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If we can implement following two rules of living, we can move in the direction of achieving post-scarcity economy:

1) Cap every individual at a maximum he can earn for private use – if he earns beyond this, it'll redistributed amongst the society (as basic income). The cap could be say $500000/$1000000, which is high enough to encourage a part of the population to create wealth and enjoy it. At the same time, it disincentivises individuals to create infinite wealth which causes monopoly and consequently concentration of power. If I think about it, it actually encourages more competition as people can replicate other successes while noone has had tangible incentive to crush all its competitors. But humans have a tendancy to show that they are better. Yes, in such a system, they can satisfy it by actually teaching others to create the same businesses they've got success with thereby creating social capital in the name of popularity.

2) Remove inheritance. Inheritance is one of the reasons why people continue to accumilate more and more. In a post-scarcity society, everyone is borne equal in terms of wealth and must work to create more wealth (with a cap) starting from adulthood.

1) Most wealthy people have their money in their ventures - not directly available for private use, like cash in a bank account. I don't see how a cap would help in this case, as they can spin off multiple ventures, all still controlled by them. It would help to keep the economy going, but not by much.

2) People will find ways to hide their wealth - taking away their money when they die is an obvious threat to them and their children. It may work in the long term with the right control and incentives, but corruption (i.e. bypassing the law) will be extremely high in the beginning.

> Capitalism rewards not just work and the investment of capital but also greed and cheating.

That implies that socialism and communism do not reward greed and cheating, which is hard to believe.

In fact by concentrating strict monopolies on political, military, judicial and economic power in a narrow party elite, it pretty much guarantees it will be rewarded. I realize Communism and Socialism as abstract principles don't require this, but that seems to be the way it works out as they have been put into practice historically by actual Communists and Socialists.

There's nothing about capitalism that demands that monopolies of any kind should or must be allowed. This is a subject of much debate of course, since there is no single authority about what Capitalism is. It's not really an ideology in that sense. However if we take Adam Smith as playing the role for Capitalism that Marx plays for Communism, Smith was very much aware the markets must be very carefully regulated in order to protect the common good. Unfortunately Marx was, shall we say, considerably more utopian about how Communism would inevitably emerge and self-regulate itself.

"There's nothing about capitalism that demands that monopolies of any kind should or must be allowed."

It depends on what you mean by capitalism. If by capitalism, you mean a market-based economy, like that adam smith guy, then yeah, we should have anti-trust laws to guard against private anti-competitive behavior. If you mean lack of government interference at all costs (which is more a political program than an economic program, really), then no, monopolies and/or cartels will actually be the end state of many industries if you don't have laws preventing that behavior.

Also the concentration of power, corruption, and depredations against individuals (gulags etc) were predicted as an outcome of socialism and communism by Benjamin Tucker, a contemporary (and critic) of Marx.

There is no such implied statement. Capitalism is not the logical opposite to socialism and communism. Assuming that what is true for one is automatically false for the other is a logical fallacy.

In context of the rest of the parent post, it is listed as a characteristic of capitalism but omitted from socialism and communism, which is a clear implication it is not a characteristic common to all three.

That is not how I read the parent post. It said that greed and cheating is serious flaw of capitalism - it reward greed and cheating.

Is every flaw of capitalism implied flaws of socialism and communism and vise verse? Every flaw of communism also a flaw in capitalism?

That is true only if one say that capitalism and communism and socialism is all the exact same ism.

Not only hard to believe but wrong. Redistribution is at the heart of communism ( From each according to his ability, to each according to his need). This creates a huge incentives to cheat and lie in order to get a little bit more.

It's easy to exaggerate ones needs and hide ones abilities.

Cheating by definition leads to undeserved reward. Greed by definition leads to maximal reward.

>"Greed by definition leads to maximal reward."

Greed attempts to attain maximal reward, but this does not mean the reward is achieved. Greed is neither necessary or sufficient to achieve extraordinary outcomes.

Rational greed exploits whatever system you have though. A rationally greedy capitalist will do startups or work on Wall Street or something; a rationally greedy communist will gain political power. In a world of magical egalitarianism rational greed will increase the size of the pie for everyone; if you allow society to break egalitarianism purely to incentivize this kind of behavior you have become John Rawls.

Unfortunately, Perfectly rational actors rarely, if ever, exist.

> when looking for a new economic model, why not go back to psychology?

