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I don't know if I agree that the EU is fundamentally unsound. Federal systems work. Germany is one example of this. The US is another. States are stronger toget

I don't know if I agree that the EU is fundamentally unsound. Federal systems work. Germany is one example of this. The US is another. States are stronger together. The unsound bit is half-assing it. I think the politics side is really where the UK will find the rub, though. The EU isn't going to be pleased with the UK for leaving. There's a great incentive on their side to make it turn out badly for the UK. Which means it's a little bit like if Mexico got on the USA's shitlist, just so they could get better trade deals with Brazil.

Silhouette 9y ago
Speaking personally now, I'm in two minds about a lot of this. It seems clear that the inability of different EU member states to operate their own fiscal policies while tied to the same currency has caused harm (albeit of very different kinds) in recent years to both Greece at one end of the scale and Germany at the other, and to a lesser extent to various other member states. If the EU was a fully federal system, with combined political/legislative leadership to go with the combined economic/currency ties, maybe that wouldn't have happened. However, I doubt we'll see that level of integration any time soon, because it brings too much other baggage. That being the case, while I don't have the knowledge or experience to judge the odds myself, I can see why some economists might be wary of the same effects that caused so much trouble a few years ago doing so again in the future. As for the EU not being pleased about the UK leaving, that seems inevitable, but I'm hoping that cooler heads will prevail. Poisoning the well won't help either side, and clearly we're still going to be trading and collaborating in many other ways post-Brexit. We can dig in with red lines about this or that, but NI is still going to suffer economically just like Ireland if they mess the border arrangements up. They can make a fuss about blocking City financial services all they like, but it's their own big businesses using those services and they have no credible alternative based within the EU27, and those businesses weren't just spending all that money on those financial services out of charity. For myself, it saddens me that the whole affair seems to be characterised more by divisive rhetoric and mistrust now than by a constructive, amicable approach. I take the view that if we're going to have Brexit then obviously the UK-EU relationship will change, but it's still in our mutual interests to collaborate in numerous ways, and I think there were also numerous ways that these negotiations could have gone better if most of the political leadership on both sides hadn't been weak and hostile from day one.
- pasabagi 9y ago
  I have a similar feeling. On the one hand, I feel like Brexit happened for all the wrong reasons. I don't remember england being a nationalistic nation when I grew up. I found it profoundly alienating to find myself in a country that had voted for Brexit, more or less, because they don't like immigrants. On the other, what happened to Greece was appalling, and confirmed everybody's worst fears about the EU being an instrument of Capital in overrunning democratic norms. I don't think it would be so terrible, in any case, if the EU blocked UK financial services (or if the financial services went under anyway, since I think being in the EU was part of the raison-d'etre). The imbalance of the english economy created by an overweight financial sector that employs basically no-one, and has antithetical legislative needs to all the other sectors, is a lot of what's wrong with the UK as a country. We used to make things. Now all we do is flip houses on the back of one bubble or another. The financial sector has created a weird double-country, with a super-rich capital, and basically impoverished provinces. But this really comes back to what I see as the heart of English dysfunction - and it's English, since the Welsh and Scottish don't seem to share it. The politics are awful. Recruiting half your leadership from one elite boarding school just doesn't work. There's no way you can find enough smart, talented people that way. That's why everything the english state does is always so screwed up. And it's a problem that only gets worse as more power is concentrated in the financial sector.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > But this really comes back to what I see as the heart of English dysfunction - and it's English, since the Welsh and Scottish don't seem to share it. The politics are awful. Recruiting half your leadership from one elite boarding school just doesn't work This is exactly it. To my mind it's the last retreat of the Empire, inwards and inwards. The idea of having a country operating on a fundamentally equitable basis is just not acceptable to these people. So the UK gets set up almost as a set of internal colonies run from Westminster. > We used to make things. We still do - with a lot fewer people. Manufacturing is still big economically, it's just a high-value-add industry that employs a smaller number of white collar workers and robots. It also has terrible press coverage because it's not in London, and the papers are unwilling to dispatch foreign correspondents to the Midlands to find it.
vsl 9y ago
Both of your examples share the same language and culture. Europe is much more diverse and that’s a huge barrier to functional politics and democracy on the federation level.
- krageon 9y ago
  The US is not very culturally homogeneous, at least not as far as I understand it.

