Pooled Sovereignty
June 21st, 2012 // 7:06 pm @ Oliver DeMille
The breeding ground for a global system that supports pooled sovereignty is found in the top universities, and it is promoted by the bureaucratic elite in many nations.
Much of what occurs in Washington only makes sense to those who understand this drift toward globalization.
For example, a push for increased government spending, debt and regulation on small business (even in the face of recession and a struggling economy) make perfect sense if the goal is to shift the American economy away from international leadership to global participation—to make the U.S. economy and government more like those of Europe and Asia.
Stimulus, universal health care, less entrepreneurship (through increased levels of government regulation)—all are necessary to create an American economy that can fit seamlessly with the industrialized European/Asian nations.
Another step in this process is to end the use of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and replace it with an IMF or other currency.
The IMF has already proposed this change, and international support for it is growing.
Just to be clear, when the dollar replaced the British pound as the world’s reserve currency in the 1970s, the average net worth of nearly every home in Britain fell more than 30% the day after the change.
The British economy has still never fully recovered, nearly forty years later.
If the same change comes to the U.S., we will likely experience a worse economy for the next four decades than we have over the past four years.
Unfortunately, as Forbes reported, “It’s hard for the State Department to imagine an international agreement to which America is not part.” Republican and Democratic presidents since FDR have drastically decreased American freedom using treaties.
This is bad for Americans—good for pooled sovereignty.
Ultimately, there are two types of leadership that can turn this around: presidential leadership, and citizen leadership.
Sadly, few candidates for president (from either party) and exactly zero elected presidents since 1959 have effectively pushed back against this growing threat.
As for the American citizenry leading the charge, find out what percentage of your friends can tell you the details in the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Rome Statute, or UN Agenda 21, and that percentage is about how likely the people are to effectively lead.
In fact, this lack of citizen leadership means there is little incentive for presidents to take action against pooled sovereignty.
Or to put this in practical terms, a half-century with a bad economy is likely ahead.
Unless something changes…
***********************************
Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Citizenship &Current Events &Featured &Foreign Affairs &Leadership
Allen Levie
11 years ago
I miss your teaching. Thank you for the post. From what sector will the major solutions come from? It seems the sovereignty and currency issues manifest the lack of the right kind of entrepreneurship. It also seems like addressing regulation issues needs to come later down the road.
While understanding and foresight regarding the legal and the legitimacy contexts seem critical, I don’t think we win this one by fighting primarily on the terms of the status quo. I’d bet that once founded correctly the right solutions will be nearly impervious to these force-based old-school tactics.
If I’m rightly reading our current situation the major solutions that make the biggest difference in the short and long-term will be less institution-based, interdisciplinary and additionally be structured through personal-relations rather than predominately geographic and institutional constructs.
Oliver DeMille
11 years ago
Allen, I think you’re right on, especially about the solutions being 1) less institution-based, 2) interdisciplinary and 3) structured through personal relations rather than geographic. Numbers 1 and 3 may seem like the same thing, but 1 is really a re-write of the old institutionally biased perspective that organizations are needed to solve serious challenges, while 3 deals more with long-distance relationships and virtual communities now available in the information age rather than being tied to local and geographical constrictions.
This is really revolutionary and I think you’ve put your finger on 3 of the top developments ahead.
One thing I may take issue with, depending on exactly what you meant: while I agree that sovereignty and currency problems are the consequence of 2 generations of decreasing entrepreneurial leadership, I actually think that getting sovereignty and currency right is even more important in a post-institutional /post-geographical world.
But the solutions to our currency and sovereignty challenges will only come from interdisciplinary — not expert — thinking. The expert MO is to fit in, to work within past parameters of success, while the interdisciplinary/entrepreneurial MO is to push the envelope. Certainly there can be overlap between these two categories, and experts pushing for innovation certainly come down on the entrepreneurial side.
A fourth model that I think will be central to this all is the rise of new tribes. In other words, interdisciplinary thinking, non-institutional solutions, and personal relationships can present as widespread individualism or as networks of inter-meshed communities: the individual string or the lattice. I think the lattice is more likely and also preferable.
Finally, a fifth trait is a new style of leadership, based more on providing information and the context of information than on hierarchy and authority — thought leaders, rather than managers.
Put all five together and a framework for a developed information age starts to take shape. Note that the key to this new leadership is the ability to make information, ideas, systems and solutions more simple, rather than the industrial age/managerial penchant for complexity. Smaller, not bigger, and, better, not bigger.