Excellent point.

> Is it really true that most people don't want to work?

Most if not all people, unless hobbled by various ailments, are not only content to perform almost daily light work, but basically require it for their own well-being. Think how gardening keeps you healthy well into old age. Think how the boredom of total inaction destroys people.

Also, a minority of people will always be driven to perform intense, prolonged, excruciating work for sheer fame. Another minority would do the same out of pure passion for the subject matter. These two groups have a large common portion, but are not identical.

Maybe we should look at the environment where we evolved as a species, and try and model a similar thing for the trans-scarcity period, and for the post-scarcity era afterwards. Whatever environment was ideal for Stone Age people, in terms of amount of work and reward (only as a psychological metaphor, of course, I am not proposing a return to material sticks and stones, duh), should fit like a glove.

I'm guessing cavemen did some amount of near-daily, light labor, to gather fruits and vegetables, and perhaps had bouts of intense effort more rarely for greater rewards (kill an antelope, defeat the neighbors in a war). There probably always was a minority who was obsessively chipping away at some obscure project all day long (the stone carvers making the Moai, the shaman observing Nature and talking with spirits).

If we could model something like that, but on top of high technology, it should work pretty well. We are, after all, evolved to live like that.

> there will probably always be jobs that people don't want to do.

This is why PSE (post-scarcity econ) is only truly feasible after huge advancements in AI and robotics. Let the robots clean the toilets.

> Most if not all people, unless hobbled by various ailments, are not only content to perform almost daily light work, but basically require it for their own well-being. Think how gardening keeps you healthy well into old age. Think how the boredom of total inaction destroys people.

If I could devote my hours to manual gardening and the betterment of an area of land while still maintaining my standard of living I would be very content with my life.

'"Work then without disputing," said Martin; "it is the only way to render life supportable."

The little society, one and all, entered into this laudable design and set themselves to exert their different talents. The little piece of ground yielded them a plentiful crop. Cunegund indeed was very ugly, but she became an excellent hand at pastrywork: Pacquette embroidered; the old woman had the care of the linen. There was none, down to Brother Giroflee, but did some service; he was a very good carpenter, and became an honest man. Pangloss used now and then to say to Candide:

"There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts."

"Excellently observed," answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden."'

"Communism and socialism don't work because peoples' brains aren't wired to do lots of work for little or no or unequal reward."

Actually I think the problem is that they don't have an efficient way to allocate resources. That's what markets do.

"peoples' brains aren't wired to do lots of work for little or no or unequal reward"

This is the actuality for most people in the West or the Third World. Thinks sweat shops, paddy fields, StarBucks...

The effect discussed is only present if you can see the other person get the unequal reward. And it is not tolerated well at all, I've seen highly paid engineers quit when they find out other engineers are paid slightly more.

But to the degree it's tolerated, it's arguable that it's due to a want of class consciousness, at least in the U.S.

Ironic that I got to use Marxism to attack communism.

> I think we probably are headed towards a post-scarcity (or low-scarcity) economy.

I think this prediction is naive, irresponsible, and dangerous.

We are headed toward one of the most tragic shortages in human history: energy. It is possible that within some of our lifetimes, we will see the breakdown of industrialization itself unless we do something about it, right now and in a very big way.

Despite an explosion of personal electronics, U.S. domestic energy usage has leveled off in recent years, even as renewable energy usage continues to increase. Almost all consumer technology has developed a new focus on energy efficiency over the last decade+. I realize the U.S. doesn't represent the whole world, but some other countries are even further along in the development of renewable energy sources, while other countries will be forced by increasing energy costs to follow suit.

And, notably, the first published concerns about peak oil being "right around the corner" were in the 1920s.

That's not to say there isn't cause to be concerned, but I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of energy.

I'm neither naive nor irresponsible, and I'm only occasionally dangerous. :-)

If a job someone doesn't want to do pays well enough, it becomes a job someone wants to do.

See: Working in $expensiveCity, banker, lawyer, jobs requiring lots of travel, etc.

If the lack of available workers pushes the pay up, more people consider the previously undesirable job desirable again and start learning the requisite skills if applicable, increasing the candidate pool and pushing pay back down - in this way, jobs find equilibrium.

Cities are generally expensive because they are desirable places to live; that there are jobs available is only part of that.

