Edit: Clearly one glass of wine too many...

(then again, who thought we'd have a political article on the front page of HN!)

On the other hand I'm ok with a people's vote.

Maybe it could be better phrased as, "Democracy is better than autocracy, and we think it's crazy to try anything else".

There is certainly in a lot of room for improvement in how we elect leaders and what powers we give them. But, I think the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that dispersed power is better than centralized power. Remember that humanity has in fact tried a lot of variations of democracy and government throughout history. None of us actually lives in a direct democracy today a la ancient Anthens, we live in republics.

To reiterate, my main objection to asserting "democracy is the best" is that it discourages thought about other possibilities.

I don't know what work better. But I do think there are other possibilities. I'm using a somewhat stricter definition of democracy and autocracy. For our purposes, lets say a democracy allows nearly everyone to vote for a person or party that will have complete or nearly complete control over the government. We'll allow exceptions for felons and young people not voting. Lets call countries where one person has full power an autocracy.

I'm not going to give an example of a perfect form of government. But I'll give some bad or half-baked ideas just to illustrate it's possible.

As you mentioned, there's anarchy. Not far from there, you could have rule by corporations, where corporations hire their own internal police force to protect their employees, enforce their rules, and make up for the lack of national government. I know, scary. I said these weren't good ideas.

You could have rule by experts. Technocracy, or something similar. Only economists would vote on economic policy, medical professionals would vote on healthcare policy, etc.

We could say all new laws must be in pursuit of some mandate, such as increasing standard of living for the lowest 30% of the population. Laws that don't work towards this goal could be challenged and struck down in courts. Maybe laws could be proposed by anyone and the most upvoted ones would be considered by the courts.

Maybe direct democracy should be revisited now that we have the internet.

We could allow more departments to operate independently, much like the Federal Reserve Bank does now.

Maybe it's totally impossible to improve on the democracy we have now. I'd still rather not discourage thinking about it.

* No votes, just voluntary interactions

* The people voting on every issue

* The government/representatives being chosen randomly from the people

* Elected representatives being voted for by the people

* Political parties being voted for by the people

Then you have more details like franchise, denizens vs citizens, bicameralism, and more to worry about.

I would also say China today is neither a democracy (as least as you would think) or an autocracy.

China's a pretty interesting counter-example. I don't know very much about their government unfortunately, beyond what tends to make the news.

There are dozens if not hundreds of different types of democracy, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, and many forms of democracy that have not yet been tried. Most of them would be disastrous, for example "direct democracy" as opposed to representative, parliamentary democracy could not possibly work outside of a small village.

But it's odd to look at this as trying something out. As far as I know, no political system has ever been tried out. Okay, maybe you could count the genocide in Cambodia by the Red Khmer as trying out, but even they didn't really have the intention of just "trying out" this new, accelerated path to communism.

Political systems are put in place by emerging elites after a disruptive event (e.g. revolution, war, cataclysm, mass exodus) has taken place.

My objection to refrains along the lines of "democracy is the best system" is that it tends to shut down thought about other possibilities. We were taught from the time we're young that democracy is the best. But in reality, there's been very little experimentation. I'd rather encourage people to think on how we can continue to evolve our forms of government, not just in the details, but all the way up to how we choose our leadership.

I don't know how we'd test them. Computer models? Trial runs in small communities?

I don't know if anyone will come up with anything better. But there are possibilities other than "everyone votes for a leader" or, "one leader has power for life".

Democracy can be damn scary sometimes. The Nazi party was democratically elected. Who's to say that in 20 years, the majority of Americans couldn't be bigoted against some minority?

In such a case we'd probably be fucked regardless of what form of government we had. A dictatorship, monarchy, or oligarchy lets a minority of people do stupid things, and if you have a majority, it's fairly likely there is a powerful minority contained within them.

