The Brexit

[carbon]

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As the US history taught us(South vs North), changing such status quo would probably require a civil war in the future, which would be bad for all of us.
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There are several differences between the civil war era US and the modern EU that make this analogy deeply flawed. Including:

1) There is no formal, legitimized way for a dissatisfied US state to leave.

2) US states never had a long history of independent sovereignty to facilitate (#1). Even the go-to example of Texas was only independent for 10 years and that was dogged with conflict with Mexico.

3) The federal government of US generally has far more centralized authority than anything at the heart of the EU, especially in terms of the military.

4) Broadly speaking, major armed conflicts to settle issues of authority and governance was not unusual for the 1800s. I don't think the same could be said of Europe in the 2000s. There's simply too much accrued wealth and infrastructure for that to be in anyone's best interest.


I'm not asserting EU civil war is impossible, but a peaceful (if contentious) dissolution/restructuring seems far more likely than in the US case.

[iame6162013]

I'm from Poland, and I really hope we follow GB out of EU along with Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. We've already been in USSR (not exactly but practically), we don't need to belong to another socialist federation, especially since it's obvious, if the "federal" government will be the one to set taxation rates throughout the EU, they will keep the rates in the satellite countries high enough to keep them as the reservoir of cheap labor and sales market, preventing those nations from accumulating capital and becoming competitive at the same time.

As the US history taught us(South vs North), changing such status quo would probably require a civil war in the future, which would be bad for all of us.

Why would the "federal" government want to start another civil war? I'm nearly certain that they're smart enough to see that a civil war would be against their best interest as well. And they shouldn't be  too arrogant to ignore this issue, there are plenty of examples of this happening. I'm not certain if having the EU having to decide other peoples tax rates is what they're implying, and you'd still be able to live in any country you want so a civil war sounds far fetched so if you wanted to live in a 'rich' country you'd be free to do so, if they'd still revolt that shouldn't be EU's fault.
And if not having a civil war is in both of our interests we'll probably try everything we can do to avoid it (since they are elected the European civil servants, we can chose who will rule).
Oh and many economies with high tax are actually the economies that are doing fairly well.

Rules and regulations never increase economic growth per se, because they simply make some possible activities illegal. Theoretically it could be possible to forbid people from engaging into less profitable businesses and only work the profitable markets, but in practice you'd have to invest so much into centralized market research and change the regulations so fast (to adapt to market changes) that both the taxation and the unstable law environment would make people unwilling to risk their effort and capital in making any enterprises. Also, due to the nature of politics and bureaucrats having a nasty habit of forming a separate social class, they do inevitably start making regulations that favour themselves in expense of the other classes.

Many rules/regulations also help to encourage product diversity, yes it will increase the cost to make the product but because of a greater diversity there will be more competition, more competition ==> lower pricer(for the customer), more research, ...

Are you familiar with Laffer curve? The same concept can be utilized regarding regulations. While the effect of regulations on economic growth can't be so easily quantified as a continuous function, and we don't know if a totally unregulated market would grow (no historical evidence, but presumably yes) and even if we assume that the effect of any single regulation can be both positive and negative depending on the regulation, we know for sure that the fully regulated market (everything is forbidden) will stop growing. Since we know that positive growth is possible thus overregulation thwarts growth. The amount of regulations should be minimized if we want to enhance economical growth.

I'm almost certain that in todays world market a totally unregulated market would create even more monopolies that already exist today, and monopolies are really bad for the customer, they're great for the company holding the monopoly. And if many regulations would be removed the quality of the product will go down, but will they actually decrease the price? Of course not people are willing to pay the price as it currently stands so why reduce it? Of course making unreasonable standards is stupid but slowly increasing them is useful it will encourage research and we both know that that is a good thing.

[iame6162013]

I'm from Poland, and I really hope we follow GB out of EU along with Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.

I feel the urge to tell you that you make a lot more in the EU than out of it.
AKA: you spend 4B and you get 16B, you should be able to do the math and see that you are profiting by staying in the EU.
The Czech Republic republic again gains money from the EU: 4B
Hungary also gains 4B. Slovakia only makes 1B though.
Source

especially since it's obvious, if the "federal" government will be the one to set taxation rates throughout the EU, they will keep the rates in the satellite countries high enough to keep them as the reservoir of cheap labor and sales market, preventing those nations from accumulating capital and becoming competitive at the same time.

