Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being "the best wrestler" is basically Trump's campaign strategy so that concept may well be tested soon
This will no doubt give Trump some twitter scale ammo, given his bickering with the UK, who discussed banning him.
The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
201–210 of 602 posts
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
That reminds me of certain American voters saying they support Trump just because they want to tear the system down. I don't think they realize what tearing the system down would actually mean.
When you're in an abusive relationship it's always harder to pack up and leave than it is to stay. You've gotta do it though, because the long term consequences of living with your abuser are unacceptable.
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#203I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do. On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling struct…
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#204I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do. On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling struct…
> We haven't figured this shit out yet. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas? As a Swiss citizen, I think the swiss system is very close to perfect in this regard. Sure, emotional and stupid arguments sometimes prevail, but most of the time the people make the perfect decision. Public discourse is most often also very rational, more so than most world parliaments. Irrational arguments…
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#205I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do. On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling struct…
Every citizen takes a standardized test when they reach the age of majority, preferably Raven's matrices. This test would be used for scholastic and career purposes, aside from government.
A representative body of 150 people is randomly selected from those in the top 0.1 percent every N years. The IQ test filters for intelligence, obviously. Random sampling serves as an anticorruption mechanism, increasing the cost of influencing leaders before they are elected. It also strongly reduces the incentive to game the test. And unlike most other election procedures does not maximally select for those most interested in fame and power.
These representatives are given very, very high salaries so there is significant incentive to take the position.
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We haven't figured this shit out yet. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas? As a Swiss citizen, I think the swiss system is very close to perfect in this regard. Sure, emotional and stupid arguments sometimes prevail, but most of the time the people make the perfect decision. Public discourse is most often also very rational, more so than most world parliaments. Irrational arguments…
Switzerland is also much smaller than the UK or California in most respects.
This comes up all the time, especially in "Why can't the US do X?" discussions but isn't it just the equivalent of shouting down with "That will never scale!"
Of course it might not be exactly the same. Maybe the bigger country will need more servers spun up or a tweaked algorithm (to continue the analogy), but just saying a country is smaller doesn't mean things are a No before even being tried. I'm assuming there were railroads across other smaller countries before the US had the transcontinental railroad too.
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#207I don't get it - this is a prime example of democracy in action so why so much outrage? Do you rather want to live in technocracy/totality and allow voting "properly profiled" people only? "USSR is a great idea" anyone?
Get over it, as much as shocking it can be to you. You can't always profit from every democratic decision, even if you feel it's the only correct one. Just accept other people desire something else and pick up your next fight properly so that you won't be as shocked as now and completely unprepared. And next time vote politicians into office that actually have brain and don't risk everything for their own personal agenda. It's just grotesque.
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you're in an abusive relationship it's always harder to pack up and leave than it is to stay. You've gotta do it though, because the long term consequences of living with your abuser are unacceptable.
Of course, we're talking about one of the largest/most functional nations in the history of the world not domestic abuse.
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the contrary, the fact the EU had enormous power over British people, yet barely anyone knew what it was, what it did, or why it was important, was a compelling reason for the UK to leave.
"Enormous power"; do not paint it as if it were a confederacy. The EU has been a scapegoat in Britain for decades. The elites used it to justify many a policy that would hurt the middle class, while pushing for more and more liberalization once in the EU parliament. The average guy in Britain is just as much at fault here for not following what has been happening. They kept reading their fucking tabloids, the reality…
Au contraire, mon frère. There were compelling reasons for the UK to leave the EU, they're just clearly reasons you either don't know about or don't care much about.
To give one example, the Five Presidents report from 2015 made it clear that there would be a push towards greater integration of the Eurozone, and there were fairly clear implications for what this would mean for the UK.
https://euobserver.com/economic/129218
""The world’s second largest economy cannot be managed through rule-based cooperation alone," says the report, drawn up by the heads of the European Commission, the EU Council, Eurogroup, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank (ECB)."
"The eurozone “will need to shift from a system of rules and guidelines for national economic policy-making to a system of further sovereignty sharing within common institutions, most of which already exist and can progressively fulfil this task," it adds."
""In practice, this would require member states to accept increasingly joint decision-making on elements of their respective national budgets and economic policies.""
"These changes should be possible witin the current EU treaty but other ideas such as eurozone finance ministry by 2025 are likely to require treaty changes.
“Euro area member states would continue to decide on taxation and the allocation of budgetary expenditures according to national preferences and political choices. However, as the euro area evolves towards a genuine EMU, some decisions will increasingly need to be made collectively while ensuring democratic accountability and legitimacy.”"
So with all that in mind, you can see that 'rule-based co-operation' was seen as not effective enough, and that moves were being made to set up a EU Treasury, which would control taxation throughout the Eurozone. The UK would clearly have been marginalised at this point, as the Treasury would be incentivised to make sure investment from Eurozone countries stayed within the Eurozone. However, even with this compromised position, they wouldn't have been able to strike new trade deals on their own terms as the responsibility for doing so had been taken over by the EU.
This is just one example of many, and I'd say the democratic issues in the EU were even more problematic than the financial ones. You can try to pretend that Leave voters were uninformed if it makes you happy, but there were legitimate concerns about the EU, including concerns that had nothing to do with racism.
Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people in the US don't know how good they have it and what it means to be under a true abusive and police state.
I think a big chunk of Americans almost want it to be a police state, so they have something to fight against. It makes me think of Sam Altman's recent article about Trump. He said he was taking some risk by writing that, and some commenters here praised his bravery in taking a public stand on this. It's ridiculous. Bravery would be a prominent techie taking a stand for Trump. He's not going to suffer any consequence…
No, I don't feel comfortable writing this comment. For the record, I don't like Clinton or Trump. But it's better for the rest of the world for Clinton to lose.