Note that there won't be a democratic vote on any particular Brexit deal, which is likely to be less popular than the abstract idea of a Brexit. So if a Brexit deal is brokered, there's a good chance it won't be what a majority of people want to do.

That’s a big problem. Voting against something is easy. Agreeing on what a solution is takes a lot more work.

The overwhelming majority of EU citizens did not vote to join the EU, nor did they vote in favour of the Treaty of Lisbon upon which the authority of the EU currently resides.

Nor do any of the citizens of the EU get to vote for the EU executive, or anyone who has any material influence over legislation (their MEP's can't introduce legislation).

In fact, majorities of several EU nations voted against the Treaty of Lisbon after which it was 'passed anyways' (I'm looking at you France), and after which the other referendums were cancelled because the elites knew it would would fail.

And of course UK citizens never voted to join the EU, they voted to join the EEC.

Most EU citizens want something like the EEC, with some nice freedom of movement. They don't want a hard or ideological political union.

Have a look at Pew historical polling, it's interesting [1] - it shows the majority of even very large EU nations actually wary of the EU - up until the 'Brexit scare'. After Brexit, this will continue to languish downward.

The EU has so many existential issues that it's facing, and it doesn't seem to want to suggest anything other than 'more political union' as an answer, which is clearly not it. (See the recent 'twinning' agreement signed by Macron and Merkel last week as an example of trying to get some political momentum going on the pro-EU side).

The EU needs to reform, but it can't unfortunately for a variety of reasons, and I don't see any meaningful path forward.

[1] http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/15/post-brexit-europeans-mo...

For the same reason Scotland cannot leave the UK without a referendum, for the same reason Quebec cannot leave Canada.

The Treaty of Lisbon represented enough change that it was to be ratified by referendum. But guess what? It was voted down too often among the first to hold referendums, so the elite just kiboshed the whole thing. And skipped the referendums knowing they would lose.

Now consider that the French population roundly rejected the treaty [1], and then their government simply changed a few items and passed it anyhow, without again deferring to the people.

Is the 5th Republic even legally legitimate now?

The French Government, acted directly against the will of the the people to devolve signifiant sovereign powers.

It's an appalling and brutal transgression of democracy, and there should be consequences.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...

I believe the EEA is just that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area#Rights_...

Another option is EFTA and bilateral agreements like Switzerland. However, the May government decided not to pursue EFTA membership and Norway isn't that keen since thay're afraid it would impact future EFTA/EU negotiations and they could use some of their current rights.

Of course, the "UK Citizens" are not citizens, but subjects. Of a monarch. Whom they also did not vote for.

In 1649 Charles I of England was executed by order of Parliament. Parliament drew a distinction between the Crown and the person wearing it. Their loyalty was to the Crown. Having killed the King they decided to try being a republic.

Parliament is sovereign. But elected Heads of State are trouble - parliament eventually figured this out and got a new King instead.

The UK has a web site that attempts to help people figure out what they are and what they could transition to. It's insanely complicated.

This is demonstrably false.

+ The UK (like other European nations) has a fairly vibrant democracy, with representatives who make legislation.

+ People know who their reps are, and vote on the basis of party ideals.

+ Governments live and die (i.e. they fall) on votes made by reps.

+ Governments are hugely responsive on many issues, and have no choice but to bend given popular demand.

+ There are popular plebiscites on major issues such as Scottish independence and Brexit.

Contrast that with the EU:

+ Nobody related to creating legislation, or providing strategic or material guidance is elected. Nobody speaking on behalf of the EU is elected.

+ MEP's cannot introduce or amend legislation.

+ Pragmatically, there are very low voter turnouts, and people have generally little knowledge as to who their MPs are, or what the platforms are.

