Collective action problems are real. Nation states are a poor way to deal with many cross-border problems, just like individuals without a government is a poor way to deal with many problems in a community. Pooling sovereignty is a bargain: it's trading away freedom on one axis to gain freedom on another - freedom from certain kinds of problems. Whether it's war vs peace, mercantilism vs trade, security, administration of commons - there are real tradeoffs, and real wins to be had from pooling sovereignty.
The single biggest practical loss, that I feel most for the UK, is how her youth will have their horizons cut much shorter. The EU will be just another country; work visas will dissuade millions.
I agree that collective action problems are real and centralized government is one way to address such problems. But selling the E.U. on the idea that it'll only invoke supra-national powers "where actions by individual countries are insufficient" is a bill of goods. The U.S. federal government was supposed to be a narrow one that acted only in specific areas where a national response was necessary (military, trade, foreign policy). But that got obliterated over time because it's much easier to dictate from the national level instead of getting buy-in from dozens of state legislatures.
When everyone agrees on something, you don't have to coerce them. So sure, their sovereignty is pooled.
As soon as someone disagrees on something, they have to be forced to accept the group's decision. Typically there's some sort of horse trade going on so that nobody gets everything they want, because there's several things on the table.
Yes collective action problems are real, but there's no reason the collective needs to be larger and larger and encompass all issues rather than just a subset. Let decisions be made at the local level by default, and the few things that need regional or global action, have a talk about that. If what you're bringing up is compelling, a lot of other countries will agree.
Who decides what is insufficient? When culture and values are different the call on what is insufficient may not work for everyone.
Yet, Britain has done its best to deny the same right to self-determination to its subjects.
Self-determination seems to be an excuse trotted out to support existing power structures. "We should secede from _____ - but nobody should secede from us."
Britain and Ireland, Britain and India, Britain and Scotland... Britain had to be dragged, kicking and screaming through every single one of those conversations about self-determinism.
Everyone joined the EU willingly. The fact that they can leave whenever is further proof that the EU is not autocratic.
- They were formulated as an EU-directive in 2006 (which means every national parliament is forced to pass a law based on this directive)
- The corresponding German law was passed in 2008
- The law was declared unconstitutional in 2010 by the German Supreme court and in 2014 by the EU high court
- Of course the german parliament reintroduced slightly changed legislation in 2015
It basically the same thing that keeps happening within Germany, it seems like the institutions work equally well or badly.
Now what is a problem is that national politicians like to hide behind the EU. That's why you should always check who voted for these things in the council. Usually it's the same people (or at least parties) who later they the EU is forcing their hand.
Note it was not the ECJ which struck down the law first, they did it after the BGB did strike it down, partially because they did not want to get into a fight about who has primacy in decision making I believe (the BGB still claims to have the last word, changing this would be unconstitutional in Germany).
I don't think politicians "hiding behind the EU" is what is actually happening, what actually happens is collusion to shift away power from the people by obfuscation and misdirection. People like Schäuble have active contempt for democracy (According to Varoufakis he told him "Elections can't change economic policy"). See for example this discussion of ECB policies (https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2017/03/14/19258/).
I truly believe the EU has to go, in order for Europe to not further slide into a corporatist neo-liberal nightmare. It is very unfortunate that this push is lead by right-wing nationalists.
When?
Sic transit gloria mundi.
How is that being dragged, kicking and screaming?
Also, I think it's fair to say that Britain leaving the EU is a sizeable enough change to counter the "once in a generation" line — the choice is no longer Independence V status quo of 2014. Especially considering that at least some people voted to stay in the UK in order to remain in the EU.
That's a pretty big change in the game and wasn't really on people's minds in 2014. I certainly wasn't thinking about the EU exit in 2014. In fact, in 2015, a 2016 EU referendum wasn't widespread knowledge.
In fact, I was shocked by the leave vote. Almost as much as the Conservative majority a year before. I'm from Salford too and the vote was a highly Leave. I'm sure those in Scotland felt that more so.
Scotland and NI wanted to stay by large margins, England and Wales to leave by much smaller margins. Were a majority of the four required to pass the referendum, it would have failed on a 2-2 tie.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36612308
Wales voted by a 52.5% to 47.5% margin to leave.
There are very few countries in the world where a non-binding referendum with that kind of margin would be considered a mandate to make a fundamental change to the constitutional basis of the country.
I think if '52-48' is redefined as a 'big margin' then it becomes very hard to define 'a narrow margin' without running into the impact of statistical noise.
Efforts to paint this as purely an English problem are bizare, even in Scotland around a.third of voters voted to leave the EU. Surely that pojnts to huge dissatisfaction even without a majority for leaving?
A major (and perhaps decisive) point in the remain campaign in that referendum was the (quite correct) point that Scotland leaving the UK would face significant risks in remaining in the EU, since other EU members with potential breakaway regions would see that as potentially encouraging their own breakaways.
