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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

#381

Post by zghst »

barnacs wrote: post #275
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 dir…

We cannot trust academia, they are a special interest in their own right. Their power depends on bureaucracy and big government, not to mention that their field is incredibly undemocratic itself, lots of research is funded or excluded depending on the political flavor of leaders.

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

#382

Post by ars »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #252
ars wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the joke, but after having dealt with them, I would personally love it if the government got out of medicare. Just give everyone a voucher and let them buy their own health insurance using it. The amount of paperwork, and details to keep track of and calculate was absolutely unreal. I have BOXES full of paper from medicare, there was so much I could barely keep up. The worst was the arcane and utterly confusing…

Medicare pricing structure are heavily subsidized [indirectly] by commercial insurance plans -- this is one of the reason many providers hate taking Medicare patients. If the govt. just gave people vouchers and the Medicare system dissolved, those people would receive much less care (measured in dollars of care consumed per dollar of insurance purchased.) That might be a good idea. In fact, it is very likely a good i…

That would have other benefits. The reason health insurance in the US is so expensive and complicated is exactly because of how commercial plans fund medicare.

If we stopped doing that hospitals could publish actual prices for procedures - same price for everybody, insurance or not. Then people could actually shop around and healthcare costs would drop.

But today prices have to be secret and impossible to understand or the way commercial plans fund medicare would collapse.

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

#383

Post by zghst »

smhenderson wrote: post #364
zghst wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IMO it was close enough that "the people" did not decide. Roughly half of the people decided. I'm in the US so I am a little too uninformed and probably not heavily affected by this to take one side or the other. But knowing what I know I am surprised that this didn't need a 2/3 majority to pass or something similar. Given the result you have roughly half of the country upset by this and in some areas like Scotland,…

Over 1 million more people decided to leave. Percentages say one thing, but over 1 million people is a huge number.

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

#384

Post by epalmer »

Inthenameofmine wrote: post #165
epalmer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My daughter knows both. She just graduated High School. She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor. While her experience is unusual, the schools here focus on us history and us government history. I do think when I was in high school I learned more about the rest of the world than they do…

> She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor. At least doing auch lobbying and drafting was possible. This would be unthinkable in the EU. The disconnect to even the highly involved politically aware person in the EU to the power structures is huge. In manu cases purposefully and by design so. Aft…

That is sad. In the us it is easy to lobby congress and the senate. It takes coordination and determination. Whether they listen is another story. But my daughter's cause is something that both sides of the isle care about.

Writing the state bill turned out to be easier than we would have thought but it took a lot of presentations and having the right people listening the presentations. She actually had surprising cooperation from a democratic state chairwoman of education and a republican state senator.

The cause is funding for afterschool STEM competitions for disadvantaged schools.

https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?161+sum+SB246

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

#385

Post by thomasahle »

Dr_tldr wrote: post #162

As someone with no dog in this fight, I have to say that many of the pro-stay comments here are dismissive, arrogant, and the epitome of hand-waving "we know best and everyone who disagrees with us is stupid or evil." It's an ugly and insular attitude that is itself usually a sign of ignorance of the other side's arguments and motivations. As a dev, I find it hard to believe that someone who can be so easily blinkere…

Shock, Anger, Rejection, Acceptance.

People just lost a lot of opportunity, unity and economic prospect. Let them be angry for a bit.

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

#386

Post by sergiotapia »

fdsaaf wrote: post #226
sergiotapia wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN users in general lean heavily left (at least publicly).

You have to express leftist sentiment, at least in public, because expressing other views is very bad for your career. And you'd be surprised how big the "public" space is for people who'd like to ruin you for thinking the wrong way.

That's true but just don't say bad things and you'll be fine - right?

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

#387

Post by godgod »

This makes me both sad and mad. We have these same type of un-informed head-in-the-sand, "I don't care unless it effects me" type of people here in America. The citizens of England never got a say when the EU was created and they have no idea that a foreign legislative body full of corrupt grossly over paid bureaucrats are making their laws. The EU is the one world government pushed by the New World Order so I am so happy to see it crumble.

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

#388

Post by arcticbull »

zghst wrote: post #314
arcticbull wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 democr…

What about decisions like electing the leader of the free world? The most powerful person on earth? Should that be left up to every day people? I think that people should be able to make big decisions that effect them. Direct democracy is more useful than ever, the elites use our republic to manipulate people more than ever. They game the system and with no balance or checks on their power.

IMO its as easy for the elites to manipulate the public via media as it is for them to manipulate elected representatives and the latter is easier to address via checks and balances, though nobody seems willing to put them in. Elections are in the public interest so campaigns should be solely funded by the government, not by private backers. Private parties should not be able to run media campaigns on behalf or against individuals. Lobbying would be rendered useless.

Further, certain other countries do not in fact vote directly for their 'most powerful person' -- in Canada, you vote for your representative locally and the party with the most local representatives sends their leader to be Prime Minister, and even there, the Governor General in Right of the Queen has final say just to make sure.

I think as noble as 'I get to decide what matters most' is, it's worthless when issues reach the kind of complexity that requires specialization in your field. As another poster mentioned above, you don't vote on what kind of medicine a child gets, you leave that up to a doctor -- a professional. Now feel free to pick that professional!

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

#389

Post by nzp »

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #307
nzp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we don't remember. It might have to do with the fact Hitler wasn't ever elected for anything. Neither has NSDAP ever had a majority before they took power.

majority had nothing to do with this. You're just trying to deflect the issue. They had the plurality and hitler was their man

I'm not deflecting. Their best result was something over 35 % (don't remember the exact number) of the votes, and that was in the elections before the ones they supposedly won. Democracy failed not because the "general public is too dumb to vote", it's exactly the opposite. It fails when the ruling class overrides the general public's vote, as they did in the March 1933 elections in Germany.

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

#390

Post by zghst »

thomasahle wrote: post #330
chirau wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In it is suggested a form of government called epistocracy. It has a lot of merit in my opinion. The basic principle is 'rule of the knowers'. We elect knowledgeable people into power and let them make decisions. We don't vote on what medication a sick child should get, why should we vote on what remedy a sick economy needs? Let the knowledgeable that we have chosen make the prescription.

We basically already have this. During the economic crisis, there wasn't a lot of voting on how to save the banks. It's interesting whether brexit and trump will really have that much of an effect, or if we are already mostly living in a technocracy. England also has the house of lords.

We should just put machines in charge. I don't trust any humans to rule over me anymore. Power corrupts, absolutely
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