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The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

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Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#271

Post by brewdad »

kosmic_k wrote: post #184
grive wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

There has been a mood that the EU has benefited many of those who were more educated and better off while many blue color working class members of British society were left very much behind. Sure there's the immediate market shock of a decision the market didn't expect, but we can't say for sure that end result in one, two, or five years will be more negative than positive for those Britons.

Are you saying the UK will be better off without a "successful class?"

Many of those highly educated will migrate to the continent. The working class voters who sided with Leave have shot themselves in the foot.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#273

Post by Zenst »

ohitsdom wrote: post #238
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely dishonest and dismissive to say that xenophobia is the main reason they want to leave, and that attitude is what pushed people to vote leave

> that attitude is what pushed people to vote leave People thinking that the Leave camp was xenophobic pushed Britains to vote Leave?

Correct, after all had too much from the so called left wing just dismissing the people's concerns via just labeling and dismissing the people and ignoring the concerns.

After all when has picking out the few individuals and projecting that upon the many ever worked out well? As that is discrimination and too what agenda. To project the migrational bias for Europeans at the expense of allowing people from other countries to come to the UK. That if anything is more xenophobic and discriminatory in nature than the leave side and sadly seems more common with those who wanted to remain.

But been way to much name calling by pro-EU groups and indeed the EU leaders themselves over the years and to what effect. Highlighting they are not only out of touch with the people but happily ignore them.

how else can one explain why as a European I have yet to find one person in favour of TTIP and that alone indicates the EU listerns to corporations and ignores the people more than anything and that needs to change, to reform and improve.

The EU now has an opportunity to improve itself for the betterment of the people or it can carry on with its model of alienating the people it supposedly serves.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#274

Post by henriks »

mr_sturd wrote: post #69
a-priori wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, perhaps, it's a compelling reason why things like this shouldn't be decided by referendum.

There's nothing wrong with having a referendum over it. But a horrible media industry has made a circus over the entire thing, leaving many people misinformed.

But that is exactly what is wrong with having a referendum over it. The circus is inevitable, as are emotional arguments abused by populist politicians. Some matters shouldn't be decided by which side of an argument happens to have hired the better team of PR consultants.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#275

Post by barnacs »

netcan wrote: post #82

I'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…

Democracy can work but we all need to practice and support it.

The citizens need to have leftover mental energy and time from everyday life to think and learn about politics, form opinions and engage in discussions with each other. Academia needs to be heavily invonved to provide unbiased, politically independent facts, pros and cons for each choice. And there may be a role for online platforms as well to support direct democracy, proving information and a forum for discourse.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#276

Post by Inthenameofmine »

mstade wrote: post #220
Inthenameofmine wrote: post #145

Earlier 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…

> Direct democracy is something that has to be done regularly [...] I think there's a lot of truth to this. When referendums are seldom, I believe there's a real risk of them turning into spectacle. (And at worst, a weapon for use by nationalists and fascists, like what happened in Germany in the 30s.) When they are regular, and limited, and like in Switzerland not something pulled on a whim but actually requires som…

> When they are rare, and limited, and like in Switzerland not something pulled on a whim but actually requires some work to call, they might just work.

In Switzerland you essentially vote on 2-5 issues every quarter. I think this very regularity has educated the people.

It also helps that by law, if you vote on a proposal that would increase spending, you aso vote on how much your taxes increase. In the case of the Gotard Tunnel it was 1.6% increase in income tax for several decades (if I'm not mistaken). Swiss even vote on buying fighter jets, etc. You would be surprised how well it works.

All that said, the swiss constitution actually states that it is the job of the government to make sure the people have a good standard of living. So many social policies which would be difficult to get through constitutionally in lets say the US are rather simple in the Switzerland.

My only big nitpick in the swiss system is the lack of minority protection an little to no checks and balances by the supreme court on referenda.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#277

Post by 27182818284 »

gshulegaard wrote: post #254
27182818284 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 smal…

It was my understanding that the effectiveness of direct democracies has been inversely related to size of population throughout history... So, specifically in the context of discussing direct democracy, size does matter.

That is a good point, but, how many of those democracies took place in the era of fast communication by locomotive, telegraph, email, SMS, the long distance phone call, Skype, and others? Surely there is a difference between the Roman Empire being stretched and sending messages by foot and FDR addressing the US by radio.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#278

Post by banach2 »

mc32 wrote: post #9

Isn't that expected? People who voted for the establishment status quo want to know what might happen in the years to come now that the vote has gone against them. Voting to stay meant no change, therefore they knew more or less the outcome, but now that the outcome is opposite their votes, they want to look into the repercussions --this informs that it's likely they stay vote didn't investigate the alternative befor…

With the amount of easily consumable and manipulative propaganda going around it's quite easy to make a misguided vote without realising the implications. It's not like voting to leave takes much effort.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#279

Post by ianai »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #205
netcan wrote: post #82

I'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…

My favored election procedure works like this: 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…

I find it silly that you're so willing to do away with voting without entertaining changing the voting system itself.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#280

Post by arcticbull »

zghst wrote: post #174
netcan wrote: post #82

I'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…

You're against democracy because people had the right to decide what was in their interest and not the government or big business??

My take on it is that direct democracy doesn't make sense for this type of complex and nuanced decision. The general population isn't in the business of politics and scare tactics on both sides aren't going to educate them on the nuances and detailed implications of a decision like leaving the EU. That's why we vote for representatives who make it their job to understand, and vote accordingly -- representative democracy and direct democracy are two different things.

People feel qualified to weigh in on any political issue because that's always been that narrative. I see it asking the general population, without any further information to vote one day or whether Apple should move factories out of China. You know literally nothing about what's going on, so how could you possibly make that decision for Apple? That's up to their board.

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