One of the reasons for humans’ success is our unrivaled ability cooperate across time, space, and culture. That requires shared stories like the ideas of nation, religion, and money.
That's the difference between planning nuclear reactors that will be built after your term, and used after your death, vs selling your national industries to foreigners, your ports to china, &c. to make a quick buck and insure a comfy retirement plan for you and your family.
Are you saying that in western liberal democracies politicians have been selling “national industries to foreigners”? What does that mean?
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1796887086647431277
https://www.dw.com/en/greece-in-the-port-of-piraeus-china-is...
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1819036/business-economy
Step 1: move all your factories abroad for short term gains
Step 2: sell all your shit to foreigners for short term gains
Step 3: profit ?
It sounds bad, but you can also not-misleadingly say "we took industries that were costing the taxpayer money and sold them for hard currency and foreign investment". The problem is the ongoing subsidy.
British Steel is legally owned by Jingye, but the UK government has taken operational control in 2025.
> the remains of British Leyland ended up with BMW
The whole of BL represented less than 40% of the UK car market, at the height of BL. So the portion that was sold to BMW represents a much smaller amount smaller share of the UK car market. I would not consider that “the UK politicians selling an industry to foreigners”.
At the risk of changing topics/moving goalposts, I don’t know that your examples of European govts or companies owning or operating businesses or large parts of an industry in another European country is in thr spirit of the European Union. Isn’t the whole idea to break down barriers where the collective population of Europe benefit?
Do you prefer to be Japanese during the period of warring tribes or after unification? Do you prefer to be Irish during the Troubles or today? Do you prefer to be American during the Civil War or afterwards? It's pretty obvious when you think about historical case studies.
I do agree however this needs to be controlled and within bounds so as not to be totally destructive and also because you can't get anywhere with everyone pulling in different directions.
In evolutionary terms, variation is the basis for natural selection. You have no variation then you have nothing to select from.
Isn't it the opposite? Cooperation requires idea of unity and common goal, while ideas of nations and religion are - at large scale - divisive, not uniting. They boost in-group cooperation, but hurt out-group.