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Emmanuel Macron Wins French Presidency in Boost to EU

91 points by rayuela 9y ago

EGreg 9y ago
It's funny how the Macron-LePen debate video wasn't even in top of google results for that exact phrase. US politics are way more interesting for the rest of the world.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Mailtemi 9y ago
  It's not funny, just an algorithm. I'm living in Bulgaria and Google News shows that news as a top story.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mozumder 9y ago
Ok how do we in the US promote globalism and cause us to join the EU with Canada, Mexico, and China (and anyone else that wants to join)? What? You thought we globalist were going to stop at 50 states? There's no fundamental reason we can't get rid of borders and open the world up to free movement and trade. Countries that trade with each other don't go to war against each other.
- gonvaled 9y ago
  > There's no fundamental reason we can't get rid of borders and open the world up to free movement and trade. I would say those are the goals of any humanist. The EU is a step in that direction, unfortunately finding difficulties at the moment.
- adrenalinelol 9y ago
  There's also no reason you can't have borders indefinitely. Open borders have the draw backs of depressing wages. In an era where income-inequality is one of the top issues in the political debate, this is an area that's a non-starter until it can be done in a way that won't exacerbate said issue.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    > Open borders have the benefit of increasing wages. Here, I fixed your mistaken statement for you. If you want to make money, you better make sure the people you are trading with are also rich. Open borders are a good way to do that.
    - RobertoG 9y ago
      Have you been around the last 40 years? Why do you think that everyday more people is against globalization and they are becoming more nationalist? something in the milk?
      - mozumder 9y ago
        > Have you been around the last 40 years? Yes I have. Third-world Asian countries have been doing great. > Why do you think that everyday more people is against globalization and they are becoming more nationalist? something in the milk? So you're saying the vast majority of the world, which are currently benefitting from massive incomes due to globalization, is against it? You should tell the billions of people across the developing world that. I'm sure the average Bangladeshi, who had their incomes go up by 5x over the last 20 years, is going to appreciate you telling them that globalization is a bad thing.
        RobertoG 9y ago
        I'm not saying they shouldn't get improvements, quite the opposite, I'm saying that we should be able to do better and without reducing the quality of life in countries where capital formation is already developed. After all, Bangladesh it's [not so impressive](https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK:CHN&ifdim=region&tstart=831420000000&tend=1430949600000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...) And I'm not sure neither about the [5x over thing](https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK:CHN&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...)
- RobertoG 9y ago
  "Countries that trade with each other don't go to war against each other." This is from 'Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century' by Jeffry A. Frieden : 'In 1900 international trade reached unprecedented levels and the world's economies were more open to one another than ever before. Then as now, many people considered globalization to be inevitable and irreversible. Yet the entire edifice collapsed in a few months in 1914'. I recommend this book to however think, as I did before, that globalization is a new thing.
- lossolo 9y ago
  I don't know if you are joking but too much globalism got us here in the first place. You think from where China got all it's money and started being competition in global market to more tech advanced products? Globalism was a way for big corporations to make more profit thanks to cheap workforce and it was great, so much benefits for both sides until it wasn't. In USA-China trade there is a lot more money going out of USA, around ~400 billions (if I recall correctly) more going to China. You know what would happen if markets in EU would be flood by cheap african food and products without any regulation? When 500 million people from Africa would suddenly moved to EU? This would be great for Africa but disaster for EU. Sad truth is that we live in a world with limited wealth, if you want to give it to someone then you need to take it from someone else. You think that EU is giving billions of euro to Erdogan to keep immigrants out of EU because they want to get rid of the borders and welcome them in? We want to keep our way of live for us and for our children, we are selfish, we give sometimes some money to poor to satisfy our conscience. This is sad, unspoken and not politically correct truth. There needs to be balance in everything, in globalisation also. There is no one golden solution for everything but radicalism in either way is not good.
throwaway7645 9y ago
If you have zero understanding of current French politics like me, John Oliver's free show on YouTube has an excellent breakdown of why this is so important. All the candidates have some serious cons, but the frontrunner for the nationalist party is pretty sketch and her father (party's founder I believe) has openly denied the holocaust I believe. Disclaimer: I know pretty much nothing and am not French.
- surfmike 9y ago
  For all the faults Le Pen has, it's not fair to smear her with her father's views. She distanced herself from him and expelled him from the National Front.
  - the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
    Her opinions are not significantly better though.
- riffraff 9y ago
  while IMO Marine Le Pen is a terrible person, I think it's unfair to consider her father's holocaust denial in judging her. I mean, she literally got him expelled from the party for that (although, arguably, as part a power struggle).
