JOURNAL: Niall Ferguson on Adam Smith's world

A recurring theme of global guerrillas is that smaller organizations are often better suited for success (more agile, responsive, and cohesive) within the fluid/chaotic environment spawned by globalization's new rule set -- as with all ubiquitous platforms, this new global rule set is minimalist (that's all we can agree on). The same is true for economic "white" competition at the nation-state level. I've personally been calling this Adam Smith's world. Niall Ferguson, a staunch defender of the concept of empire, has finally recognized this with his recent statements on the future of Scotland.

One of Scotland’s most prominent academics — and a staunch defender of the union with England — has announced his conversion to independence. Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard University and author of several books celebrating the success of the British empire, said that he now believes Scotland would be better off as a separate nation state... “Ireland and some of the east European countries like Estonia are showing that small countries which embrace economic liberalism can thrive.” “What Scotland needs is a re-injection of the ideas of Adam Smith...”

Comments

[mark safranski]

"“What Scotland needs is a re-injection of the ideas of Adam Smith...”

No argument from me but that will be a rather lonely argument in Edinburgh. Unless things have changed, the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats are to the economic Left of Labor and those three parties represent a rough majority Scottish voters.

[Duncan Kinder]

Adam Smith was himself a Scot and part of the Edinburgh Enlightenment, which included the philosopher, David Hume, and other major thinkers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment

[Duncan Kinder]

Just to follow through on my prior post, Smith, Hume, and other leading Scottish intellectuals were members of the Poker Club.

The Poker Club had started out as the Militia Club, an organization dedicated to the proposition that Scots, as well as the English, should bear arms.

"The Poker Club was an Edinburgh social club, founded in early 1762 by the literati and intellectuals of Edinburgh, supposedly in support of a local militia, which the Scots had been denied since the Jacobite rising in 1745. It's real purpose, however, seems to have been the social interaction and entertainment of it's exclusive members,"...."...[T]he club was founded upon the ashes of the Select Society, which had declined sharply in the first years of the 1760s. Hirst also writes that The cause to be agitated was the establishment of a Scotch Militia on national lines, to be followed, as some of its radical members hoped, by a parliamentary reform which would "let the industrious farmer and manufacturer share at last in a privilege now engrossed by the great lord, the drunken laird, and the drunkener bailie." (Note 1)".

http://www.jamesboswell.info/Misc/The_Poker_Club.php

[Marcello]

Local governments being my area of specialization I have to disagree with "smaller is better", at least to an extent.The reason is that this is an area where the economies of scale are relevant.
Semplyfying the matter a lot imagine to have to choose between paying two mayors on one hand and one mayor and a police officer on the other.
I hope you get the point.
Furthermore rest assured that local governments can be just as much as (if not more so) bloated,corrupt,inefficient and unresponsive than their counterparts at the national or super national level.

“Ireland and some of the east European countries like Estonia are showing that small countries which embrace economic liberalism can thrive.”

Or more likely like China and such they have been held back in the past by negative political circumstances and they are now playing catch up.Size may be a non factor here.

[John Robb]

Marcello, as long as there is regional economic interop, the viable size of a political unit is very small. The most important factor driving this size limit is political/social/moral cohesiveness.

China, for all intents and purposes, doesn't even really have any meaningful central control anymore (or more specifically, it is Adam Smith's world run amok). As long as growth is robust, it looks cohesive. A real test of its cohesiveness will come when it runs into an inevitable economic slow down. At that point, we may find the viable scale is much smaller than it is today.

"Marcello, as long as there is regional economic interop, the viable size of a political unit is very small. The most important factor driving this size limit is political/social/moral cohesiveness."

I have examined several municipalities which were simply too small to operate efficiently, as the duplication of mandatory offices and such absorbed most of the resources available leaving little for actual services.
Merging with others municipalities was neverthless usually rejected by the locals on political grounds even if it would have given better results (which it did in the few cases where it was done).
They may have been political cohesive units but they were very,very inefficient.

China was the first example that came to mind.I could/should have used something else.The point was that the explanation for this rapid growth is former economical marginality and not size.

