If the UK does not leave the EU despite the will of the people, it will be the clearest message ever sent to everybody in Europe that they have basically lost the right to decide for themselves. That would probably not be without consequences.
By whom, exactly ?
Geniuses like Farage ? By The Sun and the Daily Mail?
But who knows; perhaps Mikhail read something in the Daily Mail.
In the United States, for example, we have a constitution that explicitly sets out rules for what a majority can't do. I don't think setting limits on what the majority can do means that people have 'lost the right to decide for themselves'.
If the British Parliament decides to drag their feet on brexit, that doesn't mean they are preventing people from deciding for themselves; the people decided to vote those MPs into office!
Nobody on the Brexit camp even had a plan on how to leave. That's not democracy that's just a tantrum.
Democracy is great up until the point people dont vote the way you want them to vote.
The referendum wasn't a choice between two courses of action. It was a choice between carrying on as normal, and "leaving the EU", where the specifics were undefined. Nobody could educate themselves as to the ramifications, because it wasn't - and still isn't - possible to know what they would be.
Leave voters might claim they voted for restored sovereignty, or reduced immigration, or not sending the EU £350MM/week, but they didn't, because none of those things were on the ballot.
I was referring to the tendencies of some to cry out that democracy doesn't work when people don't vote the way they want them to, or to portray the other side as "undecuated or "racist" just because your side lost.
>Nobody on the Brexit camp even had a plan on how to leave. That's not democracy that's just a tantrum.
You're being just as prejudiced as you claim he is if you don't even bother to acknowledge what he said and merely assume its do to his prejudice.
It seems like they are in a number of states, on a number of issues, should we not desire a correct government over a popular one? Whether it's a majority that is wrong, or a representative class that is wrong, or a despot that is wrong, should we not have a voice to point out what we see as errors?
How do you define "wrong"?
You are obviously free to point out what you see as errors, but if you can't convince the majority, then what else is there to do?
When the majority decides that a minority should be mistreated, is that justice?
If the majority is misinformed by a powerful minority, will they not act against even their own best interests?
When the majority is short sighted, is disgracing the future the proper thing to do?
An ideal government is one that uses the truth to optimize according to some anthropic value system in the short and long terms. These do not arise from popular opinion, just as they don't form under the force of authority. Unfortunately, they are probably impossible to form at all.
People are selfish, stupid, and short-sighted and that doesn't go away once you reach any particular number or proportion of them making the decisions.
Democracy can (arguably) produce morally just decisions, but that isn't the same as producing factually correct ones.
Where is the truth between legalizing marijuana or not? Where is the truth between allowing somebody who is 20 years and 11 month old to drink or not? And I'm not even getting near real controversial topics such as gay marriage, abortion, polygamy and co.
There is no truth, just what the majority considers "good" or "desirable" at a given point in time.
And yes, sometimes we realize decades later that it was dumb. or rather, we like to judge with our eyes what people did 100 years before us and want to pretend we would have known better, that they were just morons.
We could define what our values are, decide if it is just to use potentially violent force to enforce laws that forbid substances that have detrimental health effects and flesh out what we mean by a detrimental effect, what the threshold of that is for different age groups -- these are things that are pretty anthropic, can't be decided otherwise.
We can then collect facts about which substances fit into our decided categories, and avoid making mistakes that fail to serve the values we chose.
If (because the fact process, being human, is imperfect) we find new values for facts, we can adjust policy and actions without readjusting the values side of decision making.
People legislate taste, they ignore big problems because "we've always done it like that", etc. This is plain to see. Nobody benefits when a state fails to live up to its purpose, provides both insufficient freedoms with insufficient controls.
Sure, an unfeeling despotic utilitarian robot would be an immoral form of government -- we have to take into account anthropic value systems (which will not converge, and require consensus-making in some form) -- but to accept there's no one true system of mores doesn't require assuming there's no single truth.
1. Invoke article 50
2. Wait two years
That's not my job - that's what civil servants and politicians are paid considerable amounts of money to determine.
Just like a marketing director doesn't expect to have to present the dev team with the architecture of the latest web app; he or she states the requirements, we execute it.
If a customer asks for you to build a building that will collapse, do you go for it or do you steadfastedly refuse your customer's idiocy.
In the United Kingdom parliament is dissolved every five years or sooner and elections are called to elect a new parliament.
Representative democracy is manifestly a right of the British people.
British citizens voted for their MPs, and if those MPs drag their feet on brexit, it is still a representation of the will of the people.
I think protecting the minority is important. I don't think something magically happens at 50.01% that makes that idea suddenly better than at 49.99%. The majority does NOT have the right to abuse the minority.
There is an article in the constitution to allow a country to leave the union, so it is a right the people have.
Structural economic issues that span a whole continent happen regardless of whether it's in a single coordinated economic bloc or not.
Those truism by themselves are completely meaningless unless you can show that what they're missing out on is better than a unified free market.
Also, maybe old people should not be allowed to vote since they're gonna die soon anyway, what do they care?
Also, maybe only land owners should be allowed to vote, after all, if you don't own land maybe you're not really part of the destiny of the country.
Also, maybe you should have been a citizen for at least 10 years to be allowed to vote, to make sure you've had time to integrate the values of your new country.
How about we stop assuming that just because things didn't play out the way the elites wanted them to it must mean that people are stupid, racist, uneducated? I can only imagine the reactions if the "remain" had won, and we were now talking about the UK leaving anyway.
Are you talking about UK?