Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "History Scope" channel.

  1. Definitivly good. But attempts at making the "United States of Europe" is harmfull in the views of many, including me. If smaller countries like Norway wanted to be a big one we'd be one already. But the bigger a country is the less effective it's democracy is. Super-national organizations like the EU can help counteract many of the drawbacks of being a small nation but if you end up becomming a big one anyway you're effectivly ruining the whole point of a super-national organization in the first place... Moves towards a completely unified legal system just doesn't work for a diverse continent with multiple ethnic groups in a diverse geographical region where many laws despite being the same ends up simply have different de facto effects depending on where you're located. And like I mentioned earlier, democracy simply don't work large scale all that well. It's better to use small scale nations when you're dealing with economy for instance because they can react to changing realities much faster. It's easier to make compromises that works when the compromise in question applies to fewer and a more hetrogenous population. And so one and so forth. Also, when you have multiple smaller countries in a super-national organization in an area instead of a few big ones people can vote with their feet moving away from poorly run countries into better run ones. So yeah, we voted against joining the EU, twice, here in Norway. Main objections: EU policies with regard to fishery is seriously messed up. Most of the countries involved in making the rules in this area simply don't know how to manage fish without causing overfishing and other issues like that... EUs agricultural policies isn't paricularly helpfull. Local conditions in Norway makes agriculture here quite hard, and our cost of living is higher then in most of Europe. As a result if we where to have the same subsidy levels as the EU with no tarrifs our farmers would simply not be competitive, and we're already producing way less food then we need in the domestic market. By maintaining tarrifs on agricultural imports we can maintain some domestic agriculture. We're not going to become a net exporter of agricultural products anyway anytime soon. The EU is however, and the EU subsidy levels and tarrifs as well as insistence on making everyone else drop their tarrifs is harmfull because it makes countries that in the past where agricultural exporters become 100% reliant on EU and US imports to feed their population as the local agriculture simply can't compete on the domestic market vs heavily subsidised EU farmers (whose products are subsidised even when exceeding local needs far past the levels required to compensate for higher living expenses in Europe. I don't know the exact solution to the issues at hand. But my guess is that a combination of some form of flexible tarrifs with a goal of say 80% self-sufficiency in each countrys market as well as 80% self-sufficiency within the EU as a whole for required agricultural products combined with subsidies in part based on capacity rather then actual production might be worth looking into. Perhaps a EU wide purchase and storage of a certain amount of food to ensure food is stored in case of bad harvests etc, and to help regulate prices by reselling products if they go too high and purchasing extra when going too low would help? Encouraging mixed income farming too perhaps, with flexible non-farming related jobs supplementing farmers income ensuring that farmers can produce more if needed while still not relying 100% on their farms as their only income. I don't know... But the big factory farms mass producing heavily subsidised food isn't the answer. Some countries like the Netherlands don't subsidise their food particularly much because they're already competitive without subsidies due to their advanced farming teckniques and research into agriculture being pretty much the best in the world.
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  2. + @planets9102  Actually, the first of those is false and the second is a truth with modifications. Look at the relative performance pr capita of countries around the world, all the highly performing ones are small nations. And there's a reason for that. A smaller nation is more effective because it's more flexible and able to fix issues that pop up way faster. The only draw back of a smaller state is borders and tarrifs etc, but like I mentioned, that's why smaller nations benefit from super-national organizations since those negate those drawbacks. As for the foreign policy... It's sort of true in one on one negotiations. But only when comparing a single small state vs a large one. When you compare small states within a super-national organization that's still small states the situation becomes quite different. Then small states gets pretty much the same negotiation power as said "superstate" would have had. Also, since those smaller states retain their sovereignty they're more capable of look out for their own interests even within that super-national organization. In a larger nation like the US the negotiations being carried out might have more diplomatic power, but the end result both in terms of laws and foreign relations might still be worse off for the individual state. Just look at the US. Lots of dependent territories are doing much worse then they could because they're forced to use US shipping instead of ships belonging to other nations this causes a lot of harm. Ships that are sailing past areas under US controll on their way to other nations can't deliver goods to those US controlled areas. The end result therefore is way higher prices for goods and services. Then look at Louisiana. The main income that local goverment has for things like funding education is things like tax on property. Yet in that state the tax exemptions for companies are granted on a state level. As a result the state as a whole has become one of the poorest in the nation, something that's also causing increased crime. Yet the state is also among the ritches in the nation. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38 A local goverment on the other hand is more aware of local issues holding back those areas and can compensate for those. The same applies to foreign afairs. Sure the overall trade deal between a small nation and a big one might be less favorable then between two big ones yet the smaller one can target its negotiations much more narrowly towards the interests of that particular region allowing for specialization benefiting both nations. While the same small area within a larger nation would have much less influence on the trade deal being made even if the overall negotiation power of the nation as a whole would grow. The end result of that is a much broader trade deal closer to the negotiation position of the larger nation, but it's also less targeted and therefore potentially a lot less benefitial to that particular area. Essentially the extra negotiation power of a larger nation is largly dilluted by the conflict of interests within the nation as far as each individual region is concerned. An example of this is all the US companies moving production out of the country due to increased material costs due to the trade war with China. The trade war simply isn't in the interest of the wast majority of US states. Also, a side effect of nations going together into "super nations" is that the people they negotiate with are more likely to do so as well because of the same flawed logic. Heck, even a super-national organization that's not a "super-state" like the EU has caused every single continent on this planet to create several super-national organizations of their own to increase negotiation power of said states. Yet at least with such super-national organizations the individual states have more of a say both on the final treaty and if it ultimately causes more problems then it solves then leaving the super-national organization is a possiblity even if it might be a costly one.
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