EU Referendum Results
bbc.com
bbc.com
[0] http://www.ueapolitics.org/2016/06/23/eu-referendum-allnight...
[1] http://www.ueapolitics.org/2016/06/09/the-eu-referendum-what...
Edit: They moved their blog to Medium because of the demand: https://medium.com/@chrishanretty/eu-referendum-rolling-fore...
Anyway using my imaginary betting account I will bet a million pounds - I will enjoy the cup of imaginary coffee I will be able to buy with my winnings :)
More seriously the model was right and the bookies wrong - it is relatively rare that you get an opportunity like this handed to you to make money with almost no risk.
I still think p=1.0 was not possibly achievable via any model at that point in the counting, which means betting based on it would have been an enormous risk. The fact that the bet would have paid off makes no difference; especially given how close the vote seems to have gone, a coin flip would have gotten it right half the time, and I doubt you'd say that a coin flipper who just declares 100% confidence has a good model.
I certainly hope that the people who made money off Chris’ model follow his suggestion and donate to the Jo Cox fund.
Seems bogus.
https://medium.com/@chrishanretty/eu-referendum-rolling-fore...
>This is a big update, and I'm conscious that I may have made a terrible mistake somewhere in estimating differential turnout, but here goes:
Whether that's because he's better than the markets at modelling differential turnout or the markets know things his confirmed results data doesn't about predicted results in places like Birmingham remains to be seen...
This model uses a frequentist prediction interval, which assumes independently drawn samples, meaning reporting order must be random for the assumptions to be valid. If reporting is non-random, e.g. how early or late a district reports is correlated with things like region, demographics, population density, etc., then the prediction interval is probably narrower than it should be, especially early on in the reporting (meaning the model is overconfident in its prediction).
The headline prediction is more robust if you just want to know which outcome is more likely given current results, but the probabilities being badly calibrated due to these kinds of model assumptions is a common issue in quantitative polisci models.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/#/politics/market/1.11...
Interesting because the odds react far quicker than any live blog I've found, so a sudden swing means that there's just been a surprising result announced.
Profit!
100/4:1 is a notation mystery. 25%?
So if something is 4/1 and you back it, you'll win £4 for each £1 you wager. If you lay it, you'll win £1 for each £4 wagered.
Betfair exchange is matching up people on both sides of the bet, with a margin of commission in between the back and lay values.
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-refe...
I don't care about the result. I'm more interested in how our statistical modelling tools failed us. Thoughts? Did opinions change overnight? Did the polling miss a demographic?
(Also known as social desirability bias)
Lots of people say in public that they're in favor of immigration, unity, and tolerance, because lots of people will call you a bigot if you don't, but in private, harbor old-fashioned ideas about nationalism, and well, polling involves a human and voting happens in private.
I don't think that's the case though. I predict a Trump victory on the basis of a very strong social desirability bias and an immense amount of silent resentment against current social justice orthodoxy, especially as it pertains to speech restrictions on campus and in the workplace.
I've gone through Italian politics in the '90s. We tend to be pioneers when it comes to political monstrosities.
I've found it odd that the markets were far more confident in poll findings than the pollsters but assume that the bets were mainly placed on the simple heuristic that poll results tend to understate voters caution and attachment to the status quo.
It definitely seems like political discourse has taken a turn for the worse. In contrast with the Scottish independence referendum a couple of years ago which, although there was some animosity, did feel like a genuine political conversation… this one has seemed much more like an angry shouting match.
I'm particularly interested in the comparison with Trump in the US. In both cases, it feels like a nominally populist, anti-bureaucratic/anti-establishment movement (the extent of the truth in that being debatable) has been able to make a substantial impact with that platform, due in part to the abject inability of that establishment to deal with and neutralise the movement.
It's happening all over the world: Austria, France (National Front), China, Japan, Turkey, Israel, etc etc.
It's like the world forgot the lessons of the past - the curses of nationalism, populism and ideology - and nobody has stood up to remind them. The latter really angers and depresses me; nobody with a platform is making the well-known arguments about why these things are very dangerous.
It could also be, that we are doing something wrong in the society, something we did better after the last wars. Such as not including everybody in the growth of the economy.
At least I'd like to think we don't have to kill hundreds of millions of people every century, to make people remember...
Company cultures have been shifting from fear-driven-development to a more human focus. Still a ways to go (especially compared with the marketing around it), but a step in the right direction.
There is a problem with education also, we should teach our kids what populism and nationalism is, what are the consequences of radical nationalism.
