I'm really enjoying this discussion! Quite often when replies get this deep on HN people assume a level of ill-will which I hope I'm not conveying.
> "Europol" - sure, OK. But international police does still cooperate, don't they? Why is Europol so important, if you are not in Europe? Presumably it is about catching EU criminals?
The police do still co-operate, yes.
Europol's mandate is intelligence gathering across European member states, irrespective of the nationalities of the suspects they target. They work in both serious organised crime and terrorism. There is still co-operation between police departments.
There are a lot of layers here which I'd love to take you through, but it's axiomatic that organisations like Europol would not exist if there were no benefits to structured cooperation and intelligence sharing across agencies. Being on the outside of Europol is definitely worse than being on the inside.
You could broadly think of the difference in co-operation levels as like having a PC for accessing the internet 1hr a week during class at school only, vs. always available at home. Yes, you still have access in both scenarios, but the parameters are very different. Hope that's a useful illustration.
> Also I don't claim EU only has negative aspects. But it also doesn't just have positive aspects.
I don't think I suggested that you did. My point throughout has been that the quantitative aspects of the situation are not in dispute. What is in dispute is the interpretation of the facts.
> Is it, though? After all, there seem to be an awful lot of regulations on what you are allowed to trade and on what terms.
Can you give me some examples? The EU is remarkable insofar as it has high, well-documented standards for goods and services which once satisfied mean it is trivial to export and import with minimal overheads or regulation.
> It is not simple a free market once you join the EU. Otherwise, why would the contracts be so complicated?
Are the contracts complicated?
> Again, I don't find that to be a good argument for the EU.
It isn't an argument for the EU. It's an argument for why it's worse for Britain to be outside of the EU.
> They want to be the paragons of freedom in the Western world. If they then treat other countries like you suggest they will, it doesn't look very credible.
Sorry if this is something you already know (and thanks for writing in English rather than German! It's making me second guess whether or not you are imprecise with language due to translation, or you're precise with what you mean and there is a genuine misunderstanding - apologies if this comes across as patronising): The European Union exists because, post WW2, many nations were predisposed towards cooperation in different areas (trade in particular, but also atomic energy and other things) and that broad feeling of connectedness the author of the article alludes to was present in voters. They don't necessarily want to be paragons of freedom in the Western world, they want to do what all nations implicitly do: set up some regulatory structures and safety nets which, by and large, curb personal freedoms to a minimal extent whilst generating significant benefits for everyone -- directly and indirectly.
So yes, Schengen meant that freedom was enhanced because of the abolition of passport control for EU member states. But the focus is on forging a common operating playbook for member states which makes countries safer and more prosperous.
> And maybe there IS something to be said for pride. Maybe you don't have to take every too good to be true trade offer, if in exchange you are being humiliated.
I agree that a sense of national identity is important (by which I mean: common values shared by citizens and reenforced through the behaviour of the government).
> With respect to migration, that seems to be the point of Brexit :-)
This is a really fascinating area! Actually before the referendum, amongst voters in the 2015 general election, immigration was a surprisingly small detail. It was only the third biggest issue facing the country according to voters, and the fifth biggest issue facing individual voters themselves (YouGov, Apr 2015). Ipsos Mori went further, saying immigration was only the top issue for 11% of the electorate!
Anyone seeking to address immigration in the UK needs to make a solid argument for why they believe it to be detrimental. Usually the argument ends up as a confused mix of "they steal our jobs" and "they take our benefits". Yet if you look at the countries of origin of benefit claimants in the UK, only three of the top ten "non British" are European. If one assumes that being a benefit claimant is a net loss to the country (it isn't, but let's suspend our disbelief for a moment), preventing migration from China, India, Pakistan, and Africa would be smarter than the EU.
> Still, again, those things happened before the EU. The UK is also still in Europe. Personally, as a German, I don't feel British people are any less European, EU or not.
I think I'm on the verge of repeating myself more often than can be considered polite, but the argument is not whether they can happen, or did happen before the EU, but whether they can happen as efficiently as they do within the EU. Does that make sense?
I'm glad you think of us that way!
> Some things may be harder, some things easier, though. Again, the regulations - just think of Upload Filters and GDPR, for example.
That's nearly the entire argument contained in a single sentence! My position is that things will become harder nad it'll be worse.
> What's wrong with choice? EU will end up being a mono-culture, take it or leave it. I find it a rather creepy outlook, especially with Socialism gaining popularity again.
Because in general I agree with the European Union's monoculture. I don't think it's a monoculture that people have human rights. Or that we ban extremism. Or that we don't believe in capital punishment. I believe that some things are empirically better than others. I believe that the emancipation of women is better than subjugation. I believe that freedom of press is better than censorship. I believe that gender and sexual equality are better than not. These are the things I would fight for and go to war for if they were threatened, in the same way as Dabiq-readers would fight for the caliphate.
The European Union, mostly, legislates and works in areas where there is little disagreement. There may be differences of opinion on the specifics but we all largely agree.
> I think many people will come to the UK for the same reasons they always did. They already know the language or want to learn it, and they like the culture.
I can imagine something like this being true: the UK is, by a thin margin, the second biggest economy in the European Union and the fifth largest in the world. After Brexit I expect we'll probably see a small correction and dip to third relative to the European Union and eighth overall in the world.
