Why Transnationalism is a Bad Idea
Why Transnationalism is a Bad Idea
In our current era of “globalization”, the current administration's inclination to give the United Nations more say-so in our affairs, Treasury secretary Geithner’s flip flopping on the idea of a global currency and Harold Koh’s desire to see the constitution and our very sovereignty made subservient to a higher, international authority, perhaps we should pause and think about this idea. As President Obama and other G20 leaders looked for further cooperation and some members pushed for an international financial institution to deal with the economic mess, we should consider what caused this mess in the first place and whether more globalization is the answer.
It is often said that when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. Our economic problems become a problem for the rest of the industrialized world. This is a result of our place in the world as the largest economy and the globalization of commerce that has been shrinking the globe for the last hundred years or more. Trade is important and I am not going to complain about free trade because that is market capitalism at work. The problems result when everyone becomes so interdependent that foolish decisions and policies by one business or nation impact the others catastrophically.
We have become so enamored of the idea of “community” that we have forgotten how to be individuals. Consider several facets of the crisis that is upon us. As an individual, was it a smart idea to put all your financial eggs in Bernie Madoff’s basket? Of course not, but some people did. Was it a good idea to borrow 110% against the value of your house? No, but some people did. Was it a good idea to run up all your credit cards and put nothing in the savings account? No, but few of us have any savings at all. Regardless of what our exalted president says, spending less and saving more would have spared many the trauma of this downturn because no matter what President Obama says, there will always be ups and downs, there is no way to keep that from happening unless we destroy the economy completely through his freespending socialist policies. Then there will only be down, and no up. Anyway, if people have a years worth of salary saved in case they lose their job, did not have all their money in one type of investment and were not burdened with debt, a downturn is much less traumatic. Few people live that way in America and that is why so many are clamoring for the government to cover their stupidity and excess. Now our government is spending more than it ever has to meet that demand and both the short and long term results of such activity will be negative for all of us. The horrible results of too much government dependency have been covered in other blogs. A well prepared individual is always going to be better off than a dependent slave.
Now move it up a level. Look at the car industry, “too big to fail”. Don’t look at GM however, look at GM’s suppliers. Some of these businesses have one product and that product is sold to GM. If GM has trouble, those businesses are in real trouble. If my company only makes widgets for Hummer, and Hummers are discontinued under President Obama’s plan, I’m in real trouble. If I did not put some money aside for the costs of retooling and adapting another product line, I’m out of business. Businesses need diversified and adaptable business plans which is why having the government run them is such a bad idea. Government bureaucracy is anything but adaptable.
Move up one more level. California is on the brink of bankruptcy and failure. New York is going to tax it’s remaining productive citizens to death. Michigan has been in a recession for years. If I am a resident of those states, what can I do? I can move to a state where the business climate is better, the unemployment rate is lower and the politicians aren’t so stupid. If President Obama forces the country farther into a fascist “soft tyranny”, we could leave for places that still respect the natural rights of citizens and the capitalist economic system, if any still exist. If we go for the transnational idea, however, there will be no where to go. If you think that Washington is “out of touch”, wait until decisions are made by transnational organizations. If those decisions are bad economically, everyone will be affected, there will be no low tax states or nation, no places free from regulation, carbon taxes or any other bad idea dreamed up by such a body. If decisions are made that are soft on crime or terrorists, there will be no where to hide, no justice, no states with concealed carry laws. We will have all our eggs in one basket, the transnational one, and we will have no recourse if that basket is rotten. There will be no containment of economic downturns. Now any nation that “sneezes” will result in all of us catching a cold.
Think of our lives and our personal, economic and political connections within two analogies. The first is a web. Everything is connected to everything else, there are lots of options, plenty of connecting points. If one option or route around the web is taken away, there will be another. If one support, or even several are removed, the web may sag but it doesn’t fall. There are options in a web, things are decentralized. That is the way this country was set up, decentralized. The individual, not the collective, was emphasized, and that individual had plenty of options concerning how he was going to build his web and what attachment points he would choose. If he chose a few unwisely, it was not the end.
The statists and the transnationalists want centralized power, analogous to a mobile. In case you don’t remember, a mobile is one of those artistic creations you made in school with string and cut out animals that you hung from the ceiling and it rotated in the breeze. The point is, a mobile has only one attachment point and you, as an individual, cannot go anywhere else on the mobile without first going through that central point. The whole thing has to balance around that one point. If the powers that be decide that your part of the mobile is unbalanced, it can weigh you down (taxes, regulation) and you will have no recourse because you are on a fixed point. That point of attachment is not determined by you but by the people in charge. The more severe problem is that in order to keep things balanced, the people in charge need to keep adding more weight here and there to keep balance and sooner or later, the inevitable happens, that one attachment point fails and the whole thing comes crashing down. I say it is inevitable because, as a rule, politicians do more harm than good, that is why our founders limited their power. The more power they have, the more harm they do. Put them in charge of the economy and they will do a lot of harm and it will have a great impact on you and I.
This economic crisis has demonstrated the perils of being too economically dependent on others and has revealed weaknesses in businesses and individuals that do not plan and are too consumed with greed. It is a correction and this correction is good because the market works and the principles of thrift and forethought need to be reestablished in the business community and among us as individuals. If, however, we force even more dependency by creating new transnational political and economic institutions that reduce our sovereignty as a nation and liberty as individuals and prop up failure, prohibiting the correction, the next crisis will be much worse. There will be no isolating the sick patient, there will be no safe haven, there will be no choice but for all of us to go down collectively with the ship.
