No bailout! European differences in work ethic and culture can not be overcome by transfer union

Different work ethics and morals cause different monetary politics, and make Northern and Southern European economic policies incompatible. Transfer Unions between West and East Germany, Northern and Southern Italy have only wasted money. Bailout attempts will spread bankruptcy to healthy countries. Germany would be the last to fail under the debt of all of Europe. USA and Switzerland function perfectly with clear no-bailout policies towards their states and cities.

 

Greek-CrisisThe European Divide

In Northern Europe, culture, quite aside from the law, supplies a sin and guilt control mechanism. We have set rules for moral and ethical behaviour which we expect everyone to adhere to. The core value of a need to achieve is a stimulus for entrepreneurship and economic development. It is our psychological mainspring. Governments build their policies around this fundamental core value which affects the entire socio-cultural system. The Swedes ‘carry Luther on their shoulders’ and believe they need to do a good day’s work before they can partake in any reward – as do all the Nordic countries.  Success equals personal achievement, the drive to get things done, and accumulating capital to gain status and wealth.

In Southern Europe, shame tends to be the control mechanism, with one’s relationship to other people and to the group determining acceptable behaviour.  Ethics is more related to the situation and who is involved, so ‘rules’ as we perceive them are often ‘broken’. Style is everything; manliness (machismo) counts and should be displayed; dignity and honour must be maintained.  The Cultural Value of “The Public Man” is the desire to be someone rather than do something.Success equals social power; being someone personally important, being surrounded by people who look up to you and are dependent on you.

Just across the Channel and beyond, being who you are counts for more than what you have achieved; security comes not from individual effort but from reciprocal relationships which mould your expectations of lifestyle and your place in society.  Friendships are formal and a great amount of time is given to nurturing these.   Large, extended families, including distant blood relatives and close family friends, are the norm which have strong emotional ties, giving a powerful commitment to family rather than the rest of the world. Taxi drivers and hotel receptionists often try and impress upon us, the foreigner, how well connected they are to give themselves status.

In cultures like these, WORK per sé holds little value and is to be avoided if possible.Developing friends and connections is THE form of capital investment – not ‘personal development’ as we know it in the UK.  The genteel pursuit of leisure gives status – not the image of industriousness and efficiency as in the North.  3

Different Ethics, incompatible financial and economic attitudes

flags-germany-europe2The Southern European countries have a different pay and work ethic then Northern European countries. Southern Europeans strike more for wage increases, for lower work hours and earlier retirement. They use more borrowed money, like there is no tomorrow, for instant gratification.  Maybe it makes the Southerners  happier and more humane then the Northern European work animals. The northern countries have more self discipline, work ethic, self sacrifice.

Historically, before the Euro, the southern European currencies regularly suffered devaluations to re-instate an equilibrium.  Now putting these countries into one currency simply leads to Southern Europe having too high salaries, too high cost, and being too uncompetitive. These are not the countries where all citizens voluntarily lower salaries, and happily increase work hours and retirement age.

Spain Labor Market Incompatible With Euro

Well, reading thru Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times I came across a short piece by U Maryland economist Gayle Allard who explains a core problem with Spain’s economy as a member of the Euro: The country needs periodic bouts of inflation to undo the distortions caused by very powerful unions. This makes Spain’s entry into the euro zone an act of enormous political folly for all involved.

While it was doing its fiscal homework, however, Spain overlooked a key requirement for the currency area: staying competitive without a national exchange rate. Spanish labor costs chronically rise much faster than productivity.

Spain needs bouts of inflation as long as collective bargaining remains highly politicized. A country that needs periodic bouts of inflation should not share a currency with Germany. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist running complex computer models to figure that out.

No state and city bailout in USA and Switzerland. No major transfer Unions

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Shoot London rioters on sight! Politically correct humanitarianism risks lives of good citizens to save looters and hooligans

120792132DK018_RIOTING_BREAPolitical correctness and humanitarianism and human rights were invented by civilized intelligent academics.  They might work for civilized intelligent populations.  These good intentions have been maligned for giving more protection to felons then to their innocent law abiding victims.

Applying these rules to uncontrollable criminally minded looters and hooligans has terrible effects: good citizen’s physical integrity, lives, health, financial integrity get destroyed by such criminals. 

A furniture shop in Croydon which had been in the same family for five generations was completely destroyed after being torched. Owner Trevor Rees, 56, said the business was started in 1867 by his great-great- grandfather, Edwin Reeves, and employed 15 people. Sky News

London-riotsKilling a few rioters might save lives of innocent people. At least it can prevent HUGE property damage and suffering for millions of citizens who stay locked at home in fear instead of proceeding with their normal productive lives. Order and safety for ordinary citizens should be above the rights of violent dangerous felons.

Commander Christine Jones said events were "simply inexcusable".

"Ordinary people have had their lives turned upside down by this mindless thuggery," she said.