+ There are no popular plebiscites, but worse, due to the above, the EU Executive is notoriously tone deaf to the will of the people. (They just don't care, because they think they are 'right' - which is a natural thing frankly in any body that doesn't have to worry about the status of their power)

+ The legal foundation of the EU, based on various treaties, most notably the Treaty of Lisbon, is on shaky ground. French voters literally voted against the Treaty, and it was enacted anyhow. This is not a 'trade agreement' - this is about devolution of major constitutional powers, so this is a problem. Referendums were cancelled in other nations because they would have been lost.

...

Summary: the UK, much like most other European nations, is considerably 'more democratic' than the EU.

If you're going to take a boldly contrarian stance, the onus is on you to provide the evidence.

Should that be fixed too ?

For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu... (see "ratification")

The EU has a long history of ignoring democratic elections. That, to me, does not seem like a good thing at all, and yet it's becoming ever more clear that if you want the EU to exist at all, ignoring elections will be the cost: Both the current Greek and the current Italian government made promises of leaving the EU to get elected. Both have reneged, but of course other parties are springing up with more forceful leave rhetoric. Now French and German extreme-right parties promise to kill the EU if they get elected, and the more mainstream is forced to also take a more anti-EU stance in each country.

If either France or Germany decides to leave, then the EU experiment is over.

It's quite late for that, since unlike the Brits they also joined the EMU and thus ceded sovereignity to the EU. This is exactly what Margaret Tatcher warned against: a federal Europe by the back door. Also, organizing a referendum on the topic of exiting from the Eurozone is a violation of EU treaties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_withdrawal_from_the_eu...

Other EU exits could be less disastrous if coordinated. For instance if Greece and Italy would leave at the same time and negotiate together. For this they would first need to form an aliance like the Visegrad group. Regardless, everyone would have to suffer in such an event due to lack of credibility in the EU project, lack of confidence in national currencies and the Euro.

If that’s the degree of freedom you need to be happy, you probably need to live somewhere that has ever claimed to offer it. If you’re just convinced of the incompetence and doom of the race then while I can certainly see your point of view and don’t dismiss it, I don’t know that such a perspective is useful in a public policy context as it offers no solutions or hope.

Not accepting that we’re fallible, that principle is subservient to outcomes, and that a 48%-52% split is not exactly a significant minority-majority split seems unhelpful. More, if you see doom around every corner then what’s the harm in another referendum with a better defined question, and better controls on lying, dirty money and foreign influence? Remember that we’re less than a century away from the last time Europe tried to tear itself apart and take the rest of the world with it, maybe some caution is warranted here.

So, we're going to ruin the entire country to get immigration controls (and destroy trade, and cut ourselves off politically, socially, and from the scientific communities, and...) then just leave the border open?

That's like burning down your luxury rental accommodation because you don't like that exact shade of wallpaper, then moving in to a hovel with graffiti on the walls.

I doubt that.

Things would have been much less messy if Brexit had been implemented as a split of the EU, with the UK and Republic of Ireland running their own little 2-member EU government. Scotland could then be allowed to do their split from the UK while remaining in the mini-EU.

The 'war', if it happens, would be a restart of the intractable civil kind among the various NI groups, not EU vs us.

Ireland is a Soverign Country. England made its choice, and now has to live with it. The empire is gone.

Neither the UK or Ireland will ever ever be the ones the enforce the hard border.

It would have to be the EU enforcing it, if that is what their trade deals demanded. And I sincerely doubt that the EU would be happy with the consequences of them stationing troops on that border.

Both the UK and Ireland have stated that they will not be enforcing a hard border.

Literally not enforcing the Irish border and relying on everyone having their paperwork in order when they deliver truckloads of goods or apply for jobs or whatever isn't a completely insane idea. There's a moderate risk of UK tariffs and trade barriers being circumvented by people smuggling Czech stereo systems across the Irish border in an unmarked van and selling them on the streets of Liverpool, but maybe that's okay.

If the EU started allowing shady companies to export whatever tainted foodstuff they happen to have into the UK, we'd see English soldiers at the border real quick.

