9 ms·

52-48 is a poor democracy. 48% of the demos ("half") didn't get a cracy. And the 52 were plainly lied to by the politicians who claimed to have a Leave plan but

52-48 is a poor democracy. 48% of the demos ("half") didn't get a cracy. And the 52 were plainly lied to by the politicians who claimed to have a Leave plan but followed up with 4 years of mass confusion and a last minute rushed agreement 11 months after it was due. A good democracy finds a compromise that gets a much larger majority vote.

sanity31415 6y ago
Democracies are ruled with the consent of the governed. The majority of the British people withdrew their consent to be governed by the EU.
RestlessMind 6y ago
Sweden joined EU with a 52.3-47.7 vote. Malta's vote was 53.6-46.4. Should those countries have another round of voting as well before they are admitted to EU?
- LordIllidan 6y ago
  As it turns out, Malta did just that - the referendum result was not accepted by the opposition party, and it was settled by an early general election.
  - megablast 6y ago
    Same in the Uk really.
- scotty79 6y ago
  If it turned out that it will be horrible costly mess then sure, you'd want to ask again if they still want to do it.
disabled 6y ago
Agreed. The EU is where countries go after empire, and is a solution to that problem (along with all of the lost wars and preventing more lost wars). It also deals with the populism problem far better than America, for example. The UK is going to become a Russian and American playground when Brexit occurs. It will be a paradise for oligarchs to play the populace even more. Oligarchs thrive from the chaos of these sorts of situations and especially financially. I understand why Americans want to come to the UK. A lot of them come for the sole purpose of having access to better and guaranteed healthcare (you can have good insurance and still owe tens of thousands to millions if you have either cancer or a rare disease and both are statistically common—-also the third leading cause of death is believed to be medical errors according to Johns Hopkins and others—-you can go to the best institutions and still very easily die unnecessarily in the US as that kind of statistic cannot be evaded), but the lifespan of the UK population is going to lag hardcore compared to other countries on the European continent, especially ones in or aligned with the EU. Getting UK citizenship can be hard too. They are not immigration friendly at all, unless you were an EU citizen (at least in the past). There are some really esoteric rules, and there are people who have been denied citizenship for having a misdemeanor moving traffic violation, with no arrest or criminal record, who paid the fine on time. If you really want to have access to the UK, become a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU. By being an EU citizen, you can live/work/retire in over 30 European countries, including all of the EU countries. It is far easier to become an Irish citizen too. They are also very pro-EU. Not only that, citizens of the Republic of Ireland have rights to live/work/retire in the UK due to a common agreement.
- nradov 6y ago
  There is very little medical tourism from the US to the UK. In fact patients tend to go the other way. The US has higher 5 year survival rates for most types of cancer.
  - disabled 6y ago
    Americans frequently emigrate to the UK to eventually have guaranteed lifelong access to healthcare. Tourism is a totally different matter. You go to the “eastern” EU countries in that case. As for the cancer patient survival, in the US, 42% of patients lose their life savings within 2 years and the amount was typically around $92,000. That alone screws American cancer patients over long term, and it can cause them to die. EDIT forgot to add link for further information: https://www.truthorfiction.com/do-four-in-ten-cancer-patients-really-lose-their-life-savings/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/do-four-in-ten-cancer-patient... You can cherry pick data, but your logic does not add up. Spend some time on HealthData.org examining the US versus other developed countries. We may have better cancer survival rates, but when you look at deaths attributed to amenable and non-amenable medical errors (believed to be the US #3 leading cause of death by multiple studies), the average American life expectancy, and anticipated life expectancies in the future (in addition to disability free years of life), it is 100% clear that we fail as a system. A lot of these patients probably had missed or late cancer diagnoses too, due to the lack of preventative care and also just the lack of public health regulations in the US. Pretty much every developed country has a better healthcare system than the US. We do not have a normal system, and many like to think of it as normal, but it is far from that. You can cherry pick data all day, but you are not seeing the big picture here, and you do not realize how easy it is to become a statistic. I nearly died from medical errors in the US healthcare system myself, and from sepsis at age 23. I am a dual US|EU citizen (culturally American) living in the EU, and I never plan on working in the US or living there long term.
    - nradov 6y ago
      Very few Americans emigrate to the UK in order to gain access to healthcare. You are posting misinformation to push a political narrative.
shdbdnd 6y ago
Indeed, like every other election the EU has lost. Ignore the result. Remind me how the Lisbon treaty was passed when it was known as the EI constitution? Most voters didn’t get a chance to vote on the most fundamental change of their countries’ being. The voters who did get to vote rejected it. Margins of 10% (France) And 20% (Holland). So what did the EU do? Cancel the referendums in Portugal and the UK to avoid further embarrassment. Then they pretended to have won Brezhnev level margins and passed the constitution anyway. That is how the Lisbon treaty was passed, right?
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  > That is how the Lisbon treaty was passed, right? Nope
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    I mean, you are technically correct, in that the alterations to TFEU etc known as lisbon were different from the constitution that was rejected in France and the Netherlands. However, the text was almost the same, and it was a dodge to remove the need for referendums in many EU countries. Additionally, the Irish people voted twice on Lisbon, so it's not true that nobody in the EU got a vote.
agensaequivocum 6y ago
This is why the American system is superior. The representational nature of it allows minority voices. While sweeping changes, e.g., constitutional amendments, require a 3/5s majority of the states. The grid lock is by design.
- disabled 6y ago
  It’s not a superior system when Americans’ votes carry an unequal weight or are outright suppressed. That is not a properly functioning democracy, and what you described above can be exploited to the extreme in such a case. Ultimately, we got lucky this past election, as in “unicorn levels”. What is going on in America is far from over and is going to ultimately be a generational struggle.
  - agensaequivocum 6y ago
    No that is the literal design, as we are not a pure democratic system. The whole point is that states are sovereign except in a few specific areas, e.g., foreign relations, interstate commerce. The founders were terrified of a tyranny of the majority. So they designed a system that made it difficult. We did not get lucky.
    - martimarkov 6y ago
      When my vote != everyone else's vote that is not a democracy. Just because everyone gets a say but we listen to these people more doesn't mean you have a democratic system. If anything you can for sure say it's not democratic.
      - refurb 6y ago
        That's because you're ignoring that it's the united states. Not one massive state. And again, that's intentional.
      - agensaequivocum 6y ago
        Yeah because we are a constitutional republic. The founders were not a fan of pure democracy for good reasons.
hcayless 6y ago
More to the point, two of the four countries in the union voted to stay, but are being dragged out anyway against their will.
- oska 6y ago
  One of those countries, Scotland, had the opportunity to leave the UK two years prior. They chose not to (a result I personally was disappointed by). But having chosen to stay, that also meant they had chosen to be bound by national decisions, at the level of things like continued membership of the EU.

