Euronomics

It works for me, so I know it will work just as well for everyone else.

"Greed is good." -- Gordon Gekko

"Every individual ... intends only his own gain ... " and in doing so promotes the good of society "more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." -- Adam Smith

   The USA began not only as a political union, but also as a free trade association with a common currency and a ban on trade barriers between states.   The EU began in a similar fashion, but without a political union. The European Common Market was a plan to remove trade and migration barriers, and later, many of the EU members -- but not all -- agreed to a common currency, the euro.
   NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Association, was agreed to as a pact to enhance trade among the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but without a common currency and without sacrificing political independence. Whether doing so, to achieve "a more perfect union," as the U.S. Constitution puts it, will ever happen is an issue another, far distant day.

   Now President Obama wants to open EU markets to U.S. firms. In a way, this could be a first step toward expanding NAFTA to an intercontinental Common Market. Intercontinental maybe, since there is something of a cultural base of compatibility. But a larger question is whether the movement will gain enough momentum to gather others into the free trade fold.
   The economic system known as Capitalism may work well enough (more or less) on a Western European base -- and that cultural base includes North America -- but whether it works equally well in areas like Russia, Asia or the Middle East is questionable.
   For that matter, it's not even clear that Socialism will work everywhere. Karl Marx himself felt that Russia was not ready for a socialist revolution, since it was still a feudal society, and had not gone through an Industrial Revolution similar to what had happened in England and Germany.
   And in China, leaders have said for years that their country was moving to its own form of Capitalism, even as it adapts elements of Socialism for use in China.
   Marx may have been right about some things (even The Economist newspaper, that British bastion of conservative capitalism, has acknowledged this), but while the theory may have been sound, the practice was out of tune.
   In short, Marxist Socialism doesn't work. Russia, China and Cuba have tried it on a national scale, and have moved away.
   While communes may work on a small scale for a brief time -- there were several in America during the 19th Century -- but on a national level, they fail. Why? Greed. The fictional Gordon Gekko was more blunt than the real-life philosopher Adam Smith.
   Meanwhile, though pure Socialism (or Communism, if you prefer that label) doesn't work, neither does pure, unfettered, free-market Capitalism. Widespread government-sponsored social welfare programs have become a major part of American life and are not likely to go away, despite the plaints and wails of conservatives touting the benefits of a totally free market. Some of these social welfare programs popular in America include Social Security pensions, Medicare and Medicaid health benefits for the aged and the poor, unemployment benefits for those in need, universal basic public education, and now, universal health care insurance.
   Nor are these programs peculiar to the U.S. Similar and more comprehensive programs were set up in Canada, Britain and other nations decades ago.
   A major function of government is to stabilize society and protect all citizens, but a lack of control allows a powerful few to ride rough-shod over the many.