The west and what it stands for is threatened both directly (Russian involvement in attacking elections both in the US, in the UK with brexit, and elsewhere) and indirectly (rise of authoritarian power/censorship in China). This is ignoring smaller, but still violent direct threats like ISIS.

With the remaining powerful moderates in Europe struggling (Merkel, Macron) and extremists waiting at the sidelines to be elected, increased nationalism and division from brexit could lead to more instability creating a situation where a large scale conflict is more likely or a west that isn't as united and can't respond as well to aggression from Russia.

https://i.imgur.com/PwGHIWH.png

Countries with negative or near-negative per capita growth since 2007 (as of the end of 2018) in nominal terms:

Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, France, UK, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Greece

The sole positive result? Germany, a mere 6-7% GDP per capita growth over a decade. In non-inflation adjusted terms, since 2007. Inflation adjusted those other nations have seen that much larger of a contraction.

That's a recipe for disaster in Europe.

How long can most of Western Europe continue to contract economically while social demands increase with aging demographics? It's fundamentally why France is rioting for these past two months, they're being smashed between high taxes, negative growth, and negative quality of life progress.

The UK's GDP per capita has contracted by 20% since 2007 just in nominal terms. Throw a tiny bit of inflation onto that, and you're looking at the UK losing 1/3 of its economy in dollar terms over ~11 years or so. Continue that process for another decade and the result is predictable: people will freak out in increasingly dramatic ways.

Each and every country would face the same problem, separately and with interesting various plans bbut no negotiation position compared to China or Russia or US. Even Germany or France alone would have serious problems negotiating with these economic powers.

Positive action like promoting internal market, good trade deals, subsidizing and making it easier to run manufacturing again, rebalancing from pure services. Pooling resources. It is what EU all offers much better than any individual country could... even then it it's just not enough.

You cannot outmaneuver 3/4 of the planetary manpower ever without a serious technological gap, and that is closing or already has closed. Even with Russian force and resources they will ultimately fail to dominate. US with their remaining tech lead is already failing...

>a large scale conflict is more likely or a west that isn't as united and can't respond as well to aggression from Russia.

The default foreign policy consensus appears to be that anything Russia does is "bad" and should be opposed, perhaps militarily. This is nonsense, and really is a "Cold War mindset" that is not applicable in a post-9/11 environment.

Freedom of expression/speech, free press, representative democracy, independent court system, individual (women/minority) rights. There are other things like not being a religious theocracy, but I think the first few cover the most general important pieces.

> you make it sound like it was large scale cyberwar, which it wasn't

Evidence suggests it was large scale and directed by Putin through the Russian IRA [1], though it was likely more effective than even they expected (and more of a disinformation campaign than a cyber war).

"But it quickly became clear that the Russians had used a different model for their influence campaign: posting inflammatory messages and relying on free, viral spread. Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone. That was not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential election."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/r...

> Russia would now start a global war in Europe that would very likely go nuclear because ... the West isn't "standing up to it"?

I'm not suggesting they'd start a global war, but they're targeting NATO allied countries by influencing elections towards instability. Maybe it's just to free up access to their funds by trying to get rid of the Magnitsky Act [2], but if they wanted to more aggressively take over Ukraine or do something else hostile increased global instability might lead to something larger.

Obviously these things are hard to predict, but only a couple years prior to WWI people said the connected world economy made large scale conflict impossible. [3]

"A 1910 best-selling book, The Great Illusion, used economic arguments to demonstrate that territorial conquest had become unprofitable, and therefore global capitalism had removed the risk of major wars. This view, broadly analogous to the modern factoid that there has never been a war between two countries with a MacDonald’s outlet, became so well established that, less than a year before the Great War broke out, the Economist reassured its readers with an editorial titled “War Becomes Impossible in Civilized World.”"

> This is nonsense, and really is a "Cold War mindset"

It's not that anything they do is bad, but if you read about the people in power there from those that have interacted with them like Bill Browder, Gary Kasparov, and others - (in addition to the Russian government's current behavior) it suggests that they're not a government interested in rule of law.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act

[3] http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...