There's a tradeoff. For example, even people making low 6 figures are unlikely to ever own a house in (a decent part of) London unless they inherit it or win the lottery. A medium to small city is more economical for cost of living, with a decent proportion of the pay and lower costs of living.

But you are living in a small city.

If you are young you might not care about buying a house, and care about hanging out with friends and doing things instead. Cities attract young people who don't mind renting, suburbs attract families who care more about buying their own houses.

Part of that is true, I guess - I'm temporarily renting, but family is definitely not in my future plans. Suburbs don't appeal to me, especially as I like going out, but neither does a prohibitively expensive city where I'll never do better than a flat.

What is 'work', anymore? In context of capitalism/communism (and the old industrial economy), 'work' had basically meant a 'worker' getting paid to do some tangible, quantifiable task. E.g. I pay you $5 to move those 100 widgets. Or, maybe you get a loaf of bread if you move those 100 widgets.

But, in terms of the modern, knowledge economy, work means something different. I don't need someone to move widgets. What I need is more content, better design, more aesthetics, more culture, more entertainment, more research and development. None of these are quantifiable or fungible.

Work today should be viewed more like a potential to produce some value. In the startup world, we give lots of money to lots of companies, with the understanding that most will fail. We hope that a few will succeed and produce a new products or services that will work. But, we don't know. We have to spread the money around to get those results.

I have a sister who makes probably a few thousand a year. She's a very high-IQ person, who just happened to take some wrong turns in life. She's gifted and very crafty and creative. But, 95% of her time is taken up by the logistics of life - trying to pay the bills, keep the water running, etc. I would much rather have her be able to focus on creating things and inventing. But, as her brother, I'm not willing to fund her completely, because even with her innate creativity and intelligence, I'm unsure what will result. It's too much risk, for this one individual.

But, on the other hand, everyday, the majority of the value that I get is from things that are 'free': product reviews, blog articles, questions answered on IRC, people posting cat videos. There is a shit ton of work being done, but it's not quantifiable. How much is it worth for someone to read a book and edit a wikipedia page? We're certainly not willing to pay people to do that type of work. But, in aggregate, it's incredibly valuable.

Anyway, my thought is that if we can give people basic freedom from the inane logistics of life, they will free themselves up to do other things. Very few people will do nothing. I can't even imagine nothing. Even the stereotypical images of bums drinking 40oz out of bags - it's not nothing. They're creating something - new words, new art, conversation that ripples. Maybe they go to the library and post their thoughts online - that turn into other ideas. But, of the hours a day that they do things, we can't quantify that value.

Labeling things as capitalism/communism, left/right doesn't seem to do much to help the problem. We should all agree that we're past the 20th century, past the 19th century. We need new ways of thinking about these issues.

We need a system where people who have been born with the competitive gene, and who want to conquer and acquire trophies, are free to compete and be rewarded for it. But, we should also recognize that most people don't have that gene, and that it can't be taught easily. But, those other people should be given some basic income to allow them to explore the infinite space of Human knowledge and creativity.

There are two incredibly strong forces that are running up against each other: the deflationary nature of science & technology (better, faster, cheaper) and the inflationary nature of the global banking system.

If we examine the things that have benefited from the deflationary nature of science & technology -- the internet, phones/tablets/PCs, everyone is incredibly wealthy today. The typical high school student now has access as much or more knowledge and computational power than the most powerful people 20 or 30 years ago. The power is so immense yet at the same time imperceptible to most. An iPhone? A place to play Candy Crush.

The few who figure it out immediately drop everything they are doing and start a technology company (I did.)

However, when we examine areas that are greatly influenced by inflationary pressures things look really bad. Healthcare basically means if you have a family you need to spend $1000 a month on something that you will only use in a dire emergency because you'll pay thousands of dollars out of your pocket before it kicks in. Education, I don't even have to mention.

Real estate is the other big area. Real estate is a finite resource. Even if there is unlimited resources and energy there is not unlimited land. The areas that are most influenced by the global banking system appear to have the most extreme divergence in real estate costs -- London, NYC, SF/Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, etc. The upper end of the prices in there areas are in complete fantasy land to everyone else.

Technology start ups sit right in the middle of all of this. Incredible deflationary gains thanks to science and technology, insane pricing thanks to a global banking system flush with cash -- for now at a rate that has been subsidizing borrowers at the cost of savers.

The good news is that if you run a start up, even if there is a global slowdown economically, science & technology deflation will carry you along. Just don't borrow a lot of money.

