> The fact that... authoritarian executive.
I concede your point that arguably, the UK is not democratic in that the final word on laws is held by a monarch. Personally, I like the Royal Family on a cultural level and am largely ambivalent on a legislative level because as far as I'm aware, they've never done anything to a bill that gave me cause to dislike them. That doesn't preclude their having done so though.
> You may be able to affect one seat in the House of Commons, but the Prime Minister (and the Cabinet) are determined by an extra layer or two of abstraction (just as EU commissioners and the members of the European Council are chosen).
Given that our general elections are held against parties, there's 1. nomination of a party leader by party members and 2. election of a party by the population. But election of the ruling party is in my mind important but complemented by the real power of the populace in democracies - the power to influence the government through protest, petition the Prime Minister, to write to our MPs, and so on. This is part of the reason I dislike the "distance" between the EU and the public - a protest in a large city is going to definitely get the council/MP's attention and probably get talked about in parliament, but to get the EU to act it needs to be passed on by the MEP and then the other nations (all of whom are still separate entities with their own concerns) need to express interest in solving the problems of the protesting nation. Plus any motion has to go through the "democratic deficit" portions of the EU.
I suppose at the root of my issue is that the EU is made of nation states that are vastly different both culturally and economically. Within the UK there's a lot of difference of opinion, but we're still bound by the same culture, land mass and national economy, so that helps to hedge the divisions between us (North/South, England/Scotland/Wales/N. Ireland, London/Everywhere Else etc). We can have internal disagreements but that bond still exists. I don't harbour any dislike or ill will towards the other European nations (some are strangers to me, others I really love), but I recognise that they have little reason to sacrifice their interests to support Britain and we have little reason to sacrifice our interests to support theirs. This is where international agreements work better than a shared supranational entity - we can find mutually beneficial agreements and are never forced to go along with something we dislike that another country wants. I think this is why the UK is known in the EU as having been a royal pain - we keep demanding exceptions and concessions and different rules, because we just aren't that similar to Germany or France or Belgium or Italy. I guess it comes from being an island nation.
> If non-EU member... next year.
And that's a good thing, if we can negotiate such a deal to our benefit as a sovereign nation. My issue is where Britain has to sacrifice its interests for the sake of other nations, when we get such a small say in the decision. To be honest, I would prefer it if this "coming together based on mutual interests, not hierarchical authority" were to operate at even more local levels, but the nation-state model isn't something that's likely to devolve any time soon.
> The existence of... its jurisdiction.
I'll concede you that point. The point I was trying to approach rather ham-fistedly is that the natural rights to the UK's resources are (from what I can see) being packaged up and sold off, to the detriment of the British fishing industry. If Britain were to do that as an independent entity it would still suck but at least you could be reasonably sure (corruption aside) that it was in exchange for something that would, in return, net-benefit the national economy. When it's the EU doing the bargaining, the benefit we get in return isn't so clear. Is the EU trading British waters for German access to Norway's market? It would be conspiratorial to suggest an explicit example like this were literally true, but the prospect is there.
> Is it... a member of the EU:
First off, there's a miscommunication occurring here - I was trying to say that EU trading off British fishing rights isn't benefitting Britain. Of course, collective bargaining nets the EU as a whole a stronger bargaining position. However, when a large entity is negotiating for a deal that spans each of its member states, each with different interests, you have to wonder whether the benefits that reach the states are better than those they would have negotiated if you were doing so independently. You get a bigger slice of pie, but it's no longer your favourite flavour.
On the issue of independent trade deals, I know that we can make our own deals still but there are confounding factors. If the EU negotiates as a bloc, how hard is it for us to reject a proposal? If each member state can reject a trade agreement then you're not really negotiating as a bloc because the benefit to the trade partner of uniform access is no longer there. Also, if we make an independent trade deal does that cancel, supplement or supersede the deal that nation has with the EU? Say, the EU negotiates a steel market with India. Is the UK still free to sell bulk steel to India for less than the EU? I can't really give any answers here as I'm not well versed in the topic, but then that's part of the problem with the referendum - it's impossible to have a deep enough knowledge of the EU's operations to make a fully informed vote.
> As for option 1, ... even British workers.
I wasn't claiming that my cases 1 and 2 were definitive, real life is always more complicated than that. More that the logistics of Norway fishing British waters don't make much sense compared to Britain fishing British waters. If Norwegian companies are indeed selling to British markets, using British workers and British boats, doesn't that mean that they're doing nothing but capturing the profit for their own economy? That still strikes me as a net negative compared to a British company doing the same.
> If Norwegian companies really have increased costs, then presumably their bids for fishing rights are less competitive than the bids of British companies, in which case you have nothing to worry about.
If it really is an open market, you would expect that British companies would win out given their proximity to the waters in question, and cost-free access to the nearest fish and job markets (given presumably there is at least some cost in foreign boats selling in British markets and hiring British fishermen/women). So then, where is this unexpected result coming from?
Fundamentally though, I don't think the price of fish to the consumer is the metric to be optimising for, which is the metric that a totally free globalised market will optimise for. There's also local employment, taxes, secondary sector benefits (as you mentioned, using British boats for example). Probably more beyond that. I don't see how this combined tally could possibly be higher when using a foreign company. Thus, offering our waters to another country should fundamentally come with a return that is greater than the loss of these benefits. This can be controlled for when negotiating individual agreements on a nation-state level. When the EU does the negotiating, not only does the net effect just have to benefit the EU as a whole, but it's hard to see how and whether the return comes back to us at all. Even if those benefits are redistributed one-for-one back to the put-out country, you're basically just implementing the trade agreement system with extra steps.
Having thought through the trade issue, I think it at least in part comes down to a trade-off of opportunity cost against collective bargaining + administrative overhead that cannot really be quantified. But then, that's a common thread of EU debates - the system we're talking about is so large and its concerns so diverse that in a finite timespan you can only really talk about ideals and principles. Any argument about specific industries, agreements, laws etc can be countered by another like example that is perceived to have a countering or exchanged effect.
I'm glad we're having this discussion, I feel like I'm learning a lot about both my position and yours.
[edit]
I've had to abbreviate your quotes because the comment was too long otherwise. Hopefully nothing is lost in translation.