I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do.
On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling structure. Most politicians and the main parties (especially before the opportunists jumped in) were against leaving. So was the financial sector and most big businesses.
OTOH, some of the problems inherent in democracy were also on display. A "right to my opinion" emotional public moved by very emotional arguments. Lies, untruths and misleading truths were the most prominent arguments on either side. A majority of the discussion was stupid.
We haven't figured this shit out yet. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas?
> We haven't figured this shit out yet. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas?
As a Swiss citizen, I think the swiss system is very close to perfect in this regard.
Sure, emotional and stupid arguments sometimes prevail, but most of the time the people make the perfect decision. Public discourse is most often also very rational, more so than most world parliaments.
Irrational arguments have been a staple of especially the British political system. I am amazed at the low level of discussion in the UK even by their representatives.
Direct democracy is something that has to be done regularly, otherwise you end up with situations like the UK or California.
> Direct democracy is something that has to be done regularly [...]
I think there's a lot of truth to this. When referendums are seldom, I believe there's a real risk of them turning into spectacle. (And at worst, a weapon for use by nationalists and fascists, like what happened in Germany in the 30s.)
When they are regular, and limited, and like in Switzerland not something pulled on a whim but actually requires some work to call, they might just work. But that also kind of assumes an informed electorate, which is perhaps the main point here – the electorate hasn't been very well informed, either way.
> When they are rare, and limited, and like in Switzerland not something pulled on a whim but actually requires some work to call, they might just work.
In Switzerland you essentially vote on 2-5 issues every quarter. I think this very regularity has educated the people.
It also helps that by law, if you vote on a proposal that would increase spending, you aso vote on how much your taxes increase. In the case of the Gotard Tunnel it was 1.6% increase in income tax for several decades (if I'm not mistaken). Swiss even vote on buying fighter jets, etc. You would be surprised how well it works.
All that said, the swiss constitution actually states that it is the job of the government to make sure the people have a good standard of living. So many social policies which would be difficult to get through constitutionally in lets say the US are rather simple in the Switzerland.
My only big nitpick in the swiss system is the lack of minority protection an little to no checks and balances by the supreme court on referenda.
Sorry, that should say "when they are regular" – not rare. Have edited my post.
Do you find the regularity of referendums naturally makes people more inclined to be educated on the issues at hand? Anecdata obviously, but nevertheless interesting.
The UK is a much more divided society than Switzerland, in terms of the base level of income and education. The median income in Switzerland is double that of the UK. Education is harder to compare, but you can't really expect the same level of discourse
It's also very hard for a poorer or even middle class immigrant to move to a place like Switzerland because the cost of living is so high. This creates an environment of unanimity you wouldn't see in more diverse cultures like the U.S. or the U.K. I think that's largely why Switzerland and the Scandinavian states get accolades from U.S. politicians (not as much division.) But they don't seem to get that the cultures are no where near as diverse and thus the politics are not anywhere near as divisive.
That's not a criticism of diverse cultures, more of states living in relative unanimity being in a bubble.
Well, it's not like the swiss didn't have their fare share of ethnic issues in th past. Keep in mind that Switzerland is linguistically diverse.
The difference is that because of direct democracy and every male being armed to the teeth, the government steps in and tries to reduce inequality. That way democracy works again. I mean, Jura used to have straight up ethnic riots.
>that's largely why Switzerland and the Scandinavian states get accolades from U.S. politicians (not as much division.)
I have to disagree with you. I have a lot of friends in Sweden that do nothing but complain about the immigration crisis they are facing.
In fact one of my Swedish friends is here in the US now looking for a job because immigration has become such an issue in Sweden. She can name many immigrants she knows that are collecting more in welfare from the Swedish Government than what a Doctor makes... That's kinda fucked up if you ask me...
I don't disagree with you in terms of -now-, I mean historically. The Syrian refugee crisis has changed demographics in Europe in a way that I don't think we've yet seen the full ramifications of.
See, that kind of comments don't contribute anything to the conversation.
All you're doing is portraying yourself as a victim and hijacking the issue back into the bullshit "are we too pc" debate again, which quite frankly most people are already sick of.
In Sweden:
Swedish citizens really are the victims and their society has become too PC. It's not like here in the US.
If you hang a Swedish flag outside of your house you are automatically deemed a racist by your community. ANY semblance of pro-sweden is viewed as unfair by the immigrant community because they aren't swedish, because they aren't included. They've create a culture of everyone is a victim, citizens and immigrants.
It's really a fucked up situation. A situation I hope never comes to the US.
I remember listening to a Ted talk where the speaker basically said, Get income inequality in check by whatever means and most of your problems go away.
Get hold of a copy of Tony Judt's Ill fares the land. It has references to the correlation between inequality and many measures of 'problems' and tries to make the case for a causal link. Also explains philosophical background.
>get income inequality in check by whatever means and most of your problems go away.
Is that a cause or an effect though? As in, if your society evolved in such that "most problems" don't exist or aren't serious, then maybe as a consequence there isn't a lot of income disparity. But that doesn't necessarily hold in reverse. Making incomes equal by some method doesn't necessarily make the problems go away.
The point in discussion, everyone likes equality in a way they having it, without they having to do anything about it. Or in other words making the rich poor in some way. Wasn't this what communism was all about.
The real issue is equality in access to basic resources, which is by and large there already. Beyond this you need to let people win and lose on merit.
You don't go around paying the same money for a haircut and brain surgery. That sort of equality doesn't work. Or to be more precise that's inequality of a very worst kind.
> The UK is a much more divided society than Switzerland, in terms of the base level of income and education. The median income in Switzerland is double that of the UK
There's also the population size difference. London alone is larger than Switzerland, and that's not even all of England, let alone the whole UK.
In the British Parliament, there are lines which separate the MPs on the two sides. These lines are a bit more than two swordlengths apart, to prevent them from stabbing each other.
MPs have never been able to carry weapons in to the chamber so if it was a rule it's a bit silly (which doesn't mean it's not true given how silly the rest of the UK democracy is).
>Switzerland is also much smaller than the UK or California in most respects.
This comes up all the time, especially in "Why can't the US do X?" discussions but isn't it just the equivalent of shouting down with "That will never scale!"
Of course it might not be exactly the same. Maybe the bigger country will need more servers spun up or a tweaked algorithm (to continue the analogy), but just saying a country is smaller doesn't mean things are a No before even being tried. I'm assuming there were railroads across other smaller countries before the US had the transcontinental railroad too.
That is a good point, but, how many of those democracies took place in the era of fast communication by locomotive, telegraph, email, SMS, the long distance phone call, Skype, and others? Surely there is a difference between the Roman Empire being stretched and sending messages by foot and FDR addressing the US by radio.
This is a fair point, but the largest issue (IMO) wasn't directly related to communication time...rather it has been the risk of Tyranny of the Majority.
Even in the relatively recent founding history of the United States, the Federalist Papers discuss and try to address a variety of issues which can lead to this outcome.
And ultimately, I think this is what we see with the Brexit outcome and the current Trump campaign in the US. These aren't "new" concepts...throughout history we can see similar outcomes for similar events with similar reasons.
You raise an excellent point though, which is with the ease of communication in the modern era, why don't we have a more informed public? This is something I have thought about trying to tackle with a side dev project...but the issue is complex and difficult to address directly.
Side note, I believe the Roman Empire was a Republic, not a Direct Democracy :)
> Nit pick: the Roman Empire was founded after the Roman Republic, when Julius Caesar overthrew the senate.
Nit pick: the Roman Empire, in one sense, was founded while Rome was still ruled by the Republic; in this sense, the Empire is the metropole-periphery arrangement with Rome proper ruling as the metropole and the various provinces as peripheries.
In the other sense (the sense of the Empire as a form of government within the Rome rather than the relation between Rome and the provinces), the Roman Empire was founded when Caesar Augustus was granted a variety of lifetime powers by the Senate.
In either sense, it was not founded by (or during the life of) Julius Caesar.
In Switzerland referenda are a very institutionalized and regular decision making tool. It is mostly used to get rid of political gridlock and making sure special interests don't filter out the will of the people (director proposal). That, combined with the fact that in Switzerland there is no real parliamentary "opposition" (everybody voted in forms the government) turns the whole game into a problem solving process rather than political one-up-man ship. You essentially don't need an opposition anymore to keep politicians in check, that's what the people are for.
Ballot props are far more regular in CA than headlines suggest. The requirement for signatures keeps dropping as voter turnout drops, and it doesn't take that many resources to get something on the ballot. An appealing title and description make it fairly easy to get a lot of maybe not so great spending passed, despite reasonably good efforts to keep voters informed. I don't know that the overall function is that different from what you describe, given that there isn't really a strong opposition party in the state, but it is hard to get the majority of people to really think critically about 5 different obscure spending packages.
I think the Swiss system is pretty good, but I don't know about the Swiss people. Are they smarter than other citizens? Are they less vulnerable to populist propaganda?
I also think this is something that works best on "smaller" scales - that is, not on the scale of France, or the UK, or Germany, but on the scale of Switzerland, Luxemburg, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, ...
Swiss culture is very small-c conservative, with heavy value on making rational, pragmatic decisions. It is no surprise that they have a system which reflects that, and performs well for that population.
Watching the BBC last night was like drinking better beer. I couldn't believe how much better it was, not just the broadcasters but nearly all the guests. The only bum note was the poor fellow who had to do a vaudeville act with hand-waving and silly magic graphs, and that was the one obviously CNN-derived bit.
Oh dear, I'm sorry for misimputing the magic graphs. I did feel sorry for Jeremy; he looked like a giant stooping over the blue and yellow gardens of the little people. The rest of the broadcast struck me as brilliant relative to what we have to endure over here.
I'm from the UK, I'd definitely agree that the Swiss model of democracy is better than what we have here.
The only model I'd suggest that may be even better than direct democracy is liquid democracy (which is a close relative of direct democracy), but seeing as no countries have adopted it I'd say the Swiss model is the best example of how an effective democracy functions.
For those interested in learning what liquid democracy is, this is a brief introduction:
I don't think I have a better alternative to direct democracy, but it's not perfect either. I'd like to point out that the Swiss system is very far from perfect for the same reasons other systems are. Did everyone forget about the horrible minaret vote?
I've read Rousseau (who was Swiss) and was fascinated by his assessment that representative democracies lead to parties which lead to factions which leads to self-destruction; that the only viable form of Democracy was direct plebiscite, as often as possible. CH still operates this way.
A minor clarification: Rousseau was not Swiss. He was born in Geneva, but Geneva didn't join the Swiss Confederation until 1815 (many years after his death).
Prop 8, officially titled Proposition 8 - Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry, was a statewide ballot proposition in California. On November 4, 2008, voters approved the measure and made same-sex marriage illegal in California.
On June 6th, 1978, nearly two-thirds of California's voters passed Proposition 13, reducing property tax rates on homes, businesses and farms by about 57%. The Environment Prior to Proposition 13. Prior to Proposition 13, the property tax rate throughout California averaged a little less than 3% of market value.
The interesting thing about Prop 8 is, a few years later, the outcome of the vote has been totally reversed, same-sex marriage is the law of the land, and it now has solid majority support. The will of the people can change in a short time. You could imagine a similar outcome for the Brexit vote, if it weren't such a permanent change.
Democracy is fine. The intellectual class just needs to learn to respect it. There is pretty much nothing that deserves to be decided by the will of the people--their values, their emotions, their world views--than the question of "what body politic do I want to belong to?"
The deep irony of the anti-Brexit narrative is that the same people would froth at the mouth if you said "India would've been better off economically if it hadn't separated from the British Empire." Whether or not that's true, it's an argument--like the anti-Brexit rhetoric--misses the point completely.
I know the point you are trying to make but India wouldn't have been better off economically under British Empire. British decimated the Indian economy
As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6 per cent in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3 per cent at that time, to as low as 3.8 per cent in 1952.
Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th Century, "the brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income
> India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6 per cent in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3 per cent at that time, to as low as 3.8 per cent in 1952.
Not sure how useful this statistic is - it's including the collapse of the Mughal Empire in the early 1700's. British company rule is usually dated around the mid-1700's, with the British Raj starting in the mid-1800's. We're also looking at percentage of the global economy, so it's not clear how much of this is a decline in the Indian economy and how much is it not growing as fast as other countries.
Think of it like this: India is a company and you are the CEO. The market is disrupted and you sat on your ass - will the stock holders be happy with you because the stock price went down, but hey - you were still doing the same thing for 100 years with no change, so congrats?
A State is the same as a company, except worse - they have an army and a monopoly on violence. After a war, when a king takes over, they tried to integrate with the new people, marry into them and in this way eventually begin to rule them. That began to change when people’s skin color was drastically different. The term Colonists was invented to convey how race got into the mix. The British were never a Raj (kings), they never ruled over India in the traditional sense of the word. They were colonists - they colonized and decimated the Indian economy.
That's comparing apples to oranges though. China was also huge at the time, and no Europeans were there to screw it over. Yet, they were irrelevant by the turn of the 20th century.
(If you really want something to point fingers at, try the habits that stem from the cultural and religious landscapes. You can't erase millennia worth of those overnight.)
I'm not saying it's literally as bad as colonization. But the symbolism is useful in showing that the focus on economic impacts is utterly misguided. Democracy isn't about optimizing for economics; it's about people deciding how they want to be governed. "Who should be able to tell me what to do?" That's a sacrosanct decision! It shouldn't be made by bureaucrats and intellectuals looking at the impact on currency prices.
The Leave campaign spent plenty of time telling people that the UK would be economically better off without the EU, £350m per week better off. Lots of bullshit about how if it weren't for the EU they could afford to support farmers and so on. People voted against it because they think immigrants are taking their jobs and EU regulations are driving British producers out of business.
It depends on whether you view democracy as a process to perfect society or mitigate against social harm. If you think democracy should perfect (or even just improve) society, it will often seem ridiculous. Knowledgable voters don't determine the outcome of elections and referrendums, and instead the mass of voters who understand the least about the issues at hand determine their outcome. From this perspective, Aristotle's was probably onto something when he thought democracy was better named ochlocracy (i.e. 'mob rule').
However, if you understand that the purpose of democracy is to mitigate against social harm, then the drawbacks make sense. This would be the perspective of Alexander Hamilton and co. in the Federalist Papers. The tendency of political parties and factions, this view claims, is to benefit themselves at the expense of the greater society, and in fact often harming the greater society (e.g. North Korea). Assuming parties will seek their self interest at the expense of the common good, democracy is an institution which means the best interest of the parties is to get people to vote for them, which means they have to do things people actually want. From this perspective, democracy is certainly a problematic process but brings peace and prosperity because it tends, on the whole, to align the parties self interest with the perceived good of the society.
Democracy works just fine, but it needs _some_ responsibility or bad stuff happens.
These last 5-10 years have been horrible for the EU. On the hight of this current migration crisis, the UK decides to hold their election.
If I didn't know Cameron was pro EU, I'd see it as a completely UKIP-skewered dickmove. The UK is letting go, just as the "tug-of-war" gets even more hairy.
There's a lot to be critical about with the EU, but going our separate ways isn't the solution for Europe vs the world. And at the height of this crisis it is just... cowardice? I don't know.