It's worth noting that both Serbia and Ukraine had McDonalds. Hell, even Panama had a few when the USA invaded them.

"the will of 52% of the people" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

I'm not claiming that I don't understand the concept of referendum by simple majority - merely that there's a certain duplicity in the sanctimonious language being used to describe the result.

(If I did the maths right)

Though of course there isn't really a single will of the people, just a lot of people with differing opinions.

Not just bothered to vote, but allowed to vote.

Citizens of other EU member states, living in Britain, were not eligible to vote (with a few exceptions), and nor were British citizens who had been living in other EU member states for "too long". Moreover, 16 and 17 year olds were disenfranchised too, despite that age group being allowed to vote in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

I don't see why not.

I have lived in UK for 8 years, and pay my taxes here. I'm a productive member of the society, I consider Theresa May as much my prime minister as any British person would. The result of the referendum affects me hugely, and yet I couldn't vote because my passport does not say "Great Britain" on it.

And like the other commenter has said - there was plenty of non-British citizens who were allowed to vote.

The UK has a long history of letting non UK commonwealth citizens vote in things like... The Brexit referendum!

The effects of such a change can last for generations and be hard to reverse, and potentially affect younger people for longer than older people. For those reasons, I think it is better to err on the side of greater franchise than less.

For reference here's some prediction from back then:

>The Treasury's "cautious" economic forecasts of the two years following a vote to leave - which assumes a bilateral trade agreement with the EU would have been negotiated - predicts Gross Domestic Product would grow by 3.6% less than currently predicted.

>In such a scenario, it suggests sterling would fall by 12%, unemployment would rise by 520,000, average wages would fall by 2.8% and house prices would be hit by 10%.

Which was pessimistic. Sterling certainly fell, about 20%, but unemployment's doing fine so far.

It bothers me immensely how quickly the truth gets discarded the moment it conflicts with EU ideology. The UK has shown excellent economics relative to the rest of Europe since the vote despite its people being told "uncertainty" would trigger a massive recession and employment bloodbath. Yet here you are, saying it's turning into the sick man of Europe!

Important big money already migrated to Ireland (mostly), but it takes some time (years, multiple) to take an effect if any.

Treasury (as well as other organisations) predicted that the vote itself would immediately trigger a deep and severe recession.

One has to admit that there is something of a conflict of interest when it comes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer producing a document to analyse the negative consequences of a scenario which his own prime minister was campaigning against.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/18/imf-says-br...

The entire global establishment of "experts" united together and made a series of predictions that weren't just wrong by a percentage, they were wrong in the wrong direction. There are NO organisations that I remember who predicted the outcome correctly. There were though, quite a lot of vox pops with the man on the street who said words to the effect of, "it'll be fine, we'll manage".

The brutal reality is that people who put their faith in the notion of expert understanding of politics or economics have been made to look very foolish, and worse, many of them don't seem to have accepted the uselessness or bias levels of the people the media present as experts. They are still being upheld not only as important, but actually as people who should be given vast new powers to run government! It's quite concerning.

The article starts "Leaving the EU would hit British living standards" and only talks about recession (occurring in 2017) in the context of the "adverse scenario" they modelled.

As explained here:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/imf-christi...

"[The adverse scenario] was predicated on the UK’s EU negotiations collapsing and the UK eventually crashing out of the bloc without a trade deal."

which hasn't happened (yet).

So I think the lessons to be learnt are that journalists can be guilty of over-simplifying economic analyses (presenting conditional scenarios as certain outcomes) and that government analyses can be self-serving (if they are published before a vote in which the government is campaigning for one side).

Of course for people who still believe, economics is unfalsifiable because these predictions are often of the form "x.y% less than it would have been" but there's no way to tell what any given stat "would have been" unless you accept the premise that these people can predict the economy ... which they clearly can't.