"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."
We are a long way from the Middle Ages; things do change quite a bit. Look at civil rights in the U.S.: Two generations ago, women needed their husbands permission to get a job, and were only allowed in teaching and nursing for the most part. Look at the spread of democracy.
Perhaps, are you alluding to SEALDs and those against revising the constitution? If so, I don't think their voice are comparably as loud as those overseas.
We've had a political class who've decided that the hoi polloi don't really matter anymore and that governance is a matter of maintaining consensus at the top. Now the working classes are lashing back and sure it's ugly but it's a predictable consequence of the last few decades of tone deaf technocratic government.
The institutions that used to provide alternatives political voices have been co-opted. So who are they going to vote for?
See Die Linke (The Left party) in Germany taking over territory perhaps once held by the SPD (Socialdemocratic party).
So the accusations are not so much that `these voters belong to us'. But: no self-respecting party should form a coalition with these dictators ever.
That taboo has been broken on the state level in East German a long time ago. But it still holds some power on the federal level, and in West German states.
Because bringing it to a halt would take precision work and even then it probably wouldn't be stable. Iterative systems oscillate. It's what they do.
Moreover, a lot of the suggestions about "how to solve it" are in fact what people are trying to do very hard, and are themselves part of the system. The obvious solutions are what are taking us in the current direction. The fact that they are obvious is why you can actually plot the cyclic progression of civilizations with some reliability. It's an interesting field of study.
(BTW, buckle up. We're almost certainly in for a period of substantial uncertainty based on those modes. But, also, you are not your government or social system. Whatever abuse those things may be in for doesn't mean that you won't come out of it. Also, while I'd say high technology shows little evidence of having eliminated the cycles up to this point, I do consider it a wild card personally. Doom is not guaranteed.)
See also http://www.livescience.com/22109-cycles-violence-2020.html , which also has some very Google-able keywords.
Bear in mind that it's a field of active research, and I'm giving those more as starting points I plucked out from Google hits than necessarily endorsing those exact theories. Personally I would only defend a somewhat weaker idea, that the future isn't somehow entirely random, but that we can indeed look to theories like this for some understanding of the next few decades, modulo the technology wildcard. Or at least a much better understanding than just thinking it's all whims of fate and everything's on the table equally. I said some reliability on purpose... it's not totally reliable, but you can still do much better than nothing.
Because there aren't any. Although I would not use the word "sane" here, I would use the word "capable", as in capable of running a political unit the size of a country. The inconvenient truth that nobody wants to acknowledge is that there are no human beings capable of doing that. Countries are simply too big and too complicated. (This is actually true IMO for units much smaller than countries, but countries is the current level of discussion.) The problem is not to find someone who can govern a country sanely; the problem is to figure out how to organize ourselves and coexist given that nobody is capable of governing a country sanely.
This cycle is completely about the ruling elite wanting the same crooked game to keep playing, and the voting public saying "You know what? Fuck you".
Yes, the Dems couldn't pull it off with Sanders, but it appears the republicans actually picked, perhaps not an anti-establishment candidate, but at least a non-establishment candidate.
The voting systems make that hard. Eg for the US any one who wants to win the primaries has to pander to their extreme base.
Moving to range voting would help a bit http://www.rangevoting.org/
In the UK, there's an intense feeling that the concerns of people in traditionally working-class communities have been ignored in preference of a metropolitan elite. There is increasing wealth inequality, cuts to public services, less job security and so on. Members of these communities are very aware of the costs of EU membership – free movement of labour being particularly damaging to these communities – and are not as convinced by the corresponding benefits.
I do place the fault squarely at the feet of the modern left-of-center political movements (Labour Party in the UK) which has consistently peddled a muddled message of internationalism mixed with social democracy mixed with unrestrained capitalism – in appealing to an imagined middle-ground voter they have alienated their traditional support. It feels like these movements have compressively failed to provide a convincing messages – instead peddling a weak compromise that pleases nobody.
It's frustrating, but I'm struggling to understand what the answer looks like.
Yes, but in the UK context they're voting for Farange, Johnson, et al. Who are as solidly establishment as they come.
If you live in the NW or NE it's probably down to disenfranchisement. Large parts of the NW and NE are still not out of the 2008 recession, so hearing the constant bleating about the economy, they're told is doing so well, just reinforces the emptiness of the political classes.