I think one solution is to hold the vote open for an extended period of time-- weeks, say. Keep an updated tally going at all time.
That way, it's not just a high-stakes, one day event. Everyone will have a chance to vote, and nobody can (rightfully) say, "I wish I had voted, it didn't go the way I wanted" or "If I had known, I would have voted". You will know, and there will be time for you to vote still.
If I understand correctly, there were heavy rains that affected the turnout for this vote. Should something this important really be that affected by the weather?
That's an interesting idea, could you change your vote?
There was a lot of rain. Flooding / trains cancelled - biggest thunderstorm I've seen in the UK since moving here 13 years ago. In this case I think it probably made a difference, because those that were fighting to leave were more likely to turn out.
Arguments for would be learning something new, or breaking information during the period of the vote. For instance, if a news story broke about a politician, or something hidden in the wording of a bill would be highlighted, then one might want to change their vote.
Also, propaganda/information campaigns would ramp up towards the end of the vote, which could be good or bad.
Arguments against are basically logistical burden and opportunity for fraud. It's simpler for one vote, cast in stone.
There is a huge logistics issue with the poll spanning more than one day: cast votes must be kept safe. The longer the voting period is the more expensive it becomes and more prone to tampering results.
I agree with you about the logistics; it might be a better idea for an online voting system (which carries its own set of concerns).
However, assuming one cannot change their vote, I disagree that there is more opportunity for tampering. Each count of the vote is basically a statistical sampling, and it should stay relatively the same.
Here in the US, all elections are handled locally, at the county level. If there is fraud, it's hard to detect the day of the election, so the fraudulent vote becomes part of the official ballot count. Sure, months later, poll workers, voters, and politicians can be prosecuted for election fraud, but at that point, the election has already long been decided. It's very rare that a real recount is held that becomes the actual result. It's easy for fraud to become the accepted results.
However, with a long voting period with daily rolling counts, there is more opportunity for scrutiny, statistical methods, recounts, etc. If anything funny happens, it will be easier to detect with more time, and prevent it from becoming the official results.
Democracy works when those participating are both educable and rational.
Monarchies, Dictatorships, Oligarchies work if the ones in charge are educable, compassionate, and rational.
Democracy wins out a little since the checks and balances of rule by a majority tend to make it a little bit easier to counter the worst excesses of rule by a few. So as a working base it's a good starting point.
Republics are even better since they make it possible for rational actors to prevent the worst consequences of demogoguery and mob rule.
Nothing is perfect though they all have weaknesses. You can't fix government without fixing people. And that doesn't look likely anytime soon.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their
choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard
of democracy, therefore, is education.
And it seems that a lot of Britons requires exactly that: education before making a wise decision.
This is being widely reported: "The higher the level of education, the higher the EU support".
> "According the polls, university graduates were the most likely people to want to remain in the EU - while those with a GCSE or equivalent as their highest qualification were more likely to back Brexit."
Don't you think opposition to mass immigration policy supported by the pro-EU side might have something to do with lower income/education class voting leave? Something at all... maybe a little bit?
Perhaps, though you might not have noticed it, they were voting their self interest?
Is it surprising that highly educated class wouldn't feel threatened by importing more low-skilled immigrants?
I'm simply illustrating that, it's not as simple as the smart people supported remain, so that's the smarter choice. Smarter for whom?
he specifically mention well educated. not wealthy, smart or whatever and put numbers on his claim. you on the other hand just put words into his mouth which he didn't actually say...
If economics and prices were the cause of the crisis you would expect people's voting patterns to vary based on whether or not their profession's job pool scales up with population count. Yet I expect even most of those liable to be out of work if construction slows down with population growth to have voted to leave.
During the UK EU referendum, I realised something about politics... When people don't know enough about the issues, they'll vote based on the emotional framing of the issues. This makes them incredibly predictable, and I'm talking about people on both sides of the debate. On the Leave side, uninformed voters were drawn to a protectionist mentality. On the Remain side, people were drawn towards a collaborative mentality.
If people are happy to be low information voters, it almost doesn't matter what the other side is voting for, you'll never consider it, you'll just fall in line with what your peers are likely to vote for. There are many formally educated people I saw fall for the low information voter trap, so again this cuts across the board.
If I ever run for office, my lead policy is going to be free puppies for everyone. If people aren't smart enough to take opposing viewpoints seriously then you may as well cut to the chase and appeal directly to their emotions, and pretty much everyone loves puppies. ;-)
Look at the map. London wanted in. Scotland wanted in. The rest of the country is dissatisfied with their state and want out. Look at the US map and you see similar things.
You can call the populace stupid and ignorant, but by doing so you're displaying your own form of ignorance. Lots of facts and figures and economic models can be used to say that everything is just peachy, but the ground truth tells a different story.
The major fallacy at work here is that in-or-out may not be correlated with solving the problems of the dissatisfied portion. Out may well make their problems worse rather than to improve their state.
People react to things in different ways. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend, whether or not that actually makes sense.
Look at the reaction on a forum like this which represents the upper middle class business-oriented citizen towards the societal impact of tech. Globalism is seen as an opportunity here, not a threat. Politicians, media, academia and business have told millions of people that things are great, but they are the problem -- they lack education, skills, wherewithal and have expectations for prosperity that are misaligned with reality.
So they lash out. They think to themselves "If some douche from the Bank of England or the Conservatives doesn't like this, that's good enough for me." That's democracy -- it's a messy business.
Is that a "good" reaction? History will judge. Depending on your POV, the crowd is either wise or rabble. But -- the critique that democracy is somehow broken is an incredible leap of ignorance. We (speaking from the US perspective) have been offered a sham of a democracy that isn't meeting the needs of many. We're very fortunate that we live in an age where peaceful democratic revolution results in a bad day/weeks for stocks. A hundred years ago, you'd have mobs in the streets and soldiers with bayonets shooting into crowds.
Change for change's sake is rarely a good idea. It helps if you have a good idea that things will be better after the change you propose because you can see some causal chain leading to that better situation.
This is only true if you are in a position of having enough power and resource to perform that analysis.
If you don't have that resource or power, change for change's sake is rational.
Put another way - when you know your leaders are taking you in the wrong direction, then a random alternative is a rational choice if it is the only other option.
Every citizen takes a standardized test when they reach the age of majority, preferably Raven's matrices. This test would be used for scholastic and career purposes, aside from government.
A representative body of 150 people is randomly selected from those in the top 0.1 percent every N years. The IQ test filters for intelligence, obviously. Random sampling serves as an anticorruption mechanism, increasing the cost of influencing leaders before they are elected. It also strongly reduces the incentive to game the test. And unlike most other election procedures does not maximally select for those most interested in fame and power.
These representatives are given very, very high salaries so there is significant incentive to take the position.
1. IQ tests are very good proxies for intelligence. Despite decades of ideology-based objections, the relevant fields have reached consensus that IQ does measure a general factor of intelligence, and it is a good predictor of future scholastic and career ability.
2. My system isn't an alternative to perfection, it's an alternative to democracy which is decidedly imperfect. Intelligence is likely a better proxy for pro-social attitudes than the ability to navigate political institutions and then trick a bunch of people into voting for you.
3. Again, compare this not to perfection but to what we currently have.
4. Training for IQ tests has very limited returns. But as I specified, the test will be used outside of politics, too. In fact its most common use would be by academic institutions and employers. Because of this, most people will have incentives to train to whatever extent possible. Thus the test becomes slightly less G-loaded and slightly more a test of conscientiousness, but any plan to train up a bunch of corrupt lackeys would have very poor expected value.
5. Again, compare not to perfection but to what we actually have now.
Although I believe there is value to the IQ metric, I agree with you that raw intelligence should not be the way we choose our governors/reps/etc.
As if democracy didn't have enough struggles, telecommunications (and especially television) have forever changed the way that the people choose their representatives. Superficialities are much more important now than they were pre-1960, and everything we get is filtered through the media outlets that control the television broadcasts; if they dislike someone, all they have to do is repeatedly re-broadcast a single unflattering yelp and that person's prospects are done. [0]
Who writes the test questions? Who administers the test? Who grades it? How random is the random choice? Who determines what cutoffs to use as the population size changes?
You'll start to see gaming of the test, where those with resources either get involved in the administration or devote their time to perfecting their offspring's change of getting in that top 0.1 percent. Eventually, those without resources will be wholly unable from achieving scores necessary to be in the top 0.1 percent. You'll have an entire class of people who will either be part of government or feasibly able to join as members die, retire, or finish their terms. They will self-seclude as they have little to gain from interacting with the 99.9%.
As I specified above, it's vital that the test be used outside of politics, too. If employers and academics institutions rely on the test for admissions, this would provide pressure to keep the test bound to IQ. If we further specify the test must be symbolic like Raven's Matrices, I think there is a good chance we could keep the test g-loaded.
As for your second point, random selection is a vital to mitigate that possibility. A publicly verifiable source of randomness would be ideal.
I'm guessing a lot of minorities and immigrants would be left out of representation. Who decides what's on the test, how do we decide that it's fair and not used just to justify that people conform to marketed opinions? How does this test help against those that are disenfranchised and without privilege? How do we challenge those with privilege and power and their positions and goals?
Your argument is that this proposition is valid notwithstanding the very real power struggle in society. Why would one want to even put someone through something as humiliating as an intelligence test to determine their rights. It reminds me of the reading tests during segregation to suppress black voters. If we would have implemented this test then, tell me would they have a fair chance in society?
At least from my perspective, the government is fair game for everyone. Already our best and brightest are working for us, however power is incredibly corrupting. The issue isn't the voter, it's the system that seeks to suppress and deny the will of the voter. The voter should have full responsibility, just like someone who decides to take unsanctioned drugs
Why would you put someone through something as humiliating as a college education, and their final exams? Presumably you want a measure of their knowledge and capability. In my system, no one has the right to become a representative. It's a job like any other, that requires non-standard admissions procedures (namely random sampling) to avoid corruption. I'm unsure if traditions could be enshrined to make my system stable, as it doesn't have a fiction as beautiful as the people's will to justify its existence. But I do think it's worth considering.
Maybe there could be 2 parallel branches, like the House and Senate, one of which uses this random sampling / testing system. The other uses something resembling a popular vote.
You do realize this is not an "election" procedure, right? "Election" implies that some group of people is choosing their rulers or representatives. Given that this obviously disenfranchises the vast majority of the population even more than now, I must infer that you don't consider the popular will a factor that should play a major part in government.
Also, even granting that IQ tests are as reliable as you assume, you still need to justify a few things:
- Why do you assume the comparative advantage of these extraordinarily IQ people is to spend time as a representative, rather than in academia, science, business, non-elected positions in government, etc? I'm not convinced that the 0.1% most intelligent people make a particularly better voting body than the top 1%, or for that matter the top 15% percent, which certainly includes the majority of our elected representatives today.
- It's been argued that rationality and intelligence in the sense measured by IQ tests are not particularly closely correlated, so I'm not sure why extreme quickness of thought should be privileged in particular for representative positions. Related to that, there seem to be a large number of high-IQ cranks that I wouldn't want to trust the fate of an entire nation to -- for example, Mencius Moldbug.
- Do you have any particular reason to believe that the high IQ members of this body would vote for the good of the entire nation, rather than in their own interests (granted, you've already privileged them with your proposal to use IQ tests pervasively in society)? 0.1% of the US is 320,000, and though your mechanism might prevent the small number of representatives at a given time from enriching themselves to Third World-dictator standards, I don't see any reason they wouldn't grant all 0.1% highest IQ people a $1m per-annum -- it would only cost $320b/year, less than 10% of the 2016 federal revenue.
This mostly sounds like a technocratic wet dream to me -- you could have Robin Hanson rule the U.S with no opposition at all.
I like the random selection part as anti-corruption measure. But the top 0.1 percent IQ filter is not very democratic. You can train for those (if you have the time and money) and there will always be some cultural bias built into the test. It's uncomfortably close to excluding a whole race or sex.
I've long thought an entirely random selection "civic house" in legislative branches would be an interesting check or balance to the current interests and status quo. Make serving for legislature something like jury duty in that you just randomly might be asked to do it for a few months. In the age of internet communications you can presumably do it in such a way that the random selectees will not see much impact on their "normal lives" and jobs... in fact that could be a useful selective pressure against certain forms of politicking ("I can't listen to this filibuster all night, I have to actually work in the morning.").
The problem with democracy is the people are easily influenced by false truths.
I'm all for democracy, but I also realize that a well informed vote and an uninformed vote are equal and therein lies the problem. It's not really something that can be fixed within a true democracy.
The false premise in your post is that "being well-informed" would lead you to a particular conclusion. Governing isn't like building a dam. You'd be insane to build a dam by getting random people on the street to design it. But the principles underlying governance aren't predictable like the principles underlying engineering. You're not going to find prominent engineers at leading universities disagree about whether concrete with a particular compressive strength will hold back a particular amount of water. Yet, you had a number of prominent economists on the pro-Brexit side: http://www.wsj.com/articles/pro-brexit-economists-make-case-....
At the end of the day, on most issues (obviously there are exceptions), the "informed" class is just guessing or following a particular ideology. Was NAFTA good for the average American? 20 years later economists still can't definitively answer that question!
This is why you have republics. Even moreso when you can get the people to elect representatives based on familiarity and quality rather than propaganda.
Someone whose job it is to run the country should be much more informed than people who only make political decisions once every couple years for major policy decisions involving the whole country with ride ranging ramifications.
I think its the same argument communists make - that the USSR, China, Cuba, etc have all been failed states that never were what Marx and Lenin intended, and they devolved into totalitarian dictatorships rather than becoming the socialist paradise the ideological founders wanted.
In the context of republics, a similar argument stands. We should have representatives with empathic relations with their constituents going both ways - the people should be picking the best amongst themselves to rule, but most existent democracies have devolved into elites picking the leaders and voters having no relations whatsoever with their own leadership, which was supposed to be the entire point.
There are a large number of issues for which there exist equally well-informed arguments for both sides, or that there is no actual 'true' answer to be chosen.
When there are "people in charge", them being misinformed is the least of one's worries. The bigger problem is that they are very well informed about how their actions affect their own interests.
I don't know, it seems that people of all political stripes believe that the politicians in other parties are grossly misinformed. I could point to countless examples to politicians in my party and others.
It's pie in the sky, but I'm interested in the idea of "immediate delegation representative voting" (that's a phrase I just made up because I don't know if it has a formal name). How it would work would be that you still have your default elected representative for most issues, but on a per-vote basis, a citizen could override the default and designate an alternate representative for that vote, including themselves.
So if a citizen felt that a particular person was a better expert on an issue then their representative - they could designate that person to study the bill/policy in depth and cast their vote.
One effect here is that if multiple citizens delegate the same people, then those delegates could spend more time studying the issue than an individual voter. Another effect is that we might get representatives for issues (other than our normal political reps) who would collect voting blocks which could bypass the normal political lobby money path.
As with many human endeavours, it might turn out to be an even bigger circus, but being able to selectively bypass one default representative has the nice potential of short circuiting the pattern of currying favors with entrenched politicians. The approach is sort of a hybrid of direct representation while still allowing 'expertise' to come into the system.
