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Independence is a mirage, as is control. No individual nor country in the world is independent. We are all interdependent on one another, and ever more so as th

• searine 10y ago
  >It was created to prevent another world war and in that it has succeeded. As if. It was created as an amalgamation of post-war globalist trade deals. The EU administrative bodies were tacked on later to make it palatable as a governing body. It's not inherently bad that an organization is founded on trade, but don't shit on my plate and call it pudding.
  • Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    > It was created as an amalgamation of post-war globalist trade deals. To deincentivise countries going to war with each other...
    • djschnei 10y ago
      No, free trade did that. The EU does not have a patent on free trade. In fact, they are pretty horrible at it.
      • masklinn 10y ago
        > No, free trade did that. No, free trade did not do that, the seeds of the EU were sown at the Hague Congress for the express purpose of European integration as an antidote to nationalistic extremes. The Economic integration started being added with the Treaty of Rome.
        • djschnei 10y ago
          Yes, because prior to the Hague Congress the countries that now inhabit the EU were shining examples of free trade. With the exception of Ludwig Erhard in Germany (which despite losing the war, had the strongest economic recovery), protectionism and regressive economic policy crippled the region. The EU initially healed some of those wounds, but what it was going to become was inevitable and predictable.
          • masklinn 10y ago
            > The EU initially healed some of those wounds, but what it was going to become was inevitable and predictable. Of course free trade was an inevitable consequence of european integration, I never claimed otherwise.
            • djschnei 10y ago
              Clearly, free trade can and did exist before 1992, 1957, and 1942. My point was that the initial idea behind the union (in it's various forms) was to ease the pain felt by the existing regressive protectionism of the region. All in all, considering the relatively small size of the world (economically), this was a great idea. However, over time the union has taken on even more restrictive forms of protectionism except now the border is different. The results, predictably, are the same.
              • dragonwriter 10y ago
                > Clearly, free trade can and did exist before 1992, 1957, and 1942. Trade did exist. Free trade less so, and a durable expectation of free trade on predictable terms (free or otherwise) even less so.
    • searine 10y ago
      To make money. Deincentivising some kinds of war might have been a unexpected benefit, but it wasn't the motive.
      • masklinn 10y ago
        > Deincentivising some kinds of war might have been a unexpected benefit, but it wasn't the motive. That's complete ahistorical nonsense.
      • mywittyname 10y ago
        Actually, it's original purpose was literally to prevent war between France and Germany. > 'make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...
        • searine 10y ago
          Yes I am sure the European Coal and Steel Community had peace as their primary motivator in their creation of a globalist market for their product.
          • mywittyname 10y ago
            Peace absolutely was their primary motivation because it's impossible to have any sort of prosperity when neighboring states are waging a brutal war every generation. The rivalry of France and Germany has existed since long before German unification and was long considered to be unavoidable. Which is why the primary goal of the ECSC to prevent either nation from independently producing weapons of war.
• yummyfajitas 10y ago
  The EU will make the UK pay a price for Brexit, and rightly so, otherwise all member states would leave and still enjoy the free movement of goods and people. You make the EU sound like an abusive spouse. "Don't leave me or I'll hurt you!" Do you believe that if the UK leaves the EU, France and Germany will go to war? If not, I don't see how "created to prevent another world war" is relevant.
  • masklinn 10y ago
    > You make the EU sound like an abusive spouse. "Don't leave me or I'll hurt you!" The UK decided that it could tell the EU to get fucked and get all the benefits of the relationship without any of the drawbacks, it is not in the EU's interest to confirm that and it has very little reason to bend over for the UK. To reuse your ménage analogy, it's more like one spouse deciding to up and go and asking for the house, car, accounts and still being invited to christmas and family dinners.
    • yummyfajitas 10y ago
      It's more like one spouse saying "I'm leaving you, please don't hurt the children". (By analogy, the citizens of Britain/France/etc are the children, who'd like to continue to play with one another, but perhaps one of their abusive parents will use violence to prevent this.)
      • masklinn 10y ago
        > It's more like one spouse saying "I'm leaving you, please don't hurt the children". No, it really isn't. > By analogy, the citizens of Britain/France/etc are the children, who'd like to continue to play with one another, but perhaps one of their abusive parents will use violence to prevent this. So the UK left with one of the children and is telling the others they can't see them anymore.
