What? Yes, it did work for the Euro, countries that are participating are now more equal than they were before, which is the goal. Who knows what will happen in the future, maybe Greece or someone else will truly sink the entire union, but it hasn't happened yet, so lets not confidently claim "it didn't work".
> my parents putting up solar panels to offset german fears of nuclear is far away from them paying taxes so their neighbor can get health care
That's been the thinking for a long time, but for how long can we continue thinking like this? If the world is fucked, it'll be fucked for all of us, not just for people in Sweden or Germany, so the faster we can realize we're all in the same boat, the better.
The same boat is actually a good metaphor, you tend to want many smaller ones and not one big, risk of losing everything vs something (to a point).
Yes, quite literally "hey lets suffer together", this is what we've signed up to, and want. Good for everyone and bad for everyone, we're linked and this helps us focus more on helping each other, rather than just focusing on ourselves.
> The same boat is actually a good metaphor, you tend to want many smaller ones and not one big, risk of losing everything vs something (to a point).
Yeah, that's probably the two mindsets that differ here. EU was created with the goal of "better one big boat than many small", because we've tried the "many small boats" approach for millennials, and somehow we in Europe always end up starting wars against each other. We've had (more or less) continent-wide peace now, for a good while (maybe the longest it's ever been? Not sure), and probably because of the reason that we're more connected now, instead of sitting alone in our tiny boats.
Currencies aren’t an asset. They don’t “outperform”.
If the Yuan had “outperformed” the Chinese economic system would have collapsed.
> Just look at the dispersion of prices across European electricity hubs.
Same Swedes were complaining (and still are!) about having to bail out the poorer members of the Union, should Sweden adopt the Euro and have a tighter integration with the Eurozone.
The common motivation of the EU is to smooth out these things across the countries, so we don't have these wild differences between countries. That might mean electricity gets more expensive for some members, and cheaper for others, but overall should lead to better usage across everyone. Basically socialism, applied to energy, so if you're OK with that for people, health and other things, maybe it makes sense to be fine with it for energy too?