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> In the US, it's normal for people to move to a different state to attend university, and then from there often to a different state again.

European Union is not a federal government like the USA but a union of independent countries.

In Europe it’s normal to live your entire life in the country you were born. Of course you can move wherever you want whenever you want but it’s never needed because there is 99% odds that your state have what you need (specific university, companies offices …)

Since Europe have really poor democratic control and power structure as of today, we are far from a federal Europe.

Even European policies like RGPD are always enforced locally at country level, there is no such thing as European government.

> Since Europe have really poor democratic control and power structure as of today, we are far from a federal Europe.

I don't agree, partly because I don't share your view that democratic control and structure is "poor". Mainly because trying to flip the tables and redefine the goal and aspirations of the EU is a bit far fetched, as it doesn't even include becoming a federal Europe.

> Even European policies like RGPD are always enforced locally at country level, there is no such thing as European government.

That is by design, not a mistake.

You read my post like a criticism of EU, which it isnt

> I don't agree, partly because I don't share your view that democratic control and structure is "poor".

Current democratic control is mostly sufficient for what the EU is today : a union of independent countries. But this control is not enough at all if we wanted the EU to become a government with executive power.

> That is by design, not a mistake.

I never implied it was a mistake, neither that it was a bad thing.

Thanks for clarifying! My criticism was unwarranted.

1) The fact that we are far from a federal government doesn't mean we'll always be such.

2) I think you overestimate the involvement of the US federal government in law-enforcement across the country. A lot of (most?) laws are actually passed and enforced at state level, with the FBI only getting involved in the worst situations or where cross-state cooperation is necessary. California alone has tons of gdpr-like laws that it sets and enforces independently. There is an entire US political culture based around "state rights" that constantly pushes for having a looser federal structure that looks very much like what the EU is today.

3) it's not like they don't have universities in Minnesota or Nebraska, a lot of people sticks around where they were born. The difference is that the ones who don't, find it easy enough to relocate. This helps creating world-beating industrial districts like Hollywood, SF, Houston, New York, etc etc - because they can attract the best of the best among 400m people.

100 years ago people rarely moved from a village. 50 years ago they rarely moved from a city. Now they rarely move from a country. See where it's going?

> 1) The fact that we are far from a federal government doesn't mean we'll always be such.

Maybe, and I'm not even against the idea. But it would have nothing to do with European Union (the current entity)

> 2) [...]

I'm not an US expert, and I mostly have the same picture as you. I don't see what you are trying to prove ?

> 3) [...]

I never said that one system was better than the other, just that they are different with different strengths and different weakness but that migrating from one to the other is extremely difficult and probably require creating new entities. I totally can imagine an European Federation but I don't see it being the same entity as the European Union.

> But it would have nothing to do with European Union (the current entity

We are going into hypotheticals here. I am pretty convinced you are wrong, but only time will tell.

> I don't see what you are trying to prove ?

It was mentioned that the EU "cannot even enforce <some law>", but the reality is that the US federal government, that model of global cohesive superpower, more often than not cannot do that either. Do we go around saying the US government cannot do anything right, because coordinating 50 states is impossible? No, of course they can do some stuff right. Same for the EU. Already the fact that there is one "supreme tribunal" across the continent is quite remarkable, as well as a single currency for most of the Union, or a single arrest warrant, etc etc. Things move slowly but they do move, and if enough people keep pushing for a united Europe, sooner or later we'll get there.

As a Texan (yes, we have state loyalty more so than country) I would suggest taking a low and slow approach to unifying Europe under one federal entity. It took a few contentious iterations before the United American States became the United States of America and then a bloody war to fix absolute power with the central/federal government over states rights. Even today political tensions threaten to re-map state boundaries or outright dissolve the union.

>People don't own countries, they are born into them. (This is not just a pedantic remark

It doesn't really succeed as a pedantic remark, because 'their own' doesn't denote ownership. For example, here is a sentence in a BBC news article that I found by googling:

"Even his own boss said Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter at the heart of the Hutton Inquiry, 'paints in primary colours rather than something more subtle'".

This sentence does not suggest that Andrew Gilligan owns his boss.

> Something like 1% to 2% move each year to a different state [0], which means in 10 years more than 10% of people will have done that

Or it's always the same people who move a lot.

> Some cross state borders multiple times in their lives. This is what we want to achieve, because it fuels economic growth and removes obstacles to happiness.

On the other hand, people are forced to uproot and discard their entire social support network - family, friends and others - multiple times in their lives. This does not only negatively impact happiness, but also has severe side effects and associated costs!

This can range from not having a place to crash (or a source to borrow money from) when getting priced out of a home or losing your job, but also having to waste money on childcare, family meetings / events being more expensive because people are spread all over the country and similar problems. And for the elderly, they are dumped in care homes with substandard but expensive care instead of being around their families in their final days. Call me old-fashioned but I find this disgusting.

And I didn't even touch the topic if this uprooting of people is detrimental to their mental health, especially for children - I would not be surprised if the rise of depression and other MH disorders can be linked to being constantly on the move in childhood!

The worst net negative for society as a whole is that enforcing mobility creates a massive concentration of people in urban areas (where rents explode and traffic becomes untenable) on one side and "left behind" rural areas on the other side where population erosion only leads to bitterness and erosion of trust in democracy itself, and any investment in infrastructure or life quality becomes prohibitively expensive.

We have seen the culmination of decades of neoliberalism in the rise of nationalist demagogues across democracies worldwide. We as humanity need to take a step back, cool down and ask ourselves if what we are doing is actually positive for society.

Being an EU migrant myself, I know the impact of all this very well. Every day I wake up hoping my parents are still healthy, because caring for them will soon be a massive problem. And still, chances are that sticking around my hometown, as beautiful as it is, would have doomed me to a much worse life - and not because it's been "left behind" in any way, but because I simply don't match the culture in very significant ways.

Obviously nobody should be forced to move. Nobody is "enforcing mobility" in Europe; they did in the past though, when Mussolini literally sold Italian labourers to half the planet and the UK shipped convicts to the colonies. The good ol' times often weren't that good. What we need is to provide all the freedom we can, and let people look for happiness wherever they see fit.

> and not because it's been "left behind" in any way, but because I simply don't match the culture in very significant ways.

I'm simply going to assume on a stretch you're either on the LGBT+ spectrum or socially progressive, please forgive me if I'm wrong.

I disagree with you on the "not left behind" part: the "rural flight" aka all young people fleeing to urban areas as soon as they possibly can has made rural areas "left behind" socially, because the ones who stay behind objectively see that the young people are fleeing, but instead of placing the blame on politicians who did jack shit to keep rural areas liveable (e.g. by providing high speed internet and public transport), many of them resort to blaming "the gays" for "corrupting their children" and similar - which in turn is even more incentive for those few youth that remain to flee. It's a vicious circle.

I don't match the stereotype (I just moved from a culture that ruthlessly exploits the honest to one that at least lets them live a tranquil life), but I do agree that phenomena like that do exist.

Something like 40% of my high-school classmates have moved to another city or country, for one reason or another, and the ones who've remained seem to have become somewhat hyper-localistic, almost as a reflex or justification for not doing the same.

I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think forcing me or others to stick around would have made much of a difference beyond generating even more social resentment.