Brexit Thread

[Husar]

...Human nature. Unless you are a psychopath you should have noticed at least somewhat by the age of twenty that you have greater empathy with those you identify as similar to yourself than those alien to you, it's why you keep trading forum thanks with people that agree with you.

So unless you can't read, you should have noticed that a lot of the people I agree with are not from "my tribe", so you basically prove my point that arbitrary borders don't really matter.

And no, the EU is not a tribe it is an political and economic institution, "Europe" is a tribe, one whose shallow connections and abstract identifiers is making the attempts to override the deep rooted tribes of national identity fail impressively.

What deep rooted national tribes? Germany only became a nation in 1871, the UK is a nation that consists of several smaller nations, one of which is suddenly questioning these "deep rooted" "similarities". Obviously the UK is failing impressively as well as a "national tribe", which also proves your nationalist ideals wrong. If you want to bring up the 40% of Scots who want out of the EU, then you just prove that even within a small nation such as Scotland the idea of a common national direction makes no sense. You can go even further and look at families, a divorce rate somewhere around 50% clearly proves that we care so much about the ones closest to us. As do the people who hate their fathers or the fathers who molest their children. Wherever you want to draw the "ultimate border of kinship", I can pretty much always find some flaws. That's why the idea of what we currently call nations being superior to the EU is ridiculous to me.

You seem to have more in common with a German AfD voter than with Pannonian even though you share a line in your passport with Pannonian. Superficial cultural traits such as habits and food can be incredibly weak, just look at how McDonald's and Disney movies are easily accepted all over Europe and even the rest of the world. Or how no nationalists ever seem to rage about the existence of Italian restaurants in their neighborhoods...

I agree that Scotland should have the option to secede because it has it's own distinct culture. And I think that if lemiers were to become culturally polarized it should have the option of whatever border controls the political entities it stradles allow it to have

The point is that you can always find "cultural traits" that can be used to seperate people,, the emos and the jocks at school would also like to live in seperate nations, the parents of rich and poor children also infuse them with completely different behaviors and other cultural traits within pretty much any given modern nation. There current borders are simply historical developments that are otherwise rather arbitrary.
The sooner the elders would accept the EU as their nation, the sooner the young ones would grow up as EU citizens and accept that as their culture and their norm. The only thing stopping us are pointless ideas in our heads, whereas the benefits of having a bigger nation would seem to outweigh those ideas easily.

I occasionally ask rhetorically if people dont read my posts but in this case I am legitimately baffled as to how this relates to what I said.

I'm saying that an economic union that wants to preserve itself should not keep enforcing what is fracturing it in the first place. It is unreasonable to be damaging that which you want to preserve.

You said that the EU is more likely to fall apart now because every other or many other nations will react to this just like the British did.
On the other hand you claimed that the EU cannot or should not be together because the people of the various nations are too different.
Yet they will all behave in exactly the same way...

Unemployment hurts nations people.

Corrected that one for you.

Importing workers faster than you can create jobs makes more unemployment which hurts nations.
Agreements that require you to allow workers to be imported faster that you can create jobs makes more unemployment which hurts nations.
The EU is demanding an agreement that requires the swiss to allow workers to be imported faster that it can create jobs which makes more unemployment which hurts Switzerland.

The movement of money to Switzerland faster than the ICC in The Hague can get a hold of the mass murderers it belongs to kills people.
And if the EU were one nation, the internal movements wouldn't hurt it. Might as well say Northumbrians who move to London faster than London can create new jobs hurt Londons.
Since a nation is a just construct in your head that doesn't really exist, why does it matter if it gets hurt? What does a nation getting hurt mean anyway, blood falling from the sky? Yes, I'm questioning on a very, very basic level, because you just accept this idea of a hurting nation as a given and don't seem to think about why. The Brexit vote could also be said to have hurt nations going by how the stock markets reacted...

I cant say it more simply. It hurts the nation and is doing the same thing to Britain caused it to leave the EU, which weakened the EU, (see value of the Euro and European markest before and after brexit), it stands to reason that continuing to enforce such deals on the nations in the EU will cause more to leave which will hurt the EU further.

Again I am not they can't do it I am saying they shouldn't do it.

I think the real question is why not plural? There are independance movements all over europe, and with the success of the UK independance movment they will be enboldened and will try harder.

[shortened quote for aesthetics]

Switzerland is in prime position to be the second person. If it does not back down and instead chooses to forcibly shed itself of the EU, even with it's special status, you can basically say goodbye to the rest of the unhappy EU members.

That's a nice theory and all, but at least in Germany the opposite happened: http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deut...end/index.html

People who think the EU has advantages for us is up from 39% to 52%.
People who think it has more Detriments is down from 21% to 11%.
People who think the advantages and detriments are about the same down from 37% to 36%.

Maybe you forgot the part where people think more and harder about the advantages of the EU now and maybe quite a few now find out that it's not quite as bad as they used to think before they actually informed themselves or were properly informed by the media. If Britain gets itself into a lot of trouble with its Brexit, that may convince even more people that the EU is better for them. A few big corporations came out after the Brexit saying they want easier access to a big market so may move their headquarters/operations out of Britain into a country that stays in the EU, Vodafone was one of them. If people care about jobs so much, I guess Britain just lost quite a few of those.

That the unchangeable try-hard outers will feel emboldened now does not have to mean much, they may also get pushed into a fringe corner if Britain fails.

Now what I have just said is based on reasoning, my opinion comes in here: I think the EU can afford to accomodate Switzerland without encouraging the others to leave, it already has special status so I think that it will hurt less if the EU extends that status to include an exception to free movment. The swiss being given and exception here will be less likely to cause that watershed than if you gave the exception to, say, Italy, as it can be brushed off as just another in a long line of priveledges Switzerland has.

That makes me think that what they are doing now, basically a game of chicken, is utterly unreasonable. The EU is potentially risking everything over intimidating an entire country back into line. An attempt I cant see succeeding considering the Swiss take foreign bullying about as gladly as we British do.

The Swiss flooding the market with cheaper products while giving nothing in return hurts nations...
Might as well buy an German-/EU-made watch to support a local business according to your nationalist logic.
If they want to a competitive advantage on our watch market, we want a competitive advantage on their jobs market.
Why treat human resources any different than any other resource in a trade agreement?
You're making completely arbitrary exceptions here instead of thinking like a true capitalist, are you sure you belong to the Western Capitalist Culture?

[Gilrandir]

There current borders are simply historical developments that are otherwise rather arbitrary.

Are you quoting Putin?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...b-under-russia

He [Putin] said Lenin’s government had whimsically drawn borders between parts of the USSR, placing Donbass under the Ukrainian jurisdiction in order to increase the percentage of proletariat in a move Putin called “delirious”.

Since a nation is a just construct in your head that doesn't really exist, why does it matter if it gets hurt?

I'm afraid this concept is far from being born and existing in just one head. Is is one of the keystones of modern world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation

It doesn't mean it is devoid of ambiguity, though.

A few big corporations came out after the Brexit saying they want easier access to a big market so may move their headquarters/operations out of Britain into a country that stays in the EU, Vodafone was one of them.

On a linguistic sidenote: one of the poorest choices as a brand name (or logo or what-do-you-call-it). Everytime I hear it, I hear rather "what the f*ck".

[Greyblades]

Vodafone is ukranian for WTF?

[Husar]

Are you quoting Putin?

No, but great minds think alike?

I'm afraid this concept is far from being born and existing in just one head. Is is one of the keystones of modern world.

If you really want to make a case about national borders having to be in a certain place on the map based on inherent national territry, let's talk about what Poland, France and Belgium STOLE FROM US: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...orders.svg.png

I mean, seriously?
And doesn't Texas belong to the nation of Mexico? What's Iraq? I only know Persia, no I mean Assyria, and then there is this:
http://www.crystalinks.com/romanempiremap.gif

That worked more or less for a few hundred years and now that we are so modern we can't even make an EU work?
What's next? The English can share a Caesar with Egyptians but Polish culture is too different?
As for being a cornerstone, so was slavery or serfdom for thousands of years and we changed it anyway.

What about the US?
Originally a British colony full of British people who were then joined by people from all over the world and the place just formed it's own new culture. Was that such a huge failure? Did the different cultures clash so hard that the place just had to fail?

On a linguistic sidenote: one of the poorest choices as a brand name (or logo or what-do-you-call-it). Everytime I hear it, I hear rather "what the f*ck".

As a pronunciational reply, I think you're pronouncing it wrong.

[Gilrandir]

Vodafone is ukranian for WTF?

It sounds similar in English, especially if one slurs as it sometimes happens in rapid speech and with "da" instead of "the" as it is the case with the so-called "American black English" and with "v" and "w" interchanged as is the case with cockney.

No, but great minds think alike?

A lame attempt to cover for plagiarism.

If you really want to make a case about national borders having to be in a certain place on the map based on inherent national territry, let's talk about what Poland, France and Belgium STOLE FROM US: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...orders.svg.png

My case with national borders is that they NOW are where they are, and start revisioning the map on the pretext that something was wrongfully wrung from someone (as Putin does) leads to what it has led. I'm sure every nation has some territories which it considers stolen.

As a pronunciational reply, I think you're pronouncing it wrong.

Which one of them?

[Shaka_Khan]

I'd like to read the Brits' perspectives on this video:

[Husar]

My case with national borders is that they NOW are where they are, and start revisioning the map on the pretext that something was wrongfully wrung from someone (as Putin does) leads to what it has led. I'm sure every nation has some territories which it considers stolen.

But that argument could have been made at any point in the past and can still be made at any point in the future. An EU superstate would solve it as far as the territories within it are concerned. And it shows that arguments such as "this space belongs to nation A, people from nation B cannot live there" are ultimately futile as nation B may be willing to change this through war. A good way to prevent this is that nation A and B just cooperate and ultimately merge or nation A joins a big superstate that nation B cannot afford to go to war with.
Ultimately nation B may then want to join the superstate, too, because being outside is quite lonely, but joining it means trying to fit in, like not being a dictatorship, not torturing prisoners and all these annoying moral codes that the people inside take for granted but also find really obnoxious to ask from others in return for a trade deal. Probably better to buy the blood diamonds without asking how many children died in the mines.

Which one of them?

Vodafone, here's an Italian saying it a few times: http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/careers.html

I can somewhat understand the "voda" = "who da", but the rest is just in your mind.

[Beskar]

Ian Hislop: 'Remainers are entitled to go on making the argument'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36742691

I definitely agree with the 2nd half of his speech.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Ian Hislop: 'Remainers are entitled to go on making the argument'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36742691

I definitely agree with the 2nd half of his speech.

That's funny, because I only really agree with the first part.

Getting particularly fed up with everyone blaming David Cameron.

[Gilrandir]

But that argument could have been made at any point in the past and can still be made at any point in the future.

Not in the past, I'm afraid. Back then people thought in terms of "more territory - more power". Some of them still do now. But I believe contemporary world has realized (perhaps it was just impossible before) that a country can become powerful through other means. You don't need to annex some land to spread your influence over it. All you need is to inundate this territory with your goods, films, TV produce, companies, technologies, in a word - your material and spiritual culture - and the land is yours. So not in the past, now and in future - yes.

An EU superstate would solve it as far as the territories within it are concerned.

You don't look further than Europe. Nations exist beyond it. So it will take more than one uberstate to solve the problem ultimately.

I can somewhat understand the "voda" = "who da", but the rest is just in your mind.

"Voda" sounds more like "What da", not "who da". And when you hear "what da..."+ F, the mind easily anticipates the completion of the phrase.

[Husar]

Not in the past, I'm afraid. Back then people thought in terms of "more territory - more power". Some of them still do now. But I believe contemporary world has realized (perhaps it was just impossible before) that a country can become powerful through other means. You don't need to annex some land to spread your influence over it. All you need is to inundate this territory with your goods, films, TV produce, companies, technologies, in a word - your material and spiritual culture - and the land is yours. So not in the past, now and in future - yes.

The problem is that governments are not doing that, but corporations.
So you think that corporations will replace governments in the future?
The whole powerful through other means thing basically relies on having a big technological and therefore economical and military advantage over others. For this to remain true, others need to be actively stopped from developing to reach similar levels as your own, that's like a slave owner mentality except that the ones you keep down live beyond a border fence and you always claim that they're sovereign and responsible for their own issues while you intentionnally try to keep them worse than you to maintain your power. How that is morally any better than outright conquering them or joining with them and allowing them the same basic rights and standards is something you need to explain to me.

You don't look further than Europe. Nations exist beyond it. So it will take more than one uberstate to solve the problem ultimately.

You say that as though I were not aware even though I specifically mentioned that.
And no, it does not, once the EU grows into the OWG, the problem can be ultimately solved for everyone.

"Voda" sounds more like "What da", not "who da". And when you hear "what da..."+ F, the mind easily anticipates the completion of the phrase.

You and your dirty mind, I cannot relate, sorry.