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    It's hard to see this as nothing more than personal ambition + communication strategy 'look he is not here anymore'.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Nationalist party "Front National" is led by Marine Le Pen MLP. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen is a pretty despicable person altogether. You could measure Trump's worthlessness in microlepen. His ex-wive explained some sad truth about his behavior, his lies, his innate racism; and that's not even talking about the concentration camps comments. Front National has tried to clean his act for years since MLP took direction of the party, but the devious roots are still there, many of the core members are enjoying the father's racist sense of humor in private. That's just a start.
adrenalinelol 9y ago
Not exactly a surprise, if the polls were wrong this time, they'd have needed to be off by nearly ~15 points in both directions. This is the first big win neo-liberalism has had in a short-while. Time will tell if it was due to Macron being a good candidate or Marie-la-penn (sp?) turning people off.
- ddoolin 9y ago
  Marine Le Pen I think it will be/is a little bit of both.
- RobertoG 9y ago
  "Time will tell if it was due to Macron being a good candidate or Marie-la-penn (sp?) turning people off." Well, it's only an anecdote but a French friend told me this morning: "It's not a good day when you have to vote somebody that you despise." Interestingly, I had almost the same conversation with an American friend in the last USA elections.
- Boothroid 9y ago
  Challenging times for France certainly, and the Le Pen vote should be a warning.
- riffraff 9y ago
  > This is the first big win neo-liberalism has had in a short-while. IIRC the liberal party just came out first in the dutch elections a couple of months ago (ahead of the local nationalists) so I'd say this is at least the second.
orf 9y ago
Further discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286630
nafizh 9y ago
Relieved to see Le Pen not getting elected. But don't see how an establishment candidate like Macron will deliver for the people. Capitalising on that frustration, again, FN will come back for the 2022 election stronger, leaving only someone like Melenchon calable of defeating them.
- spiderfarmer 9y ago
  If the economy does well in the next 4 years, it will not be good for Le Pen. And I think the economy is likely to do better.
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  Wouldn't the establishment candidate have been a member of either the Republican or Socialist party? I do not see how you can call Macron a member of the establishment except insofar as he is educated and successful.
  - mamon 9y ago
    Macron was working in a Rothschild owned bank, in the president Hollande's administration, and also was a ministry in Socialists government - he's really well connected to the establishment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron
    - hyperbovine 9y ago
      Right but my point is that if you preemptively disqualify everybody that held high positions in industry or government, who's left to rule the country? Idiots like Le Pen.
      - mamon 9y ago
        I didn't say that you should "preemptively disqualify" them, just that calling Macron "anti-establishment candidate" is laughable. Government and big corporations are the very definition of establishment.
chvid 9y ago
Too bad the EU is already fatally wounded. Trapped by its own bureaucratic institutions, the EU is incapable of solving its two key problem areas: Immigration thru the asylum system and handling of the economic depression in southern europe caused by economic policies set by the EU.
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  The voters of France, which suffers from both of the problems you mentioned, appear to emphatically disagree.
  - maolt 9y ago
    25% of french voters did not show up. 12% of voters that did come vote put in a blank ballot paper. Macron received 65% of votes despite being against the most opposed competitor on the french political scene. We do not seem to give the same meaning to "emphatically disagree".
  - chvid 9y ago
    I doubt it - le Pen was just too much to swallow this time around.
- riffraff 9y ago
  FYI, Spain just had +0.8% GDP growth on the last quarter, +3% YoY. Italy OTOH had about 0.9% in the last year, even if it got a lot of flexibility from the EU. The EU might have screwed up Greece, but "depression in southern europe caused by EU policies" is not a thing, each souther european state has had drastically different developments.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
blibble 9y ago
it is concerning that the EU's incompetence has contributed towards 35% of French voters choosing the extreme right on the current path, she will be in in 2022 (especially as youth are heavily voting Le Pen)
peterlk 9y ago
This is a huge win for global order. Had France elected Le Pen, the EU would likely have collapsed. The next important election is the German election, which appears to be leaning more liberal than those in the US, Britain, and France. So long as Germany elects liberal or moderate conservative, the EU will stick around. This will make greater tensions over Brexit, and give the rest of Europe greater leverage in the negotiations. It seems to me that many of the current (reasonable) arguments for nationalism and ending globalism stem from the belief that Westphalian principles still apply just as strongly now as they did in in the 1960s. If this were true, it would make sense for China, Russia, and the US to look inward, and all compete independently to become the global hegemon. However, in a political climate governed by instantaneous information transfer and diminishing privacy, global order becomes something different. People paying attention have much more information than they used to, and this makes the peoples' relationship to their government different - namely, it diminishes the need for trust. In such a system, why should officials need to negotiate on behalf of the interests of people? There do still exist circumstances in which this is necessary, but broadly, there is probably more cultural commonality between Hong Kong and New York than New York and Wichita. And more interestingly, there is probably more in common between Elko NV and Kalgoorlie/Boulder Australia, than Kalgoorlie/Boulder and Sydney or Elko and San Francisco. How does global order change to cater to this paradigm?

