Sin Credits: The Future of Europe?
Lately, I’ve been chewing over what’s going to happen to Europe. Working thesis: the expansion of the EU will cement into place a comprehensive, sprawling regime dedicated to micromanaging the health and security of citizens and noncitizens alike; the difference between politics and economics — the state and the market — will eventually vanish completely; and social, moral, and cultural license will be the consolation prize in an era of diminished or useless political liberties.
Then Spiegel Online went ahead and proved that Europeans actually feel stifled by overweening Brussels-weenies. Yet the inertia of bureaucratic centralization seems unstoppable. So what’s the workaround?
Sin credits. Like carbon offsets — which have already been compared (unfavorably) to the medieval sale of indulgences — sin credits will open up to all of Europe what some lucky Russians today are learning to enjoy: a life of access to luxurious pleasures, so long as you can pay for it and let the government do as it will. You bribe your way to freedom. The logic was charted long ago by Tocqueville in his book on the ancien regime, in which prerevolutionary France was portrayed as thoroughly absolutist. ‘Government’ knew about and supervised everything, doling out and taking away privileges, including aristocratic titles, in order to keep the upper classes in its pocket. Democratize and capitalize the principle, and you get Brussels turning a ‘blind’ eye to the local cafe-owner who figures out how to tithe adequately to the administrative conscience of Europe, everywhere and nowhere…
To me, this is a classic question of rights vs. ability. To put it simply, as much of a nightmare as your future scenario sounds, I don’t think America offers much in the way of an alternative. What, effectively, is the difference between having the ability to do these things restricted by an oppressive regulatory state and having them restricted by the reality of capital? If the rich in the future Europe you imagine can “opt in” to certain behaviors through sin taxes, is that any different from a rich person in America opting in by plain old footing the bill? (Of course, the question is more salient put the other way— what is the difference, in pragmatic terms, between a person being restricted by your system and restricted by ours.)
— Freddie · Dec 2, 04:10 PM · #
I disagree profoundly and predict a rise in Napoleonism.
I DO agree that Brussels will TRY that tack. But that economic downturns/hard times will leave to little money by most average people and too much demand from government (various connected large corporations will of course be exempt from more demands for more money).
You can’t have a stable system in which ever-more amounts of money are demanded by the government for transfers to … favored groups. Mostly Muslims, third world migrants, etc. Not when the State has no meaningful monopoly of force, has failed to suppress violent riots in cities (showing impotence in the face of Muslim provocations) and then demanding more and more money.
What if people refuse to pay, start rioting themselves, and stage various putsches with soccer club hooligan manpower? Who will stop them? The trans-sexual human rights spokesman? The mighty Belgian Army? The police who ran away already from Muslim riots? Weakness in one are invites attacks in others.
The Ancien Regime fell in France because they had run out of money fighting Britain first for Canada, then supporting America’s revolution. When it came time to pay the peasants had no more money, while the regime lacked the ability to put troops in the field to suppress the peasants (they could not pay them).
Europe’s productivity growth is … negative. Manufacturing jobs are moving out, to low-cost labor centers like China. Where also there are no environmental regs either. Only some financial services (moving from highly regulated America) have shown growth. And I’m sure over-regulation will kill that too.
Can a continent of lawyers and human rights, green activists sustain economic growth? Unlikely. It’s a recipe for disaster.
— Jim Rockford · Dec 2, 11:32 PM · #
“You can’t have a stable system in which ever-more amounts of money are demanded by the government for transfers to … favored groups. Mostly Muslims, third world migrants, etc”
Please name for me a single major program in a European nation which transfers ever-more amounts of money into the hands of Muslims.
— Freddie · Dec 3, 01:12 AM · #