On Europe specifically most of the remain arguments were economic. It's quite hard to listen to those seriously whilst London is in its usual bubble and the area in which you live is still suffering. Nearly every EU economic argument is reinforcing the EU being about big business, just proving, in their minds, the disconnect with the people. People who are living in areas that have seen enormous decline in the last 30 years. Makes it harder to vote for free movement and markets when you can see the decimation of your once vibrant industry and town centres.
So nearly every argument for Remain is demonstrably untrue in their own life and region.
So, no, they're not voting for Farage, they're voting against the Westminster groupthink bubble. If they had got more regional development, or the regional economies were given better support, things could have been very different.
The UK just lost the biggest future lights out fabrics.
What does the UK plan to do?
I would hope that efforts can be made to make the UK economy more inclusive. The areas voting overwhelmingly to leave are all the areas that have been suffering since the 80s - NE, NW, Wales.
How the UK operates and competes globally now, I simply have no idea. I'm also concerned we're going to lose a lot of the protections we had in the EU.
These are Tory policies; Labor opposes them.
> free movement of labour being particularly damaging to these communities
How? The UK has had internal free movement of labor for a long time, and it didn't damage them. Blaming the immigrants sounds suspiciously like populist propaganda. It doesn't make it false, but can you back it up?
EDIT: From today's NY Times:
there was no question that while the immigrants contributed more to the economy and to tax receipts than they cost
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/world/europe/britain-brexi...
That's not really the case. Wealth inequality increased massively under the previous 13 years of Labour government in the UK, for example. They're more 'new liberal' policies than Tory or Labour policies.
How? The UK has had internal free movement of labor for a long time, and it didn't damage them. Blaming the immigrants sounds suspiciously like populist propaganda. It doesn't make it false, but can you back it up?
I guess I wasn't that clear – I don't actually agree with them in the aggregate, and I'm solidly pro-EU and pro-free-movement. 'Blaming the immigrants' as you say is solidly nationalist propaganda. But there is a perception in these communities – false though it may be – that 'immigrants from the EU' come to the UK and 'take jobs,' 'put pressure on public services' and so on. Many people in these communities haven't been well-treated by successive governments, particularly around immigrations. That's why they're annoyed, not because immigration is bad for the country (it isn't.)
> That's not really the case. ...
Austerity is a Tory policy ... I don't know about the rest, but Labor hasn't been in power for awhile.
> there is a perception in these communities – false though it may be – that 'immigrants from the EU' come to the UK and 'take jobs
That's the propaganda. Social services are reduced by Tory austerity, and then they blame the immigrants. Similar things happen in other places in Europe, especially blaming immigrants.
This is the inherent problem in dealing with demagoguery. Logical arguments do not matter, and the left doesn't seem to understand this. You have to fight fire with fire. Feelings with feelings. You have to speak to people's guts, not their minds.
Point being not only right wing basket cases don't like the EU. The far left doesn't really like it either. It is a project conceived by US planners and executed by the French and German elites pushed onto the rest of the continent. Whenever there is talk about the "democracy deficit" it is brushed aside as something that will be fixed once Europe has become more integrated.
Any proof of that? From a US perspective, I can't see how a unified Europe would benefit the US - neither economically nor militarily. The EU is the only state (besides China with 4x the population of the US) that can compare to the US economy. Dealing with smaller countries gives the US an advantage compared with similar deals with the EU itself.
A unified EU military would be the only state both large enough and advanced enough to pose a valid military challenge to US hegemony.
A bit off-topic, but what exactly do you hate about Bologna? I liked it that it shortened my studies (math) from 4 years to 3, although I would have appreciated a bit more depth (more elective subjects)... But then, I only have a very limited perspective, so I'm very curious about what other people think, and what possible improvements they see.
The result is as far as I can tell from personal experience that the quality of an average master students in Math and Physics is now significantly lower than that of diploma students.
They also introduced very interesting language, you study Modules, each of which give you points. In the end you are supposed to end up as a nice exchangeable semi-educated narrowly focussed cog in some big corporation.
Plus, Germany, the UK and France are the big players in the EU. Naturally the union favors their agenda and overrules smaller member countries.
The average worker in the western nations did a lot better when the cold war was in full swing than afterwards. Peaceful competition among nations and economic systems seems to work best.
Once the USSR and its satellite states disappeared, US capitalism had no fear of a revolution ever gaining hand, and the results for the middle class have been as expected.
Seems like a valid idea.