I thought it was remarkable that the course of an entire nation can be so greatly changed by a 51.9% victory in a single vote. Seems like such an important change should require a supermajority of some sort. (And, of course, the original choice to join ought to have as well.)
People are fickle and easily divided. For normal elections, we hold them regularly, and that gives people a chance to correct their mistakes or change their minds. But for something like this, there isn't going to be another vote in a few years where people might decide to go back, it's likely to be once and done, at least for decades. The bar for change should be higher when it's like that.
On the other hand being a member of the EU is very serious business from a constitutional point of view.
Given this point of view it seems just as reasonable to require a super majority for staying. I.e. unless the wast majority is comfortable with deligating (a very significant amount) of power to the EU, why should it be allowed?
I'm proposing that a supermajority should be required for changes either way. Since the UK is already in the EU, you'd need a supermajority to leave. This builds some hysteresis into the system to reduce short-term swings.
Note that a referendum was held shortly after the UK joined the EC, and that was 67% in favor of it.
I'm wondering if someone can fill us in on the history of the UK's entrance into the EU. Was there a vote at all? It seems complicated by the whole European Community thing.
Great question. I perused Wikipedia a bit, and it seems like the relevant event would be the UK joining the European Communities, which eventually transformed into the EU. The UK government directly decided to join, but a referendum was held two years later, and "stay" won with 67% of the vote:
The formal entry into the EU was done with the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and didn't have a referendum, but it was basically a direct continuation of their EC membership. Although I imagine someone opposed to EU membership might argue that this was the most important point, and the people did not have their say in it.
The EU has evolved over the years. The UK joined the EEC (a predecessor to the EU) in 1973. In 1975, there was a UK referendum about whether to stay in the EEC, where 67% of voters chose to stay. Since then there were a number of treaties which expanded the economic and political reach of the EEC, including the Maastricht Treaty, agreed upon in 1992, which was when the EEC became part of the newly formed EU. Whilst some countries held a referendum over the Maastricht Treaty, the UK was not one of them.
Since 1992, it could be argued that the biggest change to the EU was the Lisbon Treaty. You can read more about it here.
To be clear, between 1975 and 2016 there were no UK referendums on EU membership, so technically yesterday's vote was the first time the UK public was consulted about being a member of the EU. In contrast to the EU, the EEC was much smaller in scope, though it's clear that the architects behind the EEC always intended it to become a much bigger political player.
"There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection…. The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit."
What prominent lies from Remain? There was a lot of what people were calling scaremongering, but if you look at the markets it looks like it was pretty accurate. I've seen thorough takedowns of blatant lies from Leave, but haven't seen anything similar for Remain.
https://www.facebook.com/WTFlockNews/videos/1132580646806052 Nigel Farage made direct, public claims that the "money going to the EU" would be redirected to the NHS. An hour after the referendum he went on TV claiming that his adverts aren't what he said. This is just the most recent, flaming pile of noxious vomit to come from him but not the only one.
EDIT: I completely misread the parent post. My bad! :)
GP was asking about lies from Remain's side. Most of the filth and bilge we've been seeing has been racist, xenophobic bigotry from the organisers of the Leave campaign, speaking to populist fears and dreams. Reminds me a lot of Trump's campaign here in the US.
Yeah I completely misread the parent comment. My only defense is that because of the time difference I was up very late last night watching coverage of this, so I probably need some coffee XD
UK or US markets? The S&P 500 is down 3% at the moment, that's not panic. Panic is more like 10 - 20% in a day (UK was down 9% at one point), or 5% every day for a week like in 2008.
My take on it is that direct democracy doesn't make sense for this type of complex and nuanced decision. The general population isn't in the business of politics and scare tactics on both sides aren't going to educate them on the nuances and detailed implications of a decision like leaving the EU. That's why we vote for representatives who make it their job to understand, and vote accordingly -- representative democracy and direct democracy are two different things.
People feel qualified to weigh in on any political issue because that's always been that narrative. I see it asking the general population, without any further information to vote one day or whether Apple should move factories out of China. You know literally nothing about what's going on, so how could you possibly make that decision for Apple? That's up to their board.
What about decisions like electing the leader of the free world? The most powerful person on earth? Should that be left up to every day people?
I think that people should be able to make big decisions that effect them. Direct democracy is more useful than ever, the elites use our republic to manipulate people more than ever. They game the system and with no balance or checks on their power.
IMO its as easy for the elites to manipulate the public via media as it is for them to manipulate elected representatives and the latter is easier to address via checks and balances, though nobody seems willing to put them in. Elections are in the public interest so campaigns should be solely funded by the government, not by private backers. Private parties should not be able to run media campaigns on behalf or against individuals. Lobbying would be rendered useless.
Further, certain other countries do not in fact vote directly for their 'most powerful person' -- in Canada, you vote for your representative locally and the party with the most local representatives sends their leader to be Prime Minister, and even there, the Governor General in Right of the Queen has final say just to make sure.
I think as noble as 'I get to decide what matters most' is, it's worthless when issues reach the kind of complexity that requires specialization in your field. As another poster mentioned above, you don't vote on what kind of medicine a child gets, you leave that up to a doctor -- a professional. Now feel free to pick that professional!
But in politics and economy per se, there is no right decision. There is no such thing as a utopia or path to one, social and economic order is in a constant, violent evolution. Politicians just manipulate this struggle instead of heal it. If you can accept that you can't control adult children, why not accept that you can't control people?
And that's not entirely false, parents can decide what medicine and procedures to put a child through. Doctors aren't all knowing, they make many mistakes and are even in the favor of special interests like pharmaceutical companies.
IMO it was close enough that "the people" did not decide. Roughly half of the people decided.
I'm in the US so I am a little too uninformed and probably not heavily affected by this to take one side or the other. But knowing what I know I am surprised that this didn't need a 2/3 majority to pass or something similar. Given the result you have roughly half of the country upset by this and in some areas like Scotland, London, etc. you have a majority of people upset by the outcome.
The media is a big business owned by special interest and wealthy elites. Obviously all the scare tactics used in the media did not work on the voters.
Our biggest newspapers, the Sun and the Daily Mail, have huge political influence here. They were both strongly pro-Brexit, as was the Telegraph. They've also been anti-EU for decades.
> We haven't figured this shit out yet. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas?
I have been reflecting about this for a long time (as Venezuelan I witnessed how people can be manipulated and divided easily)
I have this crazy idea that countries should provide a "voting license" that would require the study of the matter to be chosen previous to the election process. The motto should the same that driving... It is a privilege not a right although everyone has the right to apply for it
Unfortunately, this proposal has its own set of problems. The southern United States had such a system for a long time, and in practice its only use was to keep black people from voting. I doubt that exact problem would happen again, but "voting licenses" come fraught with peril that they will be used to keep out the opinions of the "undesirables", whatever they may be at the moment.
Democracy can work but we all need to practice and support it.
The citizens need to have leftover mental energy and time from everyday life to think and learn about politics, form opinions and engage in discussions with each other.
Academia needs to be heavily invonved to provide unbiased, politically independent facts, pros and cons for each choice.
And there may be a role for online platforms as well to support direct democracy, proving information and a forum for discourse.
We cannot trust academia, they are a special interest in their own right. Their power depends on bureaucracy and big government, not to mention that their field is incredibly undemocratic itself, lots of research is funded or excluded depending on the political flavor of leaders.
Indeed, academia as we know it is somewhat broken. We can either fix it or replace it completely (eg. by some crowdfunded model) and give it a new name.
Either way, democracy would greatly benefit from an independent information source. While there are some purely subjective decisions to make in a society, a lot of them have some objective underlying facts (eg. is smoking harmful? is there a global warming?). Without an independent information provider, there's no way the average citizen could cast an informed vote on these matters.
>>The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling structure. Most politicians and the main parties (especially before the opportunists jumped in) were against leaving. So was the financial sector and most big businesses.
If you want to do X, just because people you hate don't like to do X is really a very wrong way to be making decisions about anything.
In general this sort of behaviour doesn't lead to a good ending.
In it is suggested a form of government called epistocracy. It has a lot of merit in my opinion. The basic principle is 'rule of the knowers'. We elect knowledgeable people into power and let them make decisions. We don't vote on what medication a sick child should get, why should we vote on what remedy a sick economy needs? Let the knowledgeable that we have chosen make the prescription.
You also have Heinlein's concept from Starship Troopers: only those who have committed a year of their life to serving the common good for no pay (food and accomodation covered) earn the right to vote. If that "public service" was of non military nature (unlike in Starship Troopers), I think it would be an interesting system.
On the opposite end of the scale is the concept of Demarchy, found in several SciFis, where there are no elected politicians, and technology enables everyone to vote on everything constantly.
We basically already have this. During the economic crisis, there wasn't a lot of voting on how to save the banks. It's interesting whether brexit and trump will really have that much of an effect, or if we are already mostly living in a technocracy.
Time to assemble all the evidence in both directions from sci-fi (such as most of Star Trek: TOS, some of Futurama, etc), feed it into a deep learning algorithm and see if it models a better machine society or a worse one. I trust this is a useful first case to test this hypothesis. :)
Plato's Greece doesn't take into account multi ethnic/racial/religious community. The people who are in charge of healing the sick economy would end up trying to build their utopia without realizing how the common man is affected.
A Republic works nicely. Many issues are too detailed and complex for referendums. That's why we elect people whose only job is to study those details. Otherwise, we make policy decisions based on who has the best propaganda that incites fear or hatred.
Benevolent dictatorship. Someone who can think better than mostly everyone and is dedicated to service to the nation above all else.
In theory (s)he always makes the best decision because (s)he is not swayed by excess emotion and is able to keep the best interest of the nation in view at all times.
Another option arises if we have a truly objective test of benevolent rationality (yes I just made that term up now), then we could weight votes by this measure; this will change political rhetoric from emotional to rational and it would encourage all members of society to become more rational.
A reasonable strategy, so long as one accepts from the outset that no human could be a sufficiently competent dictator, and even if occasionally someone was 'close enough' then succession crises would de-stabilise the system.
We need to design and build our own benevolent dictator, and then keep it running and upgraded as needed :-)
It's worth noting that the entire context of this discussion about democracy is an article that could be an effort by the Post (an arm of the neocon establishment) and Google (ditto) to spin a perfectly legitimate albeit narrowly-decided exercise of self-determination as a catastrophic blunder by idiots. Of course they would say that.
So I was thinking today, we could weight the votes by life expectancy. The fewer years left in your life, the less your vote counts.
In this case I wouldn't have to go home and explain to my children why it is that they probably won't be allowed to go and live in Europe for a bit when they hit their 20s anymore.
So I imagine that mens votes would count less than womens, at a particular age, and similarly for people in high risk occupations or who are obese or who have a fatal disease.
What are you talking about? Prior to Brexit, British citizens could live and work in European countries without qualification. This is not true for the rest of the world.
There are millions of non-EU born people living and working on EU soil today, the future will not suddenly change to where UK citizens will not be given the same opportunity to move to the EU than we afford the rest of the world.
British youth will have worse opportunities for working in Europe than they now do, and parents who voted to leave will have to explain that to their children.
Plato and aristotle had the perfect number at 5000, the number of people who can hear a speaker in a forum. Plus, their slaves, servants, women and other property.
Maybe politicians should have to pass a semi-"objective" process that is like the ideal for university admissions. They have to demonstrate (in a formal way, not by spending millions to broadcast their message to the people) that they are smart and prosocial.
I don't actually doubt most of the politicians are pretty smart. Cameron elegantly managed to use the promise of an EU election to form the first majority government for 30 years. Now Boris Johnson managed to use the election to get Cameron to resign and possibly tale over the government himself.
This may be a good time to question whether all votes in a democracy should be weighed equally, and how technology can make a difference to solve the problems of modern democracy.
Most modern democracies are representative democracies with aspects of direct democracy (in the form of referendums) using some sort of voting system. I don't think there is anything wrong with the idea of a representative democracy, but that most problems arise from the way the voting system is commonly implemented.
As far as I know, all modern democracies implement their primary voting using votes with equal weight. Some democracies, like the United States, have a layer of indirection (the electoral college), but still their primary votes are all weighed equally. While all people should be equal in the eyes of the law and with regard to human rights, there are good arguments that political votes should not be equal. Even with an equal total say for all citizens, it should be possible to weigh different topics that they have a say in towards areas that they are best qualified to make decisions about.
Imagine a political system where all citizens get to vote on representative experts per subject, with an implementation similar to PageRank. People who are indicated to be more qualified for a subject through both historical metrics (previous votes) and objective metrics (qualifications like a degree or work experience) get a stronger vote on representatives for that subject. The elected representatives could either advise politicians (in a binding fashion) or make political decisions directly. This system could strongly reduce a large problem of current democracies that the Brexit vote highlights: all people get an equal say about all issues, regardless of their ability to make qualified judgments about those issues.
Of course there are significant problems with such a weighed voting system, primarily how to make a system that weighs each person's vote fairly and accurately, and who gets to decide how the voting system itself works. This is where modern technology could play a role: by designing a digital voting system that is simple to understand and transparent, so that it can be audited by average citizens. In order to work well, I think this system should be strongly based on the scientific method and should therefore evaluate empirical evidence, instead of emotional sentiments. Another important aspect would be to learn from history, instead of overlooking its lessons. This means the system should be strongly based on political systems that have been shown throughout history to work best, like democracy. It also means that the system should avoid the historical pitfalls of political systems, like concentrating power to a specific group of people.
It would be great to know whether HN thinks that such a system could be designed, or that these ideas are utopian and wont work.
As someone with no dog in this fight, I have to say that many of the pro-stay comments here are dismissive, arrogant, and the epitome of hand-waving "we know best and everyone who disagrees with us is stupid or evil." It's an ugly and insular attitude that is itself usually a sign of ignorance of the other side's arguments and motivations. As a dev, I find it hard to believe that someone who can be so easily blinkered and so dismissive of others is going to be able to show flexibility and humility in their code and engineering decisions.
And maybe you're just that good at compartmentalizing, but I wouldn't want to risk bringing someone like that onto my team. How can you work with people who you think are stupid and ignorant when they disagree with you, even when you won't explain your reasoning? And how will you ever be able to switch sides and admit you may have been wrong when you state your initial position in such absolutist terms?
The disdain and disgust impressed on the elderly in this issue in particular is distressing. Seeing people advocate for selective voting or implying that the younger persons' views are worth more because of their older countrymen's vicinity to expiration is personally upsetting as a self-loathing Millenial.
As another self-loathing millennial, it's also distressing to empirically see the detrimental effect of my elders making extremely poor choices that will fundamentally affect my life much more than theirs.
Nobody really wants to disenfranchise certain voters. But it doesn't mean that we aren't frustrated with their poor choices either.
Well then, go vote. The reason old people get their way so much more is because they vote.
I heard a young lady interviewed on the BBC this morning, talking about how young people felt betrayed because this choice was made by people who wouldn't feel the negative consequences. When the interviewer pointed out that a lot of young people didn't vote, she blamed the negative nature of the campaigns for that, rather than acknowledging that maybe if people want a certain outcome they should vote that way.