        • yummyfajitas 10y ago
          According to you it's the EU who will do these things. Britain and #leave wants a free trade agreement similar to Canada, it's the EU who won't give it to them.
• djschnei 10y ago
  The EU is a vast bureaucracy, not a "framework for interdependence." You don't need a limitless bureaucracy to prevent war, you need free and open commerce. Otto T. Mallery, a late 19th century liberal, in his “Economic Union and Enduring Peace” states, “If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries, goods must do so. Unless the Shackles can be dropped from trade, bombs will be dropped from the sky.” Are you suggesting that without a central leviathan like the EU, free trade and cooperation is untenable?
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    > The EU is a vast bureaucracy, not a "framework for interdependence." Frameworks for interdependence and vast bureaucracies aren't mutually exclusive (in fact, they often go together: the US federal government is both of those things, too.)
    • djschnei 10y ago
      I suppose, semantically you are correct. I would suggest that a framework for mutually beneficial interaction (interdependence?) doesn't need a bureaucracy to be enforced. In fact, the need for a coercive third party proves the shortcomings of said framework.
      • dragonwriter 10y ago
        > I suppose, semantically you are correct. I would suggest that a framework for mutually beneficial interaction (interdependence?) doesn't need a bureaucracy to be enforced. That's an interesting theory, but I would suggest that most successful such frameworks in human history have included some form of bureaucracy.
        • djschnei 10y ago
          Bureaucracies, like everything, come in varying forms and magnitudes. In my years of studying, the most successful frameworks (bureaucracies, whatever you want to call them) served very limited and precise purposes. I agree, for mutually beneficial human cooperation to take place there needs to be something to enforce the rules. In my opinion, those rules all come down to enforcing individual property rights. Anything above and beyond that is detrimental on the whole. What frameworks would you point to as examples of what you're talking about (besides the EU... cause I think it's objectively a bad example haha)?
• masklinn 10y ago
  > Every power structure is co-optable by large corporations and special interests. The Leave leaders are no different. Quite the opposite, and an old Murdoch quote resurfaced[0] covering exactly that: > I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. “That’s easy,” he replied. “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.” [0] http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/anthony-hilton-stay-or-go-the-lack-of-solid-facts-means-it-s-all-a-leap-of-faith-a3189151.html http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/anthony-hilton-sta...
  • vonnik 10y ago
    Rupert Murdoch is a special interest with access in London. Other special interests have access in Brussels. Just not the warmongering Australian.
    • oska 10y ago
      Murdoch renounced his Australian citizenship in 1985. He's been a citizen of the US of A for over thirty years now.
      • vonnik 10y ago
        Speaking as an American, that's been our loss. National identity, to be clear, is not just legal but cultural. In that light, Murdoch will always be in some way Australian.
        • Throwaway23412 10y ago
          Do you know what country you live in? A bodybuilder from Austria with a heavy accent became governor of California. The son of a Kenyan economist battled an army kid born in a territory in the middle of Panama for the 2008 presidential election. The son of oil prospectors was born in Canada and then grew up to be the last challenger to Donald Trump. Isn't this exactly the type of attitude that lead to Brexit? I can't believe I'm defending Murdoch, but who are you to determine one's "cultural identity"? What a bizarre comment.
• nickbauman 10y ago
  Exactly this. One of the illusions of control people have is that Britain now has a free hand to negotiate trade agreements with EU member states. The EU charter expressly forbids this. So Britain (or perhaps merely a rump England after Northern Ireland and Scotland EExit) will be dealing with that same body but on unequal ground with other member states. Meet the new boss: Same as the old boss. I'm pretty sure you've been fooled (again).
  • volatilitish 10y ago
    No. We will now be free to negotiate trade deals with countries outside the EU (Which we currently are not able to do. The EU has been absolutely awful at trying to negotiate trade deals with other countries). We will negotiate a trade deal with the EU as a whole. Everyone in the UK knows those facts.
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      > We will now be free to negotiate trade deals with countries outside the EU (Which we currently are not able to do. The EU has been absolutely awful at trying to negotiate trade deals with other countries). We will negotiate a trade deal with the EU as a whole. The second sentence of the parenthetical, if taken to be true, casts significant doubt on the claim in the final sentence. I don't doubt that the requirement for consensus in the EU makes EU-to-outside trade deals difficult to negotiate. OTOH, that same fact makes successful negotiation of an EU-Britain trade deal (either as part of or subsequent to an exit agreement) uncertain.
