On Europe’s Nonlinear Climatic Future

The probable impacts of climate change are anything but straightforward, and thus predictable. From the standpoint of mid-2024, huge changes could be in store for Europe and other continents. The magnitude of the shifts is particularly worthy of notice, such that the changes being unleashed even as of 2024 and especially in the decades following the 2020s will be difficult to reverse or even change even if a Green revolution were to take hold. It bears noting that in 2023, the increase in energy usage globally outstripped contribution from alternative or clean energy, such that even more fossil fuel was used to meet the post-pandemic demand. A look at Europe provides a good case study of the unstoppable magnitude of some of the changes already underway.  

The full essay is at "On Europe's Nonlinear Climatic Future."

The European Union Is Not a Trading Bloc

The European Union can be distinguished fundamentally from the previous European Economic Community in several ways, just as the Articles of Confederation can be distinguished on a fundamental level politically from the U.S. Constitution. Both Europe and America have made a qualitative jump, rather than merely as a matter of degree or further extent. In both cases, politically speaking, governmental sovereignty has been split between a union and state governments. Furthermore, in both cases, the domains of power being handled at the federal level have increased. In the case of the U.S., the coverage of the federal level has expanded well beyond Washington’s Continental Army. In the case of the E.U. even by 2024, the coverage had come to extend well beyond a common market and trade policy to include non-economic domains of power, or competencies, too. In this regard, the E.U.'s federal level resembles a government.

The full essay is at "The E.U.: Not a Trading Bloc."

Adding Anti-Trust to Monetary Policy: The Case of Groceries

Monetary inflation is a complex phenomenon. Not only can its causes be several; it can make it more difficult to distinguish immediate and medium-term economic conditions from more long term, or structural changes impacting our species economically.  Of the former, the relationship between inflation and whether the markets are competitive or oligarchic (or even monopolies) can be better understood, and this in term can put us in a better position to assess the impact of longer-term changes, such as those stemming from the huge increase in the population of human beings since before the industrial age. The price of food (i.e., groceries) is a case in point. Specifically, the impact from presumably temporary shocks during the Covid pandemic should be distinguished from the impact of oligopolistic markets in keeping prices high, and of the increase in human mouths more generally (and longer term) representing increased demand for foodstuff in on a relatively fixed planet.

The full essay is at "Anti-Trust and Monetary Policy."