398. A paradox of international trade
There is a long tradition, since Plato at least, to reach for pure, fixed universals that transcend the messy, shifting variety of particulars experienced in the world.
On the other hand, since Aristotle there is an
appreciation of the variety of particulars that appear in reality, emerge,
realize their potential and decay.
The opposition between the two is reflected in a long
line of contestation within religions: in Catholicism, Protestantism, and the
Islam, between two streams: the strict, orthodox, intolerant universalists, and
the more lenient, tolerant, liberal particularists.
The opposition is also reflected in a difference between
relatively lenient, tolerant cultures in cities that are based on international
trade, and more rigid cultures in internally oriented, craft based communities.
The rationale for this difference seems clear: tolerance of variety is needed to
conduct international trade. An example of a port culture is Amsterdam, which has
been a hub of trade for four centuries. One would expect something similar in
other port cities.
However, current globalisation is borne by a
universalist market fundamentalism, an ideology of the market as a pure
universal, the same everywhere, that will automatically establish itself if
only one abolishes all the obstacles of intervention by states.
In reality, markets require institutions to work, and markets
vary greatly between industries, due to differences in factors that shape
markets, such as economies of scale, degree of concentration, monopolisation,
technological change and resulting uncertainty, entry barriers to markets,
transaction costs, including different degrees to which users can judge the
quality of products, switching costs between products from different producers,
separability or complementarity of products and production processes.
The focus of the development of the EU lay on the
internal market as a universal good that would develop automatically as soon as
different government rules were dismantled, in what has been called ‘negative
integration’. The expectation was that this would eradicate complexities of
rules and regulations, and that prosperity and goals of employment, living
conditions, labour conditions, and the abolishment of exclusion would
automatically follow.
It did not work out that way. As markets spread across
different sectors of society, in drives of liberalisation and privatisation, complexity
of rules and regulations did not decrease but increased, because of the imperfections
of markets and differences between those sectors.
This unexpected complexity became one of the sources
of irritation and opposition towards the EU as an excessive regulator,
constraining freedom.
Meanwhile, the dream of the market as a magical source of prosperity and quality of life and society also was not realised. The exclusive focus on the internal market was seen not to fulfil social goals but to thwart them, and now the EU belatedly has to take a more socially oriented turn.
In sum, there is a paradox of universalist ideology
versus particularistic reality of markets, and society has suffered again from the
illusion of universalistic dreams.
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