Thanks to Dave for passing on Adam Curry’s BloggerCon follow-up thoughts.
Adam Curry writes about the development of the new, federated European
Union. This is very important for us in America to pay attention
to. The Europeans are creating a new constitutional foundation
for themselves–they are dong what our nation did 200 years ago–and
they are dong it for the new century, now.
I would add that what is happening in Europe is key for other parts of
the world that are also regionalizing. China of course is a
region unto itself. Africa is regionalizing through the New
Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), the African Union and the
African Court–in an effort led by South Africa. The South Asian
nations of ASEAN have agreed to regionalize and have just signed an
agreement for a single currency.
There will be a set of powerful regional federations within just a few
years. They will perhaps come together in a new world
organization–or at least club–made up of these regional
organizations. Such an organization–if it also included regional
organizations from the rest of the world–would be as comprehensive as
the UN, as manageable as the G8, and potentially more democratic than
the WTO. The Belgian president has been pressing for this concept
for several years, by the way.
The EU will become an important model, and perhaps the model, for how
other regional federations design their unions. So it’s important
to get it as right as possible. The EU and Europe as a whole
already have certain issues for which they do a better job. In my
view the EU deals with environmental issues much better than
the US, and of course these will become more and more crucial as time
goes on, along with global social and economic development
matters. In the US we are truly in the vanguard with our
protection and encouragement of individual freedoms, and thus
entrepreneurship and individual creativity. We are not so great
at addressing the big worldwide problems such as poverty and global
climate and population explosion. Thanks to Adam for raising
these issues at BloggerCon and keeping them alive in his comments on
the conference.