91 points by rayuela 9y ago

It's funny how the Macron-LePen debate video wasn't even in top of google results for that exact phrase. US politics are way more interesting for the rest of the world.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Mailtemi 9y ago
It's not funny, just an algorithm. I'm living in Bulgaria and Google News shows that news as a top story.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mozumder 9y ago

Ok how do we in the US promote globalism and cause us to join the EU with Canada, Mexico, and China (and anyone else that wants to join)? What? You thought we globalist were going to stop at 50 states? There's no fundamental reason we can't get rid of borders and open the world up to free movement and trade. Countries that trade with each other don't go to war against each other.

gonvaled 9y ago
> There's no fundamental reason we can't get rid of borders and open the world up to free movement and trade. I would say those are the goals of any humanist. The EU is a step in that direction, unfortunately finding difficulties at the moment.
adrenalinelol 9y ago
There's also no reason you can't have borders indefinitely. Open borders have the draw backs of depressing wages. In an era where income-inequality is one of the top issues in the political debate, this is an area that's a non-starter until it can be done in a way that won't exacerbate said issue.
- mozumder 9y ago
  > Open borders have the benefit of increasing wages. Here, I fixed your mistaken statement for you. If you want to make money, you better make sure the people you are trading with are also rich. Open borders are a good way to do that.
  - RobertoG 9y ago
    Have you been around the last 40 years? Why do you think that everyday more people is against globalization and they are becoming more nationalist? something in the milk?
    - mozumder 9y ago
      > Have you been around the last 40 years? Yes I have. Third-world Asian countries have been doing great. > Why do you think that everyday more people is against globalization and they are becoming more nationalist? something in the milk? So you're saying the vast majority of the world, which are currently benefitting from massive incomes due to globalization, is against it? You should tell the billions of people across the developing world that. I'm sure the average Bangladeshi, who had their incomes go up by 5x over the last 20 years, is going to appreciate you telling them that globalization is a bad thing.
      - RobertoG 9y ago
        I'm not saying they shouldn't get improvements, quite the opposite, I'm saying that we should be able to do better and without reducing the quality of life in countries where capital formation is already developed. After all, Bangladesh it's [not so impressive](https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK:CHN&ifdim=region&tstart=831420000000&tend=1430949600000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...) And I'm not sure neither about the [5x over thing](https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK:CHN&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...)
RobertoG 9y ago
"Countries that trade with each other don't go to war against each other." This is from 'Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century' by Jeffry A. Frieden : 'In 1900 international trade reached unprecedented levels and the world's economies were more open to one another than ever before. Then as now, many people considered globalization to be inevitable and irreversible. Yet the entire edifice collapsed in a few months in 1914'. I recommend this book to however think, as I did before, that globalization is a new thing.
lossolo 9y ago
