Hacker News Reader

Comment by mvid | Hacker News Reader

That is such a blatant oversimplification.

Brexit is bad because it’s a shitshow that was never seriously believed would happen let alone be properly planned. It will leave the UK in an objectively worse position in terms of power, economy and politics.

Catalan independence is bad because it won’t improve anything, it’s a pride of culture movement that will likely negatively affect the population. The EU stated that it wouldn’t accept a Catalan state as a member, so the economy and movement would be heavily restricted.

HK independence is good because the Chinese government and state apparatus is evil. Having your home and culture consumed and extinguished is not something anyone would wish for. Maintaining independence is objectively better than being controlled by China.

View on HN

So only those oppressed by brutal dictatorships deserve self determination? Economically the damage done by independence would make brexit look like an irrelevant blip, they're dependent on water and electricity from China.

> So only those oppressed by brutal dictatorships deserve self determination?

No, everyone deserves it. It's just that people not under brutal dictatorships observably more often already have it.

> No, everyone deserves it

This is not what I usually see reflected in the comments here and the wider media narrative. If we criticize one country for being a dictatorship and criticize another for giving people a vote and following through on that vote it's certainly worth looking at how we came to those opinions.

If you're referring to Brexit, I don't think it's meaningfully comparable. A significant enough fraction of people were deluded into voting for it or did so on a lark, legitimately believing it was never going to pass, that it just can't be taken as credible.

A vote that is substantially cast on the basis of disinformation or lulz is not a legitimate vote, and despite occasionally overwhelming public outcry to the effect that they want one, the people haven't been given the chance to recast it.

A clown, indicating every intent of not following the vote of the Parliament he leads, into an action which the polity he and that Parliament represent seem, largely enough, not to want that a new referendum is the only not-insane choice, is an existential danger to democracy. There is nothing to reconcile between these not-exemplary-of-anything-but-themselves cases.

>the Chinese government and state apparatus is evil

The propaganda is strong with this one.

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and national battle. We ban accounts that do that because it's not what this site is for. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended?

> Brexit is bad because it’s a shitshow that was never seriously believed would happen let alone be properly planned. It will leave the UK in an objectively worse position in terms of power, economy and politics.

You're not wrong I suppose, but I don't quite understand why it's not considered possible for a nation to have sovereign independence and still function reasonably well. I'm sure being a member of the EU offers some advantages with respect to standards and efficiency, but I don't get why a nation can't remain independent and interact with other nations (complying with any necessary standards), at a cost of say 5%-10% to their economy due to the disadvantages of not being fully integrated.

It definitely would have been interesting to see what a properly planned and executed Brexit would have looked like.

But the referendum to leave was essentially pitched as “we will maintain all of the benefits, have more money, and get rid of those immigrants”. It probably would not have gotten nearly as much support if it were pitched honestly as “we will lose 10% of our economy, lose free movement to our nearest neighbors, and will lose tremendous leverage in international negotiations”

I agree, but if you observe the nature of conversation on the matter, even intelligent people seem to hold the belief that it is literally not possible (without destroying themselves) for countries to exist independently and trade/cooperate with each other, even though that is essentially the very model we've operated on for essentially all of modern history. There is way too much delusional thinking going on.

> Catalan independence is bad because it won’t improve anything, it’s a pride of culture movement that will likely negatively affect the population.

It seems to me you're describing the exact situation in Hong Kong right now.

Catalan would lose free movement in the EU by leaving Spain.

HK would lose movement to the world by being absorbed by China.

If Spain were an authoritarian regime like China the Catalan would have been extinguished, punished and redistributed to other parts of Spain, while they and their family were observed for insubordination for the rest of their lives.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com