      • volatilitish 10y ago
        I don't understand. The EU has been extremely ineffective at negotiating trade deals between the 28 EU countries, and non EU countries. We (UK) will be far more effective at negotiating our own trade deals with non EU countries. It's far simpler for a start.
        • dragonwriter 10y ago
• IkmoIkmo 10y ago
  This really is a key point. The UK contributed a net of something like 140m pounds a week or so to the EU, that's about 7b pounds on a 1.8 trillion pound economy, or a small (0.3%) fraction or so of the GDP. For that they got 10% or so of the votes in all European affairs, and access to a market (50% of UK exports are to the EU) under favourable trade agreements, which are easily worth 0.3% of GDP in and of itself. Now the UK will not contribute 0.3% of its GDP, lose some of its favourable deals that far exceed 0.3% of GDP, and lose the 10% vote in EU affairs, yet will be subjected to those affairs as part of the inevitable effort of negotiating to keep many (though impossibly all) of the benefits the UK now has as a member. That's not independence, really. That's losing 10% influence in a union which you'll still be trading and working with, and who will still be subjecting you to lots of requirements under this new partnership, which you'll have a reduced say in. Unless the UK actually wants to be independent in the semantic sense of isolationism, i.e. not deal with the EU at all anymore. Yes, then you'd have independence, and you'd also have a country that'll be completely wrecked, for the same principles that a broad boycott (e.g. Cuba for many decades, North Korea, Iraq during some of its harshest years etc) is so devastating, because interconnectedness is extremely valuable. That interconnectedness will still be sought for by the UK, but now it can't vote and is at the mercy of the largest economy in the world. Obviously the UK's economy and power will play a significant role in negotiations, no doubt, but the UK outside of the EU needs the EU more than vice versa. So the independence argument I agree, is quite flimsy.
  • evgen 10y ago
    I think you have fundementally mixed things up here. The UK is (was) the second-largest economy in the EU. If you want to talk about percentage contribution to the EU budget the UK was a net contributor of 8.5 billion pounds (after "rebate") more than it received from that same EU budget that totals around 125 billion pounds. So they put in about 7% of the budget and get about 10% of the votes. Definitely a deal that favors the UK, but let's please stick to reality and facts here. [Expat in the UK who could not vote but followed this all quite closely... All of the numbers I quoted can be found in wikipedia if you want to go digging.]
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• zeveb 10y ago
  > The EU will make the UK pay a price for Brexit, and rightly so, otherwise all member states would leave and still enjoy the free movement of goods and people. So it was always about power, then? Why shouldn't all states enjoy the free movement of goods & people without giving up their sovereignty? The EU should have required only as much authority as it absolutely needed; instead it demanded too much.
  • masklinn 10y ago
    > Why shouldn't all states enjoy the free movement of goods & people without giving up their sovereignty? Free movement between sovereign entities always entails yielding some amount of sovereignty loss, you can't have free movement of goods and people between two cities if there isn't a supra-city structure. > The EU should have required only as much authority as it absolutely needed; instead it demanded too much. That's just your opinion, I do not agree with it.
    • Tomte 10y ago
      The leave campaign was explicitly and to a very large part about not having free movement of people. They just want to keep free movement of goods and services.
• tomp 10y ago
  > The EU will make the UK pay a price for Brexit, and rightly so, otherwise all member states would leave and still enjoy the free movement of goods and people. I really hate this sentiment. This is just about the worst EU can do, it would damage its legitimacy in the eyes of us, EU citizens, even more than the handling of the Greek crisis already did. I don't see any reason to punish a country for voting to leave the EU, except pure spite and greed for more power. Why can't we all be friends, each on the terms that they want?!
  • mywittyname 10y ago
    It's not about punishment, but fairness and self-preservation. There's no point to the EU if countries can leave and enjoy the perks of membership at the same time. If the EU is going to come out of this in one piece, they will need to demonstrate that the perks of membership go hand-and-hand with the sacrifices needed to make things work. Unfortunately for Britain, they've shown their hand early and they have no real leverage. I think the EU will demonstrate good will because they understand that those most directly affected by this vote did not agree with it. So I won't be surprised to see visa waivers and the like for expats. I also think future trade agreements will be "fair." Which is to say, I don't think they will be punitive, but I doubt it will be as favorable to "independent" England as it was to "member" England.
