Brexit

I'm actually in England right now.

Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market

CRAP. I am going to have a drink and let this whole thing blow over. But if Boris becomes PM I am pulling everything that is headquartered in the UK.

wearymicrobe wrote: Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market Don;t look at the market, don;t look at the market CRAP. I am going to have a drink and let this whole thing blow over. But if Boris becomes PM I am pulling everything that is headquartered in the UK.

Bugger, you made me do it didn't you.

The Onion is absolutely on top of this at least!

EDIT: And how!

Haha, the EU leaders' statement on the matter is pretty much "don't let the door hit you on the way out." They managed to inject a tiny bit of diplomatic politeness in but only begrudgingly.

As a European anglophone I have some opinions on this issue, which I will elaborate on in more detail when I've had breakfast & more coffee. Suffice to say it's not the will of "the people" and was very much the will of some people overriding the will of others. It was a really narrow decision and voted for mostly by the older generation (45+) and overwhelmingly against by the younger generation ... and London, and Scotland, and Northern Ireland. It was a vote based on xenophobia, bullE36 M3 "nationalism", and a perceived sense of nostalgic past greatness that doesn't stand up to fact (let's face it, Britain's economy was pretty much in the toilet from the end of WW2 until the Thatcher era, by which time they were well established in the EU already.)

In my mind this is the perfect example of how large scale modern "democracies" utterly don't work. You can't make one decision like this and force it to be "right" for 65 million people (or 500 million people in the EU for that matter) and expect everyone who didn't like it to just roll with it.

David S. Wallens wrote: I'm actually in England right now.

Are you at Goodwood FOS?

That event is a sensory overload.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/06/24/480949383/britains-google-searches-for-what-is-the-eu-spike-after-brexit-vote

Jay wrote: In my mind this is the perfect example of how large scale modern "democracies" utterly don't work. You can't make one decision like this and force it to be "right" for 65 million people (or 500 million people in the EU for that matter) and expect everyone who didn't like it to just roll with it.

Jay, what's the alternative? And (I'm not disagreeing with you just conversing) I think you're saying that it was wrong for the decision of the majority who voted to be forced on the those who voted to stay EU. What's the difference between that and the majority of the EU imposing their rules on England?

In reply to mtn:

That is scary but not that unexpected, we do the same thing.

The idea just hit me, what if instead of an electoral college putting weight in poorly populated areas to balance highly populated area, we weighted age groups stronger based on number of years of life expectancy.

Not a dramatic weight, but just enough that in 50/50 counts, it would bump up the count with younger voters.

Imagine the irony of comments like "for last 50 years the young vote has messed up our country."

pointofdeparture wrote: The Onion is absolutely on top of this at least!

Funny, but seems to be off point. I am pretty sure he supported staying in, and the country went the other way. Not really stepping down for a mistake (other then not being convincing enough?), but more of "the country doesn't want my direction, so I will step down". Still not something you normally see though.

In reply to aircooled:

The mistake he made was mentioned earlier in this thread. He went far beyond simple support of staying in an attempt to jab his political rivals, basically setting up the whole thing as a confidence vote on his leadership, and the whole thing failing has now made him look like a fool. He made a really awful choice by becoming so intertwined with the vote, and is now living it down.

BoxheadTim wrote:

bastomatic wrote: I think Cameron steps down because this is basically a vote of no confidence in his leadership. He strongly backed Remain. It wouldn't make sense for him to be the one to organize the exit.

From what I've been able to piece together not living in the UK anymore, one of the reasons Cameron agreed to the referendum in the first place was to pull out the rug underneath what I consider the nutso fringe of the Tory party who've been agitating against and blaming the EU for anything from the existence of human rights legislation (which actually isn't the fault of the EU...) to the weather. That just blew up in his face in a spectacular fashion. Hence, as Adrian says it's also a massive no-confidence vote for Cameron.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Yup, he set up the referendum as a confidence vote in himself and originally expected it to be a vote to remain by a 10 point margin.

mapper wrote:

Jay wrote: In my mind this is the perfect example of how large scale modern "democracies" utterly don't work. You can't make one decision like this and force it to be "right" for 65 million people (or 500 million people in the EU for that matter) and expect everyone who didn't like it to just roll with it.

Jay, what's the alternative? And (I'm not disagreeing with you just conversing) I think you're saying that it was wrong for the decision of the majority who voted to be forced on the those who voted to stay EU. What's the difference between that and the majority of the EU imposing their rules on England?

The alternative - I would say is not organizing society into massive power blocks of 10s or hundreds of millions of people, and expecting them to all live by one rule from the top down. Not tying people to the territory they're born in and making draconian and asinine rules restricting their natural right to free movement. And most of all, not co-opting people's sense of self and supplanting/replacing it with an utterly fabricated, propagandistic "national identity" that makes them think the first two things are somehow "natural" or "right" and will always be there.

The thing is we have no idea what this alternative society is gonna look like, but we're already halfway there. 19th century ideas of nation-states & nationality are dead in the water and have been for years. We're in the middle of a full-scale collapse of the E36 M3sack world our grandparents' masters tried to build, but we're just not seeing it because it's collapsing out of apathy instead of revolution. Kids born in the 2020s are gonna look back as young adults and go "wtf were they thinking?? How did that system even exist??"

