps we
should embrace privatization and the global corporation, and
work within the new system for a more complete fiscal
accounting of externalities while simultaneously lobbying for
more sustainable organizational management. We can kill
capitalism from within the beast.

By combining these strategies with the careful seeding of
thousands of local economies across the globe, hope for the
survival of our species might not be entirely unwarranted.
Corporations are already moving into the domain of minting
their own currencies (albeit they are based on the U.S.
dollar) and their greed can be their undoing. Perhaps
corporate currencies can be unhinged from the almighty dollar
 and used for local economies.

The system can continue to evolve. It must. 

And very quickly.