501–510 of 602 posts
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…
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The UK is a much more divided society than Switzerland, in terms of the base level of income and education. The median income in Switzerland is double that of the UK. Education is harder to compare, but you can't really expect the same level of discourse
I remember listening to a Ted talk where the speaker basically said, Get income inequality in check by whatever means and most of your problems go away.
Is that a cause or an effect though? As in, if your society evolved in such that "most problems" don't exist or aren't serious, then maybe as a consequence there isn't a lot of income disparity. But that doesn't necessarily hold in reverse. Making incomes equal by some method doesn't necessarily make the problems go away.
https://philoofalexandria.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/reynolds-...
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The disdain and disgust impressed on the elderly in this issue in particular is distressing. Seeing people advocate for selective voting or implying that the younger persons' views are worth more because of their older countrymen's vicinity to expiration is personally upsetting as a self-loathing Millenial.
I agree with you, I hate seeing comments that are dismissive of those who actually have some experience under their belts and some personal history. You'd think that people who were living and capable of remembering a pre-EU UK would have a better perspective on this particular issue. My personal opinion is that voting age is too young in most countries. It should be upped to 30.
The idea of "One Person, One Vote" and that no one's vote is inherently more valuable that another's, irregardless of that person's gender, age, class, sexuality, mental ability or what have you.
_Stupid_ people being able to vote is a feature. The young and inexperienced being able to vote is a feature. The crotchety old stubborn types being able to vote is a feature. None of these are bugs.
The question of the hour is "What can we do to create a more informed, civically responsible public". To this end my honest belief is to encourage people to stop watching network television and reading editorialized, propaganda clickbait articles from partisan online sources (Your Brietbarts and Salons and Voxes and Gawkers).
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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.
This is a fair point, but the largest issue (IMO) wasn't directly related to communication time...rather it has been the risk of Tyranny of the Majority. Even in the relatively recent founding history of the United States, the Federalist Papers discuss and try to address a variety of issues which can lead to this outcome. And ultimately, I think this is what we see with the Brexit outcome and the current Trump campai…
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I thought it was remarkable that the course of an entire nation can be so greatly changed by a 51.9% victory in a single vote. Seems like such an important change should require a supermajority of some sort. (And, of course, the original choice to join ought to have as well.) People are fickle and easily divided. For normal elections, we hold them regularly, and that gives people a chance to correct their mistakes or…
I'm wondering if someone can fill us in on the history of the UK's entrance into the EU. Was there a vote at all? It seems complicated by the whole European Community thing.
Since 1992, it could be argued that the biggest change to the EU was the Lisbon Treaty. You can read more about it here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lisbon
To be clear, between 1975 and 2016 there were no UK referendums on EU membership, so technically yesterday's vote was the first time the UK public was consulted about being a member of the EU. In contrast to the EU, the EEC was much smaller in scope, though it's clear that the architects behind the EEC always intended it to become a much bigger political player.
"There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection…. The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit."
Jean Monnet, 1943
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> 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…
I am amazed at the low level of discussion in the UK even by their representatives. Here in the US, I find myself wishing political discourse would rise to the level of the UK.
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…
> 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…
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We elect politicians whose full-time jobs it is to understand big and complicated issues, and to decide on our behalf how to deal with them. That includes the right to make and break treaties with other world powers. Why should something like this be any different?
> We elect politicians whose full-time jobs it is to understand big and complicated issues, and to decide on our behalf how to deal with them. But, on Brexit specifically, the British people elected a government that made a campaign promise to hold exactly such a referendum, and to abide by its results.
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I do not think you'll have to explain them that they will be just as welcome as everybody else.
What are you talking about? Prior to Brexit, British citizens could live and work in European countries without qualification. This is not true for the rest of the world.
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This is a fair point, but the largest issue (IMO) wasn't directly related to communication time...rather it has been the risk of Tyranny of the Majority. Even in the relatively recent founding history of the United States, the Federalist Papers discuss and try to address a variety of issues which can lead to this outcome. And ultimately, I think this is what we see with the Brexit outcome and the current Trump campai…
Nit pick: the Roman Empire was founded after the Roman Republic, when Julius Caesar overthrew the senate.
Nit pick: the Roman Empire, in one sense, was founded while Rome was still ruled by the Republic; in this sense, the Empire is the metropole-periphery arrangement with Rome proper ruling as the metropole and the various provinces as peripheries.
In the other sense (the sense of the Empire as a form of government within the Rome rather than the relation between Rome and the provinces), the Roman Empire was founded when Caesar Augustus was granted a variety of lifetime powers by the Senate.
In either sense, it was not founded by (or during the life of) Julius Caesar.