Had it been known that staying in the UK would guarantee Scotland would be taken out of the EU and not even be in a position to try to negotiate admission, the independence referendum might well have gone the other way.
A second Scottish referendum is absolutely the right call to make and the only reason I can figure that English people are so against the idea, is that this time they expect to lose a member of the union.
It's just not true. People of the European continent have been mingling with each other for about 2000 years. The whole continent's juristic thinking roots in the Roman Empire, so do Romance languages (like Spanish and French). What's more, in the past various countries formed alliances to protect themselves against threats from the orient. There even have been "economic zones" like the Hansa which could be understood as a predecessor of the EU and so on. In short: EU countries do have a lot in common and these commonalities are part of national identities. Countries do also feature peculiarities and these may or may not decay (thanks to the EU). But change is inevitable anyhow.
i.e. why do Italians have milk quotas, spain has orange quotas, but germany has not car quotas? the general feeling is that few are getting the advantages of the free market and many are taking the piss.
on the other hand where's the democracy in the Dublin III agrement? 15 or so states voted to screw the three southern states, of course those kind of provisions gets passed, the majority gets an advantage, but the minority of states having to bear the weight will breed resentement for years to come. and to add insult to perjury now that migrants have forced their way to the other countries they want to renegotiate migrant quotas
this is not the europe that was sold on us, and if it were to be an italeave I'd vote yes in a heartbeat
As for cars, they are decidedly different products than food.
We're not talking about alliances (which happen all the time without political union) or trade areas (which the EU originally was) we're talking about supra-national centralised bureaucracy.
Change is inevitable and it's healthy to have multiple self governed states doing things differently from each other and co-operating from time to time.
A subset of people are being prodded to give up their sovereignty; a significant chunk of folks in the UK actually wanted the EU, most notably immigrants, students, young folks.
The people who tell me that I should be patriotic and culturally identify with them as British are the people I'd want to run a million miles from.
But that isn't a basis for political decisions. The fact that you like the people that you're friends with is no reason to be in or out of the EU.
I presume you have friends who aren't from the EU as well, yet surely you do not believe in closer integration with those countries?
I have a similarly diverse group of friends, but it makes very little difference to what I think politically. For one, I doubt they'll be kicked out, but also I can't make decisions about politics based on a few individuals I happen to know.
Jews voted for Leave more than any other demographic group, even more than whites. Arguing about hypothetical white nationalists is total FUD.
Not at all! To use my Bangladesh example. Bangladesh was founded in 1971 as a secular republic. Pakistan thereafter veered towards theocracy, e.g. adopting Sharia law for criminal proceedings in 1976. Subsequent events have slowly chipped away at Bangladeshi secularism over the years, but had they remained with Pakistan it would have been a lost hope. And as for tribalism being obsolete, I don't agree. There are hundreds of millions of people who think I should be executed for leaving the religion I was born into: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01.... Do you want those folks voting on the laws that govern you? If not, you're not arguing against "tribalism," you're just arguing about where the tribal lines should be drawn.
But that's speculation, neither here nor there. Who knows how it would have actually played out.
I would like to agree with you but there is not evidence that humans have not changed and that
>humans are inclined to form tribes and to fear the other
remains true.
Rather we should accept we are tribal and work to ensure our collaborations, alliances and policies have that in mind. To assume that we, by virtue of just living in the present day with more technology, are more advanced and that we have progressed is a big big error.
Progress is not something that just happens. Progress is not inevitable. Societies do not naturally become more civilised. People need to work to ensure civilisation doesn't fall apart. Progress was made by people, it is the result of actions made.
Your complaint seems like a good parroting of the brexiters "worries", but they are mostly uninformed complaints
"hetrogenous body politic with hundreds of millions of other people with which they share little other than said bureaucracy"
What an ignorant statement. People in the EU share a lot of common values (like the Arts, and Continental Europe has had exchange of people and ideas for a long time). Language is irrelevant unless you (not you) are an ignorant bastard that can't be bothered to learn the basics of the national language of the country you live in (like a certain ex MEP)
> People in the U.K. were very rightfully afraid
I'm sure people on the countryside that gets their information off of tabloids have carefully evaluated all sides of the question. Hopefully they know as well they won't get their budget increase of the NHS (in fact there will be staff shortages), that cost of living will increase and their dole will most likely decrease.
Sounds a lot like the USA.
Think of it like starting a game of Civilization at renaissance/industrial age tech with democratic government on an island with abundant resources and no real enemies.
In Europe, exactly the opposite is happening. People are being prodded to give up their sovereignty to a supra-national bureaucracy, and to be assimilated into a hetrogenous body politic with hundreds of millions of other people with which they share little other than said bureaucracy. People in the U.K. were very rightfully afraid of what that could lead to and decided they wanted to get off that train.