Hmm..

[Haplo]

To be honest I don't understand why someone from a country that has been as successful as Poland want to leave the EU. I mean if I take a look at this graph I can't see anything that looks negatively to me..
And didn't you also have a massive increase in lifestyle over the last ten years or so?
http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/graphs/2014-10-06_poland_success_story_en.htm

Just my opinion, but I don't think that Poland would be as successful without the EU..
But I can be wrong, who knows?

Just my 2 cents

[FlayedOne]

I feel the urge to tell you that you make a lot more in the EU than out of it.
AKA: you spend 4B and you get 16B, you should be able to do the math and see that you are profiting by staying in the EU.
The Czech Republic republic again gains money from the EU: 4B
Hungary also gains 4B. Slovakia only makes 1B though.
Source

You have to understand is is not so simple though. The money member states pay to EU is just money - it's not associated with any further costs since it goes directly from the budget. The money member states get from EU is on the other hand distributed through a costly
bureaucratic system. Independent (as in not financed by the state or EU) organizations estimate the cost of this distribution as between 25% - 50% of the funding received. It's insanely high. A lot of the rest is wasted. EU funding also lead to the creation of many fictional enterprises which do nothing at all for the economy and live solely off of those funds - either by helping others get the funds or simply by making fictional projects to receive the funding themselves. I question whether it's beneficial for our economy at all. It certainly makes for a nice PR though.

This stems from the fact, that we are different than the western nations in some ways. Communism degenerated our society, and you can't simply set a western system here and expect it work as efficiently as in for example France. Most importantly - our officials have no ethos. They work slower, are more corrupt and abuse their power more often.

To be honest I don't understand why someone from a country that has been as successful as Poland want to leave the EU. I mean if I take a look at this graph I can't see anything that looks negatively to me..
And didn't you also have a massive increase in lifestyle over the last ten years or so?
http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/graphs/2014-10-06_poland_success_story_en.htm

Just my opinion, but I don't think that Poland would be as successful without the EU..
But I can be wrong, who knows?

Just my 2 cents

GDP is only one measure. Take for instance the average wages:
http://wynagrodzenia.pl/upload/graph/5126.jpg
The red one is Polish compared to the orange EU27.

On this chart you can actually see that are wages pretty much stagnated since we entered EU (2001), at least compared to EU27. They more than doubled between 1991 and 2001, and barely rose 30% since we entered EU. Of course this makes us an attractive country for foreign investments, but it means we barely benefit from it. Also, even when you look at the charts you provided, you can see, that our GDP was pretty much rising at the same rate before we entered EU as well.

Of course I'm not sure if the trends could have continued if we didn't enter the EU, but then again - it's possible they could have.

The view that we had a massive increase in lifestyle in the last 10-15 years is actually wrong. The massive increase occurred earlier. I see no big changes in the last 15 years, although the things are getting slowly but steadily better.

-edit- crap, I prepared a huge reply for all of you and somehow lost the parts where I replied to Haplo and iame6162013 ;/ I can't recreate them now (lack of time), but be sure I will.

[iame6162013]

First of all, a problem that hasn't yet been discussed is the fact that going out of the EU will cost BILLIONS in lost revenue, look at the pound it dropped massively after the results where announced, think about it, it doesn't even cost that much per year per person to be in the EU. I thought it cost around 100 euro per person per year for Britain to stay in the EU(for you polish people it should be less), but losing 10% of your wage (let's say  you make 30K per year that's 3K lost per year, you can see where I'm going, this is more than an order of magnitude, it's not worth getting out, it's not worth even saying that you have a chance of going out, because it will cost a fortune).
And do you really care about that 1% of your tax, shouldn't the majority/99% be spent better?