I do know that in the aftermath of WWII, the Allies, under the Morgenthau Plan, treated the German population in the West very poorly. Essentially, the goal was to keep them in an agrarian state so they'd never be able to pose a military challenge.
After it became apparent that a large ideological battle between the communist and capitalist systems among the German population was being waged, and that the western population might just begin to choose communism, should things not improve, the Allies did begin to allow the West to re-industrialize.
I watched the Grapes of Wrath (1940) a few years ago. The amount of pro-communist idealization in the film would never, ever be allowed to play in a main-stream theater in the US today.
I think most younger people don't realize that communism was a huge threat to the US Capitalist system pre-Soviet-breakup, and because of that, a very large propaganda campaign was waged until the 90's. The remnants we see today are why an effective attack on Bernie Sanders was to associate him with socialism / communism.
Obviously, young people didn't fall for the tactic. Older folks who had been taught to fear and hate communism for much of their earlier lives, on the other hand, were influenced heavily by the attack.
When people can see all around them that gender, nationality, race, and religion convey useful information about the people they meet, and they live under the rule of an elite which claims that these things are irrelevant, then when some demagogue or other comes along who acknowledges the truth about these things but who lies everything else, people are going to go running into the arms of that demagogue.
Had these people advocated a fair and humane acknowledgement of these obvious, day-to-day truths instead of adopted a posture of absolute denial of the obvious, we wouldn't have Trump in the US and Brexit across the Atlantic.
> absolute denial of the obvious
You say that as if it's assumed, but I don't agree and neither do very many others. I agree it's obviously a human instinct to think that, but that's true of many other bad ideas - we're not beasts, our intellectual abilities take us far beyond our instincts. That tribal instinct has led to terrible destruction - arguably it's caused more harm than any other idea.
Of course I'm not speaking in absolutes (and I hope you don't you mean to). There's a little bit of information there, but generally I find people are the same everywhere; there are good and bad, smart and dumb, happy and sad, capable and incompetent, kind and cruel, etc. just as much in every group. It's really the individual that matters.
It's also essential to liberty and basic fairness: An individual need to be judged on their own merits, by their own action, and not by the color of their skin, their nationalities, their religion, gender, sexual preference, etc. If we say, "people in religion X are thieves", then it will be an injustice to almost all the individuals in that religion. It leads to widespread injustice even in peace, when a skilled woman or minority, for example, is judged instead on their race or gender and denied the job.
It turns out that stereotypes, however distasteful, usually do have a certain degree of accuracy: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/03/30/are-stereotypes-accur.... You may not want to live in the world where they do, but that reality is what it is.
When you ask people to deny the evidence of their own eyes, you're setting up a kind of resentment that can lead only to bad outcomes.
Of course, it'd be awful to be individually assumed to be a thief because you come from a group full of people unusually likely to be thieves. My point is that if it's a matter of fact that people of that group are more likely to be thieves, whatever the reason, and you tell people that, no, that group isn't full of thieves, and people are terrible for thinking so, then as soon as some demagogue acknowledges the truth, people will run to him no matter how bad his other opinions and no matter how ruinous his policies.
People hate liars, and even more, they hate being compelled by social forces of shame and ridicule to deny their true beliefs. It's better to have an honest conversation about these things than to repress them and create the kind of pressure cooker that explodes and makes a Trump president.
In an EU context, maybe it'd have been better to accept some restrictions on freedom of movement. Maybe it'd have been better to scale back centrally-imposed regulations on consumer goods (e.g., the EU banning traditional UK tea kettles).
Now we're going to see the EU damaged because well-meaning people tried to bring about the world they'd like to see by demanding everyone pretend it be so, and only children play pretend.
But I don't think any of that is accurate; I think your words are false and the argument rests only on the assumption that they are true.
If you want to cite something persuasive, you'll need something with more widespread credibility.
EDIT:
> It turns out that stereotypes, however distasteful, usually do have a certain degree of accuracy ... You may not want to live in the world where they do
This is an argument with a strawman that you made up, some absolutist person who says otherwise. If you read my prior comment, I already agreed with you that they have some degree if meaning.
> but that reality is what it is.
However, you don't get to define reality; maybe your definition is wrong.
You claim to want to avoid propaganda, but you are hewing to that approach closely with the assumptions, the absolutes, the lack of skepticism of your own position. My impression of Heterodox Academy is that it's more of the same but regardless, how about finding some more serious sources if you genuinely want to know?
