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

Is Europe Disintegrating?

nybooks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 182 posts

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#111

Post by muninn_ »

tshadley wrote: post #100
muninn_ wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why is Europe experiencing such a huge problem now and not then? That's an oversimplified chart that doesn't mean anything for this discussion.

> Then why is Europe experiencing such a huge problem now and not then? It seems less likely the problem is immigration and more likely at last part of the problem is fear of immigrants. Studies such as the following show that anti-immigrant sentiment is more extreme among residents of rural places than among residents of urban places, even though immigrants are more likely to reside in urban communities. http://cita…

Why are people scared of immigration this time around and not previously?

Did previous immigrants assimilate? Were they similar, culturally?

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#112

Post by judahmeek »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #36
ComradeTaco wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see an overall trend of of authoritarianism and nationalism as a response to immigration and an increasingly changing world. There's also a pretty heavy streak of anti-intellectualism as voters were encouraged to fundamentally reject experts that gave (IMHO well-founded) warnings about the ill-effects of Brexit and Trump. In short: Nationalism in, Globalism out.

Even the idea of experts is being rightly criticized. Look at the flip-flopping recommendations of the US health dietary guidelines. What's true to the experts this year will be rejected some point later. Not only that, but when you have centralized power it becomes much easier to corrupt and politicize. There's wisdom to decentralization.

No, it's not right to declare expert opinion to be the same as simple opinion, fad, or partisan propaganda. It is right to expect experts to change their guidance as they gain greater understanding of the objective truth of their fields.

Nor is it right to equivalate different fields of study, such as nutrition and economics. Some fields of study are much more stable than others due to the ease of proper sampling, hypothesis testing, and experiment replication. If you want to try to discredit economic experts, then focus on their failures, not the failures of other fields.

Last but not least, your claim that it is easier to corrupt and politicize centralized power is meaningless. Power only exists when it is centralized. Decentralization simply means creating multiple smaller groups of centralized power.

I think that the benefits of centralization, such as standardization of norms and forced unity, have proven far more beneficial to society as a whole than any increased chance of corruption.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#113

Post by stale2002 »

bostand wrote: post #107
stale2002 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true... Poland has decided to close its borders to immigrants, and the EU wants to fine them 250k an immigrant for it. The whole reason Brexit happened is because Britain wants to implement border controls. Edit, Proof: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/03/eu-to-fine-countr... Just get rid of these fines, and quotas, and give people control of their borders back.

There are today legal border controls from Mediterranean all the way up to the Scandinavia. Blaming EU for your own officials incompetency is soooo uk-2016

Did you read the article? It says it right there. Hundreds of millions of dollars of fines for not doing what the EU says. Those are the facts. Fines. They are real.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#114

Post by niftich »

tshadley wrote: post #61
muninn_ wrote: post #7

You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change. We will see a huge change in European political landscape within the next few years. People have to slowly assimilate into a culture in order to allow for a gradual, peaceful change in that culture. Shocking these types of systems with any sort of migration is a recipient for instability. Please keep in mind that this isn't any sort…

> You can't have short-term, mass migration without having something happen or change. I am generally confused by the claim of "mass migration". As this chart shows, EU migration of 2013 is below the rate of 2002 and is only now recovering from the 2008 economic crisis. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... If there is some problem that mass migration causes, why didn't it happen back in 200…

Same source, I used the graph generator to graph by country and year. The bottom 'light green' bar in each country's section is 2015, each successive bar above is one year prior.

http://imgur.com/a/od7Hi

You can see, in 2015, very notable increases in (in)migration rate for Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Slovakia, and Estonia. You can also see Italy's huge 2013 spike (in magenta).

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#115

Post by krona »

adrinavarro wrote: post #30
powertower wrote: post #4

edit: -deleted- this thread has been moved from the front-page, back 5 pages. There is no point making (nor leaving) good arguments in dead threads that no one can see nor take part in.

Huh? It's about creating an identity, a single market, and in the process, creating peace. I don't feel it is attempting to destroy national identity, if anything, it allows it to thrive (as long as it is compatible with the EU idea). Same goes with individual and national rights. EU policy provides a common framework, and if anything, it only overpowers states in favour of its citizens (see ECJ).

> It's about creating an identity

Sorry, that sounds like socialist nonsense.

