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Brexit is a real problem that the human race is faced with. There can be no higher question than that of what rules people should be using to deal with each ot

Brexit is a real problem that the human race is faced with. There can be no higher question than that of what rules people should be using to deal with each other. For most of human history the rules were imposed by force. You open your market because if you don't, I'll escalate from sending a strongly worded missive all the way up to sending my armies to pillage your countryside. Recently we've moved to a more contract-based system because using force sucks and you only want to do it if you absolutely have to. But that brings with it its own set of problems. Getting everybody on the same page is hard. Politics largely deals with local perspectives, even when it has to aspire to "the will of the people" when it comes to things like entering into international treaties. Brexit is history in the making. The EU is a phenomenally novel way of integrating sovereign nation-states into a singular political entity, that happened without war. It's aim is to make something as singularly powerful as the United States, without force. The US had to clear out the West by force in order to achieve its Manifest Destiny. Great that we have it now, but we can't just keep fighting wars to achieve political unity. That without force part is the problem being solved. Whatever happens here will influence all future non-violent political integrations humanity has going forward. Make no mistake, this matters. Moreso than just about anything we've done since WW2.

ceejayoz 8y ago
> The EU is a phenomenally novel way of integrating sovereign nation-states into a singular political entity, that happened without war. Not just without war, but between nations that've been regularly at war with each other (in various iterations) for well over a thousand years. It's a pretty remarkable achievement.
- toosangiforthis 8y ago
  EU has achieved more than most political unions by solving Franco-German rivalries and establishing a common Coal and Steel market for both countries
- gwbas1c 8y ago
  And some EU states still don't recognize each other. Just look at the 49.999 hz issue.
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    For those who are having trouble googling that term: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16535067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16535067
  - jerven 8y ago
    Neither Serbia nor Kosovo are EU member states. Serbia thinks Kosovo is not a country but a province/county of itself.
  - r3bl 8y ago
    What? Serbia is an EU candidate, not an EU member. It is an outsider to this. Five EU members don't recognize Kosovo as independent, meaning that Kosovo can't even apply for the EU membership. Serbia's making small steps, but won't enter any time soon. This was a European problem (as in, the continent) that had nothing to do with the EU specifically.
- dkjshfajskdfa 8y ago
  That view of what the EU is, an integration project of sovereign nation states without war, is one way of looking at it. A way the EU themselves would certainly like to believe. An alternative view is that the EU is the soft landing place for collapsing empires, that the idea of independent European nation states is just that, an idea, a fiction in the general sense. Timothy Snyder's youtube videos do a good job of explaining this.
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
I’m not sure. I think we’ll leave or stay in the EU and it won’t make a tangible difference in the long run. Not in the way that say the internet, smartphones, antibiotics, nuclear weapons/power, quantum physics etc etc have made a difference to the world. MAD means we probably won’t have a major war any time soon, so we’ll be trading with the EU regardless, it’s all semanitics and minor politics.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  MAD's not really a thing unfortunately. Nuclear winter was always a myth.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    It doesn't take nuclear winter for countries to make the decision that "if I nuke them they will nuke me and that will be bad".
    - vinceguidry 8y ago
      Yeah but that's just military tactics. As well just fly a bomber in and just drop a bomb on the capital. Same deterrent value.
- hollerith 8y ago
  >MAD means we probably won’t have a major war any time soon Was the Korean war a major war in your book? To the Korean people it was. In that war, the US's having nukes did not prevent North Korea from starting the war, did not prevent the Soviets from sending MIGs with Soviet pilots against the US army and air force and did not prevent China from sending a million soldiers.
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    From a euro centric perspective Korea is a proxy war. MAD blocks major conflict directly between two nuclear states or states with strong nuclear allies. It doesn’t prevent wars fought in other territories backed by nuclear states (eg Syria)
thereare5lights 8y ago
People forget how bad things were in the past. This is one of the reasons why it's so dangerous to ignore history. Idiots like Scott Adams love saying history doesn't repeat when they actually mean events do not repeat exactly atom for atom, but human behavior repeats. It's also why idiots in the former Confederate states think that slavery was a walk in the park and that slave owners were so nice to their slaves.
grey-area 8y ago
This may yet lead to war. If the EU starts to disintegrate, I expect to see war in Europe as a result. I do have some sympathy with the argument Brexit is a waste of resources, it matters of course but if people were sold lies that can never happen (good trade relations with a trade bloc you just left, low immigration and a strong economy, freedom of services and goods but not of people), that’s a waste of everyone’s time and money for years, it’s not a serious political argument, it’s a deadly pantomime which undermines representative democracy and encourages extremists and fascists. We’ve already seen one MP murdered by extremists (Jo Cox).
sparkie 8y ago
> Brexit is history in the making. The EU is a phenomenally novel way of integrating sovereign nation-states into a singular political entity, that happened without war. It's aim is to make something as singularly powerful as the United States, without force. The thing is, the people of the UK don't want to be part of that "United States of Europe". It is being forced upon them. The failure of pro-EU people to recognize that they are breeding unrest will lead to civil war, unless they allow the Brits to exit as they've voted to do.
- n4r9 8y ago
  I think that's a sweeping generalisation. I suspect, admittedly without numbers to back it up, that a significant minority of people in the UK - myself included - are happy to be part of a greater European state. I also suspect that there is a generational factor, and that this significant minority will grow over time to become a majority.
  - sparkie 8y ago
    The problem with you rejecting my claim as a "sweeping generalization" is that you've done exactly the same in your counter argument. Polls are not reliable (they didn't predict the vote, after all). The vote is the most reliable data we have on the positions of the people of the UK. It is the biggest sample set of any measurement performed, and 1.3M more people turned out to vote leave than to remain. My assessment of today's youth is that they're rebellious, like any generation of youth. What they're rebelling against is pro-EU, pro-socialism that has been fed to them throughout their childhood. Conservatism is on the rise among the young.
    - n4r9 8y ago
      Your claim that the vote is the most reliable data we have flatly contradicts your last paragraph: 61% of men and 80% of women aged 18-24 voted Remain. The Leave vote was very much carried through by the older generation. The polarity is such that if you assume the same proportion of remain voters for those below 18 (and I don't see why not) then the tables turned last November.

