Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

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> Long term, we now have control of our future.

Not really. Your future is just as bound up with the future of Europe as it was before. The only real difference is that instead of negotiating with the EU as a member, you will have to negotiate as an outsider who has considerably less leverage, and who has recently pissed everyone off.

And when you negotiate with non-EU countries, it will be even worse for you. As a member of the EU, you had international clout and represented the world's largest free-trade market. Now all you have to offer is your own domestic market. You overestimate your importance in the world economy if you think you can now get trade deals with non-EU countries that are as good as the deals you could have got as a member of the EU.

It's also been interesting to watch the Leave campaigners rapidly begin backtracking on their promises to reduce immigration. You simply can't afford to reduce immigration at this point -- it would shrink your economy. Immigration is a response to the demand for workers, and if that demand goes unfilled because of restrictive immigration policies, all of you will suffer. So, don't expect the government to impose significant reduction in immigration. Immigration will only decrease when your demand for workers decreases.

As a non-EU country, I suppose you will avoid the "html link tax" and some other bureaucratic EU regulations you don't like, but in the areas that really matter for your future, e.g. the economy, you will be worse off. In the area that energized many leave voters, immigration, you cannot realistically expect much to change, and whatever changes will happen in the future because of decreased demand for workers probably would have happened anyway.

Regaining control was always about more than economic control. If you're in the EU, I hope you realise that you're currently being ruled by people you didn't elect, people in the pocket of big business, who have set out to concentrate power in the hands of a small selected group. I've heard some EU apologists claim that they don't believe in democracy, but some of us still do.

> I hope you realise that you're currently being ruled by people you didn't elect

Everyone in the EU is ruled by their own elected government. The unelected bureaucrats in Brussels don't rule anybody. Their ability to make decisions for member states is limited by treaties. In any case, the UK was significantly more independent than other EU states in terms of currency and economic issues.

> people in the pocket of big business, who have set out to concentrate power in the hands of a small selected group

Ah, conspiracy theories.

> "Everyone in the EU is ruled by their own elected government. The unelected bureaucrats in Brussels don't rule anybody. Their ability to make decisions for member states is limited by treaties. In any case, the UK was significantly more independent than other EU states in terms of currency and economic issues."

The agenda of the EU is controlled by the EU Commission, as they're the only group that can propose laws. The EU Commissioners are not democratically elected, and only serve the interests of the EU as a single block. The laws they propose do have to get passed elected officials, but the Commission is free to keep passing through similar laws until they get passed, which is similar to how they pushed through the rejected European Constitution as the Lisbon Treaty, despite the contents being similar.

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

> "Ah, conspiracy theories."

Ah, casual dismissal. If you want to see if there's any substance behind what I say, watch this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuUEd6w54E

The Lisbon treaty was approved by the democratically elected governments of the EU member states, who represent their people. What's wrong with that? How can you possibly construe it as a non-democratic imposition by the commission?

The Lisbon Treaty was an attempt to push through changes that had already been put to the public vote and rejected. The proposal that was rejected was the European Constitution Treaty...

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

If it was important enough to be put to the public vote the first time, why was it not important enough to be put to the public vote the second time?

Note that...

"[The Constitutional Treaty] was later ratified by 18 member states, which included referendums endorsing it in Spain and Luxembourg. However the rejection of the document by French and Dutch voters in May and June 2005 brought the ratification process to an end.

Following a period of reflection, the Treaty of Lisbon was created to replace the Constitutional Treaty. This contained many of the changes that were originally placed in the Constitutional Treaty but was formulated as amendments to the existing treaties. Signed on 13 December 2007, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force on 1 December 2009."

> > "Ah, conspiracy theories."

> Ah, casual dismissal. If you want to see if there's any substance behind what I say, watch this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuUEd6w54E

When someone thinks you're pushing conspiracy theories you probably need to point them to a better source of information than this: https://tbunews.com/about-tbu-news/

One example of "science": https://tbunews.com/resonance-beings-of-frequency/

Or this, about vaccines: https://tbunews.com/vaccines-cure-or-spread-disease/

What would you like me to prove? For example, here's the homepage of the European Round Table, the lobby group featured prominently in the documentary...

http://www.ert.eu/

There doesn't seem to be any denial of their position as a European lobby group...

http://www.ert.eu/about-us

"ERT advocates policies at both national and European level, aimed at creating conditions necessary to improve European growth and jobs.

