European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 54

On February 18 2015 14:50 cLutZ wrote:
Spending isn't the only way to determine what a country's economic freedom is. Libertarian places like Cato have most of the Nordic countries ranked fairly high compared to Greece because they basically redistribute wealth and stop there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom (take a look at the bottom 50 and tell me which of those states you want to be the voice of their opposition party).

And I agree communism != socialism, but for modern political purposes there is little difference because there are no communists running as communists that have a significant chance of winning. Instead, there are persons running as socialists who may or may not be communists at heart.

based on freedomhouse.org
As of October 2014, Bahrain is ruled by an "authoritarian regime" and is rated as "Not Free" by the U.S.-based non-governmental Freedom House.

On February 18 2015 16:59 Alathya wrote:
First of all, thanks for this really intresting thread and your posts! (just registered to throw in my opinion)

My personal, simplified(!) opinion:

EU:
Letting Greece join the EU in the first place. Interlectual-wise I do agree on Greece being a part of the EU as the "birthplace of democracy". But economy-wise Greece has been a second world country before joining the EU (same as Portugal and many others). Having a big pile of money and let everyone take from it without proper monitoring - when did that ever worked out?

Greece:
Recklessly taking the money to improve standards to a first world country without covering it up with the necessary infrastructure/industry. Sure, if an infinite money stream never stops that could possibly work but hey, welcome to reality.

For me, there are two main possible scenarios:
1) Greek exiting the EU and not paying its debts. But then, Greek would somewhat have to go back to a second world country status in all regards, e.g. not having the same living standard as other European countries do.
2) Greek providing a real plan on how to get out the misery by itself with proper benchmarks (like going to a bank in the real world) and actually meeting the set criteria.

Whatever path they are going to chose, it will be ugly and painful - but thats just how changes have been and how they will be, see Argentina (more extreme) or Germany under Gerhard Schröder (less extreme).

Regarding the communism debate:
I think its kinda pointless since real communism might be theoratically possible (wheter this is worthwile is a different discussion) but not with the current human mindset. Therefore, the "communism" we have seen in history so far is not real communism.

On February 18 2015 20:59 maartendq wrote:

I wish people would stop calling Greece the "birthplace of democracy". Voting rights in Athens were extremely limited (the top 5 or 10% of the population), people were randomly chosen to join the "assembly", which then had absolute power to make decisions. The whole system was extremely vulnerable to take-overs by charismatic tyrants (such as the legendary Pericles) and had no checks and balances whatsoever. Athenian democracy had more in common with contemporary oligarchies than with liberal democracy as practiced in most parts of the western world (rule of law, accountable governments, effective states).

On February 18 2015 23:29 oneofthem wrote:
also it wasn't the eu governments lending greeks money, it was the banks. the theory back then was open capital flow would be good for peripheral countries and this lendingw ould be the mode of economic development. kek

On February 18 2015 23:21 nunez wrote:
your copy of das kapital, maartendq...
is it written in a language you can read
or is it all greek to you?

In Marxism, which defines social classes according to their relationship with the means of production, the "middle class" is said to be the class below the ruling class and above the proletariat in the Marxist social schema. Marxist writers have used the term in two distinct but related ways.[10] In the first sense it is used for the bourgeoisie, the urban merchant and professional class that stood between the aristocracy and the proletariat in the Marxist model. However, in modern developed countries, some Marxist writers specify the petite bourgeoisie – either owners of small property who may not employ wage labor or laboring managers – as the "middle class" between the ruling and working classes.[10] Marx himself regarded this version of the "middle class" simultaneously as exploited workers and supervisors of exploitation.[10]

"[The Economist] characterized the middle class as having a reasonable amount of discretionary income, so that they do not live from hand to mouth as the poor do, and defined it as beginning at the point where people have roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter."

As parliaments and representative democracy developed from the 18th century the example of the Athenian demokratia was not in the minds of the ruling classes. After the revolution of 508/7BC the Athenians stripped power from individual positions of authority, gave the administration to the citizen body and attempted to include all citizens in the decision making process. Representative democracy vests the majority of power in the hands of a small group with minimal participation of the rest of society. When a small proportion of the citizen body has the power to direct society the ancient Greeks called this oligarchy. Indeed for many of the founders of modern democracies the oligarchic regime of Sparta was a more likely source of inspiration than Athens.

On February 19 2015 00:25 mdb wrote:
He he so is this the new cool thing - to deny that democracy started in Greece? I wonder what will be next - math, physics, astronomy, history maybe?

Although it is generally believed that the concepts of democracy and constitution were created in one particular place and time – identified as Ancient Athens circa 508 BCi[›] — there is evidence to suggest that democratic forms of government, in a broad sense, may have existed in several areas of the world well before the turn of the 5th century.[2]