Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by Throwaway23412 » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 5:52 AM UTC

vonnik wrote: post #293

oska wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you know what country you live in? A bodybuilder from Austria with a heavy accent became governor of California. The son of a Kenyan economist battled an army kid born in a territory in the middle of Panama for the 2008 presidential election. The son of oil prospectors was born in Canada and then grew up to be the last challenger to Donald Trump.

Isn't this exactly the type of attitude that lead to Brexit? I can't believe I'm defending Murdoch, but who are you to determine one's "cultural identity"? What a bizarre comment.

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

#302

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 6:38 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #237

rhblake wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that the president of the European Commission is proposed by the [democratically elected] heads of state of the member states, and that their proposed candidate has to be accepted by the [democratically elected] members of the European Parliament, and that each member state nominates a commissioner, and that this group of people as a whole have to be accepted, again, by the the European Parliament.…

That's not what a representative democracy looks like. In a representative democracy, every citizen has equal power to have a say in how the country runs, but they loan that power to people that they believe will represent their interests. To illustrate what's wrong with the EU model of representative democracy, let's use an analogy... imagine you're a football manager and you choose 11 players to play a game of foot…

Yeah, that's true. It's almost like some monarch appointing a prime minister or something. Or imagine if ministers in general weren't being elected directly by the people, let alone all the people working in ministries doing their work for the minister. Unthinkable!

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

#303

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 6:52 AM UTC

robk wrote: post #34

Scirra_Tom wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're pro-small business, then you should be excited about the opportunities we have now. Such as? Please elaborate. One thing we can look forwards to is paying VAT to every EU country individually. That's going to be fun.

How's that? An American company doesn't charge VAT unless they have a EU subsidiary. UK would be closer to that treatment

That's at least a highly misleading way to put it. The american company doesn't charge VAT simply because the EU states cannot enforce it in the US. Instead, the tax liability is shifted to the importer inside the EU. So, it's not like you don't have to pay VAT on imported goods from US companies, it's just very inconvenient for the buyer. If a US company wants to make things easy for their customers, they can instead choose to do what any company trading within the EU has to do: They can pay the taxes to the member states that they are exporting to. The same will apply to the UK once they are out.

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

#304

Post by masklinn » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 7:06 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #120

masklinn wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got your roles exactly inverted here. The UK left screaming, huffing and smashing the door but apparently expecting the same benefits they enjoyed beforehand, as a rational person the EU would have no reason whatsoever to entertain that behaviour let alone reward it. The EU has no rational reason to be especially sweet on the UK, and looking internally and at the future it can't even be seen as that as it woul…

Well, yes, I guess being mean is rational, and being nice irrational.

> Well, yes, I guess being mean is rational, and being nice irrational.

You're the one who brought on the rationality argument, and while things differ across conflicts, in this specific instance yes being "mean"[0] is rational.

[0] if "not bending over to the whims of an asshole" is considered mean these days

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

#305

Post by guard-of-terra » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 7:10 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #273

thebokehwokeh2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-interest is a valid explanation. And the question you pose is a very valid statement. I am sure that immigration poses problems when it is at the scale of modern society. Not everyone shares the same values and beliefs but the optimist in me is the of the thinking that humanity is no longer the tribal, "us vs them", neanderthal who only sticks to persons who visually look like them. The United States of America…

> What they don't see is that they are competing with those people not because those people are different, but because the people on top have figured out how to take everything and not share. It is not either or. Why are there all of the sudden a lot of "different" people around, hmm strange? Is that correlated with wealth redistribution? Is there a causal relationship, or are they completely orthogonal phenomena tha…

Even if we are to fix ethnic crime, which I doubt we would:

Why should I like the large influx of people of different culture into my country? After all, they take my voting power in the country.

Maybe I would be content with 0,1% per year influx, but 1% per year is far into the pain zone. That's the amount of people who will try to influence culture, influence decisions and policies. And I was content with whatever we already have, thank you. I would much prefer to live in Russia than in Uzbekistan. Why let people in who would reproduce culture and politics and policy of Uzbekistan here? It's less viable, otherwise they won't desire to leave their homes for better life abroad.

When you let significant minorities in the country, of course they would want to have their say. Who won't? But this means that my voting power dwindles.

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

#306

Post by zepto » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 7:13 AM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #239

zepto wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying this, but punishing the UK for leaving could easily give further fuel to the French leave campaign. And of course an exited Britain could extend an olive branch to France.

After a 10% reduction in real income for the Brits just one day after the referendum? Fat chance.

That 10% is just the market reacting to it's failed prediction.

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

#307

Post by sgt101 » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 7:35 AM UTC

vonnik wrote: post #14

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…

Independence is a mirage, as is control. No individual nor country in the world is independent. We are all interdependent on one another, and ever more so as the movement of data, goods and people accelerates. The EU is a framework is facilitate that interdependence, and while it has many faults, it was created to prevent another world war and in that it has succeeded. Great Britain's future is very dependent on the…

"Great Britain's future is very dependent on the decisions of its neighbors and trade partners, and it has just told those neighbors and trade partners to go to hell. 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."

If you remove the free market from the EU's mission (as painted by your scenario above of everyone leaving and carrying on trading) what is the function of the state excluding the market? What is the idea there?

I hear all the time that the EU prevented war in Europe, but frankly war in Europe has been prevented by occupation by Britain and the United States. There are currently 21500 British troops in Germany. This is going to end in 2020, it will be fascinating to see what happens at that point.

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

#308

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 7:37 AM UTC

jerven wrote: post #216

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…

Its not even that the EU really wants to make the UK pay. It's just that the UK had so many advantages that it negotiated before. Now they basically reset themselves back to 1972, but the problem is the EU is much bigger at 27 members today then in 72. Making it extremely unlikely that the re-negotiation is going to end up as well today. Also the UK will want a super fast negotation, the rest of the EU are not so muc…

> Also the UK will want a super fast negotation, the rest of the EU are not so much in a hurry.

It seems to be rather the opposite. The EU is calling for fast negotiations whereas the UK is taking it easy.

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

#309

Post by stesch » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 7:46 AM UTC

UK's membership in the EU will get replaced by a number of new treaties.

The only ones suffering from the brexit are the ones who voted for it.

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

#310

Post by kalleboo » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 8:02 AM UTC

mioelnir wrote: post #139

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…

But a hit to german trading to the UK is a small price to pay instead of the hit it would take by setting precedent that you can just willy-nilly leave with all the perks. And I can tell you, the german-language media is already full of "priority number one if to stop a cascading copycat effect". As a snarky side remark, what will the UK do in the future instead of continuing to import cars, regardless of terms? Rely…

> As a snarky side remark, what will the UK do in the future instead of continuing to import cars, regardless of terms? Rely on its domestic automotive industry?

One of the more credible arguments for leaving the EU is so the UK can negotiate their own international trade deals, as they feel the EU has been slow in negotiation. Opening up free trade to the US and Japan would probably be a priority.