You raise an interesting point on 'work'. The value of work is increasingly less atomic in context of a knowledge economy. Ideas, research, art, sports--these are typically either completely ignored or wildly successful. Marginal differences in 'work' and effort are inconsequential. This is unfortunate because like you've noted, many skilled people will never get what they deserve in winner take all markets on the off chance their choices do not work out. The incremental differences between the top 0.01% and 0.02% are negligible but often lead to disparate rewards.

I disagree with your arguments that we lack a system for competition. Markets do (did) a pretty job of deciding whether an idea or invention is truly valuable. The problem is that most markets are relatively zero-sum, and people are dictated by myopic concerns like bills, quarterly earnings, etc. What this means is that ideas tend to cluster along similar branches as players react to one another rather than engaging in truly 'free-form' exploration of ideas. Basic income will help in this respect, however for every ambitious dreamer there is a gluttonous, entitled individual who blows his money on himself and contributes very little. Coming from a econ/finance background, I can tell you that people can be very selfish in contrast to the comparatively idealistic tech and research community. Unfortunately, current economic systems are obsessed with the stability of quantifiable targets such as inflation, unemployment, etc; i.e. we have a system that promotes incremental growth rather than a system that is more likely to experience creativity/innovation shocks.

Please post this in /r/BasicIncome on reddit. Its a wonderful post.

> Labeling things as capitalism/communism

It's very important to realize that Karl Marx coined the term "capitalism." Pooling resources to pursue a profitable venture is not an "ism", it's just something that inevitably happens.

It's also not a social system. A free enterprise economy is intimately bound up with cultural values.

> Anyway, my thought is that if we can give people basic freedom from the inane logistics of life, they will free themselves up to do other things. Very few people will do nothing. I can't even imagine nothing.

You need to realize that all money has to come from somewhere. If you're some 3rd-party observer and want to hand money out to some people, you'll have to take it from others, and you have no business doing that, nor does anyone else. We're all trained to think about economics from a central planning perspective. People drone on and on about what should be done to an economy, or how whatever should be arranged, when in reality, it's all about people interacting and engaging in voluntary exchanges and investments and so on.

Capitalism is just people pursuing their personal gain, which is something they'll do regardless of what kind of "system" you'd like to place upon them. It's important to realize that Capitalism itself, as I've just described it, is not a system. It's not a model for economic behaviour that's imposed on people, it's what people do in any case.

Scarcity is a fact of nature and life. This planet's resources are scarce - there's just a certain, finite amount of them out there, and that's it. Our time as human beings is scarce too, there's no way around that (for now). It's pointless to wax poetic about "post-scarcity" and what should be done about it. If we get there, we get there. But until then, we'll have to work within the confines of scarcity and that's fine. We're all responsible for our own well-being, we're all pursuing our personal goals all the time, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's just how we're biologically wired to behave.

The only problem with economies in the world is coercion, ie. other people intentionally affecting your choices in the market, compelling you to do something else than you'd otherwise do. Perhaps the most massive example of this is fiat currency. Without taxes being collected in dollars and euros etc, no one would use those currencies.

I think you're missing the point of the article. Pretty much entirely.

Well that was bluntly said. I'm not sure it's accurate though, and besides, I was just talking about the nature of economies and Capitalism, which is certainly relevant to an article talking about, well, economies.

But if you see a problem with what I said, perhaps you'd like to tell me what it is?

The problem is, the whole part of the article was post-scarcity. You identify that earth resources are scarce. What if they're not? What if all of our energy is renewable? What if we close the loop for mined materials so we recycle in-system and no longer consume additional materials from the earth? If we're wired around scarce resources, we will need to adapt when scarcity no longer occurs.

Today's Atlas would say, "Give me enough energy and mass, and I'll move the universe." With enough energy, anything is possible.

Quote from the article:

there are plenty of reasons to believe that we may be at the beginnings of a post scarcity economy. We have a surplus, no doubt. Of course, we still have legions of people in the world that are starving, and even people still here at home. But we actually have the capacity to feed them, to feed everyone, even now, even if we don’t have the will. It’s not a matter of scarcity; it’s a matter of the organization of labor and capital.

The problem here is that there is no "we" that can implement this unrealistic plan of arranging for an easy living for everyone. We're all just individuals and pursuing our personal gain, as I mentioned. That much is constant, because it's how we're biologically wired to operate. So, there is no "collective we" that could decide how to run a society, but that's exactly what he's suggesting.