You have to understand is is not so simple though. The money member states pay to EU is just money - it's not associated with any further costs since it goes directly from the budget. The money member states get from EU is on the other hand distributed through a costly
bureaucratic system. Independent (as in not financed by the state or EU) organizations estimate the cost of this distribution as between 25% - 50% of the funding received. It's insanely high. A lot of the rest is wasted. EU funding also lead to the creation of many fictional enterprises which do nothing at all for the economy and live solely off of those funds - either by helping others get the funds or simply by making fictional projects to receive the funding themselves. I question whether it's beneficial for our economy at all. It certainly makes for a nice PR though.

This stems from the fact, that we are different than the western nations in some ways. Communism degenerated our society, and you can't simply set a western system here and expect it work as efficiently as in for example France. Most importantly - our officials have no ethos. They work slower, are more corrupt and abuse their power more often.

Slow changes are a good thing it creates stability, this is what companies, banks, rich people, industry like, they'll be assured that they'll still have their money tomorrow but if something drastic will change that they almost always lose money, look at the pound, it fell a lot, people don't like that, businesses don't like that.

No one likes their money to be worthless, no one likes to be watching something in fear that it will make them lose their job, why create change, when it's really expensive, costly, and probably going to be a downside to you, (different trading laws , etc) will they(companies, rich people) focus on the massive EU market or on the tiny Polish/British/other one? The EU simplifies things, it makes our tiny counties larger, so people will be more interested in us, it causes businesses not to have to learn every countries trading laws, if we have many that have similar laws, it simplifies things for the industry, where will they create jobs where it's special(and new), but a little bit cheaper, or where it's simple(and known) but (maybe a little bit) more expensive?

GDP is only one measure. Take for instance the average wages:
http://wynagrodzenia.pl/upload/graph/5126.jpg
The red one is Polish compared to the orange EU27.

On this chart you can actually see that are wages pretty much stagnated since we entered EU (2001), at least compared to EU27. They more than doubled between 1991 and 2001, and barely rose 30% since we entered EU. Of course this makes us an attractive country for foreign investments, but it means we barely benefit from it. Also, even when you look at the charts you provided, you can see, that our GDP was pretty much rising at the same rate before we entered EU as well.

You guys didn't enter the EU in 2001, you did so in 2004 http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/index_en.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_European_Union#Poland,
if you indeed compare it to the wrong date, you did indeed grow a bit, but if you compare it to the right date, it has almost doubled!

Of course I'm not sure if the trends could have continued if we didn't enter the EU, but then again - it's possible they could have.

We'll you went down before you entered the EU and up doubled shortly afterwards, so, the EU must have done something right?
It has indeed stagnated a bit, I must admit that, but that indicated that you could have joined earlier and get this large growth then.

The view that we had a massive increase in lifestyle in the last 10-15 years is actually wrong. The massive increase occurred earlier. I see no big changes in the last 15 years, although the things are getting slowly but steadily better.

Again before joining the EU you GDP was going down, afterwards it almost doubled, that is a huge change to me.

-edit- crap, I prepared a huge reply for all of you and somehow lost the parts where I replied to Haplo and iame6162013 ;/ I can't recreate them now (lack of time), but be sure I will.

I'm sorry to hear that, but luckily you'll still create them, I'm interested in what they'll be!

[FlayedOne]

1) There is no formal, legitimized way for a dissatisfied US state to leave.
3) The federal government of US generally has far more centralized authority than anything at the heart of the EU, especially in terms of the military.

A while ago I'd agree with those points, but now I am not so sure.

Although Confederates had no formalized way of leaving US, many lawyers and historians believe that they actually had a legal right to do so based on the Constitution not prohibiting it, Federal Government not having been granted the right to deny it, and the very creation of US being a result of secession. It doesn't really matter now, and it didn't then since a war was fought over it and they lost.

Although it wasn't mentioned by Reuters, polish sources mentioned plans to centralize EU military under EU control while at the same time taking away the right of member states to have their own separate army.

Here is a link to the alleged scans of the documents:
http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/736268/publicationFile/217593/160624-BM-AM-FRA-DL.pdf

2) US states never had a long history of independent sovereignty to facilitate (#1). Even the go-to example of Texas was only independent for 10 years and that was dogged with conflict with Mexico.
4) Broadly speaking, major armed conflicts to settle issues of authority and governance was not unusual for the 1800s. I don't think the same could be said of Europe in the 2000s. There's simply too much accrued wealth and infrastructure for that to be in anyone's best interest.