It's the same situation in the US. The will of the people and the actions of the government don't line up all that well, and a lot of it is because young people don't vote. The government goes along with the will of the voters reasonably well.
I'm sure you vote, but a lot of people like you just stay home. If you don't want your elders making all the decisions, convince your cohorts to go have their say.
This is a simple matter of disagreement. Your elders aren't "making extremely poor choices" in an objective sense. They're making the choice they believe is for the long-term interest of the country, just as you did. You should not assume idiocy or malice on the opposing side's part just because you lost. Informed, well-educated people can and do disagree. This must be valued and believed in a democratic society if it's not to tear itself apart.
If it were up to me, minimum voting age would be bumped to 30 and votes would become more valuable as people aged. Personal experience and history is nothing to sneeze at. The open disrespect to just dismiss this by-definition-wiser voting block as making "extremely poor choices" is very distasteful and short-sighted.
I'm 43, and I think the idea of no-votes-until-30 is a crazy idea. Yes, the young are less informed, but they're also more interested in finding alternatives. The old are incredibly conservative, and as proven in this referendum, more fearful of diversity. They don't want to deal with change, which is a bad thing in a world that constantly changes - for example, keep in mind that the internet is only 20 years old, as far as the public is concerned. Cut off the young, and you take away the meat of the progressives, and your society will stagnate. Wisdom is definitely important, but so is the will to enact change.
And if you want evidence that the old are just as susceptible to stupid politics, look to Fox News's target audience: the silver hair brigade. Or talkback radio. Wisdom in personal life (everybody has one) does not necessarily translate to wisdom in political life (where few actually do engage).
Brexit is a pretty massive governance change. Everyone blames old people for its success, so I'm not sure why the narrative is that "old people won't vote for changes". I think it's less that older people are hostile to change as much as they've seen enough political opportunists and fraudsters that they have some firmness to their opinion (and again, this is a good thing). As Brexit shows, older people often do support changes that they believe would be beneficial.
I know that my dad, for example, would really like to see some stuff change, even though he's a senior citizen. But he's not excited by Bernie Sanders.
>for example, keep in mind that the internet is only 20 years old, as far as the public is concerned.
I am 1000% behind the idea of changing the laws that govern intellectual property and internet access, but this is not an issue that's age-dependent. Few people in any age strata care or think about this because if their news sources have any vested interest, it's in keeping IP laws locked down as tightly as possible. You'll find near-universal praise for copyright among every age group, because the public is presented only one side of the copyright debate. Laws expanding IP rights and locking down tech access routinely pass with minimal debate or interest. The exception to this is the hacker subculture, where it's not really an age-dependent thing either. Some older persons involved in certain niche businesses may remember slightly-less-oppressive copyright regimes and want to go back to that.
>Cut off the young, and you take away the meat of the progressives, and your society will stagnate.
This is everyone else's complaint too, but it's begging the question. "Progressiveness" is not inherently correct. Social insistence on certain behavioral standards is good. We don't want to "progress" out of all of our values.
>And if you want evidence that the old are just as susceptible to stupid politics, look to Fox News's target audience: the silver hair brigade. Or talkback radio.
I know a lot of young people who are into Fox News and conservative talk radio. People consciously pick the news outlets that agree with them most often because it's more pleasant to listen to someone encourage your beliefs than discourage them. Conservative media is not specifically targeted at old people; it's targeted at all conservatives.
The people voting for Brexit want to stop the changes their seeing to their country. Brexit itself is a massive governance change, but the people going for it see it as the option to stop the change they see in the streets around them.
> internet = copyright issues
Bollocks. If that's all you think the internet means to people, intellectual property, you need to open your eyes considerably wider.
> "Progressiveness" is not inherently correct.
Not inherently, but a) our societies are far wealthier (fiscally and socially) and far more equitable than ever before, largely due to progression, and b) the world changes anyway, and you have to adapt to change. If it weren't for progressiveness, we'd still have slaves, women wouldn't be able to vote (or work, really), Africa and Asia would still be colonised, anti-semitism would still be the norm of polite society, so on and so forth.
> I know a lot of young people who are into Fox News and conservative talk radio
'Target audience'. You can have a lot of other members in your audience.
>The people voting for Brexit want to stop the changes their seeing to their country. Brexit itself is a massive governance change, but the people going for it see it as the option to stop the change they see in the streets around them.
I'm sure Brexit supporters would argue this is a mischaracterization, but even if it's true, it proves that they're not afraid of change per se. They're willing to make a massive change to the country's governmental structure and role in the region in order to prevent other changes that they perceive as negative from occurring. They simply have a different evaluation of the situation than yourself. This is called a "disagreement".
>Bollocks. If that's all you think the internet means to people, intellectual property, you need to open your eyes considerably wider.
I was addressing the major fields of law that impact the internet, which is a) tech access laws like the CFAA and b) copyright/IP law. I guess your comment here indicates that you were thinking along the lines of net neutrality (already the law) and municipal internet/increased ISP competition (which is a complex issue that varies by locality and doesn't really represent a major, large-scale legal conundrum; it's mostly just legwork and local politics to resolve). Everyone wants improvement in that area too, but to my mind, it's minimally important compared to tech access and intellectual property, and it's certainly much more fractured since it's highly dependent on local politics.
>our societies are far wealthier (fiscally and socially) and far more equitable than ever before, largely due to progression
This is a non-sequitr and far too airy to really rebut. To the extent that changes associated with socially progressive politics have been beneficial (and I would argue that such changes are scant), it's not due to the fact that the positions were supported by social progressives, but that the position was reasonable and important. You act like this is inherently the same thing, that anything under the banner of progressivism is automatically just and important. That doesn't make any sense, which is becoming increasingly obvious as progressives have begun to run out of reasonable things to protest.
>the world changes anyway, and you have to adapt to change
Sure, some things change, and many things don't change. People today are biologically very similar to people from 5k years ago; on an evolutionary timescale, that's a miniscule difference, so the things that were logical and biologically compatible 5k years ago are probably pretty similar today.
It's not that people are afraid of change itself; it's simply that people understand that changes aren't always for the better.
>If it weren't for progressiveness, we'd still have slaves, women wouldn't be able to vote (or work, really), Africa and Asia would still be colonised, anti-semitism would still be the norm of polite society, so on and so forth.
You've essentially redefined "progressive" as "positive" and saying "anything good is progressive". Your statements here are not remotely reflective of reality. Every positive change is not automatically the work of social progressives. Slavery in particular drew fire from people of all ages and economic classes; the lines were not what you're trying to imply here.
>'Target audience'. You can have a lot of other members in your audience.
Yeah, I addressed this. This is another issue with getting definitions backwards, something you seem to be doing a lot. Fox News's target audience is not "old people", it's "conservatives". There are a lot of conservatives in all age groups, despite the media's attempts to make them invisible. Old people are overwhelmingly conservative, not because they're afraid of change, but because they recognize a lot of the proposed changes are not beneficial.
This boils down to simple political disagreement, and you're trying to generalize it over every demographic that's more likely to belong to your political opponents. Many would call this "ageism"; may want to watch it before your progressive brethren catch wind.
You make a good point with your last paragraph: given the circumstances, if we held a vote on who should get to vote, the answer would not be one millenials would relish. Those calling for disenfranchisement of the elderly are not only morally wrong but would bring down the very system which protects young people.
I do think that it is possible for a reasonable person to call certain decisions bad, even if it's not entirely objective. The vast majority of the credentialed economic establishment believes that Brexit was a tragedy, so does the stock market, and so do most of those educated on international political relations who study the subject.
Of course, the rejection of the establishment by voters who are tired of having their will systematically ignored, mocked, and thwarted is the reason for Brexit, so for the Leave crowd that isn't much of a point.
I agree with you, I hate seeing comments that are dismissive of those who actually have some experience under their belts and some personal history. You'd think that people who were living and capable of remembering a pre-EU UK would have a better perspective on this particular issue.
My personal opinion is that voting age is too young in most countries. It should be upped to 30.
But see this is the same issue, just in the opposite direction. I don't understand what relevance any of this identity politicking has to do with electorates.
The idea of "One Person, One Vote" and that no one's vote is inherently more valuable that another's, irregardless of that person's gender, age, class, sexuality, mental ability or what have you.
_Stupid_ people being able to vote is a feature. The young and inexperienced being able to vote is a feature. The crotchety old stubborn types being able to vote is a feature. None of these are bugs.
The question of the hour is "What can we do to create a more informed, civically responsible public". To this end my honest belief is to encourage people to stop watching network television and reading editorialized, propaganda clickbait articles from partisan online sources (Your Brietbarts and Salons and Voxes and Gawkers).
I don't agree that allowing the young and inexperienced to vote is a feature. Inexperienced people make bad long-term decisions simply because they don't have the history to draw likely conclusions from. There's nothing wrong with that and there's nothing that can be done about it; it's simply a function of age, which no one can change.
It seems accepted that a baseline amount of experience should be necessary, which is why we have a minimum voting age in the first place. I believe that the baseline is too low (and that it was intentionally lowered to more easily allow charlatans to acquire power).
I agree that telecommunications, and especially television, have had a serious negative effect on the political discourse and that we need to devise a way to make people less vulnerable to them. Things were much different when you had to read someone's pamphlets and evaluate their proposals to decide if you supported them v. watching them wink at you on TV.
What if your government voted for a lifetime stipend of $10000/month for everyone over 65, to be paid for by higher taxes on renters, students, and earners?
I think there is a breaking point where it is unacceptable to support the wants of an aging population over the future of the young, even by majority vote. However, I don't think the Brexit falls into that category.
Here's the thing: old people don't vote for that kind of thing, at least not if they have children and grandchildren. They've invested decades of heavy personal sacrifice into building a future for their posterity. They're not going to counteract that lifelong goal and knowingly vote for something that will inflict real pain or hindrance on the generations they've parented.
Personally I believe the elderly make much better decisions when voting precisely because they have something that gives their votes far-reaching meaning. Young voters care primarily about getting what they want in the moment; any other interest may be considered out of goodwill, but it is intanigble, whereas people with children and grandchildren truly care about the long-term well-being of the nation, because they know their posterity is going to be living in it, most likely for hundreds of years.
Even recently, 30% of older people support laws prohibiting black and white people from marrying each other. Only 4% of young people do. Twenty years ago, the vast majority of older people held those opinions(!) I think you'll find the same trends for many similar social issues.
I really don't see what this has to do with what I said. You disagree with 30% of older people on a social topic, and therefore, they don't care about the future of the country that their children and grandchildren will most likely inhabit for many generations? What?
> elderly make much better decisions when voting precisely because they have something that gives their votes far-reaching meaning. Young voters care primarily about getting what they want in the moment.
I'd be more positive about of future if this were the case.
Do you have any examples of where this has happened?
I always had the impression older people voted more conservatively, because they were tired of things changing, and mostly happy with their wealth and position in life.
Here's the thing: if you look at how the UK welfare system treats (say) the younger people who lose their jobs or suffer accidents or illness that stops them from working compared with how it treats the elderly, and pay attention to the politics behind it, or if you think about the emphasis on ensuring house price growth and who benefits, or... the comment you're replying to is an exaggeration of what already happens.
The difference with state pensions, welfare, etc., is that it's getting back money that has been taken out of their earnings and promised to them for decades. I think that's an important distinction. In America, we do base the amount of Social Security you receive on the amount you paid in; it's supposed to be like a forced savings account.
When the youth pay in, it's not seen as "the youth are paying for my retirement", it's seen as "the youth are paying for their retirements; I already paid for mine over the last 50 years, and now I'm going to start using it."
That's all well and good but the problem now is that politicians have pillaged the welfare funds and the programs are insolvent. The welfare and pensions need to be phased out. Those who've paid in for 50 years should get what we have left. Those who've paid in for 5-10 years are probably going to have to be SOL. That's a matter of simple fairness; the funds have been robbed, and it makes sense that those with the least to lose should bear the brunt.
If the case be convincingly made that the younger generations are going to be grievously harmed by the continuation of welfare programs, I believe the parents of those generations would do what parents do and take it on the chin for the benefit of their posterity. But I don't believe that's necessary in this instance; we should be able to give a very respectable portion of the population the amount of money we've promised them.
One of the other benefits of age is that you eventually come to understand that even a significant monetary loss can be made up over time, and that setbacks aren't the end of the world. As such, it's much more logical to solve the insolvency issues by asking how much time the person has left to make up the loss. Those who've spent decades paying in should get their promised quantities since they have very little or no time available to make up the monetary hit, those who have the most time to make up the difference and have also spent the least time paying in should get nothing, and those in between should get in between. Then the unsustainable system that caused this mess in the first place has to be dismantled.
We shouldn't confuse an interest in the reasonable fulfillment of the state's decades-long promises with disregard for the children's interests at large.
My rational brain agrees with you but I feel this decision was based on who shouted the most.
I participated in some political online discussions (something I rarely do) in good faith and the responses I got were often uninformed (no idea what subsidiarity means, what the EU institutions are, the objectives of the Maastricht treaty, ..) and more often hostile ("fuck off you want us to give Germany another pounding?", "why aren't you grateful", "we have the most powerful army and sit on the UN Security Council", ...)
After reading that for hours I came to the conclusion that these people are 1) stupid, and 2) arguing in bad faith. It was totally unlike a well paced engineering discussion.
What's your plan for engaging in this kind of discourse?
(I can link you to plenty of comments on HN right now that argue with words like "these people", "sickening", or say "The EU has no relevance to peace or war.")
I suspect that if you went to a political site that was strongly catered towards the "stay" camp and took a "leave" position, the results would be about the same. The problem is that both sides exist in a self-reinforcing echo-chamber, but they both think that it's only the other side that's ignorant, conformist, and unreasonable. Arguing that the other side is wrong because there are stupid people who support that position for stupid reasons is implicitly arguing that there aren't any stupid people on your side.
If you point to instances of people with idiotic opinions disagreeing with you but you ignore all the idiots who are on your side, you have a huge cognitive blindspot and cease to be credible except to other people with the same blindspot. For instance, your last sentence clearly shows your biases: you skipped over all the comments on this thread that are in the exact same tone, but share your opinion.
In general, there is no point in discussing things with someone who is unable to summarize their opponent's position in terms that the opponent would agree are approximately correct. If you can't get to that point, that demonstrates there's not even enough common understanding to have an argument, since you don't even know what the other side is, or if the person you're talking to is a fair representative of it.
It's the same with the Populism/Trump people and their counterparts in the US. Nobody wants to discuss a solution. Minds have been made up and if you don't agree with them, its all safe spaces, "neener neener neener cuck" and all that crap that goes with it.
For a species that imbibed itself with the idea of the republic, we certainly like to squander that gift.
Isn't that expected? People who voted for the establishment status quo want to know what might happen in the years to come now that the vote has gone against them.
Voting to stay meant no change, therefore they knew more or less the outcome, but now that the outcome is opposite their votes, they want to look into the repercussions --this informs that it's likely they stay vote didn't investigate the alternative before voting and likely voted out of custom to stay.
But way to go WaPo and imply naïveté on the Brexiters.
I think you're drawing conclusions based on your biases just as much as wapo is. You don't know who is googling the EU right now, or what their motivations are.
Just as much as some remain votes were blind votes for the status quo, some leave votes were blind votes for change.