Of course, the only entity that makes collective decisions is the government. But the government only has one way to affect an economy: coercion. In essence, this guy is suggesting that governments should force some people to provide for other people. It's just another version of "welfare", but any kind of welfare system is about using force and coercion to re-allocate resources, because otherwise resources would just get "allocated" through voluntary exchanges. In reality, it makes no sense to talk about some specific "allocation" of resources, because the only way you can even try to achieve that is through coercion again. Coercion is immoral and forbidden though, so you have no business trying to effect any specific allocation of resources.

In addition, there's a gross mistake at the root of all this: the idea that you know how resources should be allocated. We're already covered that without coercion, resources will just end up where ever they may, and that's just the end result of countless people pursuing their personal gain, making the exchanges they want to, and so on. You are only your own personal self, and you don't know what kind of exchanges other people should go through - it's all subjective.

In summary, people talking about "post-scarcity" or a "resource-based economy" (Zeitgeist) and how those should be arranged, are basically engaging in central planning, and they either realize it would require massive amounts of coercion or they do not. In the first case, they're just plain evil, and in the second, they're clueless. Either way, what they want is impossible.

Post-individualism, posts like these will look pretty childish. Human societies do exist, and have existed. We not just just individuals.

Post-brainwashing, posts like these will look astute. I'm not saying individuals don't need to co-operate in countless ways, but collective thinking is misguided, because we actually are just individuals.

We're all programmed to think in collective terms, because that helps governments maintain their power.

This was a reply, but devolved into a dump of my current thoughts on economics. As I'm no economist it is likely muddled, naive, nonsense.

The UK newspapers regularly have articles about the increased use of food banks. I haven't looked into it at all so can't comment on details such as how much is genuine need versus playing the game, or the rate of increase, etc. Combined with wage deflation or stagnation, food inflation from devalued currency counteracts the expected low prices of low-scarcity. It seems that given how much people dick around with the systems, a low-scarcity economy is a theoretical concept, too simplistic to exist in a complex environment, buffeted by politicians, economists, bankers, etc. I have no economics education, so I'm likely talking rubbish, please correct.

On the matter of capitalism, I've come to the conclusion that it is fundamentally corrupt. The entire thing is a capital feedback loop. Not in the self-regulating sense ascribed to free markets. The more capital you have, the more capital you are able to accrue. And capital is power. The old saying, the rich get richer, is not just the superficial, flippant comment it might appear, flung around in the pub - it describes a core characteristic of capitalism. The amassing of capital does enable progress with big projects, but at the cost of having a system with a blatant foundational design flaw. People talk about bubbles as if they're a flaw in the system, but they're not - they're a characteristic of capitalism, which would be better named bubblism. I'm not commenting on whether capitalism is good or bad, or the pros and cons, rather I guess I'm surprised at all the discussion of the peripheral issues, but not of the foundational design, syntax instead of architecture. I'm not suggesting there's a better alternative, again, just surprised that it seems, from my layperson point of view, that there are so many people doing so much around the elephant in the room. It's standing there dumping over and over, and people clean the floor, spray the air freshener, but never touch the elephant. Yes, there are people in favour of other systems - they've come up with little. Distilling capitalism to this feedback clumping flaw, and I consider such exponential imbalance in a deliberate system to be a flaw, is it really so difficult to design a foundation that avoids that? Tax is a response to the flawed system, it doesn't address the design of the system.

Edit: I always read some comments before I read the article, to see if the article is worth reading, which is fine, but I should probably read the article before I start commenting!

>"The more capital you have, the more capital you are able to accrue. And capital is power. The old saying, the rich get richer, is not just the superficial, flippant comment it might appear, flung around in the pub - it describes a core characteristic of capitalism."

This is an interesting idea, but has been shown to be false. One example is that the average company on the S&P 500 lasts for less than 20 years, and this is dropping.[1] Another example can be seen by simply looking at all the richest families in the USA in 1900, and seeing which of them is still a famous dynasty; there are a number of studies on this, but it seems like family wealth does not usually last more than 3-4 generations. Even the Annheiser-Busch family, who created the still-popular Budweiser brand, have lost their empire after six generations of hard work.[2] Or look at a list of the "robber barons", and see how many of the family names correspond to the list of richest people on earth.[3]

[1] http://www.innosight.com/innovation-resources/strategy-innov...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)

For your point about Anheuser-Busch, I'm not familiar enough with all that went down, so hopefully you can clarify if I'm wrong. Since the company was bought out (vs going out of business), doesn't that mean the Anheuser-Busch family (which I'm presuming had a large number of shares) would still have their wealth?

