Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 396 posts

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#291

Post by pookeh »

florianbailey wrote: post #210
danudey wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on the other hand, as a Canadian whose government was in the process of negotiating a trade agreement with the EU, now we'll have to draw up two separate trade agreements, neither of which is as unbalanced in their favour as the original would have been. That is to say, the EU without the UK has less leverage than before, and the UK without the EU has less leverage than before, so now neither the EU nor the UK ha…

But the EU is still the largest or second largest market in the world (depending on the source).

And probably the slowest. If you can capture 10 faster markets then the slowest gets pressure to get going. But if you only have to deal with the slowest then it becomes even slower. Welcome to capitalism.

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#292

Post by searine »

mywittyname wrote: post #171
searine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make money. Deincentivising some kinds of war might have been a unexpected benefit, but it wasn't the motive.

Actually, it's original purpose was literally to prevent war between France and Germany. > 'make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...

Yes I am sure the European Coal and Steel Community had peace as their primary motivator in their creation of a globalist market for their product.

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#293

Post by vonnik »

oska wrote: post #260
vonnik wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rupert Murdoch is a special interest with access in London. Other special interests have access in Brussels. Just not the warmongering Australian.

Murdoch renounced his Australian citizenship in 1985. He's been a citizen of the US of A for over thirty years now.

Speaking as an American, that's been our loss. National identity, to be clear, is not just legal but cultural. In that light, Murdoch will always be in some way Australian.

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#294

Post by mixedCase »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #238
tomp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU will make the UK pay a price for Brexit, and rightly so, otherwise all member states would leave and still enjoy the free movement of goods and people. I really hate this sentiment. This is just about the worst EU can do, it would damage its legitimacy in the eyes of us, EU citizens, even more than the handling of the Greek crisis already did. I don't see any reason to punish a country for voting to leave th…

It's not going to be a matter of punishment. This almost sets negotiation back to square one. There are A LOT of effects in this that needs to be taken into account. Anything that's reciprocal currently (e.g. access to healthcare for Britons in Spain and for Spaniards in UK) is going to evaporate and will need to be reevaluated. Now, the UK has clearly stated they don't like some things like free movement of people.…

>Now, the UK has clearly stated they don't like some things like free movement of people.

Non-european people coming in as economic inmigrants, to be more precise.

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#295

Post by snowwrestler »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #92
mjevans wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take your word on those numbers as they sound reasonable. However I do believe you've neglected the other points of the post which were about the value of access to the European market place and that 10% say in how said market is run. Those are costs / benefits which are not so easily counted before the painful divorce is complete.

But it's unlikely for EU nations to significantly damage trading relationships with the UK. Germany, for example, exports a huge volume of cars to the UK and it comprises a significant portion of German GDP. Yes, there's volatility around exactly how such a trade deal will get worked out, but it's unrealistic to lump "access to European markets" into one big ball and assume that Brexit means that whole topic will be…

The biggest hit is not in goods trade but in financial flows. With the UK part of the EU, major financial institutions could base in London to serve the entire EU. Once the UK exits the EU, they can't, at least not without a lot of extra costs and paperwork.

London, one of the 3 financial capitals of the globe, will lose its status in favor (probably) of a more diverse mix of European cities.

This will have downstream effects on other trade flows in and out of the UK.

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#296

Post by gammarator »

illumin8 wrote: post #226
jhou2 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent, I think this is what Brexit supporters want. With fewer jobs in London and rest of UK, and more border controls, the attraction of the UK for migrants decreases significantly. The ultra heated real estate market can finally cool down a bit.

Everyone wants a less heated real estate market - ask California - until they realize that cold real estate markets indicate a lack of jobs and economic hardship.

London (and Vancouver) real estate is being driven by rich overseas buyers, though--it's disconnected from the strength of the local economy, except insofar as those places are believed to represent a safe store of value.

How can a regional economy be stable if the median worker can't afford housing?

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#297

Post by iofj »

snowwrestler wrote: post #295
p4wnc6 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's unlikely for EU nations to significantly damage trading relationships with the UK. Germany, for example, exports a huge volume of cars to the UK and it comprises a significant portion of German GDP. Yes, there's volatility around exactly how such a trade deal will get worked out, but it's unrealistic to lump "access to European markets" into one big ball and assume that Brexit means that whole topic will be…

The biggest hit is not in goods trade but in financial flows. With the UK part of the EU, major financial institutions could base in London to serve the entire EU. Once the UK exits the EU, they can't, at least not without a lot of extra costs and paperwork. London, one of the 3 financial capitals of the globe, will lose its status in favor (probably) of a more diverse mix of European cities. This will have downstrea…

I don't think many UK citizens see big financial flows as being to their advantage. For 90%+ of them, I think that assessment is correct. Globalization has been dealt a serious blow here, and if you're pro-equality, that should be a good thing.

