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Do you live in London? It's just that this sounds like a very narrowminded take and one that I tend to hear from people living in London and who are culturally

by kypro 4y ago

Do you live in London? It's just that this sounds like a very narrowminded take and one that I tend to hear from people living in London and who are culturally isolated from the rest of the UK. The UK is neither a small country or a small market. While not as big as the EU, the UK is no where near as irrelevant as you're making out. I could also make the argument that many US sites refuse to comply with EU GDPR regulation so, no, others clearly don't "have to implement" EU standards. > But the really disturbing thing about the UK is that there are many people in power to whom human rights are less important than "souvereignty". You could just as easily wrap "human rights" in air quotes here. The idea that human rights are universally agreed upon is silly. Further, even when human rights are agreed on there are always conditions to them. Yeah, you have a right to free expression so long as you don't express the wrong things. Yeah, you have a right to liberty so long as you don't do the wrong things. If you're concerned about human rights then you should also be fundamentally concerned about sovereignty because without sovereignty who exactly is deciding on the rights that should be protected? "Rights" that are prescribed upon a population without its consent can be oppressive, and right or wrong, this is clearly how a lot of people in the UK feel towards rules created by lawmakers in the EU. --- On the this topic more broadly as a Brit I am much less concerned about websites tracking me without permission because there are things I can do to prevent that. If you're concerned about data protection I'd argue you should be more concerned about the perfectly legal real-world privacy violation that you have little to no ability to protect yourself from. For example, in the UK our communication devices (internet traffic, SMS, etc) are monitored, our streets are full of surveillance cameras, supermarket self-serve checkouts implement facial recognition without our consent, the police stalk the public on social media to ensure we're not saying anything offensive. Given all of this why should I care if tesco.com has placed a tracking cookie on their site without my consent? It seems so trivial to the point that it's almost a distraction from the real privacy issues that we face as a society. I'm not going to be locked in a cage because Tesco put a cookie on their website, but what the government decides to do with the data their collecting on me who knows. The only reasonable way I can protect myself from that is by not saying things my government doesn't like online and not attending protests or other real-world events that my government may not approve of.

MattPalmer1086 4y ago
It's a tired argument really. The rules that were "imposed" on us by the EU were often written by us. We had a huge hand in setting those standards. If we want to do business with the huge market next door, we will have to abide by those rules, whether we have a hand in setting them or not. I guess we can turn inwards and become poorer, both economically and culturally. Or we increase the red tape our businesses have to deal with if we want to expand our markets.
- kypro 4y ago
  I guess I don't disagree. I've switched between pro-EU and pro-Brexit positions over the last several years so I do get where you're coming from. If you're optimising purely for economics then I don't think there's any question that remaining in the EU would have been the right decision. And yeah, I agree that sometimes compromise is just the cost of doing business. The mistake you and a lot of remainers make though is to think Brexit is primarily about economics. Most of my family are on benefits and literally couldn't give a damn about what's in the best economic interests of the UK. I'm not saying that's right, but it is what it is. The problem people from my background have are more related to the social impacts of mass-migration and a lack of economic opportunities for low-skilled workers. From what I could understand that's why most of my family voted Brexit while most of my colleagues and university friends opposed it. I suspect the things that impact mine and your quality of life are different from that of my family. I do think there's a place for an EU-like political entity that can set trade standards for the continent to encourage cross-border trade. The fundamental issue for me is that the EU as an organisation seems to be heading in the wrong direction. I'd personally prefer power to be more localised and closer to communities, where as the EU as an organisation seems to believe the trend should be in the opposite direction, towards ever more centralised power. And they have a point.. If every nation state operates by different rules that's not good for multi-national corporations. But perhaps that's okay. Or at the very least it seems to me there's a trade off here. If there are things we can all agree on then it makes sense to have common rules, but enforcing agreement via a political union (or via any other means) generally isn't stable when opinions are too diverse. We see this even within the UK as political entity, but historically it's also clearly been true. I guess what I'm saying is that perhaps what you see as economic costs have benefits which you might not appreciate as someone who largely agrees with the politics of the EU. It's like arguing to a Scot who dislikes the politics of Westminster that they'll be slightly worse off if they vote for Scottish independence. I think they get that, but they probably see the political opportunities of an independent Scotland as more important even if it comes with an economic cost.

by kypro 4y ago

MattPalmer1086 4y ago

It's a tired argument really. The rules that were "imposed" on us by the EU were often written by us. We had a huge hand in setting those standards. If we want to do business with the huge market next door, we will have to abide by those rules, whether we have a hand in setting them or not. I guess we can turn inwards and become poorer, both economically and culturally. Or we increase the red tape our businesses have to deal with if we want to expand our markets.

kypro 4y ago
I guess I don't disagree. I've switched between pro-EU and pro-Brexit positions over the last several years so I do get where you're coming from. If you're optimising purely for economics then I don't think there's any question that remaining in the EU would have been the right decision. And yeah, I agree that sometimes compromise is just the cost of doing business. The mistake you and a lot of remainers make though is to think Brexit is primarily about economics. Most of my family are on benefits and literally couldn't give a damn about what's in the best economic interests of the UK. I'm not saying that's right, but it is what it is. The problem people from my background have are more related to the social impacts of mass-migration and a lack of economic opportunities for low-skilled workers. From what I could understand that's why most of my family voted Brexit while most of my colleagues and university friends opposed it. I suspect the things that impact mine and your quality of life are different from that of my family. I do think there's a place for an EU-like political entity that can set trade standards for the continent to encourage cross-border trade. The fundamental issue for me is that the EU as an organisation seems to be heading in the wrong direction. I'd personally prefer power to be more localised and closer to communities, where as the EU as an organisation seems to believe the trend should be in the opposite direction, towards ever more centralised power. And they have a point.. If every nation state operates by different rules that's not good for multi-national corporations. But perhaps that's okay. Or at the very least it seems to me there's a trade off here. If there are things we can all agree on then it makes sense to have common rules, but enforcing agreement via a political union (or via any other means) generally isn't stable when opinions are too diverse. We see this even within the UK as political entity, but historically it's also clearly been true. I guess what I'm saying is that perhaps what you see as economic costs have benefits which you might not appreciate as someone who largely agrees with the politics of the EU. It's like arguing to a Scot who dislikes the politics of Westminster that they'll be slightly worse off if they vote for Scottish independence. I think they get that, but they probably see the political opportunities of an independent Scotland as more important even if it comes with an economic cost.