Robin Philpot: the Rich Life of Jane Jacobs - The Diigo Meta page

• 26 Apr 06
  

  Yule Heibel

  jjacobs

  • healthy trade is always a win-win
    situation. On the other hand, “when people get their jollies
    in life by fighting with other people and trying to dominate, they
    are very poor traders and cannot find ways for everybody to benefit.”
  • Jane Jacobs is not terribly impressed
    by the blurring of national sovereignties and currencies in Europe.
    “I think it’s a mistake for all these Western European
    countries to blot out so many currencies in favor of who knows which
    one will win out, maybe Frankfurt. It will not favor all those countries.
    Europe had something really wonderful going for it with the different
    currencies. Look at all the development in Europe over so many centuries.
    They did get into those wars and pretty well ruined it. But they
    also had an awful lot of relationships which didn’t involve
    fighting each other, but involved learning from each other, and
    building on each others’ successes.”
  • 1 more annotations...
  • • She
      developed the idea of smaller sovereignties in her recent book Dark
      Age Ahead. In it she explains how early medieval cities helped pull
      Europe out of the Dark Age because of subsidiarity, the principle
      that government works best when it is closest to the people it serves
      and the needs it addresses, and fiscal accountability, the principle
      that institutions collecting and disbursing taxes work most responsibly
      when they are transparent to those providing money. Both of these
      principles have almost disappeared from the modern world. The separation
      of Quebec would be an excellent way to restore them, argued Jane
      Jacobs.

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