I don't know if you are joking but too much globalism got us here in the first place. You think from where China got all it's money and started being competition in global market to more tech advanced products? Globalism was a way for big corporations to make more profit thanks to cheap workforce and it was great, so much benefits for both sides until it wasn't. In USA-China trade there is a lot more money going out of USA, around ~400 billions (if I recall correctly) more going to China. You know what would happen if markets in EU would be flood by cheap african food and products without any regulation? When 500 million people from Africa would suddenly moved to EU? This would be great for Africa but disaster for EU. Sad truth is that we live in a world with limited wealth, if you want to give it to someone then you need to take it from someone else. You think that EU is giving billions of euro to Erdogan to keep immigrants out of EU because they want to get rid of the borders and welcome them in? We want to keep our way of live for us and for our children, we are selfish, we give sometimes some money to poor to satisfy our conscience. This is sad, unspoken and not politically correct truth. There needs to be balance in everything, in globalisation also. There is no one golden solution for everything but radicalism in either way is not good.

throwaway7645 9y ago

If you have zero understanding of current French politics like me, John Oliver's free show on YouTube has an excellent breakdown of why this is so important. All the candidates have some serious cons, but the frontrunner for the nationalist party is pretty sketch and her father (party's founder I believe) has openly denied the holocaust I believe. Disclaimer: I know pretty much nothing and am not French.

surfmike 9y ago
For all the faults Le Pen has, it's not fair to smear her with her father's views. She distanced herself from him and expelled him from the National Front.
- the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
  Her opinions are not significantly better though.
riffraff 9y ago
while IMO Marine Le Pen is a terrible person, I think it's unfair to consider her father's holocaust denial in judging her. I mean, she literally got him expelled from the party for that (although, arguably, as part a power struggle).
- agumonkey 9y ago
  It's hard to see this as nothing more than personal ambition + communication strategy 'look he is not here anymore'.
agumonkey 9y ago
Nationalist party "Front National" is led by Marine Le Pen MLP. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen is a pretty despicable person altogether. You could measure Trump's worthlessness in microlepen. His ex-wive explained some sad truth about his behavior, his lies, his innate racism; and that's not even talking about the concentration camps comments. Front National has tried to clean his act for years since MLP took direction of the party, but the devious roots are still there, many of the core members are enjoying the father's racist sense of humor in private. That's just a start.

adrenalinelol 9y ago

Not exactly a surprise, if the polls were wrong this time, they'd have needed to be off by nearly ~15 points in both directions. This is the first big win neo-liberalism has had in a short-while. Time will tell if it was due to Macron being a good candidate or Marie-la-penn (sp?) turning people off.

ddoolin 9y ago
Marine Le Pen I think it will be/is a little bit of both.
RobertoG 9y ago
"Time will tell if it was due to Macron being a good candidate or Marie-la-penn (sp?) turning people off." Well, it's only an anecdote but a French friend told me this morning: "It's not a good day when you have to vote somebody that you despise." Interestingly, I had almost the same conversation with an American friend in the last USA elections.
Boothroid 9y ago
Challenging times for France certainly, and the Le Pen vote should be a warning.
riffraff 9y ago
> This is the first big win neo-liberalism has had in a short-while. IIRC the liberal party just came out first in the dutch elections a couple of months ago (ahead of the local nationalists) so I'd say this is at least the second.

