"Americans unbalanced these days almost as a matter of policy"

[Carl Remick]

[Szamuely is one of Taki's stable of columnists in NY Press - the
following is from the current issue -- and is, I gather, a conservative.
But this is an excellent piece, whatever its provenance.]

The Real Thing

By George Szamuely

It is not often that the European Commission does something right. But
at dawn a couple of weeks ago it raided Coca-Colas offices throughout
Europe. Bureaucrats in Germany, Britain, Denmark and Austria seized
internal company documents because, according to the Commission,
Coca-Cola may have been abusing its dominant position in Europes soft
drinks market. One of its favorite tricks, apparently, is to offer
retailers and restaurant-owners free refrigerators or soda fountains if
they refuse to sell rival soft drinks. A thorough investigation of
Coca-Colas marketing practices is promised and the company could face a
fine of 10 percent of its sales. This was only the latest of Coca-Colas
recent troubles in Europe. A few weeks earlier the company had been
forced to recall 17 million cases of Coke. Some Belgian children had
reported feeling sick after drinking bottled Coca-Cola; Europes national
health authorities immediately banned the sale of the drink. The panic
was almost certainly without foundation. Toxicology experts could find
no trace of anything anywhere that could explain any sickness. But the
scare probably cost Coca-Cola over $100 million. This came on top of
loss of sales in Russia and Eastern Europe as a result of NATOs war on
Yugoslavia. And in May, the European Commission had stopped Coca-Cola
from acquiring Cadbury Schweppes while French authorities blocked its
acquisition of Orangina.

Clearly, someone has it in for Coca-Cola. This, of course, is not the
first time the company has been under attack in Europe. After the Second
World War, the French fought fiercely, but unsuccessfully, to keep the
drink out of their country. Coca-Cola was everything they disliked about
America: ruthless salesmanship combined with perpetual adolescence. A
sweet, sticky, foul-tasting, gaseous drink that destroyed teeth and had
no nutritional content, Coca-Cola nonetheless conquered continents.
Since no one in his right mind would ever choose to drink Coke given so
many vastly superior alternatives, its extraordinary worldwide
popularity can only be explained by brilliant American marketing. How
else does one explain the craze for Air Jordan sneakers in countries
where basketball is sport number five or worse in its priorities? Or the
wearing of baseball caps by people who have never watched a game of
baseball in their lives? Or the box-office triumph of American movies in
countries whose indigenous films are easily superior to anything coming
out of Hollywood? (Critics who point to the abysmal quality of most of
the films made in Europe today are correct. But Europe has been so
thoroughly penetrated by Hollywood that it is hard even to talk about a
distinctly European cinema. The best movies today are being made in
countries that have been relatively impervious to American influence:
Iran and Yugoslavia.) 

As far as the Washington elite is concerned, the triumph of American
cultural style is a cause for rejoicing. In the first place, it is
democratic and egalitarian and therefore preferable to any other
cultural style anywhere in the world. And, second, it represents the
victory of global market forces. Europe's attempts to place barriers to
the free flow of capital and goods appears to be almost an immoral act.
Indeed, the very existence of Europe is nothing short of an outrage.
Time and again, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has instructed
the Europeans to shape up or else: adopt American-style capitalism and
become competitive or risk being thrown on the dust-heap of history by
"globalism." Yet Europeans continue to reject American dogma. They
refuse to "reform" welfare. They mumble about introducing Americas pride
and joy -- "flexible labor practices" -- but do nothing about it. They
accept double-digit unemployment rates without complaint. Complacency of
this sort drives American policymakers up the wall. 

But then Americans seem to be unbalanced these days almost as a matter
of policy. According to the mad logic of globalism, enunciated with
cretinous gusto by Thomas Friedman in his ignorant and illiterate The
Lexus and the Olive Tree, people have to sacrifice their jobs, their
livelihoods, their homes just so the global economy can function without
hindrance. Europeans, according to the Washington consensus, will have
to accept regular cuts in pay, work longer hours, take shorter
vacations, learn to live with less comprehensive health care coverage or
else cease being "competitive." But why on Earth would Europeans allow
their culture, their cities, their civilized way of life degenerate to
the brutish levels that we take for granted here in America? Why on
Earth would they destroy everything that is vital to Europe just so that
they can "compete" with the sweatshops of Indonesia and Thailand? And at
what point will the Europeans be competitive? When workers are earning
$10 an hour? Five dollars an hour? Two dollars an hour? Who came up with
this idiotic notion that there is something wrong with economic
security? That throwing people out of work in the name of "downsizing"
is commendable because it ensures "competitiveness"? 

The creation of a bourgeois class with a strong set of moral values --
optimistic, confident, secure in its home, its community, its nation --
was the great triumph of capitalism. If capitalism offered economic
insecurity as a permanent way of life, socialism would have won hands
down. The ideologists of globalism do not seem to understand this. The
Europeans do. Economic insecurity, American-style neuroses, medical
debts that take a lifetime to pay off, bad education for almost everyone
except the very rich, a vast underclass, a large section of the
population permanently behind bars, seem to go together with this
American-style capitalism that U.S. policymakers extol wherever they go.
This is what lies behind Europe's onslaught on Coca-Cola. Two rival
models of capitalism are fighting it out. Or, rather, globalism is being
shown up for the infantile fantasy that it is. According to the
doctrine, the giant conglomerates should be able to do whatever they
want. They can merge, downsize, switch their operations around the
world, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. If Coca-Cola gets
annoyed with the Germans for some reason, they can simply transfer their
bottling plant to Nigeria. The Europeans, however, are demonstrating
that they can make life very difficult for any transnational
corporation. If the corporation threatens to transfer its main business
to some place where it can pay workers two dollars an hour it will face
harassment. If it tries to sell in Europe products it made elsewhere at
a fraction of the cost it will get clobbered. A health scare can be
whipped up overnight, allegedly unfair competitive practices can be
investigated for years. And the ultimate sanction is denial of access to
the European market. This is already rather a large market and the
European Union will expand to include almost every single country in
Europe in the next few years. Europe is, in effect, practicing
protectionism.

There is nothing wrong with protecting a civilized way of life.
Americans dismiss this as a recipe for decline. Europeans, they believe,
will continue to suffer a flight of capital while America will be where
all the exciting high-tech work will be done. To be sure, the United
States is doing well now. Or rather the Dow Jones continues to climb to
the stratosphere. Which is all that people actually mean when they say
"the United States is doing well." But sooner or later something
untoward will happen. It may be a recession; it may be a collapse in the
stock market; it may be the Japanese unloading their T-bonds. Then the
globalists will discover that "flexible labor practices" are not as
appealing to the people who are fired as they were to those who were
hired. People who gambled on stock options in lieu of extra earnings or
savings will discover that they may have been a little rash. At this
point, the European-style capitalism will seem rather attractive.
Europe's wealth is not as tied to the stock market as it is in the
United States. It is also not burdened by a huge trade deficit that it
can suddenly no longer finance. 

There is one wrinkle to all of this. Though Europe and America represent
two rival versions of capitalism, they are still joined together in this
defunct organization called NATO. Europeans are content to remain
members, since they thereby can get away with spending next to nothing
on defense. Americans like NATO because it enables them to throw their
weight around in Europe. Europeans had to go along with Americas
demented destruction of Yugoslavia because the alternative was -- as
always -- to pay for their own defense. An unacceptable notion,
apparently. NATO, in other words, may be the means whereby the United
States will prevent the emergence of a rival capitalism. It is one more
reason -- as if we needed another one -- to bring this morally and
intellectually bankrupt organization to an end. 

[end]

Carl