I'm not asserting EU civil war is impossible, but a peaceful (if contentious) dissolution/restructuring seems far more likely than in the US case.

Those are certainly valid points and I do hope you are right.

Why would the "federal" government want to start another civil war? I'm nearly certain that they're smart enough to see that a civil war would be against their best interest as well. And they shouldn't be  too arrogant to ignore this issue, there are plenty of examples of this happening. I'm not certain if having the EU having to decide other peoples tax rates is what they're implying, and you'd still be able to live in any country you want so a civil war sounds far fetched so if you wanted to live in a 'rich' country you'd be free to do so, if they'd still revolt that shouldn't be EU's fault.
And if not having a civil war is in both of our interests we'll probably try everything we can do to avoid it (since they are elected the European civil servants, we can chose who will rule).
Oh and many economies with high tax are actually the economies that are doing fairly well.

I'm not saying they will "want" to start a war. I'm saying that if we lose the right to have an army, intelligence agency, control of our taxes laws and currency, the only way we will be able to ever achieve any real development compared to for instance Germany and France will be if we force advantageous changes by force, since they will be detrimental to Germany's and France's interests.

That's actually one of the reasons our political class pushed to enter EU - we had a huge amount of unemployed people who were unsatisfied
with how they were governing the country. EU served them as a safety valve - instead of their dissatisfaction causing any real changes on the political scene (creation of new parties? inclusion of different points of view in the parliament?) they simply left the country and became content without resolving our country's problems.

Oh, and I disagree. I believe no economy with high tax is doing well. At least when compared with similar economy with lower taxes. Also, you have to understand something: imagine gross taxation is 75% (it's fairly close actually). If you live in Germany and make 6000 EUR a month, you are still left with 1500 EUR after taxation, which is enough to live comfortably. If you live in Poland and make 1000 EUR a month, you are left with 250 EUR which is barely enough. The difference in living costs is not that big. Where are you going to have it easier to gather capital necessary to start an enterprise?

Many rules/regulations also help to encourage product diversity, yes it will increase the cost to make the product but because of a greater diversity there will be more competition, more competition ==> lower pricer(for the customer), more research, ...

I'm not saying you're wrong, but can you name a few of such regulations?

I'm almost certain that in todays world market a totally unregulated market would create even more monopolies that already exist today, and monopolies are really bad for the customer, they're great for the company holding the monopoly. And if many regulations would be removed the quality of the product will go down, but will they actually decrease the price? Of course not people are willing to pay the price as it currently stands so why reduce it? Of course making unreasonable standards is stupid but slowly increasing them is useful it will encourage research and we both know that that is a good thing.

I'm not sure myself what would happen in a completely unregulated market. My point is simply that the amount of regulations should be minimized to the bare minimum needed to do a decent job.

I know for a fact though, that in the late nineties we had a much better quality of food than we do now. The food was also much cheaper compared to our wages. We had lots of food markets in my city where the farmers came to sell their produce. They are all gone now since the law requires them to sell most of their produce through wholesalers. Healthy food is very expansive now - and what you call eco was our normal food back then. I also know that now, people in the east go to Belarus to shop for good and cheap food.

Fun fact - people also go to Belarus and smuggle mercury thermometers into EU:P

You can also still buy normal light bulbs in pretty much every shop because a lot of people like them better than the other - legal ones.

That's what overregulation does - makes people do illegal stuff to achieve the product variety they really want. (In case you are not from EU - yes, normal light bulbs and mercury thermometers are illegal in EU)

First of all, a problem that hasn't yet been discussed is the fact that going out of the EU will cost BILLIONS in lost revenue, look at the pound it dropped massively after the results where announced, think about it, it doesn't even cost that much per year per person to be in the EU. I thought it cost around 100 euro per person per year for Britain to stay in the EU(for you polish people it should be less), but losing 10% of your wage (let's say  you make 30K per year that's 3K lost per year, you can see where I'm going, this is more than an order of magnitude, it's not worth getting out, it's not worth even saying that you have a chance of going out, because it will cost a fortune).
And do you really care about that 1% of your tax, shouldn't the majority/99% be spent better?