Silhouette 9y ago

Speaking personally now, I'm in two minds about a lot of this. It seems clear that the inability of different EU member states to operate their own fiscal policies while tied to the same currency has caused harm (albeit of very different kinds) in recent years to both Greece at one end of the scale and Germany at the other, and to a lesser extent to various other member states. If the EU was a fully federal system, with combined political/legislative leadership to go with the combined economic/currency ties, maybe that wouldn't have happened. However, I doubt we'll see that level of integration any time soon, because it brings too much other baggage. That being the case, while I don't have the knowledge or experience to judge the odds myself, I can see why some economists might be wary of the same effects that caused so much trouble a few years ago doing so again in the future. As for the EU not being pleased about the UK leaving, that seems inevitable, but I'm hoping that cooler heads will prevail. Poisoning the well won't help either side, and clearly we're still going to be trading and collaborating in many other ways post-Brexit. We can dig in with red lines about this or that, but NI is still going to suffer economically just like Ireland if they mess the border arrangements up. They can make a fuss about blocking City financial services all they like, but it's their own big businesses using those services and they have no credible alternative based within the EU27, and those businesses weren't just spending all that money on those financial services out of charity. For myself, it saddens me that the whole affair seems to be characterised more by divisive rhetoric and mistrust now than by a constructive, amicable approach. I take the view that if we're going to have Brexit then obviously the UK-EU relationship will change, but it's still in our mutual interests to collaborate in numerous ways, and I think there were also numerous ways that these negotiations could have gone better if most of the political leadership on both sides hadn't been weak and hostile from day one.

pasabagi 9y ago
I have a similar feeling. On the one hand, I feel like Brexit happened for all the wrong reasons. I don't remember england being a nationalistic nation when I grew up. I found it profoundly alienating to find myself in a country that had voted for Brexit, more or less, because they don't like immigrants. On the other, what happened to Greece was appalling, and confirmed everybody's worst fears about the EU being an instrument of Capital in overrunning democratic norms. I don't think it would be so terrible, in any case, if the EU blocked UK financial services (or if the financial services went under anyway, since I think being in the EU was part of the raison-d'etre). The imbalance of the english economy created by an overweight financial sector that employs basically no-one, and has antithetical legislative needs to all the other sectors, is a lot of what's wrong with the UK as a country. We used to make things. Now all we do is flip houses on the back of one bubble or another. The financial sector has created a weird double-country, with a super-rich capital, and basically impoverished provinces. But this really comes back to what I see as the heart of English dysfunction - and it's English, since the Welsh and Scottish don't seem to share it. The politics are awful. Recruiting half your leadership from one elite boarding school just doesn't work. There's no way you can find enough smart, talented people that way. That's why everything the english state does is always so screwed up. And it's a problem that only gets worse as more power is concentrated in the financial sector.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > But this really comes back to what I see as the heart of English dysfunction - and it's English, since the Welsh and Scottish don't seem to share it. The politics are awful. Recruiting half your leadership from one elite boarding school just doesn't work This is exactly it. To my mind it's the last retreat of the Empire, inwards and inwards. The idea of having a country operating on a fundamentally equitable basis is just not acceptable to these people. So the UK gets set up almost as a set of internal colonies run from Westminster. > We used to make things. We still do - with a lot fewer people. Manufacturing is still big economically, it's just a high-value-add industry that employs a smaller number of white collar workers and robots. It also has terrible press coverage because it's not in London, and the papers are unwilling to dispatch foreign correspondents to the Midlands to find it.

vsl 9y ago

Both of your examples share the same language and culture. Europe is much more diverse and that’s a huge barrier to functional politics and democracy on the federation level.

krageon 9y ago
The US is not very culturally homogeneous, at least not as far as I understand it.