I would like to move there.

the head of the Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, on the 2005 French referendum on the Lisbon Treaty:

"If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'."

the result being that the French rejected it, but it was adopted regardless

1. The French didn't hold a referendum on Lisbon

2. The treaty was ratified in 2008

Presumably you are either confusing the referendum on the EU constitution with the Lisbon treaty, or trying to suggest that they are one and the same? They are not of course, the Lisbon treaty was drafted specifically to address the concerns with the EU constitution. "The electorate rejected version 1, so we redrafted until it was acceptable" sounds like a pretty good policy to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_...

the Treaty was a device created to pass the constitution while bypassing the need for referendums

> "The electorate rejected version 1, so we redrafted until it was acceptable" sounds like a pretty good policy to me

well yes, that sounds reasonable, except the electorate were not given the option to reject it a second time, because they might actually do that

I am not aware of any such thing, in fact I reject your statement completely.

> the electorate were not given the option to reject it a second time Isn't that a matter for France to address, rather than the EU

Needless to say, this has now been repeated, again, and again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_Eur...

And of course, one might say that the EU treated the election results in Greece, Italy, France and Germany with utter contempt. Greece most of all, of course, but the others aren't far behind.

The question asked was « Do we accept this constitution ? »

As you can imagine, barely anyone read it, so on the end most of voters choosed their response on this question : « Do I like my actual government ? »

But my point is, for the Brexit the question was simple, and could have been summarized as « Leave or stay ? » which is very easy to have an opinion on (even if the consequences were not that clear and, as many have stated in other comments here, an elaborated exit treaty should have been thought before asking).

So one one side, a complex question (due to the complexity of the text), and on the other a simple one.

And in the end, most of voters voted emotionally.

Maybe not that different after all.

From being an outsider (I have never even visited UK yet), it seems to me from talking to people and reading the news it was more a vote about "do you like how the things are now and where they are headed, or would you like ... something else"? Something else could have been not necessarily Brexit, as long as it was drastic enough change from the status quo.

And I think a good number of people are just dissatisfied and thought this gamble for a drastic change would perhaps improve things.

I think most people voting in the 2016 referendum were, in their minds, answering the question "do you want to give th establishment a good kicking?".

Doesn’t make sense to me. Seems analogous to getting fed up with shady mechanics, so the next time your car breaks down you drive it over a cliff in the hopes that the wreckage will be more reliable. But I guess people do strange things when they feel like they have no control.

Exactly. Desperate people who don't see anything in the future for them or see thing getting worse, don't usually act rationally. Poverty does that to people as well, for example, and that's visible daily. They resort to payday loans, food they buy might not be healthy for them in the long term and so on.

On the other side there are usually powerful forces willing to take advantage of that irrationality and desperation.

Now that they did, it's reasonable to have another referendum on those specific terms. To not do so would be undemocratic, in fact.

So even if there had been a pre exit agreement to be vote for in the Brexit one, it might ended the same. Leave or stay. And I’m not sure UK people would have read it (but I may be completely wrong by projecting how we did in France)

Opponents (on the left side of French politics) to the European Constitution argued that rejecting it would allow France to open negotiations for a more social leaning EU that didn't try to be only a giant free trade zone, but would also care about the well-being of its citizens (social net, minimum wage, etc.). We've seen where that went: there never was a Constitution B. No-one ever agreed to even try to write one. In short: just like for the Brexit, there never was any concrete plan behind the "no".

Ironically UK managed to duck out of most of the Lisbon treaty obligations (like the Charter of Fundamental Rights, judicial harmonisation and co-operation, etc.), while it would have been much harder -if not impossible- to do with the European Constitution... Had we (the French) voted "yes", we may have ended up with a Brexit 10 years before Brexit!

I think your conclusion is right. Having an agreement worked out first probably wouldn’t have changed much.