  • jerven 10y ago
    Its not even that the EU really wants to make the UK pay. It's just that the UK had so many advantages that it negotiated before. Now they basically reset themselves back to 1972, but the problem is the EU is much bigger at 27 members today then in 72. Making it extremely unlikely that the re-negotiation is going to end up as well today. Also the UK will want a super fast negotation, the rest of the EU are not so much in a hurry. The UK is negotiation in a position of relative weakness. The professionals on the other side will of course take advantage of that. In the end I doubt the UK will get as nice a deal as Swiss or Norway nor at such a fast rate. The main deal of the EU is free movement, that is not on the table due to the UK. Without free movement of people, free movement of goods and money are going to be difficult.
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• hellothere789 10y ago
  Rather 1 day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.
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• James001 10y ago
  "it was created to prevent another world war and in that it has succeeded" You couldn't be more wrong here. If anything the creation of the EU makes war much more likely, precisely because of the inevitability of its breakup. The UK is just the first to go, but many more countries will leave too, effectively finishing off the EU project. And with the end of the EU, comes the bitter divorce between European countries, which is fertile grounds for a new world war.
  • vonnik 10y ago
    Europe's longest period of peace correlates with the existence of the EU. Most EU citizens have never known war. Not knowing what the EU protects them from, they feel they have nothing to lose by leaving it. There is nothing "inevitable" about the breakup of the EU, just as there was nothing inevitable about the Brexit. These departures require massive efforts on the part of small, motivated groups, who rely on enormous falsehoods to draw the vote of ignorants. Nigel Farage is already backing away from Leave's promises on healthcare.
    • kps 10y ago
      > Europe's longest period of peace correlates with the existence of the EU. Europe's longest period of peace correlates with the existence of the EEC (1957–1993), not the EU (1993–).
  • spoonie 10y ago
    So NAFTA means Canada, the USA, and Mexico are more likely to go to war now?
  • cr1895 10y ago
    Can you expand why the countries of the EU are so fundamentally incompatible that their breakup is inevitable (and, as you claim from the start)?
    • bjourne 10y ago
      In the 90's, when the unification process between West and East Germany were ongoing, West Germany paid many billions to help the latter because its economy was tanked. In total, two trillion euros or so. The West Germans mostly didn't complain. A few years ago, they were asked to contribute a few billions to Greece's economy that also was (and is, I presume) completely wasted. Most Germans complained loudly and politicians like Angela Merkel made it a point not to give them more money than absolutely necessary. Why did they complain so much in Greece's but not East Germany's case? Think about that for some time then you see why the EU is doomed.
• jazzyk 10y ago
  >The EU will make the UK pay a price for Brexit. Last time I checked membership in the EU is voluntary. Why should there be punishment?
  • sangnoir 10y ago
    If you are a subscription-paying member of a country club and you renounce your membership, do you expect to use their facilities for free thereafter? No. You will pay a fair price - if they choose to allow you onto the property in the first place.
  • tokensimian 10y ago
    It's not necessarily punitive (although it could be), but they will unlikely receive similar negotiating advantages as they did before.
• sgt101 10y ago
  "Great Britain's future is very dependent on the decisions of its neighbors and trade partners, and it has just told those neighbors and trade partners to go to hell. The EU will make the UK pay a price for Brexit, and rightly so, otherwise all member states would leave and still enjoy the free movement of goods and people." If you remove the free market from the EU's mission (as painted by your scenario above of everyone leaving and carrying on trading) what is the function of the state excluding the market? What is the idea there? I hear all the time that the EU prevented war in Europe, but frankly war in Europe has been prevented by occupation by Britain and the United States. There are currently 21500 British troops in Germany. This is going to end in 2020, it will be fascinating to see what happens at that point.
  • cr1895 10y ago
    Are you suggesting that a small village's worth of British troops in Germany is what placates Europe? I'm not really sure what you mean, or what you think will be so fascinating should they leave Germany.
  • cygx 10y ago
    I hear all the time that the EU prevented war in Europe, but frankly war in Europe has been prevented by occupation by Britain and the United States. There are currently 21500 British troops in Germany. This is going to end in 2020, it will be fascinating to see what happens at that point. Not really. Once the dust had settled, it was French-German reconciliation that kept continental Europe stable, not the British or US military. Sure, foreign troops in Germany had their role to play, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, not so much as far as domestic affairs are concerned.