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Some might say that a good outcome is one where the people can freely make their own choices and accept the consequences. The plight of the British might serve

• fossuser 8y ago
  What if the consequences are instability or large scale war?
  • xienze 8y ago
    Well, what if? You're essentially arguing that if our benevolent overlords decide that the democratic process might result in something unfavorable that they should do the wise thing and ignore the will of the people.
    • fossuser 8y ago
      I'm arguing in favor of representative government where elected people decide on what makes the most sense for complex issues. Relying on advice from experts, but ultimately making the call that's in the country's best interest.
      • RobertoG 8y ago
        That sounds like a fantastic system, where is being implemented? I would like to move there.
        • falsedan 8y ago
          It’s Switzerland.
      • sievebrain 8y ago
        So far every expert prediction about Brexit had been wrong. The UK was meant to be in a deep recession by now, remember?
        • inciampati 8y ago
          It is not doing well. It's turning back into the sick man of Europe. Productivity growth is among the lowest in the EU.
          • sievebrain 8y ago
            That's an interesting description. Last year UK growth beat Germany, France and Italy in Q3 (don't know q4 figures yet I believe). It looks like the eurozone may be heading for recession given falling industrial output in Germany. It bothers me immensely how quickly the truth gets discarded the moment it conflicts with EU ideology. The UK has shown excellent economics relative to the rest of Europe since the vote despite its people being told "uncertainty" would trigger a massive recession and employment bloodbath. Yet here you are, saying it's turning into the sick man of Europe!
            • AstralStorm 8y ago
              It probably is, but so is most of EU. Important big money already migrated to Ireland (mostly), but it takes some time (years, multiple) to take an effect if any.
        • spuz 8y ago
          Where did you read that the UK would be in a deep recession 2 months before Brexit actually happens?
          • stephen_g 8y ago
            https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36355564 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36355564 (2016). Treasury (as well as other organisations) predicted that the vote itself would immediately trigger a deep and severe recession.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        So, like, Parliamentary sovereignty with a democratically elected parliament, instead of popular sovereignty? What an odd idea.
    • blibble 8y ago
      this is the general principle behind the EU Commission: that of a technocracy the head of the Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, on the 2005 French referendum on the Lisbon Treaty: "If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'." the result being that the French rejected it, but it was adopted regardless
      • jimnotgym 8y ago
        Wikipedia suggests that 1. The French didn't hold a referendum on Lisbon 2. The treaty was ratified in 2008 Presumably you are either confusing the referendum on the EU constitution with the Lisbon treaty, or trying to suggest that they are one and the same? They are not of course, the Lisbon treaty was drafted specifically to address the concerns with the EU constitution. "The electorate rejected version 1, so we redrafted until it was acceptable" sounds like a pretty good policy to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_Lisbon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_...
        • blibble 8y ago
          as I'm sure you are aware: the texts of the constitution and the Lisbon Treaty are essentially completely identical the Treaty was a device created to pass the constitution while bypassing the need for referendums > "The electorate rejected version 1, so we redrafted until it was acceptable" sounds like a pretty good policy to me well yes, that sounds reasonable, except the electorate were not given the option to reject it a second time, because they might actually do that
          • jimnotgym 8y ago
            > as I'm sure you are aware: the texts of the constitution and the Lisbon Treaty are essentially completely identical I am not aware of any such thing, in fact I reject your statement completely. > the electorate were not given the option to reject it a second time Isn't that a matter for France to address, rather than the EU
    • andybak 8y ago
      "the will of the people" sounds very grand and final. "the will of 52% of the people" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. I'm not claiming that I don't understand the concept of referendum by simple majority - merely that there's a certain duplicity in the sanctimonious language being used to describe the result.
      • starshadowx2 8y ago
        52% of a 72% turnout, so really just ~37% of "the people". (If I did the maths right)
        • tim333 8y ago
          Yeah 52% of those who could be bothered to vote. The non voters polled about 60-40 remain so you could argue the will of the people including the lazy was remain. Though of course there isn't really a single will of the people, just a lot of people with differing opinions.
          • dane-pgp 8y ago
            > 52% of those who could be bothered to vote. Not just bothered to vote, but allowed to vote. Citizens of other EU member states, living in Britain, were not eligible to vote (with a few exceptions), and nor were British citizens who had been living in other EU member states for "too long". Moreover, 16 and 17 year olds were disenfranchised too, despite that age group being allowed to vote in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
            • petre 8y ago
              Are 16 and 17 year olds even of voting age in the UK? You can't possibly advocate letting non UK citizens decide for UK matters.
              • jashmatthews 8y ago
                > You can't possibly advocate letting non UK citizens decide for UK matters. The UK has a long history of letting non UK commonwealth citizens vote in things like... The Brexit referendum!
  • nostrademons 8y ago
    Then that's what we get. There's no guarantee of a good outcome: if the majority of people want to do stupid things, a democracy will let them. In such a case we'd probably be fucked regardless of what form of government we had. A dictatorship, monarchy, or oligarchy lets a minority of people do stupid things, and if you have a majority, it's fairly likely there is a powerful minority contained within them.
    • Beldin 8y ago
      The majority of EU citizens did not vote in the Brexit referendum. They shouldn't have to suffer the consequences [edit to clarify] of a war resulting from this vote.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • candiodari 8y ago
        The majority of EU citizens that voted whether to join the EU or not ... voted against doing that. Ditto with expansion of the EU, constitution of the EU. Should that be fixed too ? For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu... (see "ratification") The EU has a long history of ignoring democratic elections. That, to me, does not seem like a good thing at all, and yet it's becoming ever more clear that if you want the EU to exist at all, ignoring elections will be the cost: Both the current Greek and the current Italian government made promises of leaving the EU to get elected. Both have reneged, but of course other parties are springing up with more forceful leave rhetoric. Now French and German extreme-right parties promise to kill the EU if they get elected, and the more mainstream is forced to also take a more anti-EU stance in each country. If either France or Germany decides to leave, then the EU experiment is over.
