Plato on European Common Currency Zones 360BC

Silver "old-style" tetradrachm. Head of Athena right,
 wearing crested helmet ornamented with olive leaves
 / Owl standing right, ΑΘΕ, olive sprig and crescent moon behind

Excerpt from Plato's "Laws" c. 360BC below where he documents the correct procedures to be used in operating a common currency zone:

1.  First step is to eliminate the use of metals and thus establish the common currency area where metals are repudiated, comprised of an area spanning and including multiple states:

Further, the law enjoins that no private man shall be allowed to possess gold and silver, but only coin for daily use, which is almost necessary in dealing with artisans, and for payment of hirelings, whether slaves or immigrants, by all those persons who require the use of them.

OK, now that we have dispatched with the metals, and thus established that we humans are completely in charge of our own economic policy, on to the next step.

2.  Establish different currencies for citizens of each member state:

Wherefore our citizens, as we say, should have a coin passing current among themselves, but not accepted among the rest of mankind;

This will allow the local magisterial people in public finance to manage their own currency system within the local territory of the state (intra-state) where only that currency is allowed to be used.  This provides for local magisterial administration which is more efficient and effective.

Now on to the features to successfully allow inter-state transactions within the common currency zone.

3.  Recognize that the purpose of the common currency zone is in the first place to allow for economic interactions across a wider area than just the local area of administration previously established in steps 1 and 2 above.

with a view, however, to expeditions and journeys to other lands-for embassies, or for any other occasion which may arise of sending out a herald, the state must also possess a common Hellenic currency.

4.  Outlaw the "free market" across administrative boundaries by requiring any citizen who wishes to travel outside of the local currency area to first seek magisterial consent.  At this stage, an assessment can be made by the local administrators within the context of "exports are a cost".  Local administrators are in the best position to assess whether the local currency area is fully provisioned in real terms before allowing any exports of real goods and services from the local area under their administration.

 If a private person is ever obliged to go abroad, let him have the consent of the magistrates and go;

This is not a "rubber stamp" from the magistrates.

5.  Require any citizen who may end up with a surplus of foreign currency from an external state surrender this currency immediately upon return and have the local administrators replace these sums with the local currency at a fixed 1:1 ratio.  This will prevent any local citizen from maintaining a financial claim against a citizen of another state.

and if when he returns he has any foreign money remaining, let him give the surplus back to the treasury, and receive a corresponding sum in the local currency.

6.  If the citizen violates this law, confiscate the foreign currency and impose punitive fines equal to the amount appropriated for any citizen and co-conspirators that do not comply.

And if he is discovered to appropriate it, let it be confiscated, and let him who knows and does not inform be subject to curse and dishonour equally him who brought the money, and also to a fine not less in amount than the foreign money which has been brought back.

What they are doing right now in the Eurozone is perhaps with "good intentions", taking steps 1, 2 and 3 but are ignorant of steps 4, 5 and 6 and they are reaping the resultant chaos.

They are pursuing a barbarian-style "free market" (idiots!!!), so they are not doing step 4.  They are allowing foreign claims to be built up by entities between states (idiots!!!) so they are not doing step 5.  And instead of laws enforcing mandatory surrender of these foreign claims, they have established laws to actually enforce the foreign claims (idiots!!!) so they are not doing step 6.

So I think if you read the opinion polls over there, the citizens of Europe generally want to go back to this type of Athenian-style common currency zone for greater Europe, and I think the public's intuition is correct and justified as this type of system allows for successful cooperation between members of mankind across a much larger area.

Cooperation is generally good and can help we of mankind explore greater options and achieve scale economies, etc... respond to local environmental crises, etc.. so I think the citizens of Europe generally realize this and the polls accordingly report this out.

I think the citizens of Europe are demonstrating the correct human intuition here.

But the citizens over there are being entirely let down by the current leadership which just cannot understand, mathematically, why steps 4, 5 and 6 are necessary for long term success in the administration of this kind of system.

I sort of come down on the side of Ramanan wrt this issue of foreign claims and think that the potential for unbridled build up of foreign claims is something to be VERY cognizant of; if for no other reason than in this era where we in the west are still (albeit slowly) emerging out of the era in which we were under the metals, an ignorance of this issue of foreign claims is leading the current magisterial people to miss, mathematically, that "exports are a real cost"; the exporters are being allowed to point to the foreign claims as some sort of compensation they earn for the exports.

The regulatory and administrative accounting treats local claims and foreign claims as if they are the same and imo this is a big part of the current problem.

I think our western ancestors realized this too and this is why they imposed mandatory surrender of foreign claims by local entities with 1:1 compensation from local administrators as a preventive measure.

So we still have a good distance to go to get back to where we manifestly were over 2,000 years ago... maybe we are halfway there at this point.

Its taking a longer time than it perhaps should from our perspective because our current magistrates and administrators are simply not qualified to be occupying their current positions of authority.