> A single market

The single market was and is designed for a collection of industrialized nations that no longer exist. 2/3 of the EU economy today is driven by services (80% in the UK) and yet there is no single market in services worthy of the name.

Even the EU commission admits that the single market is a dysfunctional mess; of course their answer to the productivity problem Europe has is 'more single market!'

> and in the process, creating peace.

It's only been through the interests of the US that peace has been maintained. The expansionary EU threatens that.

> it only overpowers states in favour of its citizens

In what world is it a good idea that unelected and unaccountable judges can overpower the elected and accountable governments of member states?

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#116

Post by gambiting »

stale2002 wrote: post #110
gambiting wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing here that it's not "EU vs EU member countries" - members do come up with, and vote on ideas. It's not like evil EU parliament said that everyone has to take immigrants, so everyone now has to and that's it. The move came about because of the flood of immigrants coming to Italy and Greece, mostly - and serious concern that neither one of those two countries can deal with the problem on their own.…

It is not the EU telling these countries what to do. It is other EU countries telling other EU countries what to do, just because they have more votes. What if one EU country wants to do something else? Can't different EU countries just choose to do their own thing, and be ruled by their OWN population, instead of people in Germany deciding what happens to people in Poland? If greece doesn't want to deal with these i…

Ugh. No, it's like a group of people deciding to do something together. Sometimes you don't like what the group is doing,but it's usually better to be in it than outside of it. I personally would love for EU to unite even further,just call it United States of Europe and stop saying that it's German people telling Polish people what to do or vice versa - it doesn't matter, or at least I wish it didn't.

And I'm sure you know very well that "closing borders" wouldn't do a thing when immigrants arrive via boats and land on your beaches asking for asylum. You just can't send people back to active war zones, and that has nothing to do with EU regulations.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#117

Post by 0xD3ADB33F »

pound wrote: post #15
akjainaj wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in one of the PIGS, I can tell there's not much going on here about leaving the EU. Nobody has seriously brought it up. That said, I see important problems in the EU going on now that must be solved: 1. I know the EU is completely against the "two-speed Europe". But that MUST be put in place if the EU is to survive. There's a clear divide between regions in the EU. It is a cultural divide in the way work is se…

for those wondering: PIGS - Portugal, Italy, Greece & Spain (some people jump to comments)

Talk about a loaded acronym.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#118

Post by walterstucco »

stale2002 wrote: post #99
walterstucco wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they won't. You can't cherry pick in this situation. You got free movement in EU because of the Bosman ruling, it's the law, everything less than that is a step back and we can't afford steps back. It's like when your girlfriend asks for some space. It's the beginning of the end and. nothing good can come out of it.

Why not? We can change the law. The people don't want open borders. So change the law to get that. If the EU doesn't, then the whole thing will collapse as we get more brexits. Brexit wouldn't have happened if Britain was allowed to have border controls.

> The people don't want open borders

The people don't want a lot of things.

> If the EU doesn't, then the whole thing will collapse

And then the people won't even have the option of going to Berlin and work as waitress, while people from Africa or middle east will continue to come here, undisturbed, without a super state trying to control the situation.

It's so obvious that the single states can't control immigration on their own.

If that's what they want, they can be my guests.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#119

Post by dkb »

krona wrote: post #95
nommm-nommm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your house/building analogy is flawed because there are extremely significant rules/regulations about what your house can look like and what materials you can use to build it leveed by all sorts of levels of government as well as HOAs. Doubly so if you live in a historical neighborhood. And somehow people do manage to live in skyscrapers without flooding the first floor. I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a curren…

> I'm not sure if anyone ever attempted a currency something like the Euro before. Well, from 1865 to 1927 there was the 'Latin' monetary union, which failed because some countries (e.g. Greece) simply couldn't afford to produce the coinage and instead debased the currency.

USSR had one as well, the Soviet Ruble. You are right about the Latin Monetary Union, it is one of them. There was also the Scandinavian Monetary Union (SMU), and many more.

Re: Is Europe Disintegrating?

#120

Post by dkb »

powertower wrote: post #4

edit: -deleted- this thread has been moved from the front-page, back 5 pages. There is no point making (nor leaving) good arguments in dead threads that no one can see nor take part in.

powertower, If I recall properly, I think that the nature/idea of the EU was from the nazis originally, is that right? Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-...
Post reply on HN