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Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by Spooky23 on Friday June 24, 2016 @12:41PM (#11971244)
I think it's too easy to get lost in the details.

Look at the map. London wanted in. Scotland wanted in. The rest of the country is dissatisfied with their state and want out. Look at the US map and you see similar things.

You can call the populace stupid and ignorant, but by doing so you're displaying your own form of ignorance. Lots of facts and figures and economic models can be used to say that everything is just peachy, but the ground truth tells a different story.

Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by jacquesm on Friday June 24, 2016 @01:43PM (#11971845)
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.
Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by Spooky23 on Friday June 24, 2016 @05:02PM (#11973454)
People react to things in different ways. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend, whether or not that actually makes sense.

Look at the reaction on a forum like this which represents the upper middle class business-oriented citizen towards the societal impact of tech. Globalism is seen as an opportunity here, not a threat. Politicians, media, academia and business have told millions of people that things are great, but they are the problem -- they lack education, skills, wherewithal and have expectations for prosperity that are misaligned with reality.

So they lash out. They think to themselves "If some douche from the Bank of England or the Conservatives doesn't like this, that's good enough for me." That's democracy -- it's a messy business.

Is that a "good" reaction? History will judge. Depending on your POV, the crowd is either wise or rabble. But -- the critique that democracy is somehow broken is an incredible leap of ignorance. We (speaking from the US perspective) have been offered a sham of a democracy that isn't meeting the needs of many. We're very fortunate that we live in an age where peaceful democratic revolution results in a bad day/weeks for stocks. A hundred years ago, you'd have mobs in the streets and soldiers with bayonets shooting into crowds.

Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by zepto on Friday June 24, 2016 @01:50PM (#11971911)
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.
Re:The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after vo... by jacquesm on Friday June 24, 2016 @02:25PM (#11972181)
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 vo... by zepto on Friday June 24, 2016 @02:33PM (#11972243)
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.