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

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

#261

Post by white-flame »

mc32 wrote: post #117
jacalata wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an even faster growing trend of people who campaign on really explicit "stop immigration, prevent foreigners from ruining our culture" platforms turning around and saying 'how dare you call me racist!'

Do people call Japan's immigration policy racist? Or do people not bemoan China controlling Tibet because, among other things, Tibet'd lose their cultural identity (this is separate from the valid argument about annexation and human rights issues). What about Bhutan, should we propose they go full globalization and either take on western culture, or Japanese or Korean culture? Fundamentally countries have a right to…

I'm pretty sure most people familiar with Japanese ethnic views & policies consider them racist. The difference is that Japan doesn't have the same stigmas against racism. In western countries where other freedoms are preached and valued, racism is much more hypocritical.

But these immigration and cultural issues aren't necessarily racist. The weight behind anti-immigration movements includes other social/cultural/economic opinions, in addition to flat-out racism.

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

#262

Post by yummyfajitas »

masklinn wrote: post #56
yummyfajitas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like one spouse saying "I'm leaving you, please don't hurt the children". (By analogy, the citizens of Britain/France/etc are the children, who'd like to continue to play with one another, but perhaps one of their abusive parents will use violence to prevent this.)

> It's more like one spouse saying "I'm leaving you, please don't hurt the children". No, it really isn't. > By analogy, the citizens of Britain/France/etc are the children, who'd like to continue to play with one another, but perhaps one of their abusive parents will use violence to prevent this. So the UK left with one of the children and is telling the others they can't see them anymore.

According to you it's the EU who will do these things. Britain and #leave wants a free trade agreement similar to Canada, it's the EU who won't give it to them.

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

#263

Post by rdtsc »

cromwellian wrote: post #128

Right now, among all industrialized economies, there is a crisis happening as deindustrialization is taking place. This has fundamentally altered the assumptions of steady and stable middle class economic growth that was an anomaly mostly between the 1940s-1970s. As a result, people are mad "at the system", what what we're seeing is political movements redirecting public anger at whatever target they wish. In the US,…

> As a result, people are mad "at the system", what what we're seeing is political movements redirecting public anger at whatever target they wish. In the US, anger is being redirected at Mexicans, in the UK, apparently, it's Immigrants and Brussels.

Agreed. This is a very strange time. I think the system went not how people hoped or thought about it. We thought we'd be living in a techno-utopia, with robots giving us massages and driving us to the beach. Instead we got a large wealth concentration at top and people at the bottom wondering what happened to their pensions.

> He's being told that regaining sovereignty, or stemming the immigrant flow will "make Britain great again", but there's no logical connection between A and B

Ok but when he is being told, who tells him and does the one telling him have a plan? That is do the sneaky politician have an ulterior motive, like they need Joe the Used-to-be-factory-worker to vote this way because they hope to $x ? (I don't know what goes there where $x is).

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

#264

Post by SkyMarshal »

Animats wrote: post #48

This may mean the breakup of the United Kingdom, too. Scotland and Northern Ireland mostly want to stay in Europe, and may choose to leave the UK, leaving Britain and Wales as the UK.[1] As a practical matter, it will become harder to do business into the EU from Britain. Visiting the EU from Britain may require a visa, and visiting Britain from the EU almost certainly will. This is really about Keeping Britain White…

>This is really about Keeping Britain White.

Britain has long been home to many non-whites who nonetheless self-identified as culturally and politically British, largely immigrants from their former colonies in India, Africa, Mideast. A telling data point may be, how do long-time non-white British citizens, and other non-white but culturally-identifying British folks, feel about mass immigration? How did that demographic vote on Brexit?

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

#265

Post by yummyfajitas »

groby_b wrote: post #247
yummyfajitas wrote: post #28

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. You make the EU sound like an abusive spouse. "Don't leave me or I'll hurt you!" Do you believe that if the UK leaves the EU, France and Germany will go to war? If not, I don't see how "created to prevent another world war" is relevant.

> Do you believe that if the UK leaves the EU, France and Germany will go to war? If not, I don't see how "created to prevent another world war" is relevant. Directly? No. Trade war between EU and Britain? Might happen. And if the EU doesn't take fairly drastic action to, it will fray further, essentially destabilizing Europe. No war will come from that, either. Not yet. But if the EU were to crumble, it's a good bet…

And no, it's not "Don't leave me or I'll hurt you". It's "we had a contract, you broke it, that means I don't need to uphold my end of it either". That's generally how this whole treaty business works.

It's right in the contract that member states have the freedom to leave.

So tl;dr; Britain should stay in the EU because #remain folks want to start a trade war with them to punish them for leaving? And that maybe this will result in an actual hot war? You seem to be doubling down on my abusive spouse metaphor.