In our current era of “globalization”, the current administration's inclination to give the United Nations more say-so in our affairs, Treasury secretary Geithner’s flip flopping on the idea of a global currency and Harold Koh’s desire to see the constitution and our very sovereignty made subservient to a higher, international authority, perhaps we should pause and think about this idea. As President Obama and other G20 leaders looked for further cooperation and some members pushed for an international financial institution to deal with the economic mess, we should consider what caused this mess in the first place and whether more globalization is the answer.
It is often said that when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. Our economic problems become a problem for the rest of the industrialized world. This is a result of our place in the world as the largest economy and the globalization of commerce that has been shrinking the globe for the last hundred years or more. Trade is important and I am not going to complain about free trade because that is market capitalism at work. The problems result when everyone becomes so interdependent that foolish decisions and policies by one business or nation impact the others catastrophically.
We have become so enamored of the idea of “community” that we have forgotten how to be individuals. Consider several facets of the crisis that is upon us. As an individual, was it a smart idea to put all your financial eggs in Bernie Madoff’s basket? Of course not, but some people did. Was it a good idea to borrow 110% against the value of your house? No, but some people did. Was it a good idea to run up all your credit cards and put nothing in the savings account? No, but few of us have any savings at all. Regardless of what our exalted president says, spending less and saving more would have spared many the trauma of this downturn because no matter what President Obama says, there will always be ups and downs, there is no way to keep that from happening unless we destroy the economy completely through his freespending socialist policies. Then there will only be down, and no up. Anyway, if people have a years worth of salary saved in case they lose their job, did not have all their money in one type of investment and were not burdened with debt, a downturn is much less traumatic. Few people live that way in America and that is why so many are clamoring for the government to cover their stupidity and excess. Now our government is spending more than it ever has to meet that demand and both the short and long term results of such activity will be negative for all of us. The horrible results of too much government dependency have been covered in other blogs. A well prepared individual is always going to be better off than a dependent slave.
Now move it up a level. Look at the car industry, “too big to fail”. Don’t look at GM however, look at GM’s suppliers. Some of these businesses have one product and that product is sold to GM. If GM has trouble, those businesses are in real trouble. If my company only makes widgets for Hummer, and Hummers are discontinued under President Obama’s plan, I’m in real trouble. If I did not put some money aside for the costs of retooling and adapting another product line, I’m out of business. Businesses need diversified and adaptable business plans which is why having the government run them is such a bad idea. Government bureaucracy is anything but adaptable.
Move up one more level. California is on the brink of bankruptcy and failure. New York is going to tax it’s remaining productive citizens to death. Michigan has been in a recession for years. If I am a resident of those states, what can I do? I can move to a state where the business climate is better, the unemployment rate is lower and the politicians aren’t so stupid. If President Obama forces the country farther into a fascist “soft tyranny”, we could leave for places that still respect the natural rights of citizens and the capitalist economic system, if any still exist. If we go for the transnational idea, however, there will be no where to go. If you think that Washington is “out of touch”, wait until decisions are made by transnational organizations. If those decisions are bad economically, everyone will be affected, there will be no low tax states or nation, no places free from regulation, carbon taxes or any other bad idea dreamed up by such a body. If decisions are made that are soft on crime or terrorists, there will be no where to hide, no justice, no states with concealed carry laws. We will have all our eggs in one basket, the transnational one, and we will have no recourse if that basket is rotten. There will be no containment of economic downturns. Now any nation that “sneezes” will result in all of us catching a cold.
Think of our lives and our personal, economic and political connections within two analogies. The first is a web. Everything is connected to everything else, there are lots of options, plenty of connecting points. If one option or route around the web is taken away, there will be another. If one support, or even several are removed, the web may sag but it doesn’t fall. There are options in a web, things are decentralized. That is the way this country was set up, decentralized. The individual, not the collective, was emphasized, and that individual had plenty of options concerning how he was going to build his web and what attachment points he would choose. If he chose a few unwisely, it was not the end.
The statists and the transnationalists want centralized power, analogous to a mobile. In case you don’t remember, a mobile is one of those artistic creations you made in school with string and cut out animals that you hung from the ceiling and it rotated in the breeze. The point is, a mobile has only one attachment point and you, as an individual, cannot go anywhere else on the mobile without first going through that central point. The whole thing has to balance around that one point. If the powers that be decide that your part of the mobile is unbalanced, it can weigh you down (taxes, regulation) and you will have no recourse because you are on a fixed point. That point of attachment is not determined by you but by the people in charge. The more severe problem is that in order to keep things balanced, the people in charge need to keep adding more weight here and there to keep balance and sooner or later, the inevitable happens, that one attachment point fails and the whole thing comes crashing down. I say it is inevitable because, as a rule, politicians do more harm than good, that is why our founders limited their power. The more power they have, the more harm they do. Put them in charge of the economy and they will do a lot of harm and it will have a great impact on you and I.
This economic crisis has demonstrated the perils of being too economically dependent on others and has revealed weaknesses in businesses and individuals that do not plan and are too consumed with greed. It is a correction and this correction is good because the market works and the principles of thrift and forethought need to be reestablished in the business community and among us as individuals. If, however, we force even more dependency by creating new transnational political and economic institutions that reduce our sovereignty as a nation and liberty as individuals and prop up failure, prohibiting the correction, the next crisis will be much worse. There will be no isolating the sick patient, there will be no safe haven, there will be no choice but for all of us to go down collectively with the ship.
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