Anheuser-Busch is a very interesting case, I would refer you to Julie Macintosh's book "Dethroning the King", or one of her excellent presentations.[1]

The Wikipedia page on Augustus Busch IV states the following:

>"Press reports indicated that the Busch family ownership of the company had greatly dwindled over the years with Busch's father owning only 1.2 percent of the shares at the time of the takeover. In total the Busch family owned only 4 percent of the company"[2]

I think it is fair to say the the Busch family were able to preserve some of their wealth, but their status has declined drastically over time, and will likely continue to do so. I must admit that the story about this family is subjective, and anecdotal.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXq9Jj4LGCo

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Busch_IV

Thank you for the monkey fairness video link. Made my day.

You describe life in the rich west. It's not looking as rosy for most people.

It'll be interesting to see how the perception of capitalsm's problems shifts as we wade towards the deeper end of the climate crisis. Will human suffering invoke more actionable empathy when it's in the form of agricultural collapse vs current income inequality problems?

>> [ capitalism's] current income inequality problems

I will assume you talk about the income inequality between nations. That is, in most cases, not solvable by other countries.

To make a country (without military conflicts) better is not rocket science. You get infrastructure and education to work well in addition to limiting corruption. The corruption part is probably enough, since non-corrupt politicians will fix the rest.

After that, a generation or two later you have a South Korea. Estonia is getting there.

For examples of this, see East Europe inside the EU after 1991. The main failures with corruption are Romania and Bulgaria, which also have horrible economic inequality. The politicians even steal the money for roads!

The point is, income inequality is not a problem of economics. The problem is that packs of thieves have stolen a country/government and sucks the lifeblood out of it.

First you say that this problem can't be helped by other countries and then you discuss the EU's eastward expansion... which is largeely about Western European countries getting together and lifting up ex-Soviet countries.

The terms under which those countries were allowed into the EU were largely about building strong anti-corruption measures and improving transparency in government.

Supernational institutions like the EU and UN can do great things like this.

>>and then you discuss

Starting with "For examples of this".

>>Supernational institutions like the EU and UN can do great things like this.

Well, give me some examples where corruption of a political system was solved by external organisations?

(And NOT in a military way.)

(The main benefit East Europe got was a pressure to conform with EU criteria to get into the trade union. That solved quite a lot, by paying the political leadership to solve their problems... This can only be done once. But Romania and Bulgaria got into EU without fulfilling those criteria, probably by bribing for the EU votes (as I understand it, a few large companies were sold cheap to French, Belgian etc companies). So corruption worked for them... not even here, with a big carrot, was it solved by the EU!)

Edit: I might add that the UN is infamously corrupt and many functions are taken over by dictators, working for their combined interests. (If you're Swedish, you won't read about that in your local media.) Hardly able to help anyone with corruption...

Even Greece and Italy (with all of their history), still turned to corruption to benefit from the EU. Can't solve this problem by throwing more money at it from the outside.

Uhm, are you really claiming those two countries weren't corrupt before the EU?! Afaik, both are classic cases of the Mediterranean client-patron culture? (At least the south of Italy.)

My original point was that to make a country a nice place today is not rocket science, the failures either seems to be an ongoing conflict -- or corruption.

Afaik the methods to stop corruption isn't that hard to design, the hard part is to get a political class to implement them. To do it from outside is impossible without an invasion, you have to get the population to pressure the criminal thieves (a.k.a. politicians).

(I guess 'fulafel' is a naive Swede who grew up believing his own media, like I did. That is why I bother with this.)

Disclaimer: No political science education, just a hobby to read to try to understand the world,

I meant that they were corrupt, they hid everything from the EU, took their money without fixing much of anything, then the truth came out and shit hit the fan.

Ah, yes. It seems this plague might be spread more by EU membership than it is cured. Not a positive future for Europe... :-(

I think it will work out fine if the members stick through for enough time. Kinda like the United States - the states have almost gone to war several times after the Civil War...

With regards to the Business Week chart, do you know if the numbers are using median or mean?