"The Met will ensure that those responsible will face the consequences of their actions and be arrested." Sky News

Humanely arresting a marauding crowd of arsonists is not practical. It will not protect safety and property of good citizens, it will not stop and prevent imminent danger.

120817027PM015_RIOTS_AND_LOPut a camera on the sights of the guns of police. Make sure that everyone shot was engaged in an act of dangerous violence, with arms, crow bars, Molotov Cocktails, and was not in self defense against criminals. If non-lethal violence can be used. But don’t be shy to use deadly force. One can even arrest an entire crowd: have you seen 5 policemen controlling a huge crowd of riotous prisoners, lying on the ground? The prisoners know, one false move and they get shot.

Using lethal force, there will be inevitable collateral damage. Certainly less damage then done by week-long riots.This damage should be accepted and excused, provided it can be shown to be accidental and due to true honest mistakes. Honest serious policemen, and citizens defending their life and property should be excused in case of honest battlefield mistakes.

Yes, we want to provoke to think different. Yes we see that there are problems in our attitude. We see that there are serious problem in the unquestioning humanitarianism that protects criminals and creates havoc.

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Perjuring Goldman Sachs executives: Wrong religious morality endangers your savings, countries’ currencies and finances

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? |Rolling Stone

Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them […]

Goldman Sachs New World HeadquartersThe rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.

The immorality of Wall Street

Human-Stupidity was wondering long ago why Rating institutes’ AAA ratings for junk (causal for world economic collapse) went unpunished. Not only is the financial sector one big behemoth that profits from unproductive gambling in financial markets, The financial sector fraudulently rigs the game, gains immorally high commissions and ruins the world economy, banks, and entire countries like Ireland and Iceland.

When caught red handed, executives at Goldman Sachs, unaware that their own memos and emails had leaked, blatantly denied their wrong-doings under oath. What are the conclusions?

We need true morality in big world-moving issues.

  1. We need morality in economy and business. Maybe a Western Confucianism.
  2. Profit should come from production, not from financial gambling and fraud
  3. Big fraudsters need to face punishment.
  4. Or maybe the lesson is: Destroy your tracks. Don’t send and keep incriminating emails. When planning to con your own customers, don’t discuss it in writing

Our moral philosophers, religions, churches fail, philosophizing about silly issues like:
birth control, the beginning & end of life, sex & possession of child porn

Our churches, moral apostles and philosophers fail miserably. Entire countries get plundered, the world economy gets shattered, currencies are a house of cards waiting to collapse under collective debt. Banks make immoral profits from the world’s miseries. Our moral guides and philosophers are caught up in silly issues like

Our religions and moralists are just as useless and damaging as banks.

The People vs. Goldman Sachs

A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

A legal system that allows the financial sector to make huge gains while producing nothing, or worse, destroying the productive economy.

Total dishonesty. Outright fraud. Impunity. Rating institutes that give AAA rating to junk and don’t get punished. Governments that bail out banks instead of letting them pay for their mistakes.

Government and nations borrowing like there is no tomorrow

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Peter Singer’s utilitarian ethics replaces our sexually-obsessed religious morality

The sexually-obsessed morality of conservative Christianity

.. and of other religions!  This phrase aptly summarizes the dilemma of most moral problems in the US and in the world. Moral discussion and legal discourse are obsessed with sexuality and relatively unconcerned with violence, greed, selfishness.

The more enlightened Christian readers have themselves now recognized that their Church’s preoccupation with sex has been a mistake: Dr George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, has admitted that the church has been guilty of ‘being caught up with the idea that sexual sins were “more significant” then other sins’ and has said that instead we should think more in terms of global problems such as world poverty. […] ethics has no necessary connection with the sexually-obsessed morality of conservative Christianity   Peter Singer “How Are We to Live?”

World poverty, corporative greed, dishonesty of politics, culture of violence, school yard bullying. So many real problems require ethics and morality.  Real violence, real damage to society and economy caused by moral failures.

But religions obsess with issues like birth control,  abortion: “saving” human life of small clusters of cells, while thousands of really alive and breathing humans starve or get killed in wars. Religions cause suffering by prohibiting stem cell research, mandating that embryos can be discarded to waste but can not be used for life saving medical research. Our laws interfere with birth control and HIV prevention. 20 year jail sentences for consensual sex with adolescents or mere possession of nude photos.

There is a reason for this religious obsession with sex.  Our holy books, are all around 2000 years old and were not updated.

Sexuality and baby-making were inseparable 2000 years ago

But nowadays, we have birth control. Sexuality is not identical to child production any more. Paternity can be verified with DNA tests and does not require virginity enforced by draconian punishments.

It is funny, though, how churches extrapolate their teachings unto issues that are not covered by the Bible: areas like stem cells, birth control pill, etc. It is also interesting how churches influence politics and legal codes, in countries that have clear separation of church and state.

New ethics and morality are needed.