ceejayoz 8y ago

> The EU is a phenomenally novel way of integrating sovereign nation-states into a singular political entity, that happened without war. Not just without war, but between nations that've been regularly at war with each other (in various iterations) for well over a thousand years. It's a pretty remarkable achievement.

toosangiforthis 8y ago
EU has achieved more than most political unions by solving Franco-German rivalries and establishing a common Coal and Steel market for both countries
gwbas1c 8y ago
And some EU states still don't recognize each other. Just look at the 49.999 hz issue.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  For those who are having trouble googling that term: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16535067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16535067
- jerven 8y ago
  Neither Serbia nor Kosovo are EU member states. Serbia thinks Kosovo is not a country but a province/county of itself.
- r3bl 8y ago
  What? Serbia is an EU candidate, not an EU member. It is an outsider to this. Five EU members don't recognize Kosovo as independent, meaning that Kosovo can't even apply for the EU membership. Serbia's making small steps, but won't enter any time soon. This was a European problem (as in, the continent) that had nothing to do with the EU specifically.
dkjshfajskdfa 8y ago
That view of what the EU is, an integration project of sovereign nation states without war, is one way of looking at it. A way the EU themselves would certainly like to believe. An alternative view is that the EU is the soft landing place for collapsing empires, that the idea of independent European nation states is just that, an idea, a fiction in the general sense. Timothy Snyder's youtube videos do a good job of explaining this.

albertgoeswoof 8y ago

I’m not sure. I think we’ll leave or stay in the EU and it won’t make a tangible difference in the long run. Not in the way that say the internet, smartphones, antibiotics, nuclear weapons/power, quantum physics etc etc have made a difference to the world. MAD means we probably won’t have a major war any time soon, so we’ll be trading with the EU regardless, it’s all semanitics and minor politics.

vinceguidry 8y ago
MAD's not really a thing unfortunately. Nuclear winter was always a myth.
- freehunter 8y ago
  It doesn't take nuclear winter for countries to make the decision that "if I nuke them they will nuke me and that will be bad".
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    Yeah but that's just military tactics. As well just fly a bomber in and just drop a bomb on the capital. Same deterrent value.
hollerith 8y ago
>MAD means we probably won’t have a major war any time soon Was the Korean war a major war in your book? To the Korean people it was. In that war, the US's having nukes did not prevent North Korea from starting the war, did not prevent the Soviets from sending MIGs with Soviet pilots against the US army and air force and did not prevent China from sending a million soldiers.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  From a euro centric perspective Korea is a proxy war. MAD blocks major conflict directly between two nuclear states or states with strong nuclear allies. It doesn’t prevent wars fought in other territories backed by nuclear states (eg Syria)

thereare5lights 8y ago

People forget how bad things were in the past. This is one of the reasons why it's so dangerous to ignore history. Idiots like Scott Adams love saying history doesn't repeat when they actually mean events do not repeat exactly atom for atom, but human behavior repeats. It's also why idiots in the former Confederate states think that slavery was a walk in the park and that slave owners were so nice to their slaves.

grey-area 8y ago

This may yet lead to war. If the EU starts to disintegrate, I expect to see war in Europe as a result. I do have some sympathy with the argument Brexit is a waste of resources, it matters of course but if people were sold lies that can never happen (good trade relations with a trade bloc you just left, low immigration and a strong economy, freedom of services and goods but not of people), that’s a waste of everyone’s time and money for years, it’s not a serious political argument, it’s a deadly pantomime which undermines representative democracy and encourages extremists and fascists. We’ve already seen one MP murdered by extremists (Jo Cox).

sparkie 8y ago

> Brexit is history in the making. The EU is a phenomenally novel way of integrating sovereign nation-states into a singular political entity, that happened without war. It's aim is to make something as singularly powerful as the United States, without force. The thing is, the people of the UK don't want to be part of that "United States of Europe". It is being forced upon them. The failure of pro-EU people to recognize that they are breeding unrest will lead to civil war, unless they allow the Brits to exit as they've voted to do.

n4r9 8y ago
I think that's a sweeping generalisation. I suspect, admittedly without numbers to back it up, that a significant minority of people in the UK - myself included - are happy to be part of a greater European state. I also suspect that there is a generational factor, and that this significant minority will grow over time to become a majority.
- sparkie 8y ago
  The problem with you rejecting my claim as a "sweeping generalization" is that you've done exactly the same in your counter argument. Polls are not reliable (they didn't predict the vote, after all). The vote is the most reliable data we have on the positions of the people of the UK. It is the biggest sample set of any measurement performed, and 1.3M more people turned out to vote leave than to remain. My assessment of today's youth is that they're rebellious, like any generation of youth. What they're rebelling against is pro-EU, pro-socialism that has been fed to them throughout their childhood. Conservatism is on the rise among the young.
  - n4r9 8y ago
    Your claim that the vote is the most reliable data we have flatly contradicts your last paragraph: 61% of men and 80% of women aged 18-24 voted Remain. The Leave vote was very much carried through by the older generation. The polarity is such that if you assume the same proportion of remain voters for those below 18 (and I don't see why not) then the tables turned last November.