As is in the case of Britain - it's not even about the money. It's about the control. I'd rather even make 20% less than have our country lose control of our military, taxes and currency. Not to mention EU forcing us to "take in" so called refugees, who not only are simply illegal immigrants, are a safety hazard, and what's more don't even want to stay in Poland. What are we supposed to do? Reopen German death camps and put them inside, so they don't run west? We never agreed to this shape of EU. It's simply becoming a different organization than it was when we entered. ("We" as in "the people" - as evidenced by the rising euroscepticism across the various countries of EU)

Slow changes are a good thing it creates stability, this is what companies, banks, rich people, industry like, they'll be assured that they'll still have their money tomorrow but if something drastic will change that they almost always lose money, look at the pound, it fell a lot, people don't like that, businesses don't like that.

No one likes their money to be worthless, no one likes to be watching something in fear that it will make them lose their job, why create change, when it's really expensive, costly, and probably going to be a downside to you, (different trading laws , etc) will they(companies, rich people) focus on the massive EU market or on the tiny Polish/British/other one? The EU simplifies things, it makes our tiny counties larger, so people will be more interested in us, it causes businesses not to have to learn every countries trading laws, if we have many that have similar laws, it simplifies things for the industry, where will they create jobs where it's special(and new), but a little bit cheaper, or where it's simple(and known) but (maybe a little bit) more expensive?

I disagree again - every export oriented enterprise likes when it's currency gets cheaper - the production gets cheaper and the profits get bigger. It also makes countries more attractive to foreign investments. Cheaper currencies make people and governments unhappy but at the same time they stimulate growth since production is cheaper. Currency going down is not as bad as you make it out to be.

You guys didn't enter the EU in 2001, you did so in 2004 http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/index_en.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_European_Union#Poland,
if you indeed compare it to the wrong date, you did indeed grow a bit, but if you compare it to the right date, it has almost doubled!

You're right. My memory compressed the timeline. 2001 was the year the SLD (socialist) party won the elections and then EU became the primary focus of our politics.

It actually grew 65% between 2004 and 2014 - from 2290 PLN to 3783 PLN.
It also grew from 533 PLN in 1994 to 2290 in 2004 which is an increase of 330%.

Sources:
http://wynagrodzenia.pl/gus/dane-roczne
http://www.zus.pl/default.asp?p=4&id=3381

Since this fails to account for inflation and purchasing ability of the currency  it is worthless though so let me relate that to USD.
USD in 1994 was the cheapest in the beginning (2,10 PLN). In 2004 it costed at most 4,05 PLN. In 2014 OTOH it costed 3,50 PLN.

Source: http://www.finanse.egospodarka.pl/kursy-walut/USD?s=1994-03-24&e=1994-05-11

Polish average wage was worth:
253,8 USD in 1994
565,5 USD in 2004
1080,9 USD in 2014

Now if we take into account USD inflation we get (by "current USD" I mean USD from 2014):
405,45 current USD in 1994
708,70 current USD in 2004
1080,9 current USD in 2014

source: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

This gives us an increase of ~75% between 1994 and 2004, and ~52,5% between 2004 and 2014.

Not as bad as I though, but still worse than before.

I know comparing currencies makes for a somewhat flawed comparison, so if anyone has an idea how to do it otherwise, please suggest it. We went through a devaluation of our currency during that time, so it's difficult to compare in a "straight" manner.

We'll you went down before you entered the EU and up doubled shortly afterwards, so, the EU must have done something right?
It has indeed stagnated a bit, I must admit that, but that indicated that you could have joined earlier and get this large growth then.

Frankly I don't know why the first chart I showed you looked like that. Official data looks different. That's on me for not checking my source. Sorry.

Again before joining the EU you GDP was going down, afterwards it almost doubled, that is a huge change to me.

Wait, I'm confused - our GDP pretty much never went down since 1990?
source:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2014&locations=PL&start=1960&view=chart
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?end=2014&locations=PL&start=1960&view=chart

OMG. That literally is the biggest post I ever made. Hopefully it goes through .

[NeonOverIon]

Wow okay walls of text everywhere.

I apologise If I'm repeating anyone's point, it's late in... the morning I suppose, and I can't be bothered reading every last detail.

