The Brexit

[iame6162013]

What are your opinions about it guys? Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad(horrendous) idea?

[Snownova]

Yes it's a bad, bad horrible idea, but 52% of those islander nitwits think otherwise apparently.

I predict that 5-10 years from now, pound sterling in the gutter, Nigel Farage's head on a pike and several years deep in a recession, the UK will come crawling back the the EU, tail between its legs and the EU will laugh. We might take them back once we've caught our breath, but it will be on OUR terms then, none of those stupid exemptions, they will sign Schengen and every other treaty the core EU countries have.

[iame6162013]

Actually only 37.5% of ALL the people voted for the brexit and 34.7 voted against, 37.8% didn't vote at all.

How can they do things when the largest group is the one who didn't care enough to vote.

[Calahan]

Actually only 37.5% of ALL the people voted for the brexit and 34.7 voted against, 37.8% didn't vote at all.

How can they do things when the largest group is the one who didn't care enough to vote.

37.5%+34.7%+37.8%=110% (I believe the didn't vote figure is 27.8%, so the smallest group. Turnout was ~72%)

Yes it's a bad, bad horrible idea, but 52% of those islander nitwits think otherwise apparently.

I predict that 5-10 years from now, pound sterling in the gutter, Nigel Farage's head on a pike and several years deep in a recession, the UK will come crawling back the the EU, tail between its legs and the EU will laugh. We might take them back once we've caught our breath, but it will be on OUR terms then, none of those stupid exemptions, they will sign Schengen and every other treaty the core EU countries have.

A lot depends on whether or not the EU can prevent a domino effect. If they can, then Britain may well come to regret their decision to leave, and any re-entry would (rightly) be on worse terms. But if other EU nations start having referendums, especially from nations that are net contributors, then the EU could be in for a decade of instability. And if any other major nation leaves (The Netherlands are a distinct possibility), then the existence of the EU itself could start to be in danger.

[Snownova]

The Netherlands won't leave the EU. We got this whole thing rolling with the BeNeLux and our economy is far to dependent on trade to risk leaving the EU. We have a loud minority of eurosceptics but they'll never get enough votes to leave the EU. We would like some brakes to be applied to various EU spendings and such though...

[milon]

Wow, I hadn't even heard about this.  They're trying to pull a Quebec!  (The Québécois ultimately failed their referendum attempt as well.)  Assume zee position! 

EDIT - Erm, that's a reference to a movie, not a sexually suggestive comment 

[PotatoeTater]

In my opinion, I see this as the downfall of the EU. Overall, Britain has sealed the fate of the Euro, many of the smaller countries want to exit and now with Britain gone they see that they can too. The unification of Europe is at an end and I honestly can see imperialistic tendencies rising again, as well as nationalism.

[billycop32]

I live in California so I only have a passing knowledge of the EU situation. from the various news articles and whatnot, it sounds like this is just the first step in the collapse of the EU.

[Coenmcj]

From what I've heard down under, alot of the justification for leaving the EU is xenophobia, which is ironic cause I've seen alot of Brits taking the piss out of America for Voting Trump

It's a shame really, They honestly would have been better off in the EU, cause the Pound has already dropped significantly in value from the time I've spent watching the market, probably won't recover for a long while.

[milon]

USA is unstable + EU is unstable ...
* Does math *
* Puts on tinfoil hat *

[iame6162013]

USA is unstable + EU is unstable ...
* Does math *
* Puts on tinfoil hat *

All we can hope for is that trump doesn't win the elections but then again, he'll leave in a couple of years.

[skullywag]

Not happy, this has broken up the "country" and worse, families. Utterly livid we were even given the choice, the UK public as a whole arent smart enough to make this decision and its now come to this. Im gutted for my kids, so many opportunities they now have to fight for over just having. ugh.

[muffins]

FREEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOM!

Sorry, I'm British and I think it's a wonderful thing. The EU is throttling Europe's economic growth with its Byzantine bureaucracy, rules, regulations and subsidies. Britain will no more implode outside the EU than Norway or Switzerland has done so outside the EU. It also means that the people who craft the laws that are imposed upon us are fellow Britons who are directly accountable to the citizens. The citizens can vote the politicians out if they try to impose something that the public is against. We can't do that with the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.