This is clearly still a going concern. But if you're a British company trading with the EU, you're likely building a base of operations in the EU, not in Britain. If you're a US or BRIC nation trading with the EU you're again not likely to build an operational base in the UK. The UK has always been a big enough country to merit dedicated teams, but in the past it's always had ease of access to Europe too. This advantage is gone.
> I don't know - if currency is high, economic comment will be "it is bad for our export business", if currency is low they will cry "we are losing our buying power". It's hard to tell what is true. I also remember when the Euro was introduced in Germany - felt like buying power was halved over night. Many price tags remained the same, but one Euro cost 2 DM...
Very true.
> It doesn't seem inevitable to me. In fact many small countries seem to make a living from offering favorable deals to finance businesses, that the big behemoths somehow can't offer. So it seems possible that the UK could maintain an edge over EU finance businesses.
We are already seeing aggressive courtship of financial service industries to move outside of London. It's by no means a forgone conclusion but we are not going to be in the EU, so there's no point building an EU HQ here.
> And finance - aren't people trading all over the world? Again, why would the UK be barred from doing financial business with the EU?
Again :) Not barred. But no longer as simple/efficient.
> Might have upsides and downsides. I can not simply migrate to the US even though I am an European citizen. Nevertheless the US economy seems to be going strong.
But in that analogy you have never been able to simply migrate to the US. In the case of the UK/EU, you once were able to.
"I'm really enjoying this discussion! Quite often when replies get this deep on HN people assume a level of ill-will which I hope I'm not conveying."
I hope I am not conveying that either, and no, you are not. You are taking the time to write long responses, that doesn't seem like ill-will :-)
"Europol" - sure, OK. Although there used to be interpol. There doesn't seem to be a mandatory reason for not cooperating as much. But I know what you are going to say, EU makes it easier. How, though? By what special power? Don't the departments still have to work it out individually?
"My point throughout has been that the quantitative aspects of the situation are not in dispute. What is in dispute is the interpretation of the facts."
I'm not sure - the EU seems like a very complicated construct. Who really knows everything it does?
"Can you give me some examples? The EU is remarkable insofar as it has high, well-documented standards for goods and services which once satisfied mean it is trivial to export and import with minimal overheads or regulation."
I'm not really trading in the EU, so what sometimes surfaces are some extreme cases. Bottles have to have a certain shape, that sort of thing. I think it really can be quite complicated at times - meat being shipped around through different countries. I don't really know details - but who does?
Wasn't there just the other day an article about the GDPR, one year in, saying it cost companies Billions of dollars to comply?
Yes, we had that example before - but it is an example of EU regulations having a high price.
"Are the contracts complicated?"
If they are not, why are they saying it wold take decades to create new contracts for trade with the UK? And why so much bureaucracy to begin with?
"If one assumes that being a benefit claimant is a net loss to the country (it isn't, but let's suspend our disbelief for a moment), preventing migration from China, India, Pakistan, and Africa would be smarter than the EU."
Here in Germany I had the impression campaigning for the EU was more on the lines of "paragon of the free world". And that includes effectively free immigration for everybody from all over the world (asylum and so on) - at least everybody who is worse off than Europeans, which is a lot of people. And these people then are also free to enter the UK. I don't want to debate if that is good or bad, but I think that is a concern many people have.
"whether they can happen as efficiently as they do within the EU"
There certainly seems to be a lot of bureaucracy involved with the EU. That doesn't necessarily seem so effective. At least I think it can be argued.
"Because in general I agree with the European Union's monoculture. I don't think it's a monoculture that people have human rights. Or that we ban extremism. Or that we don't believe in capital punishment. I believe that some things are empirically better than others. I believe that the emancipation of women is better than subjugation. I believe that freedom of press is better than censorship. I believe that gender and sexual equality are better than not."
To me, EU has started to become the opposite of many of those things. Upload filters and privacy rights bring censorship. So do the bans on "extremism", which often seems to mean just things the people in power dislike. And leaving the EU does not equate abandoning human rights and reintroducing capital punishment. Didn't early human rights laws actually originate in the UK? And emancipation of women - I am for equality, but EU is falling in line with socialism and virtue signalling, which means sexist discrimination against men (my opinion - you may disagree). I just don't trust the EU anymore, as a white middle age male.
I will give you, though, that in many of those aspects the UK is actually worse than the EU. Still, as a single country, the odds may be better to change things for the better. Very difficult to move things in the EU, as one vote counts so little.
" in the past it's always had ease of access to Europe too. This advantage is gone."
Again, I don't think that is true. And if the EU really would shut out the UK, then shame on the EU.
"But in that analogy you have never been able to simply migrate to the US. In the case of the UK/EU, you once were able to."
I'm old enough to remember the days before the open borders within the EU. It was still possible to travel. And I suppose, also to migrate.
"The European Union exists because, post WW2, many nations were predisposed towards cooperation in different areas (trade in particular, but also atomic energy and other things) and that broad feeling of connectedness the author of the article alludes to was present in voters. They don't necessarily want to be paragons of freedom in the Western world"
I think people still feel like Europeans and want a connected Europe in principle. Just not the Europe that the EU has become now.
And the paragon of freedom is the big argument here in Germany, especially since the migration crisis of 2015. Other countries may have different angles.