ERT Members firmly believe that Europe’s prosperity depends on the competitiveness of the European economy, which in turn requires a sound, stable and well-managed political environment."

Was there a particular claim in the documentary that you thought was far fetched?

I have the impression that I elected the MPEs, and that I have chosen my ministers and my head of state, and as such, the councils of ministers and heads of state that are the real rulers of Europe, yes, the nations! As the European commission, it's a civil service as there is in all the European countries.

> "As the European commission, it's a civil service as there is in all the European countries."

That's a common misconception. Why? In other countries, the civil service aren't the only ones that can propose legislation.

In the EU, the European Parliament can't propose legislation, the European Council can't propose legislation, only the European Commission can propose legislation. You may be electing people to represent you, but how are they meant to represent you when they have no input into what is being discussed? All they can do is say yes or no to what the Commission proposes, it's the Commission that controls the agenda.

If the European Parliament were able to propose legislation, you would have a lot more of the kinds of laws and regulations you don't like about the EU.

No, I would have laws proposed by democratically elected officials, which is something I'd like to see more of from the EU. The only thing I'd want to see more is have European Citizen Initiatives skip the Commission and get debated in the European Parliament first.

It should be noted that the president of the European Commission is proposed by the [democratically elected] heads of state of the member states, and that their proposed candidate has to be accepted by the [democratically elected] members of the European Parliament, and that each member state nominates a commissioner, and that this group of people as a whole have to be accepted, again, by the the European Parliament.

Also, it's not a simple "yes/no" ability for the parliament. They certainly can (and do) modify proposed legislation.

> It should be noted that the president of the European Commission is proposed by the [democratically elected] heads of state of the member states

A nitpick: The European Council, which appoints the President of the Commission, is composed of the heads of state or heads of government, which depends on the individual member state. E.g., for Britain, the PM (head of government) is a member of the Commission, not the Queen (head of state).

That's not what a representative democracy looks like. In a representative democracy, every citizen has equal power to have a say in how the country runs, but they loan that power to people that they believe will represent their interests. To illustrate what's wrong with the EU model of representative democracy, let's use an analogy... imagine you're a football manager and you choose 11 players to play a game of football. If those players then chose other players to play on their behalf, you'd have something to say about it, right? It's the same thing with a democracy, the loan of power is only designed to be shared with the person or group you pick to do the job, they shouldn't have the right to give up that power to let someone else run the show. If the role of the Commissioners was merely that of assistants then I could accept that, but these unelected people are at the centre of how the EU functions, and have greater control of the direction of the EU than the elected officials. Do you not see any problems with that?

I agree that there are indeed many problems with the commission. (And I so wish that Viviane Reding had been president rather than Juncker.)

Just wanted to clarify how things work, as many have no idea. And for all its faults, I certainly don't think it's reason enough to leave the EU.

(Personally, as a Swede, I'm very happy to have the CJEU which is the only thing that can stand between Sweden and mass surveillance, as Sweden lacks a constitutional court, as - apparently - our local politicians cannot make bad laws.)

Yeah, that's true. It's almost like some monarch appointing a prime minister or something. Or imagine if ministers in general weren't being elected directly by the people, let alone all the people working in ministries doing their work for the minister. Unthinkable!

People elect the European Parliament, who vote a motion of confidence to the European Commission. It's standard parliamentary democracy, no different than the Commons voting the confidence. The current head of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, was the head candidate of the party who gained the most seats in Parliament.

I don't think leaving the EU is going to change a pattern of extreme concentration of power and money toward elites, and a few mega-corps dominating every single market, nor the tight relationship between megacorps, elites, and government that is present everywhere to strong effect.

That is a global trend for every major nation, and the factors behind a pyramidal society are not obviously being negotiated with in any meaningful way by the UK, Americans, or the Chinese. This is simply the structural propensity of an economic and political game where strength begets strength.

Sadly the people who are complaining about the democratic deficit of the EU are also the ones who blocked the democratic reforms. The European constitution was an awesome document that would have given more power to the democratic bodies of the EU. Sadly the UK, France and the Netherlands all held referendums to block it.

It was literally the same people in all three countries who campaigned against the constitution back then who are now the EU-critics that complain about the EU not being democratic enough.

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