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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

#511

Post by superswordfish »

_audakel wrote: post #465

Going out on a tangent - Would California be more successful leaving the US as an independent country? As things stand, California is currently the eighth largest economy in the world on their own. 17 of the top 30 U.S. tech companies are in California, which should come as no surprise. Tourism, entertainment, biotech, and agriculture are multibillion dollar industries already. Aerospace and defense contracts still r…

I forget the exact amount (it's likely changed), but CA is one state that is subsidizing the rest of the country. It was somewhere in the ballpark of $0.20 received for every $1.00 given.

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

#512

Post by ddebernardy »

boundlessdreamz wrote: post #243
rayiner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is fine. The intellectual class just needs to learn to respect it. There is pretty much nothing that deserves to be decided by the will of the people--their values, their emotions, their world views--than the question of "what body politic do I want to belong to?" The deep irony of the anti-Brexit narrative is that the same people would froth at the mouth if you said "India would've been better off economic…

I know the point you are trying to make but India wouldn't have been better off economically under British Empire. British decimated the Indian economy http://www.thehindu.com/2005/07/10/stories/2005071002301000.... As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6 per cent in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3 per cent…

That's comparing apples to oranges though. China was also huge at the time, and no Europeans were there to screw it over. Yet, they were irrelevant by the turn of the 20th century.

(If you really want something to point fingers at, try the habits that stem from the cultural and religious landscapes. You can't erase millennia worth of those overnight.)

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

#513

Post by jacquesm »

zepto wrote: post #480
jacquesm wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major fallacy at work here is that in-or-out may not be correlated with solving the problems of the dissatisfied portion. Out may well make their problems worse rather than to improve their state.

It may make their problems worse, but the status-quo has been failing to make things better for decades, so they are willing to take a risk.

Change for change's sake is rarely a good idea. It helps if you have a good idea that things will be better after the change you propose because you can see some causal chain leading to that better situation.

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

#514

Post by hansjorg »

TWAndrews wrote: post #460
sspiff wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Swiss system is pretty good, but I don't know about the Swiss people. Are they smarter than other citizens? Are they less vulnerable to populist propaganda? I also think this is something that works best on "smaller" scales - that is, not on the scale of France, or the UK, or Germany, but on the scale of Switzerland, Luxemburg, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, ...

Swiss culture is very small-c conservative, with heavy value on making rational, pragmatic decisions. It is no surprise that they have a system which reflects that, and performs well for that population.

Very conservative and paternalistic. Swiss women only got the right to vote in 1971. Is that indicative of a rational population?

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

#515

Post by zepto »

jacquesm wrote: post #509
zepto wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are millions of non-EU born people living and working on EU soil today, the future will not suddenly change to where UK citizens will not be given the same opportunity to move to the EU than we afford the rest of the world.

Still, what are you talking about?

British youth will have worse opportunities for working in Europe than they now do, and parents who voted to leave will have to explain that to their children.

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

#517

Post by jacquesm »

zepto wrote: post #515
jacquesm wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are millions of non-EU born people living and working on EU soil today, the future will not suddenly change to where UK citizens will not be given the same opportunity to move to the EU than we afford the rest of the world.

Still, what are you talking about? British youth will have worse opportunities for working in Europe than they now do, and parents who voted to leave will have to explain that to their children.

The original comment read:

> they probably won't be allowed to go and live in Europe for a bit when they hit their 20s anymore.

You write:

> British youth will have worse opportunities for working in Europe than they now do

Which is something else.

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

#518

Post by thrillgore »

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…

It's the same with the Populism/Trump people and their counterparts in the US. Nobody wants to discuss a solution. Minds have been made up and if you don't agree with them, its all safe spaces, "neener neener neener cuck" and all that crap that goes with it.

For a species that imbibed itself with the idea of the republic, we certainly like to squander that gift.

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

#519

Post by zepto »

jacquesm wrote: post #513
zepto wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may make their problems worse, but the status-quo has been failing to make things better for decades, so they are willing to take a risk.

Change for change's sake is rarely a good idea. It helps if you have a good idea that things will be better after the change you propose because you can see some causal chain leading to that better situation.

This is only true if you are in a position of having enough power and resource to perform that analysis.

If you don't have that resource or power, change for change's sake is rational.

Put another way - when you know your leaders are taking you in the wrong direction, then a random alternative is a rational choice if it is the only other option.

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

#520

Post by cookiecaper »

lichform wrote: post #503
cookiecaper wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But see this is the same issue, just in the opposite direction. I don't understand what relevance any of this identity politicking has to do with electorates. 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 in…

I don't agree that allowing the young and inexperienced to vote is a feature. Inexperienced people make bad long-term decisions simply because they don't have the history to draw likely conclusions from. There's nothing wrong with that and there's nothing that can be done about it; it's simply a function of age, which no one can change.

It seems accepted that a baseline amount of experience should be necessary, which is why we have a minimum voting age in the first place. I believe that the baseline is too low (and that it was intentionally lowered to more easily allow charlatans to acquire power).

I agree that telecommunications, and especially television, have had a serious negative effect on the political discourse and that we need to devise a way to make people less vulnerable to them. Things were much different when you had to read someone's pamphlets and evaluate their proposals to decide if you supported them v. watching them wink at you on TV.

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