sanity31415 6y ago

Democracies are ruled with the consent of the governed. The majority of the British people withdrew their consent to be governed by the EU.

RestlessMind 6y ago

Sweden joined EU with a 52.3-47.7 vote. Malta's vote was 53.6-46.4. Should those countries have another round of voting as well before they are admitted to EU?

LordIllidan 6y ago
As it turns out, Malta did just that - the referendum result was not accepted by the opposition party, and it was settled by an early general election.
- megablast 6y ago
  Same in the Uk really.
scotty79 6y ago
If it turned out that it will be horrible costly mess then sure, you'd want to ask again if they still want to do it.

disabled 6y ago

Agreed. The EU is where countries go after empire, and is a solution to that problem (along with all of the lost wars and preventing more lost wars). It also deals with the populism problem far better than America, for example. The UK is going to become a Russian and American playground when Brexit occurs. It will be a paradise for oligarchs to play the populace even more. Oligarchs thrive from the chaos of these sorts of situations and especially financially. I understand why Americans want to come to the UK. A lot of them come for the sole purpose of having access to better and guaranteed healthcare (you can have good insurance and still owe tens of thousands to millions if you have either cancer or a rare disease and both are statistically common—-also the third leading cause of death is believed to be medical errors according to Johns Hopkins and others—-you can go to the best institutions and still very easily die unnecessarily in the US as that kind of statistic cannot be evaded), but the lifespan of the UK population is going to lag hardcore compared to other countries on the European continent, especially ones in or aligned with the EU. Getting UK citizenship can be hard too. They are not immigration friendly at all, unless you were an EU citizen (at least in the past). There are some really esoteric rules, and there are people who have been denied citizenship for having a misdemeanor moving traffic violation, with no arrest or criminal record, who paid the fine on time. If you really want to have access to the UK, become a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU. By being an EU citizen, you can live/work/retire in over 30 European countries, including all of the EU countries. It is far easier to become an Irish citizen too. They are also very pro-EU. Not only that, citizens of the Republic of Ireland have rights to live/work/retire in the UK due to a common agreement.

