Dollars are cheap

[Peter Korsten]

Dave S schreef:

> Remind me again what national borders are good for, and whose favour they work 
> in?

In my /personal/ opinion, they're very much a product of the 19th 
century, and one wonders what the radical shortening of distances by 
railways (hey, might as well make it an R-thread) had to do with it. 
Countries like Germany or Italy didn't exist at the beginning of the 
19th, but they did at the end.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation

The talk page is longer than the article, and the article mostly lists a 
lot of different opinions, as Wikipedia propagates.

> PS. First p-thread in a while. Nobody has to answer, but it's a question that 
> bothers me.  Actually, I'm probably going to regret sending this...

Oh, I don't know. I think nations have their place in the world, and if 
you look at Europe, it's interesting to see how things develop. Most of 
the created states, throwing some peoples together into one state to 
ward off a perceived threat from a powerful state (United Kingdom of the 
Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia), have meanwhile split. Heck, 
even Belgium, split off from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, is 
likely to split up within the next 10 years.

So on the one hand, we see small countries forming to define an ethnic 
group, but meanwhile quite a lot of sovereignty is passed on to a 
supra-national entity: the EU. It's interesting to see that the safety 
situation in Europe seems inversely proportional with the emphasis on 
nations.

This is not to say that nations are at the source of all conflicts, WW1 
and WW2 notwithstanding. If you look at tiny Malta, which is one of the 
very few countries in Europe with a population that (except for 
immigrants like me) is the same ethnically and religiously, there were 
still political assassinations in like the 70's and early 80's. Mind, 
there are 400,000 people living here. A medium sized town on the 
mainland. Malta has led me to the opinion that people will always find 
something to fight about, whether about race, colour, creed, ethnicity, 
religion or ideology.

The question remains then how you would deal with sovereignty in a 
large, unified Europe. First of all, very few people want a unified 
Europe right now. Heck, opinions vary where Europe actually ends. And 
there are those blasted states that have the nerve to be in two 
continents at the same time (Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan) or are largely 
European in nature, whilst lying in Asia (Georgia, Armenia). It's all 
very confusing.

And then, should every ethnic entity have its own nation? The Basques 
seem to think so, but they're territory is spread over Spain and France. 
And many of the regions in Spain, like Catalonia think the same. 
Obviously, it won't be workable if Europe ends up with more states than 
Africa when Scotland, Wales, Euskal Herria, Flanders, and all those 
other areas with or without some form of autonomy start declaring 
themselves independent.

Abolishing states is not really an option either (at least, at this 
point in time), because there are those (the Dutch come to mind, not to 
mention the Swiss) that are quite happy to be a citizen of that nation.

In my view, the Union, nations, ethnic/cultural/linguistic or whatever 
groups all have their place in Europe, but we have to figure out first 
who will be responsible for what.

Perhaps you've noticed that I've limited myself to Europe. I can't even 
imagine what such a process would mean for a continent like Africa.

Do remember, though, that nations and import duties have their positive 
sides as well. The EU uses it as some sort of aid, where developing 
countries (mostly ex-colonies) can cheaply import into Europe, yet 
European products are heavily taxed, thereby protecting the vulnerable 
local market from the money power of multi-national companies.

Ah well, this issue is not going to be solved here, and it's more 
philosophizing than anything else.

Let me finish by stating that I'm *very* happy to be finally using euro 
notes and coins in Malta, doing away with the confusion of having to do 
calculations from one currency to another. And little by little, the 
coins with the Maltese cross will start appearing from Ireland to Greece 
and from Portugal to Finland, and people over there will think, hey, 
cool. Or maybe not, who knows.

- Peter