4 ms·

In what way was Brexit a stupid thing? It was an extemely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything then isn't th

In what way was Brexit a stupid thing? It was an extemely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything then isn't that what it should be? You might not like the outcome (I don't) but I consider the question of Brexit important.

epihelix 4mo ago
Should we also have a referendum on reducing the tax rate to zero? It would also be an extremely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything, then isn't that what it should be? Not all referenda that might win a "yes" vote are sensible to propose.
- teiferer 3mo ago
  If you ask me personally, then no, we don't need to have such a vote. But if the point is that country wide referendums should only be held for important questions but then exclude Brexit because "it's stupid" then that's an inconsistent argument. Surely the question whether the UK should leave the EU was a very important decision to make. That the vote went a certain way which you don't like does not make it less important of a decision. Unless the actual point is "referendums should only be held for questions that are important and will go the way I like". You can have that opinion but then please be honest about it instead of disguising it with supposedly neutral musings about democracy. (Hint: Democracy does not mean that only what you want will happen.)
  - chii 3mo ago
    for such a wide ranging effects, brexit's vote had only 2% margin of error, with 48% against. The people's stupidity is why "important" questions like that should not be put to a vote; they can't be expected to understand the entirety of the outcome and consequences. As the other comment has posted: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
ben_w 4mo ago
Analogy: Cancer surgery is an extremely important decision, directly affecting many people's lives. What happened with Brexit was a analogous a bunch of salesmen on TV saying "that mysterious ache you have, don't listen to doctors who say it's fine, call our surgical team today! It's cancer! We can fix this quickly and you'll be back to your old self within a week!" for two decades, then the country agreeing, going to surgery, and waking up to find they'd had half their liver removed, the post-surgical biopsy results said it was fine and not cancerous at all, it took 6 months to recover and they could never drink alcohol again. And the ache was still there. If it had been an honest "we know it will cost X, we are willing to spend this because otherwise what is the point of money", that would have been totally fair. Instead, problems that weren't caused by the EU were blamed on it for decades, while the benefits of membership were treated as the natural state of the world to the extent that talk of losing them was equated with "being punished".
nextaccountic 4mo ago
It was put to vote for stupid reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_vote_in_favour_of_Brexit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_vote_in_favour_o... > The referendum was originally conceived by David Cameron as a means to defeat the anti-EU faction within his own party by having it fail. After that, another issue is that the leave campaign was heavily based on lies and misleading the British voters. Couple that with a extreme form of policy lock-in / hysteresis: you need just to form a small margin in a majority at a single point of time. After that point of time, the popular opinion doesn't matter anymore because getting back to EU isn't as easy as leaving. So the misinformation campaign need to work just once. By the time voters realize what happened, it's too late. This situation is a critical failure of democracy. Not just direct democracy, representative democracy can't work in a post-truth world either.
- teiferer 3mo ago
  > representative democracy can't work in a post-truth world either. Truthful public debate is a central ingredient to democracy. If you don't have that then you are severely lacking in democratic qualities. In other words, your statement is akin to saying "democracy can't work in an undemocratic environment", which is obvious. If anything then the Brexit vote shows that democracy is lacking in the UK. Not having asked the people would not have made that better though.

epihelix 4mo ago

Should we also have a referendum on reducing the tax rate to zero? It would also be an extremely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything, then isn't that what it should be? Not all referenda that might win a "yes" vote are sensible to propose.

teiferer 3mo ago
If you ask me personally, then no, we don't need to have such a vote. But if the point is that country wide referendums should only be held for important questions but then exclude Brexit because "it's stupid" then that's an inconsistent argument. Surely the question whether the UK should leave the EU was a very important decision to make. That the vote went a certain way which you don't like does not make it less important of a decision. Unless the actual point is "referendums should only be held for questions that are important and will go the way I like". You can have that opinion but then please be honest about it instead of disguising it with supposedly neutral musings about democracy. (Hint: Democracy does not mean that only what you want will happen.)
- chii 3mo ago
  for such a wide ranging effects, brexit's vote had only 2% margin of error, with 48% against. The people's stupidity is why "important" questions like that should not be put to a vote; they can't be expected to understand the entirety of the outcome and consequences. As the other comment has posted: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE

ben_w 4mo ago

Analogy: Cancer surgery is an extremely important decision, directly affecting many people's lives. What happened with Brexit was a analogous a bunch of salesmen on TV saying "that mysterious ache you have, don't listen to doctors who say it's fine, call our surgical team today! It's cancer! We can fix this quickly and you'll be back to your old self within a week!" for two decades, then the country agreeing, going to surgery, and waking up to find they'd had half their liver removed, the post-surgical biopsy results said it was fine and not cancerous at all, it took 6 months to recover and they could never drink alcohol again. And the ache was still there. If it had been an honest "we know it will cost X, we are willing to spend this because otherwise what is the point of money", that would have been totally fair. Instead, problems that weren't caused by the EU were blamed on it for decades, while the benefits of membership were treated as the natural state of the world to the extent that talk of losing them was equated with "being punished".

nextaccountic 4mo ago

It was put to vote for stupid reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_vote_in_favour_of_Brexit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_vote_in_favour_o... > The referendum was originally conceived by David Cameron as a means to defeat the anti-EU faction within his own party by having it fail. After that, another issue is that the leave campaign was heavily based on lies and misleading the British voters. Couple that with a extreme form of policy lock-in / hysteresis: you need just to form a small margin in a majority at a single point of time. After that point of time, the popular opinion doesn't matter anymore because getting back to EU isn't as easy as leaving. So the misinformation campaign need to work just once. By the time voters realize what happened, it's too late. This situation is a critical failure of democracy. Not just direct democracy, representative democracy can't work in a post-truth world either.

teiferer 3mo ago
> representative democracy can't work in a post-truth world either. Truthful public debate is a central ingredient to democracy. If you don't have that then you are severely lacking in democratic qualities. In other words, your statement is akin to saying "democracy can't work in an undemocratic environment", which is obvious. If anything then the Brexit vote shows that democracy is lacking in the UK. Not having asked the people would not have made that better though.