Anyone here an adherent to Austrian school economics, or at least understands where Austrian economics stands with government? Government does not create wealth, it can only consume it one way or another. It is a net drag on society's prosperity and the more government there is, and the more layers of government there are, the poorer society will be.

[iame6162013]

The EU is throttling Europe's economic growth with its Byzantine bureaucracy, rules, regulations and subsidies. Britain will no more implode outside the EU than Norway or Switzerland has done so outside the EU.

Why would rules and regulations be bad? All these rules are made to increase the economic growth and increase the quality of life.
Food regulations are a good things, fuel regulations are good thing for peoples health, Weapon regulations are a good thing to lower (violent) crime, drug regulations are a good thing to make sure your population don't become addicted(like tea, that made the UK lose a lot of money, they sold this by selling opium to the Chinese, the Chinese government didn't like this). Taxation is a good things, how else are we going to pay for roads, are we going to put toll boots everywhere? safety regulations are a good thing, you/ your employees don't die. Yes regulations complicate things but, if you had to chose, and if you made an informed decision you'd probably chose to have the regulation.

Well, these are very different countries, Norway has far more oil and gas than the UK, oil gives Norway a decent backbone for their economy.
And the swiss have made several bilateral agreements to liberalise trade ties with the eu (They are not actively trying to have noting to do with them, or stand on their own, they've done that in the past though).

It also means that the people who craft the laws that are imposed upon us are fellow Britons who are directly accountable to the citizens. The citizens can vote the politicians out if they try to impose something that the public is against. We can't do that with the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.

First of all who states that the 'bureaucrats' in Brussels are unelected? They are elected, if you want to know how look it up.

And they aren't bureaucrats, this term is just to obfuscate what they're saying so it becomes harder to look up and research it, they are 'European civil servants' that's how you find the other side of the argument.

You can't find any non newspaper when looking for unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
Information about the European Civil Service is here.
If you want more information about the 'unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.'
They feel quite reliable, and give numbers you can look up and give handier search terms to get to objective sites like wikipedia.

and an argument I've heard a lot is that the UK is held back because they rest always votes against them (70 times!). luckily they've votes a couple of times(2474, in a 15 year time period) with the majority and they've only voted with the majority 95%.

Anyone here an adherent to Austrian school economics, or at least understands where Austrian economics stands with government? [see next], it can only consume it one way or another.

I don't know much about Austrian school economics, nor do I see why their model is logical. First of all, there are 'few'(at least in
proportion with all those who don't) lawmakers/whatever who could consume their wealth, and do you know how large the eu economy is? It's huge! One person getting paid a lot of money won't drag the economy down(not by any amount that is measurable), and them getting paid(a lot) IS A GOOD THING, do you know what happens when they don't? They will be supported by the rich(because they have a lot of money they could spend) to vote in their favor. Or even worse they'll be the rich.

Government does not create wealth.
It is a net drag on society's prosperity and the more government there is, and the more layers of government there are, the poorer society will be.

So you're saying that the government doesn't create wealth? I'd like to hear why you have this opinion, I've never heard anything like this.
And many layers is a bad thing? It's far simpler to have a tree shape government(They should have more than two child nodes per node, but that isn't relevant):

Then everyone has an equal amount of work. If one man has to rule an entire country all by him self, he'd fail. Because there is so much to do. If you rule a county you don't want to worry about a single individual, you're thinking about everyone, you want the best for everyone, so you want advisors, people who will apply your 'law' (/whatever) to smaller areas. If there are more layers it is simpler to rule, there is no over generalization if one node has a lot of crime for example node 4 but the rest has none, overall the boss(node 2) is doing quite well, but node 4 and node 9 maybe even 5 have to fix this issue. And if node 4's problems will be dealt with by someone else than node 2, he'll have time to better the entire tree.


I'm sorry I broke up your comment in more small pieces, it has gotten quite large. 
But if you want to prove me wrong on any of these points then please do, I want to know why you have your opinion and see if it is logical, and if I need to adjust mine.
If I've angered you, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, but once again if I'm wrong on anything please state why(it's a long text, please ignore language mistakes).

[FlayedOne]

First of all, let me say that my worst fears are becoming true:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-germany-france-idUSKCN0ZC0BQ

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.

As for the several points made by iame6162013:

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.

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.