Sure the "brexit" vote was sparked by misty-eyed nationalism from the older generation who can't accept that, but IMHO the fact that it was so clearly split along demographic lines is a good example of how the old power blocks are failing. In reality a 51.9% "leave" vote (agreed to by barely over 25% of the population) means jack squat in terms of what "the people" wanted.

What Jay is referring to is know as The Tyranny of the Majority. It's one of the basic concepts that the system in the US was designed to avoid.

The EU has a ton of problems but in some ways they're actually trying to bring on change and improve society. It's much less "top down rule from Brussels" and more of a framework for getting a bunch of narrow-thinking insular "leaders" in some capital cities to agree on things and talk to each other, sometimes to the benefit of their peasants. Things like the free movement of people & goods between member territories and open borders are a HUGE deal, and a massive departure from recent history in the region.

So... the EU wants to be the like the US. Each country (state) under common rule buy has their own govt and open borders to one another, but not to other non-countries (Canada/Mexico). So basically, the UK is acting like the confederates during our civil war.

MAnkind is doomed to repeat our history.

Bobzilla wrote: So... the EU wants to be the like the US. Each country (state) under common rule buy has their own govt and open borders to one another, but not to other non-countries (Canada/Mexico). So basically, the UK is acting like the confederates during our civil war. MAnkind is doomed to repeat our history.

No, the EU wants a Kingdom, well an oligarchy really. The UK is us in 1776. The EU folks are taking without giving, loving the whole 'taxation without representation' stuff.

tuna55 wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: So... the EU wants to be the like the US. Each country (state) under common rule buy has their own govt and open borders to one another, but not to other non-countries (Canada/Mexico). So basically, the UK is acting like the confederates during our civil war. MAnkind is doomed to repeat our history.

No, the EU wants a Kingdom, well an oligarchy really. The UK is us in 1776. The EU folks are taking without giving, loving the whole 'taxation without representation' stuff.

That's not what Jay is saying. I agree with you on htis though. I have read both "sides" of this argument and have to say I agree with their decision to leave and even though it will hurt in the short term, it is the smart decision.

But that is likely the Libertarian in me.

^^ I'm also a libertarian but I think the average person in the UK, as well as businesses & other institutions have FAR MORE freedom if they're free to move around in a common area / open market than if they're confined to a tiny island under insular rulers. A brexit does give the reigning government in the UK more freedom to do what they want, but less for real people.

As usual we're probably both a little bit right and a little bit wrong; this issue is WAY more complex than can be summed up in a few paragraphs on a message board (& way more complex than should be decided by a single 50+1% vote.)

In reply to Jay:

But doesn't giving the govt of the UK more freedom by proxy give the people more power as well? (in theory anyways) At least they have a hand in electing their members of parliament, whereas they have no direct vote in EU matters.

tuna55 wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: So... the EU wants to be the like the US. Each country (state) under common rule buy has their own govt and open borders to one another, but not to other non-countries (Canada/Mexico). So basically, the UK is acting like the confederates during our civil war. MAnkind is doomed to repeat our history.

No, the EU wants a Kingdom, well an oligarchy really. The UK is us in 1776. The EU folks are taking without giving, loving the whole 'taxation without representation' stuff.

...but the UK is a kingdom and is a textbook definition of a very-long-standing oligarchy! =:|

The US in 1776 hadn't voluntarily joined the (then) British Kingdom and it certainly didn't pull their economy out of a deep hole. I really don't understand how you can make this comparison...

Furious_E wrote: In reply to Jay: But doesn't giving the govt of the UK more freedom by proxy give the people more power as well? (in theory anyways) At least they have a hand in electing their members of parliament, whereas they have no direct vote in EU matters.

I don't believe for an instant that governments are remotely representative of "the will of the people" (this vote is a pretty good example of how that worked.) The EU leadership is also 'elected' for what it's worth, every European living in any member state can vote (as I was invited to when I lived there... actually I could probably still vote now even though I'm not living in the EU at the moment, but I can't be arsed.)

I see things like re-imposing visa restrictions to move abroad (note: it's not even remotely clear if that will happen) and re-implementing protectionist measures to keep businesses from doing business in other jurisdictions as HUGE reductions in freedoms, regardless of how much say they have in the (very) local leadership.

bastomatic wrote:

While this is an interesting poll, it does go to show how you can make 'facts' mean whatever you want them to mean.

Instead of focusing on life remaining, a poll that shows years of "living under EU rule" would indicate that people who've been under the "EU rule" the longest want out more than those who haven't dealt with it as a working adult all that long.

ThunderCougarFalconGoat wrote:

bastomatic wrote:

While this is an interesting poll, it does go to show how you can make 'facts' mean whatever you want them to mean. Instead of focusing on life remaining, a poll that shows years of "living under EU rule" would indicate that people who've been under the "EU rule" the longest want out more than those who haven't dealt with it as a working adult all that long.

I was thinking hte same thing, but refrained from mentioning it in my less eloquent tongue. The british have now been under EU rule since the mid 70's. Long before most of these "remain" people were even thought about being concieved.

In reply to Jay:

It's very strange, to many people the whole majority thing seems to be perfectly acceptable to utilize cramming E36 M3 down the minority's throats....doesn't matter what it is about, it's still wrong on all fronts.

I would say this could have a potential benefit to the UK in the long term by not being forced to pay for other member nations' mismanagement of their own finances.....we're looking at you Greece & Spain. It could also blow up in their faces equally as well. Only time will tell.