nradov 6y ago
There is very little medical tourism from the US to the UK. In fact patients tend to go the other way. The US has higher 5 year survival rates for most types of cancer.
- disabled 6y ago
  Americans frequently emigrate to the UK to eventually have guaranteed lifelong access to healthcare. Tourism is a totally different matter. You go to the “eastern” EU countries in that case. As for the cancer patient survival, in the US, 42% of patients lose their life savings within 2 years and the amount was typically around $92,000. That alone screws American cancer patients over long term, and it can cause them to die. EDIT forgot to add link for further information: https://www.truthorfiction.com/do-four-in-ten-cancer-patients-really-lose-their-life-savings/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/do-four-in-ten-cancer-patient... You can cherry pick data, but your logic does not add up. Spend some time on HealthData.org examining the US versus other developed countries. We may have better cancer survival rates, but when you look at deaths attributed to amenable and non-amenable medical errors (believed to be the US #3 leading cause of death by multiple studies), the average American life expectancy, and anticipated life expectancies in the future (in addition to disability free years of life), it is 100% clear that we fail as a system. A lot of these patients probably had missed or late cancer diagnoses too, due to the lack of preventative care and also just the lack of public health regulations in the US. Pretty much every developed country has a better healthcare system than the US. We do not have a normal system, and many like to think of it as normal, but it is far from that. You can cherry pick data all day, but you are not seeing the big picture here, and you do not realize how easy it is to become a statistic. I nearly died from medical errors in the US healthcare system myself, and from sepsis at age 23. I am a dual US|EU citizen (culturally American) living in the EU, and I never plan on working in the US or living there long term.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Very few Americans emigrate to the UK in order to gain access to healthcare. You are posting misinformation to push a political narrative.

shdbdnd 6y ago

Indeed, like every other election the EU has lost. Ignore the result. Remind me how the Lisbon treaty was passed when it was known as the EI constitution? Most voters didn’t get a chance to vote on the most fundamental change of their countries’ being. The voters who did get to vote rejected it. Margins of 10% (France) And 20% (Holland). So what did the EU do? Cancel the referendums in Portugal and the UK to avoid further embarrassment. Then they pretended to have won Brezhnev level margins and passed the constitution anyway. That is how the Lisbon treaty was passed, right?

_-___________-_ 6y ago
> That is how the Lisbon treaty was passed, right? Nope
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  I mean, you are technically correct, in that the alterations to TFEU etc known as lisbon were different from the constitution that was rejected in France and the Netherlands. However, the text was almost the same, and it was a dodge to remove the need for referendums in many EU countries. Additionally, the Irish people voted twice on Lisbon, so it's not true that nobody in the EU got a vote.

agensaequivocum 6y ago

This is why the American system is superior. The representational nature of it allows minority voices. While sweeping changes, e.g., constitutional amendments, require a 3/5s majority of the states. The grid lock is by design.

disabled 6y ago
It’s not a superior system when Americans’ votes carry an unequal weight or are outright suppressed. That is not a properly functioning democracy, and what you described above can be exploited to the extreme in such a case. Ultimately, we got lucky this past election, as in “unicorn levels”. What is going on in America is far from over and is going to ultimately be a generational struggle.
- agensaequivocum 6y ago
  No that is the literal design, as we are not a pure democratic system. The whole point is that states are sovereign except in a few specific areas, e.g., foreign relations, interstate commerce. The founders were terrified of a tyranny of the majority. So they designed a system that made it difficult. We did not get lucky.
  - martimarkov 6y ago
    When my vote != everyone else's vote that is not a democracy. Just because everyone gets a say but we listen to these people more doesn't mean you have a democratic system. If anything you can for sure say it's not democratic.
    - refurb 6y ago
      That's because you're ignoring that it's the united states. Not one massive state. And again, that's intentional.
    - agensaequivocum 6y ago
      Yeah because we are a constitutional republic. The founders were not a fan of pure democracy for good reasons.

hcayless 6y ago

More to the point, two of the four countries in the union voted to stay, but are being dragged out anyway against their will.

oska 6y ago
One of those countries, Scotland, had the opportunity to leave the UK two years prior. They chose not to (a result I personally was disappointed by). But having chosen to stay, that also meant they had chosen to be bound by national decisions, at the level of things like continued membership of the EU.