Re: [PEN-L] quotation du jour

[paul phillips]

Sabri, I was using the term 'optimal' (reflecting my economist background) in the same sort of sense as used by economists to define "optimal currency area", although without the technical gobbledy-gook.  What I am looking at is a region that has sufficient homogenuity and common interest (economic, social, cultural) that the "local" government needn't sacrifice one part or parcel of the region to satisfy the interests of a dominant part of the region.  I know that is pretty wishy-washy and I'm not sure that I could come up with any hard standards to actually define such a region/nation state. Nor does it get at the problem the Michael raises, that some of the most urgent problems (eg pollution, global warming, water) transcend national and regional boundaries. -- the externalities issue.      But that need nott affect all inter-regional issues.  Michael mentioned telephone.  Nothing stops a local region from having a local company providing local service hooked to a trunk line provided by an international (nation, region) co-op.  E.g. Saskatchewan has a provincial telephone service that was and is one of the best in Canada.  Manitoba had an excellent provincial telephone company until the neocon Conservatives sold it for a song to their business friends (after which service deteriorated markedly).  Ontario Hydro (in its glory days) was originally a co-operative of local electric distribution companies which relied on central, public, generation facilities.  If anything, electricity is going in the opposite direction with the proliferation of co-generation, a system which is particularly suitable for wind and, possibly, solar power.     What this all suggests is that technical economies of scale are not all that they are cracked up to be (nor necessary) and this suggests that corporate capitalism has become dependent on global finance for its rationale , i.e. the economies of scale/scope are in finance, not production. (Veblen was on the right track 100 years ago.)  What I further suggest is that the economic advantage of global finance is dependent upon cheap energy.  Someone on the list suggested that 'peak oil' is not an immanent threat.  Perhaps he is right.  I don't know, and as everyone writing in the field says, we won't know until after the event -- by which time it will be too late.  However, most of the scientists (and even some of the major oil companies, though this could be self-serving propaganda) in the field say we are on (or even over) the cusp, or will be within, at most, 10 years.  I think perhaps the view of Matt Simmonds, an international oil financial analyst and staunch repug, that Saudi Arabia, the world's greatest supplier of crude, is at, or past, its oil peak should be a wakeup call to us all. But .... Thanks Sabri for your comments. Paul Sabri Oncu wrote: Paul: This is the core of my argument for suggesting we are looking at the rise of "local" (nation) states -- optimal economic regions, defining optimal in terms of social structures or regimes of accumulation. Apparently, we are in agreement, although it appears to me that we still need a narrower definition of what we mean by "optimal". My point was that "optimal" economic regions need not all be "very local", again, without qualifying what "very local" means. "Optimal size" should depend both geographical and historical conditions of the region, which vary from region to region. In certain cases it is possible that a number of "nation states" may choose to merge and in others a "nation state" may choose to split, who knows? One of the questions I have in mind is this: who will write down/define the problem for which an optimal (not necessarily global but at times suboptimal and indeed not necessarily exact but approximate, yet "better") solution is to be found? And the only answer I can come up with to this question is the existing "nation states" or rather, the citizens of the existing "nation states", that is, their elected governments and national assemblies. And given this answer, the strategy I propose to the left is going back to the "national" political scene with a party or a coalition of parties with well-defined social and economic agendas, and biding for the "national" power: something along the lines of the recent German Left Party is trying. If this happens and the Left Parties of the world can unite, then, who knows, maybe they can find an answer to the below question of yours as well: If there is any truth in this argument, then we have to ask the question, what supercedes the existing nation states and what supercedes the inter-national rules now made up of a complex web of international institutions, controlled for the most part by the existing US and its subordinate states (in particular, Britain, Australia, Canada), neo-liberal international treaties and economic policy institutions (IMF, WB, WTO, NAFTA, etc.), and the big-power controlled and increasingly neo-liberal United Nations? Best, Sabri

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