Right... But then again, I'm not a journo at the WaPo. They are making these implications without knowing who... However I find it likely the Stay voters would be interested to know the implications of the vote now that the vote has gone against them.
They could also be children, non-voters, who are just trying to inform themselves about what the passionate people were fighting about and what's going to happen now.
Please don't use Google Trends for political gain. It's ridiculous on either side.
Now look at the demographics where voters voted for exit and see how does it compare in terms of age, education and income compared to those who foter for staying.
Wow, if that's not an elitist take I dunno what is. Maybe we should require IQ tests for voters, eh? Don't want the working class voting against the elites, now.
When it comes to politics, intelligent and rich people have proven themselves just as capable of blunder as the simplest common man. Just switch the ignorance for a sincere belief in things that aren't true.
Just FYI, participation was above 70%. ("The referendum turnout was 71.8%, with more than 30 million people voting. It was the highest turnout in a UK-wide vote since the 1992 general election" - BBC)
It's pretty safe to bet that a lot of those searches were from people who voted.
The title implies that a significant number of British people voted to leave the EU without even knowing what it was, and that their opinion is therefore uninformed and should not be respected. You believe that's a "pretty clear and accurate summary"? Even if you do, you at least recognize the bias and that it's not really fitting for a supposedly-neutral news outlet?
I recognize bias, and I recognize that I myself am biased. But I also maintain that the title is accurate, and the implications of the bias are reasonable to draw. Whether or not this speaks to the quality of the publication is up to anyone, and I might agree with you if I had read more from the WP in the past.
It's a truth that a lot of people are googling things like this inside the UK and the adverb "frantically" I believe reasonably addresses how large the amount of searches is.
I also believe that the implication stands solid, that a lot of the Brexit voters had no idea what they voted on, what the implications of a Brexit are, and were largely motivated by things like fear of immigrants, which intellectuals seem to agree is a... not so smart fear to have.
Out of curiosity, what would be a better, non-biased headline then? I kind of agree with capote here, the title does summarize the contents of the article.
The entire article is hostile and biased; a biased headline that properly summarizes a biased article is not an accomplishment, it's just more propaganda.
First, we have to treat the source with healthy skepticism: Google, like most other large companies, probably wanted the UK to Remain, so they're going to release data that is intended to embarrass the Leave camp since they're bitter over their loss and want to prove that the vote was bad. An article stating that Google claims this is one of the most-asked questions is fine, but it's taken as de-facto true by the WaPo, which is improper. People tend to believe these things, but even results in peer-reviewed studies are totally and completely fabricated with surprising frequency. It certainly happens a lot with unauditable data like Google Trends.
Besides being incentivized to embarrass the British people, we also have to assume that Google is squashing various forms of the query into one block: "What is the EU?", "what is eu", "what is the e.u.?", and so on would be logical, but what about just "EU"? Is it counted? Surely many people would type that in to be directed to the official EU home page.
Second, even if it is an accurate representation of the search queries in the UK, there is not necessarily heavy correlation between people that voted and people that were asking that question. Many people who cannot or do not vote use Google, especially teenagers that are tech-literate but not yet of age to vote, and they may be seeking to be informed on the monumental decision that others in the UK just made.
Third, asking Google a question doesn't necessarily mean you don't know the answer. I often conduct queries for things I already know because I want to find a citation for a specific claim, I want to find a related image, or I want to see what other people think and/or say about the thing. This is pretty typical. For example, my last search was "howard dean yell" to find a link to the clip of Howard Dean's infamous "yeah". I've known about Howard Dean's yell since it happened in 2004. That I searched for this doesn't mean that I was ignorant previously; it just means I was trying to find something concrete.
Fourth, the way that Google presents suggested questions can cause people to click the option out of convenience, curiosity, or even just proximity, so we need not assume that every query is sincere or even intentional.
So, an unbiased first paragraph of the article would be something like this:
American web search company Google has stated that the query "What is the EU?" was among the most searched today, hours after the UK voted to leave the European Union.
Compare to the actual first paragraph, which literally says "it seems many Britons may not even know what they had actually voted for." That's open hostility and bias.
Aside from all this, there is bias merely in the selection of what to publish, even if the article and headline are written in a seemingly-neutral way. The fact that WaPo is choosing to publicize Google's unverifiable declaration in the first place lets you know where they stand.
> But way to go WaPo and imply naïveté on the Brexiters.
The D.C. political class : politics :: MBAs : business. And WaPo is the Harvard Business Review. In that it's often useful, but suffers from the belief that the hoi polloi would be lost without the "professional political class" to tell them what they want, and derisively dismisses ideas that don't originate within certain orthodox circles.
Most media and politicians have a distinct opinion or slant. I don't think WaPo does. Their MO is more: "Either X or Y might be right, but whatever is right is only right because we tell you it's right."
I just saw an interview with a young woman who was expressing that most of her family voted "yes" out of protest, and now they're already regretting it, seeing what the fallout is.
Protest/spite voting happens in Germany as well, and I'm beginning to consider if it's required to ask people (like an oath at court) when casting a vote. But knowing how people get pissed off about things like that for no reason and parties leveraging it, it seems unrealistic to do any good. In the future voting will probably involve bio sensors like cars with alcohol meters.
I can't link directly to districts on this page but have a look at /Westmidlands/Wallsall and /westmidlands/wolverhampton.
I don't know but I suspect a fair number in those towns will have joined in with friends/family as part of the general mood.
Petrol price rises coming through soon unless you guys all start buying sterling again. Some companies have hedged their supplies but others buy only a few days forward. Priced in $ of course.
I spend much of my time in unuseful ways, and so do you.
Outright ignorance is definitely pushing it. It's a guess, but very much an educated guess that it's mostly Brexiters who are googling it. Bremainers tend to be better informed, so they are less likely to be doing last minute (or in this case post-last minute) googling about the issue.
What a load of bollocks. The majority of people on both sides have been getting the bulk of their information from mainstream media, which is heavily biased towards a limited set of narratives. There's a fair amount of compelling information that has been omitted from or suppressed in the public debates.
You could look at it either way. For example, you could say it was Remain voters who wanted to understand why Leave voters were pleased to have won. Once someone realises they were misled by the mainstream media, and see the vote was about more than just racism/immigration, perhaps that curiosity is understandable.
In any case, we can't say for sure which side of the argument was searching for 'What is the EU?', though odds are it was a mixture of people from remain, leave, undecided and ineligible.
Would you really be surprised if many voters didn't know what they were voting for? Especially if the outcome is one agreed upon by most intellectuals to be the worse outcome.
With the amount of easily consumable and manipulative propaganda going around it's quite easy to make a misguided vote without realising the implications. It's not like voting to leave takes much effort.
I don't think they're implying it - they are quite correctly stating it.
If you voted for brexit and you still think it was a good thing - then you have a serious issue with parsing the reality in front of you and understanding it. Honestly. The empirical fact is here, today, the reality is gruesome.
If you still think that this is all great, then you must just enjoy chaos and uncertainty, which makes you a queer duck indeed.
No, brexiteers were duped, even Farage said so himself this morning - and moving from an entrenched emotional position isn't easy, which is where the reality parsing defect comes from.
Here's a Leave fellow who says he just did it as a protest vote thinking it wouldn't actually pass. https://twitter.com/AdamWSweeney/status/746269140915208193 I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The most important international agreement in the UK's history torn up because people thought this was a Buzzfeed poll.
That reminds me of certain American voters saying they support Trump just because they want to tear the system down. I don't think they realize what tearing the system down would actually mean.
I get the joke, but after having dealt with them, I would personally love it if the government got out of medicare.
Just give everyone a voucher and let them buy their own health insurance using it.
The amount of paperwork, and details to keep track of and calculate was absolutely unreal. I have BOXES full of paper from medicare, there was so much I could barely keep up.
The worst was the arcane and utterly confusing rules on eligibility: if this, or if that, or you live here, or there, for these dates, and that deadline. I felt like I needed an AI just to figure it all out (and in hindsight my understanding was completely wrong, and I chose the wrong option).
By contrast, the paperwork I do (as a client) under Canadian single payer Medicare is nil, and my supplementary insurance (vision/dental) can be filled out online in minutes.
Sounds like you need a better system in the US. Maybe not so many different stakeholders in the system?
That's how it works for commercial plans. Very easy, simple paperwork.
They have to compete with each other, if they were confusing no one would sign up.
> Sounds like you need a better system in the US.
It does work for most people, it's the edge cases that fail.
> Maybe not so many different stakeholders in the system?
Making medicare normal would require much higher taxes (medicare/medicaid hospital payments are below costs and are subsidized by commercial plans). People would then save money on commercial plans.
Net dollars would not change, or maybe go down, but the distribution would change, some winners, some losers.
Americans always seem to just assume that because their unique way of doing <thing> doesn't work, <thing> is unworkable and should be abandoned, usually in a "let the corporations fix it" kind of way.
Seriously, I don't think they realize that most of their problems with government are actually problems with just their government, which from an outsiders perspective seems very poorly run.
They outspend nearly everyone on public health and education and yet still have outcomes in the lower half of the developed world for what those programs are supposed to address. And instead of actually owning up to the poor outcomes and trying to fix them they just blame blacks and latinos for pulling down the average.
Medicare pricing structure are heavily subsidized [indirectly] by commercial insurance plans -- this is one of the reason many providers hate taking Medicare patients. If the govt. just gave people vouchers and the Medicare system dissolved, those people would receive much less care (measured in dollars of care consumed per dollar of insurance purchased.)
That might be a good idea. In fact, it is very likely a good idea, for some global notion of 'good.' But people on Medicare would be, shall we say, vocal in their complaint.
That would have other benefits. The reason health insurance in the US is so expensive and complicated is exactly because of how commercial plans fund medicare.
If we stopped doing that hospitals could publish actual prices for procedures - same price for everybody, insurance or not. Then people could actually shop around and healthcare costs would drop.
But today prices have to be secret and impossible to understand or the way commercial plans fund medicare would collapse.
The expense and complication is due to many, many more factors than how commercial plans fund Medicare. Medicare could disappear entirely and the price transparency you describe would not change one iota. They are largely orthogonal issues.
Not sure if you're being facetious, but Medicare IS the government, you do realize this? Medicare isn't some magical, mythical creature that existed from the dawn of time and has always been there: it is explicitly a creation of the government (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States))
"Certain american voters", not the whole "other side". I'm sure most Trump voters actually want him to be president, but I've heard a few people say "oh I'm sure he'll get impeached within a year or two, I just want to shake up the establishment".
I originally posted the comment without "certain" and then immediately went back and added it, because I was afraid someone would think I was referring to all Trump supporters without it. Apparently it didn't work anyway.
I didn't think you or anyone else thinks it's all. But so much of news coverage (and forum arguments) are about the fringe elements which are basically nothing more than strawmen.
Saying that there are some people ignorant of what they are voting for is not news. Stating that one side has ignorant voters carries implications that the other side is correct and right thinking.
Never said it was only that side. I consider myself an independent and while I view the Democrats more favorably, I'm not positively inclined towards either party nor either voter base. Don't read things that aren't there.
After dismantling the last superpower, a whole spectrum of things could happen. The assumption is that whatever rises from the ashes just by chance is better than the system that has been refined and mostly thrived for two centuries. Of course there is no assurance that we won't be left with a mix of anarchy and warlords.
Not that I think Trump will bring that. The office of President is not that important. But I'm talking about what a certain set of voters says they want, not what will actually happen if they vote that way.
When you're in an abusive relationship it's always harder to pack up and leave than it is to stay. You've gotta do it though, because the long term consequences of living with your abuser are unacceptable.
I think a big chunk of Americans almost want it to be a police state, so they have something to fight against.
It makes me think of Sam Altman's recent article about Trump. He said he was taking some risk by writing that, and some commenters here praised his bravery in taking a public stand on this. It's ridiculous. Bravery would be a prominent techie taking a stand for Trump. He's not going to suffer any consequences for publishing that. Nobody's going to knock on his door and haul him off at 3AM, or deny him entrance into any organizations, or even shoot him dirty looks on the street.
I got some really bad looks in my office building when some people overheard me telling a colleague I rather Clinton lose than Trump lose, due to her preference for fighting wars. One person looked at me like if they could kill me, he would, like I was some enemy. A lot of anti-Trump people accuse Trump supporters of bigotry and exclusion, but I think that's projection on their part.
No, I don't feel comfortable writing this comment. For the record, I don't like Clinton or Trump. But it's better for the rest of the world for Clinton to lose.
I'm sorry, what? You can certainly call it prejudice. There's plenty of trump supporters who aren't bigots, but there's also a lot of them who are, and Trump's campaign has been majorly based on demagoguery, bigotism and xenophobia.
If you're voicing/implying support for someone whose campaign is built on racism, don't be surprised if you're getting dirty looks.
As for dirty looks, that's what they are. You're accusing "the other side" of projection when you yourself are interpreting a look as "I want to kill you". Jeez.
Edit:
> But it's better for the rest of the world for Clinton to lose.
I appreciate the conendrum the US is facing in this election cycle, but if you're going to make decisions based on their worldwide implications, you should ask around in the rest of the world. Clinton is an inconsequential establishment politician; Trump is a loose cannon who "won't rule out using nukes in Europe". As someone living in said Europe, I really wonder how you got to that conclusion.
They are both very egoistic and unsuitable as presidents. One of them has a strong history of deliberate action fanning the flames of war which has led to the current refugee situation in Europe, notwithstanding the hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced, the other talks about building walls and keeping people out of the country, instead of interfering with people out of the country, plus some BS talk about nukes and Mexicans. Guaranteed warmonger or probable asshole? I choose the latter. But really, they are both horrible choices so in the end it doesn't mean much to have the 'better' one win. Why do people have strong emotional responses to people having different preferences?
And you weren't with me to see that look. It was incredibly hostile. No I don't think he literally wanted to kill me, but he had the same look as a person who would. (From movies)
> * I rather Clinton lose than Trump lose, due to her preference for fighting wars*
Trump publicly stated his support for the Iraq war during an interview in 2002. He's since backpedaled claiming that he was against it "before it started" but all indications are that he was, at most, neutral on the war before it started (being against the war after it starts is kind of irrelevant).
> A lot of anti-Trump people accuse Trump supporters of bigotry and exclusion, but I think that's projection on their part.
A lot of Trump supporters are really good at ignoring the obvious terrible things about Trump and his campaign and latching onto the one or two things they like about him. You can't honestly claim that there is no bigotry or exclusion in Trump's campaigning. He's called for a ban on Muslims entering the country. He's called for building a huge wall along the Mexican border and deporting 11 million immigrants. Plus, you know, the "rapists and murderers" comment about Mexicans entering the US.
If you think that Trump is the better candidate in spite of his obvious shortcomings, you should have the honesty to say so, rather than pretend his shortcomings aren't real.
I'm not at all surprised. I'm sure there are communities where this sort of statement would be welcomed, but the tech community is pretty strongly anti-Trump. I completely disagree with your opinion on this, but I don't think you should be put in a situation where you feel uncomfortable with people knowing your opinion.
