The conference organised by Foundation Institute for Eastern Studies on February 15-17 in Łódź gathered in Poland many distinguished individuals, including politicians, journalists, think tankers and many others, who were seeking the possible ways of helping Ukraine develop in the midst of the on-going conflict with Russia. Liberté! was media partner of the event.
To understand utility of an intermediary we need to understand subjective price theory. A can of cheese does not have a universal value given from the “universe”, but rather N subjective values which vary in time and space. A task of the intermediary is to exchange what we need less for what we need more.
Through economic and financial convergence, European business culture and practice become part of our everyday lives quickly and naturally. If this had not taken place, the corrupt bureaucracy and way of life still prevailing in our vicinity would probably dominate here as well.
Merkel’s criticism of Orbán’s domestic politics came through clearly via independent media. The visit made it very clear how far Orbán is from the mainstream European opinion on issues of democracy and rule of law.
We should open our minds to the notion of individual responsibility and entrepreneurship. We have to take responsibility and the costs of our mistakes. The recipe for growth is no technocratic engineering. Growth goes through entrepreneurship, mistakes, reactions to mistakes and risk-taking. These elements are critical.
Competitiveness of Europe is lagging, pension systems keep ignoring the demographic trend, relative price of energy for industrial consumers is growing, there are popular jokes about labor markets in France or Italy, starting a business and tax compliance is still extremely demanding tasks in many of the member countries.
Just before Christmas, it became clear that the prime minister and the two major labor unions had signed a memorandum which not only prevents raising the retirement age, but also fundamentally changes the pension model of Bulgaria. Noteworthy, the main agents behind this decision were the same people who in 2010 decided to steal 100 million leva from professional pension funds, thus breaking the Constitution.
The investment incentives (part of state aid) are like a looser relative at a family meeting. Nobody is too excited to see him, but everybody is accepting that he has to be there. Every single economist will confirm that the incentive represents market disorder.
Giving up on reforms could send a very bad signal to the other problem countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, France) where they are also key to growth.
Since the May 14, 2014, Google has received 185.000 requests and deleted 670.000 search results (i.e. it made impossible to find particular articles via European versions of Google search engine). The EU still does not understand the old truth that once something is on the Internet, it stays there forever, and that the Internet does not equal Google.