I'm a huge free trader and open borders type. (And also a yank in India, so no skin in the game.) But listening to the arguments of #remain folks makes me think the UK is better off on their own. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

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

#266

Post by rdtsc »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #160
cromwellian wrote: post #128

Right now, among all industrialized economies, there is a crisis happening as deindustrialization is taking place. This has fundamentally altered the assumptions of steady and stable middle class economic growth that was an anomaly mostly between the 1940s-1970s. As a result, people are mad "at the system", what what we're seeing is political movements redirecting public anger at whatever target they wish. In the US,…

Why can't a person be opposed to mass immigration even if it won't bring economic benefits? I'm not in UK frankly, but I'm definitely ready to sacrifice part of my income if that would curb mass immigration. Unfortunately, nobody ever proposed so.

It is interesting that you got downvoted without a reason. You asked a question and it didn't seem obscene or mean. It just didn't toe the line here, and well "down with you!"

I saw someone below basically saying everyone who opposes immigration is a racist deep down. It seems people are pretty angry at the moment, so they jump straight to the "r" word. Can understand that.

Anyway, I see the point. Yeah I am immigrant as well to US. It was a very hard process and very painful, more than it needs to be. But I understand that national identity, culture, borders, are there now and will stay there. Opposing immigration is something countries can decide and should be able to decide one, so yes, I can see immigration specifically being a reason many would vote based on (well, I don't just see, they clearly did vote already).

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

#267

Post by tokensimian »

EdHominem wrote: post #225
theparanoid wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember an issue in Cologne over new years. Economics isn't always the most important.

No, you don't. You remember reading about it on the equivalent of Fox news. There were no mass rapes, gropings, etc. Would you believe the papers if they said Jews were out in force, drinking the blood of your Christian babies? Edit: Oh forgive me for pointing out the blood libel. What could ever go wrong from framing an entire ethnicity for stealing our jobs and raping our women?

I have no idea what your original comment is referring to, but from my perspective you just lost the game of "let's not appear completely insane in front of strangers."

That's an ineffective way of communicating your point.

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

#268

Post by gutnor »

rdtsc wrote: post #256
gutnor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you assume the UK still participate in the single market, then the majority of the stuff you don't like about Europe are still going to be there. Except that the UK would have lost any kind of direct influence on its rules and regulations. Otherwise, the UK will compete against other startup place like Berlin where any European can freely go. That's a huge pool of talent that is no longer directly accessible. Then…

> Otherwise, the UK will compete against other startup place like Berlin where any European can freely go. As a non-EU or non-UK citizen, I guess that's good? It means competition. Perhaps UK would try to make a better environment to attract startups to compete? I don't think it is too crazy of a thought.

That's the other side of the coin. How the UK deals with the increase difficulty to find talent ? It is difficult to predict especially because the Leave politicians that will lead the country have campaigned on immigration control, and immigrant stealing jobs. However they don't really have an agenda and have proven that they are willing to backtrack even on big item like the NHS funding, so who knows ?

Your scenario could happen. The UK could do too little or too late and let the startup market fizzle. Or the UK could simply not care.

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

#269

Post by joeyspn »

dr_ick wrote: post #27
illumin8 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36623723 "American banks JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are able to sell to the rest of Europe from London under special "passporting" arrangements. Even before the negotiations with the EU begin, both have said they may need to move staff to the EU to serve their European customers. JP Morgan alone has warned up to 4,000 jobs could leave the UK. Airbus employs 15,000 people in the UK a…

So no companies have announced they are moving. They are evaluating the situation, as any responsible corporation should. The UK banking system is not about to collapse.

> The UK banking system is not about to collapse.

Santander -20%. Lloyds -21%. Barclays -18%... etc

Nothing to see here, everything is ok...

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

#270

Post by kps »

vonnik wrote: post #253
James001 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it was created to prevent another world war and in that it has succeeded" You couldn't be more wrong here. If anything the creation of the EU makes war much more likely, precisely because of the inevitability of its breakup. The UK is just the first to go, but many more countries will leave too, effectively finishing off the EU project. And with the end of the EU, comes the bitter divorce between European countries,…

Europe's longest period of peace correlates with the existence of the EU. Most EU citizens have never known war. Not knowing what the EU protects them from, they feel they have nothing to lose by leaving it. There is nothing "inevitable" about the breakup of the EU, just as there was nothing inevitable about the Brexit. These departures require massive efforts on the part of small, motivated groups, who rely on enorm…

  > Europe's longest period of peace correlates with the existence of the EU.
Europe's longest period of peace correlates with the existence of the EEC (1957–1993), not the EU (1993–).
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