orf 9y ago

Further discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286630

nafizh 9y ago

Relieved to see Le Pen not getting elected. But don't see how an establishment candidate like Macron will deliver for the people. Capitalising on that frustration, again, FN will come back for the 2022 election stronger, leaving only someone like Melenchon calable of defeating them.

spiderfarmer 9y ago
If the economy does well in the next 4 years, it will not be good for Le Pen. And I think the economy is likely to do better.
hyperbovine 9y ago
Wouldn't the establishment candidate have been a member of either the Republican or Socialist party? I do not see how you can call Macron a member of the establishment except insofar as he is educated and successful.
- mamon 9y ago
  Macron was working in a Rothschild owned bank, in the president Hollande's administration, and also was a ministry in Socialists government - he's really well connected to the establishment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron
  - hyperbovine 9y ago
    Right but my point is that if you preemptively disqualify everybody that held high positions in industry or government, who's left to rule the country? Idiots like Le Pen.
    - mamon 9y ago
      I didn't say that you should "preemptively disqualify" them, just that calling Macron "anti-establishment candidate" is laughable. Government and big corporations are the very definition of establishment.

chvid 9y ago

Too bad the EU is already fatally wounded. Trapped by its own bureaucratic institutions, the EU is incapable of solving its two key problem areas: Immigration thru the asylum system and handling of the economic depression in southern europe caused by economic policies set by the EU.

hyperbovine 9y ago
The voters of France, which suffers from both of the problems you mentioned, appear to emphatically disagree.
- maolt 9y ago
  25% of french voters did not show up. 12% of voters that did come vote put in a blank ballot paper. Macron received 65% of votes despite being against the most opposed competitor on the french political scene. We do not seem to give the same meaning to "emphatically disagree".
- chvid 9y ago
  I doubt it - le Pen was just too much to swallow this time around.
riffraff 9y ago
FYI, Spain just had +0.8% GDP growth on the last quarter, +3% YoY. Italy OTOH had about 0.9% in the last year, even if it got a lot of flexibility from the EU. The EU might have screwed up Greece, but "depression in southern europe caused by EU policies" is not a thing, each souther european state has had drastically different developments.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

blibble 9y ago

it is concerning that the EU's incompetence has contributed towards 35% of French voters choosing the extreme right on the current path, she will be in in 2022 (especially as youth are heavily voting Le Pen)

peterlk 9y ago

This is a huge win for global order. Had France elected Le Pen, the EU would likely have collapsed. The next important election is the German election, which appears to be leaning more liberal than those in the US, Britain, and France. So long as Germany elects liberal or moderate conservative, the EU will stick around. This will make greater tensions over Brexit, and give the rest of Europe greater leverage in the negotiations. It seems to me that many of the current (reasonable) arguments for nationalism and ending globalism stem from the belief that Westphalian principles still apply just as strongly now as they did in in the 1960s. If this were true, it would make sense for China, Russia, and the US to look inward, and all compete independently to become the global hegemon. However, in a political climate governed by instantaneous information transfer and diminishing privacy, global order becomes something different. People paying attention have much more information than they used to, and this makes the peoples' relationship to their government different - namely, it diminishes the need for trust. In such a system, why should officials need to negotiate on behalf of the interests of people? There do still exist circumstances in which this is necessary, but broadly, there is probably more cultural commonality between Hong Kong and New York than New York and Wichita. And more interestingly, there is probably more in common between Elko NV and Kalgoorlie/Boulder Australia, than Kalgoorlie/Boulder and Sydney or Elko and San Francisco. How does global order change to cater to this paradigm?