[Hasan Diwan]

Small countries survive because they piggyback on the policies of larger neighbours. In the case of Scotland, there are 2 possibilities, the US (by way of England), or the rest of Europe, lead by France and Germany. Part of the SNP platform is anti-Americanism, they want Britain (not only Scotland) to take a leadership role in Europe, as opposed to second fiddle with America.

[Duncan Kinder]

For a current British perspective on devolution generally, see, "Why Britain should pay homage to Catalonia. Barcelona's vote for devolution from Spain reveals a mature attitude to democracy that we would do well to emulate "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1802138,00.html

Excerpts:

"The statue is the new era in European politics. It enshrines Catalonia's "national identity" in a regional context. It offers the Catalans a measure of legislative, judicial and linguistic separatism in both a federal Spanish state and a wider European confederation. Education, health, housing and roads are firmly localised, and the booming city of Barcelona can regulate its commerce and even regional migration. The Catalan language, already the medium of instruction in public schools, will be official. The province will continue to levy its income, business and property taxes, ceding just half to central government for national redistribution to poor provinces such as Andalusia and Extremadura."

....

"Zapatero now intends to negotiate similar autonomy - beyond that already enjoyed - with the Basques and Galicians. In the former case it could herald the end of one of Europe's nastiest separatist conflicts."

....

"Most of Europe has been decentralising for over a decade. One talisman has been the eruption of bespoke regional constitutions, from Sicily to Corsica, Brittany, Scotland and Lapland. They have often been accompanied by a politicised culture; witness the linguistic protectionism of Welsh, Flemish, Basque, Monégasque and Letzebuergesch (Luxembourg) among others. Even Cornish is returning from the dead. Europe's "variable geometry" is an ever more complex matrix of local identities and parallel sovereignties. In 1993 Andorra, across the Catalan border, upped sticks from France and Spain and voted itself into the United Nations. It is half the size of the Isle of Wight."

....

"Neither Scotland nor Wales enjoys remotely the degree of autonomy exercised by provincial governments elsewhere in Europe. The Scottish parliament has roughly the powers possessed by a pre-Thatcher county council, and the Welsh assembly even less. When John Prescott tried to bring regional democracy to England he suffered a bloody nose. The people of the north-east voted overwhelmingly against his elected assemblies because he wanted to replace their counties with a new tier of government that did not relate to their local identity."

....

"Thank goodness for some sanity from Spain. Come back Armada, all is forgiven."

[tim302]

More on de-volution:
"How do you intend to deal with EU treaties which define certain legal frameworks for the protection of intellectual works?
What can they do? Fine us? Send us an angry letter?
Come on, countries need to think more like corporations. If the fine is less than the cost to society, which it is in this case, then the right thing to do is to accept the fine with a polite "thank you".
Actually, national media just called me about this very question; the Department of Justice has stated that we can't allow file sharing, as it would break international treaties. My response was that it is more important to not have 1.2 million Swedes criminalized, than it is to avoid paying a penalty fee."

This is from an interview with the leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, Rickard Falkvinge.

Interview here: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/%22Avast_ye_scurvy_file_sharers%21%22:_Interview_with_Swedish_Pirate_Party_leader_Rickard_Falkvinge

[Duncan Kinder]

For a radically different picture of what a post-modern transnational political entity might look like, consider Mount Athos, the monastic community in Northeastern Greece.

http://www.inathos.gr/athos/en/

As Thomas Merton has stated, "For over a thousand years Mount Athos has been one of the greatest monastic centers in all Christendom. Perhaps those who have heard of this ancient republic have cherished a vague idea that Athos is simply a 'monastery.' Actually, the 35-mile-long peninsula near Thessalonica, in north Greece, is a whole nation of monks and monasteries. The capital of this small country, which for a long time enjoyed a completely independent political existence, is a town called Karyes in the center of the peninsula....The peninsula is absolutely forbidden to all women...."

Athos' influence has been transnational within the Orthodox world. For example, in the early part of _The Brothers Karamozof_ , Dostoyevski describes how spiritual guides, a doctrinal importation from Athos, had stirred up a controversy within the Russian Orthodox Church.