That depends which part, after all Trump would be fine detonating a nuclear warhead in Europe because 'it's a big place.' So probably not for Europe ;)
We are also just talking about a four year term of the president only. If the system works at all the winner won't be able to screw anything up so much that it will be unrecoverable.
I don't even know anyone personally who has expressed any favorable view of Trump. Yet clearly they exist in fairly large numbers, so I don't think that should prevent me from acknowledging them.
Second-hand anecdotes of people claiming they'll vote for Trump just to see the system come down is not data.
Without data, it may be such a minority of people that it's not worth significant consideration in a discussion. I'm apt to believe it's an extreme minority given it's an extreme view.
Maybe so, and maybe people who voted in the EU referendum without understanding the EU are likewise an extreme minority. If you want to stick with easily quantifiable facts then I don't think this is the right discussion for you.
False equivalence, I wouldn't call uninformed voting (as they are painting it) extreme. I would call malicious voting extreme though.
In any case you're probably right. Most people who voted to exit the EU probably weren't uninformed. Google data only represents correlation. General buzz about brexit is a more likely explanation for the search trends. Occam's razor dominates.
The government benefits the people enormously. Yes, it has a lot of problems, but we're way better off with it than without it. I can totally understand a desire for reform, but simply tearing it down is insane.
The only way to force the government to reform is to vote out the party that screwed up.
Unfortunately, in the US, both parties colluded to work for their corporate sponsors, not the people who vote for them, so they both need to be disrupted somehow.
Most voters understand it, and that explains the anti-establishment voting in this election (Sanders/Trump)
There's a big difference between "reform" and "tear down." I'm specifically referring to people who say they want the second. I can understand, if not agree with, people who want to elect Trump so he can reform the system. I think people who want to elect Trump to tear the system down don't understand what that means.
Ahh yes, there's no benefit to being under the American government; we might as well all pack up and move to North Korea, because any change is good change!
Even though one of Trump's most legitimate points in favor was that he mocks how the USG tore down the system in Iraq and Syria, distorting the country.
On the contrary, the fact the EU had enormous power over British people, yet barely anyone knew what it was, what it did, or why it was important, was a compelling reason for the UK to leave.
"Enormous power"; do not paint it as if it were a confederacy.
The EU has been a scapegoat in Britain for decades. The elites used it to justify many a policy that would hurt the middle class, while pushing for more and more liberalization once in the EU parliament.
The average guy in Britain is just as much at fault here for not following what has been happening. They kept reading their fucking tabloids, the reality-check will be harsh and gruesome.
No, it's not a compelling reason for the UK to leave. It was a compelling reason for the average Briton to learn and educate himself. Now they shot themselves in the foot. Well done!
The problem the EU has always had is that it wasn't really unified and that non elected officials held to much sway over countries. Countries, not states, not territories, or such. Meaning that you had distinct separation, governments, and the like, being controlled by people not of the same. This will always lead to strife.
If anything vote simply reaffirms that EU favoring side either failed to communicate properly why it was good to stay or worse, failed to recognize or acknowledge real issues that existed and take action to explain them or fix them. As in, far too often the exit crowd was portrayed and ignorant, bigoted, or worse, and you do not convince people your side is right when you attack them
plus it benefits the EU to make it all doom and gloom because this loose grouping was never bound to be successful without more tight knit integration, something they knew they could not sell.
I had the feeling that they forced countries to do the right thing, for example granting human rights. Even here in Germany we had laws that let you lock up people forever.
What was the bad stuff that happend in the EU?
The "crisis" was mostly due to the "elected" governments of the countries which have now financial problems.
What the EU did in the last years was mainly telling "the people" that they elected a bunch of assholes that milked their countries dry.
The Remain campaign never made any positive points about staying in the EU (apart from a few in the Labour party talking about workers rights, but they got about 4% airtime and very little newspaper coverage). The vast majority of the Remain campaign was all about the terrible consequences of leaving.
The Leave campaign was a mix of fear of foreigners, fear of unaccountable bureaucracy and a vision of a Britain that had "taken back control".
The purely negative vision lost.
(There are also those that say that the Eurozone was doomed to failure because of the imbalances in the countries involved with no mechanisms to rectify those imbalances - making the fact that the EU stepped in and replaced two democratically elected governments an inevitability. So it engineered a bad situation then punished the losers in that situation for falling into it. But I don't know enough about economics to argue that point)
Maybe you should look up stuff like 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung'. The EU is literally demanding (and receiving) money from Germany because the haven't implemented this law yet. The reason they have not is that is was against the German constitution and it was rejected by the Bundesgerichtshof.
Now the law is coming back and a argument of the supporters is that its about EU integration and cost.
The law is very clearly against western principles, surveillance for everybody even if they did nothing.
This is just one example, the EU is used to push threw laws that can not get threw on National level and then get imposed top town.
The EU gets much better coverage then they deserve because people are into the idea of "Europe United, No War" but nobody really knows or cares much beyond that.
> The "crisis" was mostly due to the "elected" governments of the countries which have now financial problems.
The left the question about debt open (legally) but gave the impression that it would be common. The market assumed so, and this provided false incentives for all the governments. When the debt was not common, as you can see, the bond yields spread again and some of the nations were not able to role over their debt.
Instead of fully committing to the idea of not sharing debt and letting Greece default, they don't allow that and keep Greece limping along. This is the worst of all ways because nobody knows what to expect form the EU.
The ECB has also not helped the case by conducting monetary policy so badly, that it has lead to something so bad that its only comparison is the the Great Depression. Their are multiple nations in Europe that are doing worse then they did in the GD. The GD on a global scale was far worse then what happened this time, but Europe is the outlier and that has mostly to do with the EMU and the ECB mismanagement.
Its unbelievably hard for Greece to service debt and reform while also having a NGDP that is dropping like crazy. No nation on the planet could deal with that. Greece is poor but they are not flexible, so going the forced price/wage deflation route is also not gone be easy (thats essentially what some of the Balics did).
To be fair to the ECB, even if they did do everything perfectly, they would still not be able to do a perfect job. Their is broad agreement about that in the research area of common currency zones. The problem of uniformity is quite real. Compare the NGDP of Germany and Greece. Germany in the same monetary union has a growing NGDP, the NGDP of Greece is lower then it was in 2008.
The EU and specially the EMU has totally disgraced the hole project of european union. Now the nations hate each other, calling "them" lazy or nazis in newspapers. When the project was mostly about Free Trade and Free Movement it was growing together.
Now we could get into a hole lot more issues such as the other horrible protectionist polices and the cartel enforcement that they do. Their are many other issues but this post is already to long.
tl:dr; The EU(specially EMU) is a horrible institution that is horribly managed in almost every way, specially everything that relates to economics.
There has been a mood that the EU has benefited many of those who were more educated and better off while many blue color working class members of British society were left very much behind.
Sure there's the immediate market shock of a decision the market didn't expect, but we can't say for sure that end result in one, two, or five years will be more negative than positive for those Britons.
> "No, it's not a compelling reason for the UK to leave. It was a compelling reason for the average Briton to learn and educate himself. Now they shot themselves in the foot. Well done!"
Au contraire, mon frère. There were compelling reasons for the UK to leave the EU, they're just clearly reasons you either don't know about or don't care much about.
To give one example, the Five Presidents report from 2015 made it clear that there would be a push towards greater integration of the Eurozone, and there were fairly clear implications for what this would mean for the UK.
""The world’s second largest economy cannot be managed through rule-based cooperation alone," says the report, drawn up by the heads of the European Commission, the EU Council, Eurogroup, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank (ECB)."
"The eurozone “will need to shift from a system of rules and guidelines for national economic policy-making to a system of further sovereignty sharing within common institutions, most of which already exist and can progressively fulfil this task," it adds."
""In practice, this would require member states to accept increasingly joint decision-making on elements of their respective national budgets and economic policies.""
"These changes should be possible witin the current EU treaty but other ideas such as eurozone finance ministry by 2025 are likely to require treaty changes.
“Euro area member states would continue to decide on taxation and the allocation of budgetary expenditures according to national preferences and political choices. However, as the euro area evolves towards a genuine EMU, some decisions will increasingly need to be made collectively while ensuring democratic accountability and legitimacy.”"
So with all that in mind, you can see that 'rule-based co-operation' was seen as not effective enough, and that moves were being made to set up a EU Treasury, which would control taxation throughout the Eurozone. The UK would clearly have been marginalised at this point, as the Treasury would be incentivised to make sure investment from Eurozone countries stayed within the Eurozone. However, even with this compromised position, they wouldn't have been able to strike new trade deals on their own terms as the responsibility for doing so had been taken over by the EU.
This is just one example of many, and I'd say the democratic issues in the EU were even more problematic than the financial ones. You can try to pretend that Leave voters were uninformed if it makes you happy, but there were legitimate concerns about the EU, including concerns that had nothing to do with racism.
The EU is not other people. The UK has always held large power in controlling the EU. Obviously in concert with others, but such is the nature of cooperation.
This othering of the EU is really lazy. The EU was never some ominous foreign entity.
Plus, get better education if that's the problem. My civics teacher was quite adept at explaining the EU. For historic reasons there is some ugly cruft, but it's nevertheless not that hard to understand.
This is a failure of media coverage and attention, not the EU.
And the people who were representing them are, well, mostly still David Cameron. One of the sad things about the EU is that it could never completely shake this thing many supranational organizations have, i.e. that the top-dogs are the heads of the respective member-state governments (and maybe their ministers if it’s about more narrow areas of expertise). Without them nothing can happen. They are still centrally important and involved everywhere and most everything that’s decided is done with consensus and not majority rule.
The people implementing the details are truly not that important. Do you know (many) people below the minister level in your country? It’s not relevant.
People I can think of in the EU off the top of my head: Jean-Claude Junker, president of the commission. Martin Schulz, president of the parliament. Julia Reda, cool European MP from Germany. Beatrix von Storch, racist European MP from Germany. Martin Sonneborn, European MP from Germany, member of a satirical joke party.
There's nothing wrong with having a referendum over it. But a horrible media industry has made a circus over the entire thing, leaving many people misinformed.
But that is exactly what is wrong with having a referendum over it. The circus is inevitable, as are emotional arguments abused by populist politicians. Some matters shouldn't be decided by which side of an argument happens to have hired the better team of PR consultants.
Well you can have another, can't you? Or is leaving the EU a one-way thing?
I'm sort of jealous. They had a referendum on Scottish independence and they honored the outcome. I'd love to have an up/down national vote on abortion, gay marriage, gun background checks.. At best here in the US, you're voting for a derivative, you're electing someone on the wish/hope that they support your issues if they get a chance or opportunity to of if they're willing to use political capital to actually propose the issues.. With something like abortion, it's at least 2 derivatives removed, you're voting for someone who will hopefully select a court justice (should they get to) that will align with your issues should the opportunity ever arise for them to make a judgement on it. And what's more perverse, there are a lot of single issue voters that take that multiple derivative issue situation as the only issue that matters.
It'd be an interesting experiment if nothing else.
Or even more, maybe a compelling reason for Britons to elect representatives in the government and EU parliament who could actually push the reforms the EU needs?
How is this "raw emotion", though? Leaving the EU has been discussed for a few years now, quite widely.
Also, "raw emotion", direct democracy (in Switzerland, for example) can work very well. Direct democracy may not scale well, hence we need representation, but big issues should be left up to the people to be voted on.
In the end, I believe, the people in the UK voted against not so much the idea of EU, but rather expressed their frustration with the EU's inability (unwillingness?) to fix its problems. It's been brewing for a while.
A big part of this vote is a huge swathe of voters who felt that they were not being properly represented by their representatives. All three major parties had similar lines on economic liberalisation, immigration and freedom of movement and so on and this has been the case for almost 20 years. So when a new party stepped in and said "we hear you, we want things to change to" it's not surprising it captured some of the public's imagination.
Remember the European Constitution that failed a few years ago? (At least the three hundred page document that they were calling a constitution.) I was shocked when my German friends mentioned that the German people would certainly have voted no, but they never got the chance. The German legislature voted for it, and that was it. Apparently most Europeans had no direct vote up or down for that constitution. And when it finally failed, it came from one of the countries that got a direct referendum.
But then thinking back to the US Constitution, it was voted in by the state legislatures without a direct vote, too. Somehow that seems OK back then, but an affront to democracy in today's world. How times change.
Even worse, many nations did not go into the EU by popular vote. Generally if people are asked about the EU, they don't follow the line of the politcal classes. This is just the latest example.
We elect politicians whose full-time jobs it is to understand big and complicated issues, and to decide on our behalf how to deal with them. That includes the right to make and break treaties with other world powers.
> We elect politicians whose full-time jobs it is to understand big and complicated issues, and to decide on our behalf how to deal with them.
But, on Brexit specifically, the British people elected a government that made a campaign promise to hold exactly such a referendum, and to abide by its results.
One very plausible theory I've seen doing the rounds is that the government never actually expected to have to follow through on that campaign promise. Strategically speaking it was a terrible idea and Cameron was always pretty pro-EU, but he needed the support of the anti-EU faction of his party, so he promised the vote as a sop to them. The theory goes that he didn't expect to get an absolute majority in Parliament and hoped the other parties would "force" him to to not follow through.
Is this also an argument for states to pull out of the USA? Because I doubt your average voter understands much about the US or state government or federalism.
I would actually wager the average American understands the federal government much better than their state government, due to the hyperfocus in schools and in the media on the federal government. State and local governments get away with incredible amounts of nonsense because people don't know or care anything about them.
I agree. My daughter knows both. She just graduated High School. She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor. While her experience is unusual, the schools here focus on us history and us government history.
I do think when I was in high school I learned more about the rest of the world than they do. And that is sad.
> She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor.
At least doing auch lobbying and drafting was possible. This would be unthinkable in the EU. The disconnect to even the highly involved politically aware person in the EU to the power structures is huge. In manu cases purposefully and by design so. After all, the EU was born oit of a price pact essentially stablished though conglomerate economic interest. (steel, coal, electricity, transport, machinery).
That is sad. In the us it is easy to lobby congress and the senate. It takes coordination and determination. Whether they listen is another story. But my daughter's cause is something that both sides of the isle care about.
Writing the state bill turned out to be easier than we would have thought but it took a lot of presentations and having the right people listening the presentations. She actually had surprising cooperation from a democratic state chairwoman of education and a republican state senator.
The cause is funding for afterschool STEM competitions for disadvantaged schools.
To the contrary: Americans are usually more invested in federal politics than state politics. E.g. turnout is usually higher in federal elections, and more people know who their federal senators are than their state senators.
Anecdotal, but in public elementary school in the US they actually did do a good job of explaining this. I mean I know it's very complex in some ways, but it's also not that complex?
Yeah, but barely anyone fully understands their municipal org either, and I took the comment to mean people have no idea at all what the EU is. For example, Iceland is not part of the EU, just part of another construct which kinda/sorta makes it easy for them to do business with the EU.
If that's true, then having them vote is a game of those in power to get what they want by trying to keep them stupid. Is that the rest of your thought? We can see how places with conflicts try to keep the population misinformed or under-informed in order to more easily justify violent actions, so who's to benefit (besides Boris Johnson) from a proper exit?