        • petre 8y ago
          > Both the current Greek and the current Italian government made promises of leaving the EU It's quite late for that, since unlike the Brits they also joined the EMU and thus ceded sovereignity to the EU. This is exactly what Margaret Tatcher warned against: a federal Europe by the back door. Also, organizing a referendum on the topic of exiting from the Eurozone is a violation of EU treaties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_withdrawal_from_the_eurozone#cite_note-60 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_withdrawal_from_the_eu... Other EU exits could be less disastrous if coordinated. For instance if Greece and Italy would leave at the same time and negotiate together. For this they would first need to form an aliance like the Visegrad group. Regardless, everyone would have to suffer in such an event due to lack of credibility in the EU project, lack of confidence in national currencies and the Euro.
  • cm2187 8y ago
    War between who and who?
    • philwelch 8y ago
      Not necessarily "large scale", but it's hard to leave the EU customs union without introducing a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and specifically not having a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was part of the peace agreement that ended the Troubles.
      • cm2187 8y ago
        Right, though technically the EU insists on a border, not the UK.
        • pbhjpbhj 8y ago
          One of the main pillars of Brexit voters was immigration control. So, we're going to ruin the entire country to get immigration controls (and destroy trade, and cut ourselves off politically, socially, and from the scientific communities, and...) then just leave the border open? That's like burning down your luxury rental accommodation because you don't like that exact shade of wallpaper, then moving in to a hovel with graffiti on the walls.
          • cm2187 8y ago
            Crossing a legal border physically doesn't give you the right to be there, and work, receive benefits, etc.
            • Tomte 8y ago
              So anti-Immigration Brexiteers don't mind illegal aliens? I doubt that.
              • cm2187 8y ago
• roland35 8y ago
  That reminds me of the Despair demotivational poster "Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."
  • arethuza 8y ago
    "We all live in a yellow lump of Brie, yellow lump of Brie... " Edit: Clearly one glass of wine too many...
    • osrec 8y ago
      Are you referring to this: https://www.indy100.com/article/brexit-explain-cheese-submarine-twitter-thread-people-love-8680191 https://www.indy100.com/article/brexit-explain-cheese-submar... ?
      • arethuza 8y ago
        Yes, you've gouda admit it's a grate analogy.
        • osrec 8y ago
          You're on fire, but this isn't Reddit :D (then again, who thought we'd have a political article on the front page of HN!)
          • arethuza 8y ago
            Overtly political discussions do pop up on HN occasionally - the ones that don't descend into slanging matches (such as this one) are usually of good quality and seem to be tolerated by the mods.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• 7952 8y ago
  After brexit the people became a transcendent idea. An idea that nationalists want to have presidence over everything, including the democratic process and the rule of law. And at this point the people is just a proxy for the righteous authority of the nation.
  • tim333 8y ago
    The idea of enemies of the people as mentioned in The Mail has a rather inglorious history involving Nero, Stalin, Hitler and the like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_people#Origins_of_the_expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_people#Origins_of... On the other hand I'm ok with a people's vote.
• nearbuy 8y ago
  I often hear the refrain that, "democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried". But how many forms have actually been tried? As far as I know, every country is either a democracy or an autocracy. Maybe it could be better phrased as, "Democracy is better than autocracy, and we think it's crazy to try anything else".
  • Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    What else is there? The only systems I'm aware of are variants of either democracy or autocracy. Control is either dispersed among many (democratic) or centralized among a few (autocratic). Or there's no control and you have anarchy, I guess. There is certainly in a lot of room for improvement in how we elect leaders and what powers we give them. But, I think the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that dispersed power is better than centralized power. Remember that humanity has in fact tried a lot of variations of democracy and government throughout history. None of us actually lives in a direct democracy today a la ancient Anthens, we live in republics.
    • nearbuy 8y ago
      I replied to a similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18927767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18927767 To reiterate, my main objection to asserting "democracy is the best" is that it discourages thought about other possibilities. I don't know what work better. But I do think there are other possibilities. I'm using a somewhat stricter definition of democracy and autocracy. For our purposes, lets say a democracy allows nearly everyone to vote for a person or party that will have complete or nearly complete control over the government. We'll allow exceptions for felons and young people not voting. Lets call countries where one person has full power an autocracy. I'm not going to give an example of a perfect form of government. But I'll give some bad or half-baked ideas just to illustrate it's possible. As you mentioned, there's anarchy. Not far from there, you could have rule by corporations, where corporations hire their own internal police force to protect their employees, enforce their rules, and make up for the lack of national government. I know, scary. I said these weren't good ideas. You could have rule by experts. Technocracy, or something similar. Only economists would vote on economic policy, medical professionals would vote on healthcare policy, etc. We could say all new laws must be in pursuit of some mandate, such as increasing standard of living for the lowest 30% of the population. Laws that don't work towards this goal could be challenged and struck down in courts. Maybe laws could be proposed by anyone and the most upvoted ones would be considered by the courts. Maybe direct democracy should be revisited now that we have the internet. We could allow more departments to operate independently, much like the Federal Reserve Bank does now. Maybe it's totally impossible to improve on the democracy we have now. I'd still rather not discourage thinking about it.