Comment by hacknat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hacknat | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment can explain the strong political push to varying western members' desire to break out of the EU. People are rightly concerned about the break up of an important institution. However, ever since the constitution was signed in 2004, I think many people have justifiable concerns about sovereignty violations, incompetence, and grift. The EU constitution is an 80 page document, and the people were given an up or down vote on it; that is not effective democracy! When the US passed the bill of rights it did so one by one. There was a vote for every single amendment, and the US constitution is a brief document.

I think immigration is a great thing, but I would have voted to leave. The EU is a great idea, but it should be limited to trade deals and trade enforcement. The single currency and the unifying political body are a bridge to far.

I don't think the Brexit is a referendum on Globalization or the Post War Order, I think it was a referendum on the limits of sovereign unity on a continent divided by many languages and cultures. The US is much less diverse and has, effectively, one language and it has trouble doing anything at the Federal level. Was there really any real hope that the EU could accomplish something an order of magnitude more grand?

Edit:

I would like to add that any democratic institution that has the power that the EU does, but the incredibly low turn out (EU turnout makes the American midterms look positively Athenian) and the high number of backlash candidates (a good number of EU MPs are actually anti-EU) that it does is doomed to be voted down by its body politic. The EU might not die, but it will for sure get scaled back.

The USA keeps popping up as an example, but their homogeneity is the result of a civil war which was their bloodiest war to date.

And Europe is not that diverse. Many of us are Christian descendants of the Roman empire or of Germanic origins and share mostly the same values, beliefs and even culture. Sure we have our local customs, art and preferences, but a majority of the TV movies and shows we watch and of the books we read and of the news we hear about are pretty much the same, with slight variation. Many of us also learn English, French or German since primary school. Note English is not my native language and here I am, communicating with you. Such education was maybe uncommon 50 years ago, but there's nothing another generation or two can't fix.

I don't really understand your concerns. What's the problem in the single currency or in the unifying political body? The only problems I'm seeing are those that could be solved by having an actual political union.

You speak of sovereignty. In case you haven't noticed, there's the US hegemony, there's the rising China hegemony and who knows, Russia might make a comeback, with its maniacal daddy included. United we'd be stronger. In fact it is the EU that's the biggest economy in the world. But divided we'll be at their whims, we'll be strong-armed into any treaty they want. And divided we are.

>The USA keeps popping up as an example, but their homogeneity is the result of a civil war which was their bloodiest war to date.

This backs up my claim. Though our homogeneity wasn't the result of the war.

> And Europe is not that diverse.

I don't even. It's fairly white...But not diverse? Are you kidding?

> What's the problem in the single currency or in the unifying political body?

Disproportionate outcome of opportunity. Greece voted fat pensions and benefits for their citizenry (as did Spain and Italy) and in order to protect the currency and the political stability of the EU Germans are stuck footing the bill. Common currencies work when it is relatively easy for anyone (including lower classes) to up and move within the region of the common currency to get a new job. The diverse culture, language differences, and disparate sovereignties in the EU make this difficult. Hence the bailouts and the blowback.

>divided we'll be at their whims

United you're holding each other hostage. You guys look like the Microsoft org chart right now. Cf http://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011...

> Greece voted fat pensions and benefits for their citizenry (as did Spain and Italy) and in order to protect the currency and the political stability of the EU Germans are stuck footing the bill.

What. You are either extremely disinformed, malicious or just plainly racist to believe and redistribute that kind of wrong information.

If the Germans had to pay Greece's, Italy's and Spain's debt they would be bankrupted for a couple of centuries. It's actually those very same countries who are paying their own debts through austerity measures and increase of taxes (which doesn't seem to work really well, but that's a different discussion).

Germany has grown so much thanks to those countries spending money on German manufactures, with money lent mainly by German and Dutch banks. It has been all a massive scam where North Europe has used the corrupt politicians in South Europe to siphon all the money of South European citizens. They took the risks gambling with the money of Northern European citizens.

This is and always have been a class war, not a national or race war. Those of you who can't see it are doomed to be puppets of others.

the EU constitution mostly reiterated stuff that was already in the treaties, and for the large majority of the EU countries no popular voting happened nor it could have (i.e. the italian constitution explicitly forbids referendums on international treaties).

Not that I'd mind a consultive referendum on each article, but a comparison with the US bill of rights doesn't make much sense.

(Also, not all democracy has to be direct democracy and plebiscites are not always the best thing)

> EU turnout makes the American midterms look positively Athenian

That doesn't seem accurate. Turnout for the last 4 midterms vs. EU parliament elections:

  EU  49.5%  45.4%  42.9%  42.6%
  US  39.5%  40.4%  41.0%  35.9%

It's discouraging when you look at the standard deviation though. The Eastern countries have disparingly low turnout.

Edit:

USA numbers are artificially low, because they don't account for felons and the incarcerated population (of which the US has a high number, about 3 million people now).

This chart shows we have better than EU turnout if you calculate based on eligibility rather than voting age: www.electproject.org/2012g

My numbers are based on VEP as well[1]. 2012 was a presidential election year, not a midterm election.

[1]: http://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present

I think that anyone who's seen what the EU/Eurozone/ECB/Comission/Eurogroup did to Greece knows that staying in the EU is not in their interest at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZOAroRgIbY

On the contrary if the EU had been harder on Greece it would have boosted its popularity in the UK.

I'm not sure about this, so far it seems that the Greek government is (mostly) of the opinion that their situation would probably considerably worsen should they decide to leave the EU or the Euro zone, as the (significant) financial aid they currently receive from the EU would cease and the new currency that they would be forced to introduce would probably get completely devalued from the Euro (which is not, as many people say, a blessing for Greece). Also, their credit ranking would be such that they would not be able to borrow money on the free market except at a forbiddingly high interest rate, so effectively they would again end up at the mercy of the IWF, only this time they would not be able to count on the help of the EU.

Sure, the Troika and the EU (especially Germany and France) chose a path that created a lot of suffering for the Greek people in the short run, but bear in mind that Greece brought itself into this position by agreeing to become a part of the Euro zone and doing so using highly "creative" ways to mask their bad metrics to fulfill the stability criteria. If anyone is to blame here it's the EU for taking Greece into the Eurozone and the Greek government back then for eagerly grabbing that opportunity while ignoring (or not knowing) the risks. What we should learn from this is that strong political will alone is not sufficient if the underlying fundamental economic values are wrong.

As widely reported, Greece has no access to the financial aid for Greece. Those amounts are deposited directly to EU banks which bought Greek debt because of the ECB guarantee.

No more than 5-15% ever passes through Greek hands.

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