He says "I'm a bit shocked to be honest.. <Presenter: What about?> I'm shocked about both... I'm shocked that we have actually voted to leave. I didn't think that was going to happen. My vote, I didn't think was going to matter too much because I just thought we were going to remain."
Maybe this short clip is missing context... maybe he says later on in the conversation that it was a protest vote... but all this clip shows is that he's surprised they won?
It's common to vote for something you believe in, knowing the opposition will win anyway. That doesn't imply it's a protest vote, that you don't really want what you're voting for.
So you're characterizing everyone who voted to leave based on a distorted statement of one person the BBC pulled out. He in fact did not say that, quoted no less, sentence at all! Find the clip, the full clip, and watch it. He said he was shocked that they won, AND didn't expect Cameron to resign, and so is worried about that. It's quite understandable to be worried about big changes regardless of wanting them or not. He has neither said it was a protest vote or anything like that, nor that he regrets it.
However effectively the Brexit vote is an expression of sovereignty of the populace. It's about power. Why? Because some parliament members are afraid to oppose the outcome.
Of course some things are different from the Swiss direct democracy. First the votes aren't ordained by politicians as a gamble but are set in motion by predefined rules in constitution and law. Second, the federal minister (Bundesrat) who has «lost» a vote doesn't retire like Mr. Cameron. Quite the opposite: everybody expects that he obeys the people and takes over to try to find the best way. Like a child who has to obey its parents and can't retire if he disagrees.
It might worth remembering that anecdote !== data. Drawing conclusions about the motivations of a larger group from one member of that group is logically indistinguishable from all the discriminatory -isms.
One of the original suggested referendum questions was "Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the
European Union?"
It was rejected in favour of "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of European Union" because "some
participants in our research did not know that the United Kingdom is currently a member of the European Union."*
If that wasn't evidence the referendum was a bad idea...
If you check the history of the European Union (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_European_Union) it is history of various agreements between an ever-changing set of member states. Eventually (1992) there is the Maastricht Treaty that creates called the European Union, but that has been amended various times. To complicate things there is also the European Economic Community (renamed to European Community) and member states are in/out of various important provisions of European governance such as the Euro or the Schengen Agreement (like the UK and Ireland). The Schengen Agreement I believe includes even some non-EU members.
So people googling for "What is the EU" isn't proof of stupidity in my book. They may haven been familiar with critical elements of the EU (which were the deciding factors for their vote) but want to understand the full implications of this historic vote.
-They are xenophobic racists (over 50% of the population!).
-Trump welcomes the Brexit, so being pro-leave is stupid.
-Old people vote "leave" since they don't have to face the consequences as long as the young people, and old people have no clue.
-"Leave" votes come mainly from E.U. subsidized areas, thus they bite the hand that feeds them.
-Pro-leave doesn't even know what the E.U. is.
I have read a lot of insults regarding either position, but the attribution of stupidity comes almost always from the "Remain" camp. Which comes close to saying: there are no reasons to vote for leave, so they must be stupid. How stupid.
Well, what are those reasons that are so impactful that people should have voted "Leave"? Because I have not really heard a single informed argument about that, and the public discourse for Leave has shown an enormous gap in knowledge about what the EU actually is.
If you don't search for it, you want find it. I am not sure if the "Leave" people voted for it for the right reasons or the wrong reasons (xenophobia).
I think its fairly easy to make a case of why the EU is a bad institution. I have made so here and other places. I think people are blinded by the idea of the EU but ignore the actual EU. Can anybody deny that the EU has shown horrible management in everything related to economics? We have a Great Depression level crisis and now a horrible slow recovery. 90% of this hole crisis could have been avoid if the EU and specially EMU were such horribly setup institutions. The EU is not really democratic either, when it should be the most democratic. It should improve on the state of institutional democracy, while in reality its a very clear step back. Take a look at Swiss Federalism and Direct Democracy, its a much better set up for a system but many of the ideas are nowhere to be found in the EU.
Britain has economic problems right now because a lot is changing, but I see no reason that the long term growth should be negatively impacted by this. In the long term I think it can be a net positive. It all depends on how Britain will operate going forward.
The people of the UK voted for the Conservatives, on an explicit platform of austerity.
Only 37% of the population was needed for this, but this is because the UK voters had been apathetic about the opportunity to reform the voting system.
So how can they claim to be disappointed by the EU adopting the same polities?
Because the EU is soled on a platform of European Unity and how they are the highest achievement of the European Political classes.
The UK has a reason for their bad system. They have a very gradualist history. Compare it to France, where we are talking about the Republic 5 right now.
If we are doing a project for European Unity is should actually be better then everything else. It should be better then Switzerland, not worse then the UK.
The sovereignity of the UK is the most important argument. The way the EU resolves regulations is an undemocratic process (for the citizens of the affected countries, not inside the EU). Most people dismiss this argument as conspiracy BS, but I can encourage you to read up about it.
Of course many people voted because they want to "close the borders" but:
1) This doesn't invalidate the sovereignity argument.
2) The protectionism/anti-immigration stance is a reaction to the existing politics, not the cause. And it's something we currently see all over Europe.
There are more valid arguments for leaving the EU, but I think the argument for democracy is the most important one. Saying there are no good arguments to leave is dishonest or ignorant.
What if over half the population is racist and stupid, though? I don't want to get into an argument about whether that's actually true of Britain, but if you would indulge the hypothetical: what do you do at that point? Is it right, in a democracy, to try to disenfranchise and demoralize racist bigots with nothing to offer but an endless supply of bad ideas? Is it time to just give up on democracy altogether at that point?
What's the answer? It is something you should consider, because while you can argue it isn't actually true in this case or that, certainly you have to admit it is theoretically possible. It seems like a failure mode one should anticipate and be prepared for. (I must admit, I have no good answers, and so am not prepared.)
What else do you expect to read they day afterwards? The arguments have been made before the referendum repeatedly and in detail. There is no point in going over them now.
It's disheartening, because I often see these insults from liberal, intellectual people. It shows a disability do empathize with 50% of the population, which I find worrying.
And this is why statistics can be misleading - 72% of the population turned out for the vote. Almost a record.
It's pointless at best, actively harmful at worst, to compare the voters vs the non voters in an attempt to make the result seem undemocratic. The non voters abandoned their ability to influence this issue; if they had wanted to participate, they had plenty of opportunity to do so.
67.23% of all votes cast. Turnout was 64.62%, so 43.2% of all registered voters [1]. As fraction of total population, it was 56.23 million in 1975 [2] and the total number of Yes votes was 17,378,581, so 30.91%.
I haven't read too much into the topic until a week or two ago but I've seen those exact arguments coming up time and time again. Given how close it was I think remain shot themselves in the foot by not articulating their points.
The BrExit vote was caused by the same problem that enables Trump (and Sanders) to win so many votes. The British Elites, like the Republic Elites are ignoring the pain caused to the working class through trade agreements and (in the case of BrExit) immigration from poorer parts of Europe. In different ways the EU integration put an additional burden on the already struggling British working class.
As a specific example, the immigrants, who came to the UK for jobs drove down wages for the working class with additional competition while at the same time putting a lot of pressure on budgets for the National Health System and social services.
The British Elites ignored the complaints of the working class while not even increasing the budgets for social services and the National Health Service proportionate to the additional demand caused by immigration.
It is this total lack of sensitivity of the British Elite to their fellow citizens that caused the BrExit.
Similarly, the "rise of Trump" is because Paul Ryan, the billionaire Wall Street hedge fund owners, and other Republic Elites have totally ignored the feeling of the working class. They have created trade policies which have "exported" American factory jobs while at the same time wanting to cut the social services that workers need precisely because of policies of elites (Republic and Democratic) to export their working class jobs.
For example, when Carrier air conditioners closed their Indiana factory and exported the jobs to Mexico, it was only Trump that complained repeatedly. Not Paul Ryan, Not billionaire Paul Singer, not Cruz, not Jeb Bush, not Rubio. The total cluelessness of the Republic Elite is why Trump won the nomination.
The rise of Sanders is because the Democratic elite refused to listen to among others, the young, for whom the cost of education has increased significantly and who are unable to buy homes, etc, because of rising student debt.
In the cases of the British Elites, the Republic and Democratic Elites, they all appear to care more for "The City" and Wall Street Bankers than they do working class citizens and the young who are attempting to start their lives as their parents had.
I'm confused. Are you saying that Trump is not part of what you're calling the "Republic Elite"? Or that he's not part of the billionaire class? That he's not highly connected? Are you saying he actually cares about the working class?
I don't understand how average Americans can buy into this idea that Trump is some kind of outsider. He rubs shoulders with all kinds of rich, powerful, and connected people, including presidents.
The idea that people are enamored with Trump because he represents their interests just doesn't add up. At the most, I can see how people might find his off-the-wall antics and constant flip-flopping somewhat entertaining, but surely that's not a good reason to put him office.
>I don't understand how average Americans can buy into this idea that Trump is some kind of outsider.
It's because Trump is politically incorrect. He dresses like the just got off shift at the factory and makes jokes about his dick size and most importantly, when he speaks, he doesn't come off as being more informed or articulate than his supporters.
All it takes for a politician to convince Americans they're not part of the "elite," is to act like a convincing caricature of "the common man."
> He dresses like the just got off shift at the factory
This comment baffles me, because one of the most consistent aspects of Trump's image is always being in a suit and tie.
I just searched for "Donald Trump" on Google Images. Nearly every picture has him in a suit and tie. The first wherein he was visibly not wearing a tie or bowtie was #70 (but he was still in a suit). #139 was the second picture lacking a tie (but still in a suit). #176 was the first picture featuring a person without a suit, but it was Michael Moore alongside Donald Trump (still in a suit and tie). #551 was the first image where he was not in a suit, but it was a caricature drawing. #603 was the first photo of Donald Trump where he was not in a suit; it was this picture: http://government.northcrane.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/...
It seems to me that Trump always wears a suit, except when he's golfing, and is always wearing a collared shirt. I'd be happy to see a picture where "he dresses like [he] just got off shift at the factory".
It's part of the elite narrative about what confuses rubes, so Trump must dress that way.
The reason people are voting for Trump is because he's as openly racist as the Republicans have gotten so far. This is the same reason why Democrats haven't won whites since Kennedy. The question is whether Trump's supporters will suspect that his newly found overtly racist anti-establishment stance is a deception before the election and not turn out, or whether Hillary will make enough Democrats sick that they won't turn out.
Wow. Apparently you went through the effort of checking 700 photos and indexing them one by one just to disprove one sentence out of my comment. That's true dedication to the cause.
I guess you're right though - I went a bit too far on that. I could swear I remember him dressing down for a number of interviews but I can't actually find pictures of it so mea culpa.
Trump is very wealthy and he rubs shoulders with the elite in our country, but he is certainly not a member of the Republican Elite which includes people like Paul Ryan, Republican Wall Street billionaires such as Paul Singer, and most of the Republican candidates that Trump beat (Jeb Bush, Cruz, Rubio, ....). The Republican Elite did not listen to suffering of the Republican electorate which is why they lost to Trump. Somewhere along the way, the Republic Elite lost sight of the fact that it is policies that appeal to voters than win elections and not donations from the wealthy.
Eric Cantor was the second most powerful person in The House of Representatives until he lost the primary to a political unknown. He lost because Republicans do not want illegal immigration. They are not against immigration but believe that people should only immigrate legally. Cantor did not listen to his voters and he lost. Remarkably, the Republican Elite ignored this loss and backed illegal immigration. Only Trump came out against illegal immigration.
The Republican Elite are so out of touch and this country deserves better leadership from the "Party of Lincoln."
In addition to the other voter, Switzerland population also restricted the government into tight budgets and debt reduction.
If you give people the options they will make okish choices. enough okish choices for a long time yield a great democracy.
Switzerland is also not in the EU for the same reason, we voted against joining after the political classes singed us up for it. Now if you suggest joining the EU most of the Swiss population would laugh at you. Why would anybody join such a horrible shit show of an institution.
"Hey, you voted against what we recommended to you, so now we will be telling you for the next 5 years that you are the stupid one that you don't even know what you voted against!"
I don't get it - this is a prime example of democracy in action so why so much outrage? Do you rather want to live in technocracy/totality and allow voting "properly profiled" people only? "USSR is a great idea" anyone?
Get over it, as much as shocking it can be to you. You can't always profit from every democratic decision, even if you feel it's the only correct one. Just accept other people desire something else and pick up your next fight properly so that you won't be as shocked as now and completely unprepared. And next time vote politicians into office that actually have brain and don't risk everything for their own personal agenda. It's just grotesque.
"On balance democracy is a good thing" and "this electorate is utter shit" are not contradictory beliefs :-)
On the face of it this seems like a terrible idea, and certainly the politicians promoting it are fucking cretins of the lowest order. But, maybe we're wrong! After all, the people who generally voted Leave are the same folks who have not shared all that much in the prosperity created by global capitalism. Come to think of it, so are most of the folks who voted Remain. It gets a bit tiring, for the listener and the speaker, when one constantly blames so many of society's ills on wealth inequality and plutocracy, but wealth inequality and plutocracy are responsible for a lot of society's ills. I do take some solace in the fact that the rich will suffer the consequences of this referendum the same as the poor - however they can withstand it better than the poor, too. I don't think the average Briton is going to be better off for leaving the EU, but if this convinces the ruling class that they should try fucking everyone else over a little bit less (I doubt it will), maybe it will end up having been worth it.
Sanity check: Google searchers aren't necessarily voters. The UK had a massive (72.2%) turnout, which still leaves 13 million potential voters at home [1]. I think it's reasonable that those least-likely to vote on this issue also might be a large contingent of those who don't even know what the EU is. Moreover, Google searchers aren't necessarily in the electorate. They might be kids, etc.
"People of $MY_IDENTITY believe a thing, so I'll vote for it no matter what $OTHERS say!"
I thought before reading that story that the above was a bad caricature, but holy shit. How can you not know what the EU is if you're in a member country and can read? It's like an American not knowing what Congress is!
Right, but let's imagine there is a vote to abolish congress and it goes through. Wouldn't it be logical for many people who understand congress and how it works try to figure out all of the nuances of the decision?
I think the WaPost is really trying to hammer hard the narrative that:
Searched = Evidence of ignorance = Leave won thanks to ignorance.
My guess is that both sides are equally curious of the outcome. A large number of voters for leaving the EU were older, so I anticipate many of them aren't using Google to figure it out (as they both lived prior to the EU and are naturally less inclined to search on Google).
Likely its the younger crowd trying to figure out "what now?"
If only. That actually sounds like a plausible, perhaps even advantageous structure. Imagine that, a testing environment for government. Dang, I actually like that.
If you google "What is cancer?" after being diagnosed with it, does that mean that you don't know what cancer is, or that you don't know about it in the detail that you now expect to need?
The upper middle class think that everyone who works with their hands is a failure, and are willing to believe the worst about them.
"Even though I voted to leave, this morning I woke up and I just — the reality did actually hit me," one woman told the news channel ITV News. "If I'd had the opportunity to vote again, it would be to stay."
Obligatory horrific Churchill quote: "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."
This is the problem with popular votes on issues with far-reaching and complex consequences. There are certain matters that are better left to elected politicians. If one were to have a popular vote as to whether or not we should dissolve the IRS in the US, that measure would likely pass because "yay no taxes!" but would result in the collapse of the US government.
