4 ms·

> Here's hoping our kids manage to vote us back in New old people are created every day. So I wouldn't necessarily count on it. I hope you're right though.

discreteevent 6y ago
Those new old people will have a bit less nostalgia for the world wars and the empire.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I believe Mark Francois is to be used to train an AI to have CaaS - there's hope yet!
dmje 6y ago
I think there's still a fairly dangerous element of colonialism which will get phased out as that whole era drops from memory. Here's hoping, anyway.
mhh__ 6y ago
It's almost entropic really - there was a genuinely depressing YouGov graph from a few years ago which plotted the number of people who actually think the EU is an important issue vs. time: The number is almost nil (even the wonks didn't care) until the year/s directly leading up to the referendum. Europe is a tricky problem, but the way Brexit specifically has happened (Lie, Damned Lies, and fake statistics - at best) means the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions.
- FartyMcFarter 6y ago
  > the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions. Yeah, I think that's definitely the big lesson. I feel it's exacerbated by decades of tabloid propaganda.
  - desas 6y ago
    Decades of uk politicians letting the EU take the fall in the tabloids and little of the credit.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Certainly a referendum this vague. People were asked to vote for either status quo or... something very ill defined. Witness the ‘yes’ voters suddenly surprised they’re losing their jobs because the deal doesn’t cover selling live eels or sausages or banking services or whatever to Europe. It’s easy to say “they condemned themselves” and they _were_ naive to buy into the cake-type Brexit narrative, but if the choice had been between status quo and “we’ll try to negotiate this sort of attainable deal”, people would have had some idea on what they were voting for. As it was, it could have been anything from Norway+ to autarky.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  I'm not a fan of the "people can't be trusted with international law" thing. I mean, I also hate Brexit, but I hate policy laundering too. And international agreements are really good at just that, because they aren't democratically accessible. Ironically, the EU tried to solve this problem: it had a parliament with democratic elections that actually made decisions about the kinds of international treaties EU member states would adopt. However, most international law doesn't work that way. Instead, all of the sides negotiate in private and some negotiated agreement comes out the other end that local legislative bodies only get a final yay-or-nay vote on. Fun fact: this is actually how we got the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This is commonly derided as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, but the actual legislative history is that the EU had already negotiated and passed identical term lengths five years prior. They also added a reciprocality clause, granting the same term lengths in the EU to any country that also extended terms in their own jurisdiction. This is a ratchet: there's no mechanism for an American or European to object to longer terms, aside from unilateral withdrawl that will disadvantage the first-moving party. In practice, the US agreed to longer terms, because what else are they going to do? Let France or Germany have more protection for their films than the US has? (DMCA Section 1201 happened in a similar manner, but replace the EU with the WTO. The US wouldn't pass anti-circumvention laws first, so they snuck it into TRIPS, and then used that to force the DMCA into being. The beauty of international law is that you always can find another institution to launder policy through. If there was no TRIPS, then maybe they could have bundled it into NAFTA.) People don't like it when they object to something, and their elected representatives try and shut down their concerns. That makes them feel disenfranchised. Brexit was the inevitable result of politicians doing unpopular things and using the EU as an excuse for it. Eventually, someone was going to say "why don't we just not have international agreements"? Bonus points if you are actually one of those politicians looking to get out of, say, an upcoming tax agreement. Cause the problem (anti-democratic ratcheting), sell the solution (economic isolationism)!
  - blibble 6y ago
    > Ironically, the EU tried to solve this problem: it had a parliament with democratic elections that actually made decisions about the kinds of international treaties EU member states would adopt. the EU parliament can't do any of these things it can't even propose legislation at best it's a rubber stamp for the Council and the Commission

discreteevent 6y ago

Those new old people will have a bit less nostalgia for the world wars and the empire.

mhh__ 6y ago
I believe Mark Francois is to be used to train an AI to have CaaS - there's hope yet!

dmje 6y ago

I think there's still a fairly dangerous element of colonialism which will get phased out as that whole era drops from memory. Here's hoping, anyway.

mhh__ 6y ago

It's almost entropic really - there was a genuinely depressing YouGov graph from a few years ago which plotted the number of people who actually think the EU is an important issue vs. time: The number is almost nil (even the wonks didn't care) until the year/s directly leading up to the referendum. Europe is a tricky problem, but the way Brexit specifically has happened (Lie, Damned Lies, and fake statistics - at best) means the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions.

FartyMcFarter 6y ago
> the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions. Yeah, I think that's definitely the big lesson. I feel it's exacerbated by decades of tabloid propaganda.
- desas 6y ago
  Decades of uk politicians letting the EU take the fall in the tabloids and little of the credit.
rsynnott 6y ago
Certainly a referendum this vague. People were asked to vote for either status quo or... something very ill defined. Witness the ‘yes’ voters suddenly surprised they’re losing their jobs because the deal doesn’t cover selling live eels or sausages or banking services or whatever to Europe. It’s easy to say “they condemned themselves” and they _were_ naive to buy into the cake-type Brexit narrative, but if the choice had been between status quo and “we’ll try to negotiate this sort of attainable deal”, people would have had some idea on what they were voting for. As it was, it could have been anything from Norway+ to autarky.
kmeisthax 6y ago
I'm not a fan of the "people can't be trusted with international law" thing. I mean, I also hate Brexit, but I hate policy laundering too. And international agreements are really good at just that, because they aren't democratically accessible. Ironically, the EU tried to solve this problem: it had a parliament with democratic elections that actually made decisions about the kinds of international treaties EU member states would adopt. However, most international law doesn't work that way. Instead, all of the sides negotiate in private and some negotiated agreement comes out the other end that local legislative bodies only get a final yay-or-nay vote on. Fun fact: this is actually how we got the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This is commonly derided as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, but the actual legislative history is that the EU had already negotiated and passed identical term lengths five years prior. They also added a reciprocality clause, granting the same term lengths in the EU to any country that also extended terms in their own jurisdiction. This is a ratchet: there's no mechanism for an American or European to object to longer terms, aside from unilateral withdrawl that will disadvantage the first-moving party. In practice, the US agreed to longer terms, because what else are they going to do? Let France or Germany have more protection for their films than the US has? (DMCA Section 1201 happened in a similar manner, but replace the EU with the WTO. The US wouldn't pass anti-circumvention laws first, so they snuck it into TRIPS, and then used that to force the DMCA into being. The beauty of international law is that you always can find another institution to launder policy through. If there was no TRIPS, then maybe they could have bundled it into NAFTA.) People don't like it when they object to something, and their elected representatives try and shut down their concerns. That makes them feel disenfranchised. Brexit was the inevitable result of politicians doing unpopular things and using the EU as an excuse for it. Eventually, someone was going to say "why don't we just not have international agreements"? Bonus points if you are actually one of those politicians looking to get out of, say, an upcoming tax agreement. Cause the problem (anti-democratic ratcheting), sell the solution (economic isolationism)!
- blibble 6y ago
  > Ironically, the EU tried to solve this problem: it had a parliament with democratic elections that actually made decisions about the kinds of international treaties EU member states would adopt. the EU parliament can't do any of these things it can't even propose legislation at best it's a rubber stamp for the Council and the Commission