Anyway to the point. I saw quite a lot going on about Britain's Economy in a shambles, and how the last time we had such a drop in the GBP was in the 1970's(?). Now, from what I can gather, that's total crap, I don't want to seem like I know everything about economy and how the market works, but from information about the value of the GBP, it's gone lower than it has in the past 6 months, and it's come straight back up again. Now I'm sure most people here must understand that everything is affected by money and affects money itself, so it's reasonable to think that such a large event in the world, would affect the global market, so I think this is nothing to be worried about too much. All over the world, countries are trying to help stabilise the market.

This is different of course for the EU, trying to cause as much economic damage to the UK as it goes through the process of leaving, Mainly through blocking trade.

But the reason why we would rather throw ourselves in a grave now and dig ourselves out whenever is because, we don't want to be "European", we want to be British, and this applies for other countries as well, they want to be Polish, and Hungarian etc. The problem with the EU is that it's trying to create it's own little Empire, led by Germany and the EU slave master Angela Mercel. The EU is openly trying to create it's own Military by merging other militaries together within it's borders, it's trying to take control over countries' laws and systems, and Worst of all, it's trying to demolish other cultures to create a blank, Dead, FAR left system where offending anyone is publishable, where there ARE 62 fucking genders and it's normal, where religion is something that's looked down upon, and destroying all traces of proud, patriotic people.

Sorry, that's my conservative side coming though, I tend to ramble when it comes to European political situations but Uh yeah. Long story short, We're patriotic, the EU isn't.

Nice to let all that steam out sometimes though.

[Calahan]

...Anyway to the point. I saw quite a lot going on about Britain's Economy in a shambles, and how the last time we had such a drop in the GBP was in the 1970's(?). Now, from what I can gather, that's total crap, I don't want to seem like I know everything about economy and how the market works, but from information about the value of the GBP, it's gone lower than it has in the past 6 months, and it's come straight back up again...

I don't know what report(s) or information you've seen/read, but on June 23rd (the day of the referendum) the GBP/USD exchange rate was 1.488. At the time of this post it is ~1.330, which is only just above the post-Brexit vote low. The last time the value of the GBP was this low was during the 1980's. So your statement that the GBP has "come straight back up again" is, at least for the moment, completely false. Perhaps you are confusing the GBP with the stock market, since the indices have generally started to recover from their post-Brexit vote lows, but the stock market indices and the value of the GDP are not the same thing.

[NeonOverIon]

...Anyway to the point. I saw quite a lot going on about Britain's Economy in a shambles, and how the last time we had such a drop in the GBP was in the 1970's(?). Now, from what I can gather, that's total crap, I don't want to seem like I know everything about economy and how the market works, but from information about the value of the GBP, it's gone lower than it has in the past 6 months, and it's come straight back up again...

I See

I don't know what report(s) or information you've seen/read, but on June 23rd (the day of the referendum) the GBP/USD exchange rate was 1.488. At the time of this post it is ~1.330, which is only just above the post-Brexit vote low. The last time the value of the GBP was this low was during the 1980's. So your statement that the GBP has "come straight back up again" is, at least for the moment, completely false. Perhaps you are confusing the GBP with the stock market, since the indices have generally started to recover from their post-Brexit vote lows, but the stock market indices and the value of the GDP are not the same thing.

I see, well thanks for clearing that up. As I said, I'm not an economist in any way and I'm not very educated when it comes to the subject, so thanks for shedding some light on my mistake.

[Fluffy (l2032)]

I keep hearing this bullshit about a European Army, and I have no idea where it comes from. So let me just clarify a few things;

With the possible exceptions of the UK, the entirety of Europe's armed forces are completely inseperable from NATO. They just don't have the dedicated command and control structures to go at it alone (let alone cooperate outside of NATO) in any medium to large scale conflict. That's all fine and dandy, untill the US decides it doesn't particularly want to join a conflict - at which point the EU is basically powerless, because NATO is absolutely dominated by the US. We've seen an example of such a situation in the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian war, 1995, which was a clear signal to at least part of the EU (as usual the UK didn't agree) that the EU needed to be able to perform military actions outside of NATO, and independent of the US.