I'm not sure that individual voters that have no conception of the myriad issues associated with this decision should have been allowed to vote on it.
it's taboo to say this but I've been reading a lot about Ancient Rome before Ceasar and yearn for that type of government. I know people have a disdain for aristocracy but people in charge were raised knowing they'd be powerful. As such, they'd be extensively educated both academically and in Roman culture. (Also sometimes moving to Greece to study at the best universities in the world). There was also no partisanship as each senator made the moves that benefitted them or their people the most.
these weren't parties really. it's similiar to saying you are a populist. To me bernie sanders and trump are both populists yet have vastly different views and would never be considered the same party.
edit: as it says on wikipedia, " ...the designation populares refers as much to political tactics as to any perceived policy."
The subtext of the article seems to be that British voters don't know what the EU is despite voting to leave it.
But their evidence doesn't show that. Yes, there is a spike in people googling "what is BREXIT" and such things. But how many voters are doing that search? What percent of voters are uninformed? No one knows, so why write an article about it?
Pundits need to stop it with this "mock the unsophisticated yokels" click-baiting and trolling. Of course people are Googling about the EU after a major upset referendum about the EU.
One reason "insane" anti-establishment positions like this are winning (even when they are insane) is because pundits stubbornly refuse to actually listen to peoples' reasons for supporting them. Instead they mock them as backwater idiots and insult their intelligence.
I don't know UK politics well enough to say for certain, but I know in the USA Trump is largely a FU vote against an establishment that's allowing vast swaths of the country to collapse into permanent depression while ignoring the problem and horribly distorting the economy to keep Wall St. pumped up at the expense of things like housing affordability. I can't stand him myself but I know where the support is coming from, and if nobody listens to these issues we're going to have President Trump in November.
My first impression of the result was shouldn't there be a requirement for a larger difference than 1 - 2% for something like this to pass? A majority of at least 65% for example? I don't know what I'm talking about really but that seems logical, what do you all think?
The number is arbitrary though. Why not 60 or 63 etc..? I don't think it should even have been voted on. Direct democracy makes
no sense when 99 pct of those voting don't understand the issue. We are dealing with extremely complex economic and political webs. When experts are ignored everyone fails.
In my jumbled mess of thoughts this is a rough list of priorities that should be addressed at before democracy can work in a "more perfect way" and can't be misused by the power-hungry elites or the disgruntled masses led by dangerous clowns:
1) Wealth Inequality brought on by unfair access to opportunity (This one item needs its own list of priorities in order to be figured out... Basic income? Better social support in the form of jobs, education, health? Fair legal treatment?.. too long to list here)
2) An uninformed populace (Removal of "personalities" from politics. Maybe even a shift from voting for people but rather for issues. Engage people in political life often, not just when elections roll around. A more responsible media landscape - Less Kardashians and much less opinion or propaganda journalism.)
3) Get money out of politics or at least enforce mandatory transparency of financial influence in politics
4) Ability to delegate your voting power to someone you trust (it could be a group or an individual). If you're on social assistance and your priority is to survive, you might not have time to be informed about every single issue. You could however empower an individual, association, union or another entity that you feel represents your interests to vote on your behalf).
So when googling something is an indication of what people actually know??
This only tells you what people were looking for not what articles they read or what conclusions they drew from the actual articles they read. We have truly jumped the ship if people are drawing conclusions based solely on what people are searching for in Google.
I'd actually modify most referenda and other public elections to include a brief quiz about the choice taken.
For example,
I VOTE:
[_] LEAVE [_] REMAIN:
My choice above means (choose one): (_) more welfare; (_) less welfare.
Foreign trade will be (choose one): (_) simplified; (_) complicated.
etc.
If the quiz choices don't match the vote itself, the vote is INVALID.
Thus the amount of uninformed votes would be reduced to zero.
Of course the options would have to be agreed upon by both sides.
"Oh, but someone could easily be taught to 'cheat', you could tell someone what answers to pick!" Well, sure. Good luck convincing an immigrant to tick the "(_) less jobs for immigrants" box.
> Awakening to a stock market plunge and a precipitous decline in the value of the pound that Britain hasn't seen in more than 30 years
There's a tad bit of sensationalism here. Yes, this is a HUGE drop to happen in one day, but the British Pound is only ~1.5% lower than the low of 3 months ago (when compared against the US dollar).
Why can't these people just accept a democratic decision without painting those who voted in an undesired way as retards?
Every major voting decision in the last 10 years was painted (in basically all media) as the smart and educated ones vs the retards, bigots, racists or even nazis.
With this attitude we are one step away from abolishing democracy altogether. Obviously because we must protect the stupid ones from their own opinions.
I originally came from a Communist country and I've got to say that over the years all mayor western publications have turned into something resembling the Soviet Pravda.
Western culture as a whole pretty dumb these days - we used to have the Bible and the classics as common cultural touchstones, but nowadays the only shared culture is idiotic stuff like Star Wars, so most people get their fundamental ideas of how the world works from there, rather than anything that touches on the real world.
"Why can't these people just accept a democratic decision without painting those who voted in an undesired way as retards?"
Because if your opposition isn't composed entirely of morons, there's a chance that your position might actually be wrong. And some people can't handle that possibility.
I'm confident in the future this will be a case study on the failings of democracy. I absolutely do not believe all 52% of leave voters realized the economic repercussions.
"the piles of ballot papers told their own story about those parts of Britain that felt comfortable in a modern, connected world, and those which felt cut off from the fruits of globalisation.
Voters in London and Scotland, the two most prosperous parts of the UK, turned out in large numbers to deliver a clear message that they wanted to remain in the EU and its huge single market.
But elsewhere — in the old industrial centres of the north, the small towns of the Midlands and the faded seaside resorts — the ballot papers were stacked high in favour of Leave, rejection of an establishment that had let them down."
Haven't read all the comments here, but isn't it possible or even likely that it's Remain voters having an "oh shit what next" moment that are Googling the EU and the implications of leaving, as opposed to ignorant abstainers and Leave voters checking up on the consequences of their vote after the fact?
The article doesn't actually take a position, but the tenor of the viral social media chatter seems to assume the latter case.
Going out on a tangent - Would California be more successful leaving the US as an independent country?
As things stand, California is currently the eighth largest economy in the world on their own. 17 of the top 30 U.S. tech companies are in California, which should come as no surprise. Tourism, entertainment, biotech, and agriculture are multibillion dollar industries already. Aerospace and defense contracts still rake in around $25bn a year. And many state business leaders are increasingly showing a real commitment to renewable energy.
Overall, while I believe there is definitely more potential for a social democratic style of government if California were its own country, the changes would not be that drastic. Barring a major collapse, California would, like Canada, still remain in the U.S.'s economic and cultural shadow. And who knows? Secession might be the best thing to happen to other states like Texas, New York, and Massachusetts. Who else would be capable of filling the void left in the energy, media, and technology industries? There is certainly upside in such a move but also a great deal of risk.
I forget the exact amount (it's likely changed), but CA is one state that is subsidizing the rest of the country. It was somewhere in the ballpark of $0.20 received for every $1.00 given.
There is no legal path for a state to leave the union once it joins. Membership is permanent, so if you want to secede from the US, you have to do so against it's laws, which basically means armed uprising. There's no state which wants independence so much that enough of their people would actually go to war over it.
I have no real reason why I think it would work well, but I have always felt that voting on anything should only be allowed to the people that can show a half decent knowledge of that topic and not for people that just go with the first thing they hear. You might as well flip a coin at that point. If you want to vote, do your part as a citizen and learn about what it is you are voting on, how it will impact you and your country as a whole and if you don't want to do that, don't vote.
Democratic countries gave power to the people, but we basically give it right back because "its too hard", or "i dont have time", etc. so we only vote from our gut feeling and follow the loudest voice. Gut feeling is fine in a fight or flight sense, but not for policies that impact the whole country.
IMO I would think decisions like this and many others would benefit from something similar to the scientific method. Construct your proposal, share it with everyone, let them critique it, revise, share, etc. and then vote. Biggest thing is taking ego out of the equation.
When I travel through a new country, I look at a general map first. When I get to a new area in a country that's now in my direct personal experience, I look at a more detailed map.
"What is the EU" isn't a detailed map. It's the most general for the purpose. "How many times a year does the chamber of ministers meet" would be a more detailed local map.
Right. And they are far from 100% committed. They have 2 years to change their minds. This was just a first step -to determine if the British public had the will to proceed.
The WaPo was always bad, but it's descending into linkbait shit, and every headline is a backhanded editorial. Leave won by 4 points with a 70% turnout. Plenty of the people doing the googling voted stay. I assume the stay voters knew less about the EU than the leave voters not because of the position they chose, but simply because it was the status quo, supported by the entire establishment, default.
What's happening is that people who are facing what has been painted to be a major change in their circumstances are checking the internet for as much information as possible so they can figure out how to deal with it.
Translated into WaPo: the idiots who voted against the EU didn't even know what it was.
Odd, how in some close elections if the result is aligned what the media and the establishment want, "the people have spoken" and grandiose words are spoken about the power of democracy.
And yet when the election is close but the result runs counter to what those in power want....suddenly we have hand-wringing over misleading campaigns, "uninformed voters", the perils of democracy, etc. etc.
They didn't leave yet and may not. I feel like this has been used as a vehicle for Boris Johnson to increase his chances to be prime minister and others' to provoke changes. It seems to me that Britain didn't seriously consider the repercussions of an exit that doesn't involve cherry-picking.
I think this particular Golem has too much momentum now to simply decline the advice of the electorate, however it did occur to me that Cameron's 3 month delay in applying Section 50 would allow the attention of the public to be distracted to some extent.
OTOH, the referendum did kill the Britain-EU agreement on new terms -- as that was expressly conditioned on a "Remain" vote -- so while it doesn't legally obligate the government to withdraw from the EU, in addition to creating a strong public expectation (both in the UK and in the rest of the EU) of withdrawal, it also makes the conditions for staying in the EU worse for the UK than they were before the referendum.
I take the point, and that was a significant part of my own decision to vote remain.
I actually think that the EU itself may scale back the political union bit and push up the economic cooperation bit over the next decade. Then options for the future (on all sides) may open up again.
Those options will be for the ones under 30 now to explore of course and they voted heavily to remain.
So says The Washington Post. What doesn't seem to get through to the global elite is that regardless of the decision, the people demand constitutional and auditable mechanisms to 'voice' their opinion.
Maybe things would make more sense to if EU countries went to the olympics under a single flag? It's not like American athletes compete under the flag of their state.
I was simply using the rise of Hitler as an example of when democracies fail. To see any other link is just an indication of abysmal reading comprehension.
Hitler wasn't elected and bringing up Hitler here evokes a scenario far more dire than leaving the EU. Your original point was bad and I regret wasting time on it.
No, we don't remember. It might have to do with the fact Hitler wasn't ever elected for anything. Neither has NSDAP ever had a majority before they took power.
You've been posting uncivil, unsubstantive comments to HN. We ban accounts that do this; please stop doing it. Instead, please (re)-read the site guidelines and post civil and substantive comments only from now on.
I'm not deflecting. Their best result was something over 35 % (don't remember the exact number) of the votes, and that was in the elections before the ones they supposedly won. Democracy failed not because the "general public is too dumb to vote", it's exactly the opposite. It fails when the ruling class overrides the general public's vote, as they did in the March 1933 elections in Germany.
No, they didn't. They claimed they did, and then they elevated the party elite to a new upper class and brutally murdered anyone who dared continue to criticise it, including their own party members.
That's misleading. The party elite was not living in much greater luxury than the general Soviet population. The party leaders did not indulge in Saudi-Arabia style opulence. They did kill a lot of people, but that's orthogonal to the question of material equality.
The Soviet Union and its satellites were one of the most egalitarian societies ever seen. What this shows is that equality and lack of socio-economic stratification is not necessarily a good thing. Of course already Marx/Engels were criticised along the lines of: any organisation strong enough to enforce equality will need to be so powerful, so brutal that it will not relinquish power after it has achieved economic equality, leading to all manner of negative consequences.
Wanting a sensible immigration policy or control over your laws is not xenophobia. The idea that half the country is racist is absurd, and downright insulting. There's a reason people voted leave, and part of it is due to both labour and conservatives constantly ignoring the working class's issues over immigration, dismissing them as racist. You reap what you sow.
Pretty much - Brexit is a push to (slightly) tilt the British labor market to the advantage of the common British man - lower and middle class people who work for wages. Less workers from Spain/Eastern Europe will re-balance the market towards higher wages for Brits.
For the elites that will mean less profits so naturally they are opposed. If they were smart and played their game well, they would have slightly hiked the wages previously, thus opened some steam valves. I read the guardian (as liberal as it gets), and vast majority of leave comments pointed to stagnating or decreasing standards of living as the cause. Either way, democracy worked as intended.
It's absolutely dishonest and dismissive to say that xenophobia is the main reason they want to leave, and that attitude is what pushed people to vote leave
Correct, after all had too much from the so called left wing just dismissing the people's concerns via just labeling and dismissing the people and ignoring the concerns.
After all when has picking out the few individuals and projecting that upon the many ever worked out well? As that is discrimination and too what agenda. To project the migrational bias for Europeans at the expense of allowing people from other countries to come to the UK. That if anything is more xenophobic and discriminatory in nature than the leave side and sadly seems more common with those who wanted to remain.
But been way to much name calling by pro-EU groups and indeed the EU leaders themselves over the years and to what effect. Highlighting they are not only out of touch with the people but happily ignore them.
how else can one explain why as a European I have yet to find one person in favour of TTIP and that alone indicates the EU listerns to corporations and ignores the people more than anything and that needs to change, to reform and improve.
The EU now has an opportunity to improve itself for the betterment of the people or it can carry on with its model of alienating the people it supposedly serves.
Patronizing attitude towards British voters from newspapers and the elites. Democracy happened, British people wanted to regain sovereignty over their affairs, and they did it. Good for them.
The left wing establishment once again shows their utter contempt for the common people. Of course there's a lot of people searching about the EU today. It's pretty disingenuous to suggest it's a sign that they're ignorant. But hey, anything to defend the narrative, right?
As usual, WaPo is shitposting. Why are they not banned here?
Yes, people are deeply curious about the full effect of this huge proposed change, especially the half of the entire population who voted for Stay because they weren't too worried about the UK/EU boundary when they were happy enough with the status quo total package.
Actually I think HN leans center. HN has no particularly inspiring agenda, it's mostly conformity to the status quo. There are extreme left and right on HN but they are usually down voted.
You have to express leftist sentiment, at least in public, because expressing other views is very bad for your career. And you'd be surprised how big the "public" space is for people who'd like to ruin you for thinking the wrong way.
On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling structure. Most politicians and the main parties (especially before the opportunists jumped in) were against leaving. So was the financial sector and most big businesses.
OTOH, some of the problems inherent in democracy were also on display. A "right to my opinion" emotional public moved by very emotional arguments. Lies, untruths and misleading truths were the most prominent arguments on either side. A majority of the discussion was stupid.
We haven't figured this shit out yet. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas?