May you live in intersting times

[Fragony]

Chinese proverb.

Let's face it, the EU only has a few months.

The Dutch referendum isn't anything small (I thought it was I was wrong), the brexit is well on it's way, and hopefully a nexit as well, which really is a possibility. Both a brexit or a nexit will probably don't happen but the rules will be changed. Eastern-europe no longer has any patience with EU, they don't like to be told what to do again. Expected by political thinkers the EU would fall in 2020. I think it's just a matter of months. Musings and thoughts please.

edit, times of course

[Gilrandir]

Let's face it, the EU only has a few months.

Expected by political thinkers the EU would fall in 2020. I think it's just a matter of months.

Too many experts predicted the disintegration of Ukraine in 2014 "along cultural/linguistic divides" and later the collapse of Russia under the pressure of sanctions. Complex systems are resistant enough to carry on, especially if efforts to preserve them persist.

[Snowhobbit]

I thought the EU had already collapsed after the Greek crisis, or the Spanish Crisis, or the Italian Crisis? No? What about the Portuguese crisis? Surely it collapsed in one of those already? ;)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I thought the EU had already collapsed after the Greek crisis, or the Spanish Crisis, or the Italian Crisis? No? What about the Portuguese crisis? Surely it collapsed in one of those already? ;)

It's not a case of one collapse killing the EU, it's crisis after crisis gradually whittling away at the foundations.

If you look back eight years to 2008 you can see that after each crisis the EU is just a little bit worse off, a little bit less "in this together".

It took the better part of a thousand years for Rome to fall, we shall not be so lucky.

[Husar]

I don't like the advertisement in the title.

It took the better part of a thousand years for Rome to fall, we shall not be so lucky.

Everything was slower back then, you couldn't even buy a game, then pay and receive it right away from a country 6000km away. You also couldn't travel to a country 6000km away in 6-7 hours. You also couldn't buy and sell shares of a company 20 times within one single second, or rather, have a machine do that for you...
And the water you drank and the fish you ate back then didn't contain as much plastic either.
We have become so much faster at destroying things by now, just ask Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the cellphone someone replaced for a newer model after a year.
On the bright side, our GDP is also much larger than that of the Romans and we take better care of the unmployed and (most of) our slaves.

[Fragony]

Can you fix the advertisement for me please, I can only edit posts

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I don't like the advertisement in the title.



Everything was slower back then, you couldn't even buy a game, then pay and receive it right away from a country 6000km away. You also couldn't travel to a country 6000km away in 6-7 hours. You also couldn't buy and sell shares of a company 20 times within one single second, or rather, have a machine do that for you...
And the water you drank and the fish you ate back then didn't contain as much plastic either.
We have become so much faster at destroying things by now, just ask Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the cellphone someone replaced for a newer model after a year.
On the bright side, our GDP is also much larger than that of the Romans and we take better care of the unmployed and (most of) our slaves.

All true, but you know exactly what I meant.

The fall of Rome, like the the fall of the EU, was a long drawn-out process and nobody realised it had happened until centuries later.

Snowrabbit may think the EU "hasn't fallen" because he looks at each individual event and nobody says after "well, EU's dead now". What he doesn't appreciate is that the EU is tilting towards its end, and will fall if the tilt is not corrected.

[Fragony]

It's not a case of one collapse killing the EU, it's crisis after crisis gradually whittling away at the foundations.

If you look back eight years to 2008 you can see that after each crisis the EU is just a little bit worse off, a little bit less "in this together".

It took the better part of a thousand years for Rome to fall, we shall not be so lucky.

The EU seems to know only one perspective, if the EU screws up we need more EU. The proverbial snake that feeds on it's own tail. Things are NOT going to improve with these idiots handling things. I so very much hope that England will blow things apart. Everybody here already knew that a no vote was going to be just ignored, oh she said no but I thought she really wanted it.

EU fu&die please, Europe does not need the EU it's a continent not a country like the US. Fuck. Off. Excuse my French of German what was it

[Sarmatian]

Offering an outside perspective, the most recent polls in Serbia show that only 30% (and some change) of the population is in support of joining EU.

Usually it was much higher, ranging between 50% and 75%.

The weird thing is, all major parties support joining EU and it is a major part of their platform. Only right wing nutjobs are against it, and all together they can scrape between 10-15% of the vote.

EU is definitely in crisis and the only thing keeping it together is lack of viable alternative. In most countries there simply aren't any major political parties who are in favour of leaving EU. Sure, there are Tories in Britain, but even they are more in favour of a different status for UK within EU than pulling out completely.

EU will survive in some way, shape or form, especially the economic part. It's the political aspect that is in question.

[Snowhobbit]

It's not a case of one collapse killing the EU, it's crisis after crisis gradually whittling away at the foundations.

If you look back eight years to 2008 you can see that after each crisis the EU is just a little bit worse off, a little bit less "in this together".

It took the better part of a thousand years for Rome to fall, we shall not be so lucky.

It is a case of people always crying that the EU will fall *now* because *this crisis* is so bad and there is no recovery from it. I think you should be more concerned with the collapse of the UK given the support for independence in Scotland, which is greater than the support for leaving the EU proportionally. The way that the debt situation has worked out was largely inevitable since the member states retain full autonomy over how they manage their finances. How you think the EU can manage the Greek state budget without the legal ability to do so is beyond me.