Merely abandoning religious ethics can lead to crime, greed, moral disorientation. We can observe this in politics, youth violence, obesity, nutrition, corporate (lack of) ethics, general moral disorientation of large parts of the population.Morality & Ethics without God: Peter Singer’s Utilitarianism

Read hundreds of free articles by and about Peter Singer


Very good overview of Peter Singer’s ethics. Just listen to the audio, the video is not interesting.  This is not a single video but a set of videos.
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), University of Melbourne. He specialises in applied ethics, approaching ethical issues from a secular preference utilitarian perspective. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer

Singer is the greatest contemporary exponent of utilitarianism, the doctrine that actions should aim to maximise the greatest happiness for the greatest number of individuals. Given that our every action has consequences for this end, we are truly immersed in morality.

Peter Singer’s utilitarian philosophy is an alternative to stupidity derived from religious beliefs. Where Richard Dawkins just vaguely surmises about morality without religion, Peter Singer devotes his life to the intricacies of such a morality.  As I have stated, the rules from holy books like Bible or Koran were very sensible at the time they were written. But they need overhaul. And, preferably, without resorting to God or Prophets. Peter Singer can come to the rescue.

Dinesh de Souza made the great compliment: Singer’s ethics is what you arrive at with logic and without God: “Peter Singer represents the sharpest, deepest, certainly the most lucid, the most consistent in arguing out the premises and the implications of atheism”.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phgb67NAaHA is part 1 of a 12 (!) part discussion with Peter Singer. Very interesting to see in its entirety. In part 1 Dinesh gives a fairly good but hostile description of Peter Singer’s philosophy)

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“Morality” kills drug addicts (HIV)! Morality prevents needle exchange policy.

Junkies don’t want Aids. They want to use clean needles. Clean needles eliminate the Aids problem in injectable drug addicts. So, logically, let’s provide clean needles! A non-brainer. But then comes drug policy, moralistic prejudice, (unconscious) wish to punish the sinners with Aids, police arrest for needle possession. Result: addicts use dirty needles and get HIV.

Compare this legitimate injection kit obtained...

Legitimate Drug Injection Kit (Wikipedia)

Human Irrationality, dogmas, blindness at its best.“People do stupid things. That’s what spreads HIV.”

Needle exchange is an even clearer solution then condom use efforts. Because condoms are unpleasant. Clean needles are not even detracting from drug “pleasure”.

Our “morality” is outdated & immoral. We need updated morality.

Drug War, morality, religion, sexual morality etc prevent needle exchanges, thus cause HIV infection and deaths. Call it insanity. Call it suffering and death caused by false outdated stupid “morality”. Dogma, blindness, self-deception ….. We believe in our 2000year old holy books. They were very good for their times. But no biblical author knew about HIV virus transmission or drug addiction therapy. In later posts I will write about Peter Singer’s utilitarism as a help to guide our morals.

Elisabeth Pisani @ TED

“People do stupid things. That’s what spreads HIV.”  [ . . . ] Now, let’s look at it from a policy maker’s point of view. This is a really easy problem. For once, your incentives are aligned. We’ve got what’s rational for public health. You want people to use clean needles, and junkies want to use clean needles. So we could make this problem go away simply by making clean needles universally available and taking away the fear of arrest.
ted.com/talks/view/id/818

Now, the first person to figure that out and do something about it on a national scale was that well-known, bleeding heart liberal Margaret Thatcher. And she put in the world’s first national needle exchange program and other countries followed suit, Australia, The Netherlands and few others, and in all of those countries, you can see, not more than four percent ever became infected with HIV, of injectors.

In places that didn’t do this, New York City for example, Moscow, Jakarta, we’re talking, at its peak, one in two injectors infected with this fatal disease. Now, Margaret Thatcher didn’t do this because she has any great love for junkies. She did it because she ran a country that had a national health service. So, if she didn’t invest in effective prevention, she was going to have pick up the costs of treatment later on, and obviously those are much higher. So she was making a politically rational decision. Now, if I take out my public health nerd glasses here, and look at these data, it seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it. But in this country, where the government apparently does not feel compelled to provide health care for citizens, we’ve taken a very different approach. So what we’ve been doing in the United States is reviewing the data, endlessly reviewing the data. So these are reviews of hundreds of studies by all the big muckety-mucks of the scientific pantheon in the United States, and these are the studies that show needle programs are effective, quite a lot of them. ted.com/talks/view/id/818

Rational Publich Healty Policy demands
  • allow needle exchange to make addiction less dangerous
  • consider furnishing cleaner, cheaper, less harmful drugs

Of course, if we furnish needles, we should also furnish anti-addiction therapy, public information, etc. Some think one should not spend money to prevent addicts from getting AIDS: these addicts pass on AIDS to non-addicted innocent partners, who then could pass it on to you and me. And once an addict has AIDS, society helps to treat the medical AIDS cases with massive financial investments. Needles are cheaper!

We need morality and public action to reign in disease & death through drugs

We need to try to reduce drug damage by information policy, advertising, influencing public opinion, education, ………

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