Take an obvious and very direct example. Cleaning staff. Not having to compete with EU illegal immigrants will improve their labor conditions. Building workers and Polish guest workers who send all money back home and live in extremely poor conditions, same. Yes that probably means the next time you need your toilet repaired, you'll pay more, but you'll pay more so the plumber can have a better life.

Even for tech startups, this may be an improvement. I know over 4 London-based startups that don't directly sell to customers. They "consult" for a foreign entity (a US company in 50% of the cases, other 2 use Asian proxies), which then sells to EU customers because selling digital products to EU customers from outside of the EU is far cheaper and simpler than doing it from inside the EU.

One thing I absolutely do not get is why socialists and even those left-inclined are so massively pro globalization. That just makes no sense whatsoever. There are constant complaints about globalization here. How Monsanto/Big finance/Suez/... convinced congress/EU/ECB/... that X is going to happen/be legal which means state/city/even small town Y gets shafted in Y way. For once, that becomes a little harder.

But yes, it's probably the wrong thing for center London tech and finance workers and managers.

The EU is reacting, imho, in the worst possible way. The press in France, Netherlands and Belgium is full of articles on how it was stupid, boneheaded, evil, weak for Cameron to allow the vote in the first place. It's generally all being blamed on Cameron, and his mistake is allowing people to vote in the first place. Very EU, being so overtly anti-democratic.

But let's face facts here: the EU will try to make this work the same way the other referendums worked [1][2]. When the votes turned against the EU, they canceled the rest of the voting ("postponed" the term used, but they never happened). And then they cheated (the referendum happened because the law said it should happen before the law was changed. The law was changed without referenda). So I'm giving the odds of a Brexit happening at best 30-40%. Granted, that's far better odds than I gave it yesterday, so maybe I'll be wrong again. But the EU has a long history of ignoring democratic votes.

The sky is not falling, this is not the worst thing to ever happen, and frankly, the market is wrong. This is a massive overreaction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_r... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_European_Constitution_re...

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#298

Post by VorticesRcool »

djschnei wrote: post #79
dragonwriter wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose, semantically you are correct. I would suggest that a framework for mutually beneficial interaction (interdependence?) doesn't need a bureaucracy to be enforced. That's an interesting theory, but I would suggest that most successful such frameworks in human history have included some form of bureaucracy.

Bureaucracies, like everything, come in varying forms and magnitudes. In my years of studying, the most successful frameworks (bureaucracies, whatever you want to call them) served very limited and precise purposes. I agree, for mutually beneficial human cooperation to take place there needs to be something to enforce the rules . In my opinion, those rules all come down to enforcing individual property rights. Anythi…

I disagree. Many of the rules do not come down to only enforcing individual property rights. An optimal outcome for society and each individual can reached by enforcing them in many scenarios, but not all.

For example, how do you reach an optimal solution for orphans with the enforcement of private property rights? Or what about regulation of the relationship between a doctor and their patients? If the patient is mentally unable to act as a rational agent, there may be a conflict of interest between the doctor and patient without regulation.

What about health and safety standards? How does only focusing on private property rights deal with the vast asymmetry of information out there?

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#299

Post by programmarchy »

ParrotyError wrote: post #114
volatilitish wrote: post #2

As a brit, it's strange to see how it's being spun here. The majority of people voted to leave the EU and to regain independence. There will be a little volatility until some facts about how that divorce happens, emerge. Long term, we now have control of our future. In terms of startups though, the EU is there to serve big businesses and powerful establishment. It's there to hinder startups and small businesses. If y…

Are you nuts? We already had control. Now the future of the UK is in jeopardy because of you tinfoil hat brigade.

Personal attack is not an argument.

Re: Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit

#300

Post by lambdaphagy »

lkrubner wrote: post #197
thebokehwokeh2 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. I'll bite on this one. Why are you opposed to mass immigration?

I admire your willingness to be open minded and ask the question, but I've asked the question in the past, and I've never gotten a straight answer. Instead I get some pat pre-package talking points, and if I dig deeper I get a confusion of ideas. And that's because the people opposed to immigration tend to be motivated by racism, but they don't want to say that, so they every other imaginable thing. It's simply impos…

Pay no attention to the dread racist guard-of-terra! His seeming reasonableness is only further proof of his duplicity!
Post reply on HN