What the EU has been trying to do, with limited (but surprising, given the pushback from a number of directions) success is create a platform in which EU armed forces can cooperate in peacekeeping missions, outside of NATO and independent from the US. Note that this has been, and will likely remain to be, limited to relatively small scale peacekeeping operations, and hasn't exactly been in the news much.

The idea that the EU would subsume national armies is laughable, precisely because not a single member state would ever agree to that. Sure there's probably some bureaucrats somewhere who think it might be a good idea (because from a purely technical perspective, it really would be - armies are very expensive, and working together would reduce costs quite a bit, as well as increase efficiency on the battlefield). But european politicians in the European Parliament, and national heads of state in the European Council would never agree, because that would be political suicide.

As for lawmaking, the only area where the EU has jurisdiction over national lawmakers is the common market. The free movement of goods, services, people and money. Why? Because thats necessary to make the whole thing work. The irony is, basically everyone agrees that the common market is a good thing, and the UK is certainly going to try (and probably succeed) to stay in. That however does mean that they would still have to comply with all of the regulations governing the single market, and pay for the privilige of being in it.

So to sum things up, the UK has just put global markets into disarray and devaluated the Pound and the Euro, removed itself from the decision making process in the EU, and saved roughly 4bn* anually (the expected net difference between membership costs of the EU - benefits received from EU and membership costs of the common markets, this does not include indirect gains or losses from leaving the EU), all so it can say 'fuck you' to the political establishment in the UK and the EU.

I may be wrong, but I think there's better ways of venting your displeasure.

*4 billion pounds sounds like a lot, but it's less than 0.5% of the UK governments' budget. The UK spends twice as much on foreign aid alone. I'd wager more than 0.5% of the UK governmenst income can directly or indirectly be linked to trade with the EU, but I lack actual figures there.
(Disclaimer; I hold a BSc degree in European Public Administration, and was hoping to spend a yeah of my PhD studies in the UK. Doesn't seem likely now).

[Kegereneku]

My 2 pence :

The british will regret it a LOT.
But it could turn out wonderful for the survival of EU, because the Great Britain, because of all the concession we did, ended up as the main passageway for many form of tax evasion, "fiscal optimization" and economic problems created by Anarcho-Capitalism logic.

So I tell them Good Luck and thank them warmly for their sacrifice. I'll be just as happy to get them back later, once they understand the point of an Union.

[1000101]

Historically I can totally understand the UKs xenophobia.  It's an island nation where when large groups of foreigners came it was to rape and pillage.  Now it's being done economically - the UK put's far more into the EU economy than it gets out, social spending to maintain this new population, etc - and with the EU's lax regulations on the movement of people, an already crowded group of islands is becoming even more so.

While I think the EU should have some form of economic charter to prevent unnecessary tariffs on goods, there should be some restrictions on the movement of people.  Not just, "hey, I live in a poor country and want to move to a rich one."  This is where the major bone of contention lies I think.  The UK people who are already a little xenophobic (and rightly so, imo) are being forced to take in people who would never had a chance in hell of passing the immigration process prior to joining the EU due to lack of skills vs job market and proficiency with language.

Canada is a large country (2nd largest by area) with plenty of space, but I have seen some xenophobia forming here too for the same reasons - Tax payer money supporting unproductive immigrants who by-pass the normal immigration protocols because they are refugees.  These people typically aren't even allowed to get jobs until they meet immigration standards but, being refugees, there is no requirement that they ever do pass immigration standards and they can't be deported because of their refugee status.  There are many of them who do apply themselves to becoming fully productive members of their new society but there are also those that don't.  The issues in Canada aren't with the ones who are working to become fully integrated but with the ones that aren't and those are the ones which focus a large spotlight on the issue and leads to things like Brexit.

While I don't necessarily think that leaving the EU is the "right" solution for the UK, the EU would never change their regulations (namely, restricting the movement of people) which would allow the UK to stay and be happy.  I really don't think the issue with the UK has to do with the fact that they pay more into the EU so nations like Poland can prosper than they get out but that they can't prevent the people who don't contribute to society (no matter where they are) from entering the country and being unproductive squatters.