Most of these differences are too incendiary to link here (and I'd rather not attract the wrath of dang), but let me cite one example: men are, biologically, physically much stronger than women. 95th percentile in women is 5th percentile in men. See this well-sourced quora thead: https://www.quora.com/Are-men-generally-physically-stronger-...
I think it's pretty easy to corroborate the statistics with everyday experience. Muscular strength is a function of total number of muscle fibers. Look around you, if you're in a group of men and women: which group tends to have the thicker biceps and triceps?
Now consider that quite a few people, particularly in the more blue-tribe areas of the US, think that it's a grave injustice that women do not have more representation in occupations that depend to large extent on physical strength --- e.g., firefighting.
Think about how frustrating it must feel to point out the unreality of this accusation. Imagine how it must feel to fear that you'd be fired from your job and ostracized from your social group for pointing out what the statistics and your own eyes agree in the truth. Now imagine that you had an opportunity to anonymously vote against the people who make you feel that way.
Can you imagine this state of mind? If so, you've captured why Britain left the EU.
> My impression of Heterodox Academy is that it's more of the same but regardless, how about finding some more serious sources if you genuinely want to know?
One sad effect of the current political climate is that it's become very hard to find unbiased sources --- or at least sources everyone respects (which isn't the same thing).
This is just a strawman; nobody argues women are as strong as men.
> it's become very hard to find unbiased sources
Not really, except than for ideological partisans
The parallels between our (still recent) past are absolutely striking: EU's propaganda, censorship efforts, ideological idiocy that nobody takes seriously any more (incl. economic).
But most of all, there's the scary disconnect between how real people live their lives vs what the official "party line" dictates. We're re-learning to read between the propaganda lines, again.
IMO we don't need condescending comments about how stupid everyone is (populists!), nor a platform explaining why this "central planning" ideology is appealing but very dangerous. We know very well, and we vote accordingly.
[0] "we" = majority of the country: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/ctenari-idnes-cz-anketa-czexit-de5-/d...
Wouldn't a voluntary exchange of trade, labour and policies, in place of "a feeding hand" (what a condescending remark!) be better for everyone?
By the way, the subsidies feed mostly the politicians, and the hands of their well-connected friends who are the true benefactors. And that's no coincidence -- as I said, we've already lived through the reality disconnect that is the result of top-down social engineering.
What the linked poll shows you is that normal people are telling you to take your oh-so-generous subsidies and shove them. If it means being part of a political union they have no say in.
You'll need to provide some data. It sounds like what any anti-EU propagandist would first think of asserting.
And what about the businesses with access to the world's largest market?
Regarding businesses: what about them? I happen to run a business, and dealing with EU partners and clients is actually a (marginally) greater nuisance than non-EU partners and clients. Are you aware of the complexity of the inter-EU VAT regulations and laws, especially for SMEs? [1]
The fact that a majority of a country believes populist propaganda is, unfortunately, not evidence of anything but the power of populist propaganda.
It seems to me the Czech Republic has become far wealthier in the EU, in large part because of access to EU markets and due to the stability of EU institutions.
Sure, you can say that Brexit are incredibly populist and play on peoples fears, but... the Bremain side was no better. Essentially, my take on it was, that the Brexit side was targeting the incredibly stupid people with fears like immigration, whereas the Bremain was targeting the merely stupid people with fears like economy crash. Neither seemed to have any kind of justification to their main arguments, or any other sensible argument.
The situation in the US seems very similar. Sure, Trump is spewing inconsistent nonsense left and right, but Hillary has nothing to say, period. Part of me thinks that she's so embroiled in potential scandals that it's actually better for her to say nothing, and hope that Trump auto-ignites and explodes based on his speech...
I saw something (jokingly) suggesting the other day that the best thing Clinton could do with her campaign's cash would be to loan it to Trump's campaign.
Yeah, both sides have massive flaws, but isn't it stifling to keep insisting on this fact and to keep preaching it? Shouldn't we all just accept the lesser evil, by however small a margin it's less evil?
As good a point as you may have, isn't it more important to avoid a Donald Trump presidency/a brexit/a ridiculous fear of immigrants and Islam than to say what is technically correct so loudly and prominently?
I feel like if we wind up with the worse cases, people might regret having made both sides seem bad. Plus, less intelligent people might avoid voting altogether rather than voting for the lesser evil because they keep hearing intellectuals say how bad both sides are.
That would probably come as a surprise to the small army of people who have sued him over the years[0], or who have been sued by him for what seem to be vindictive or petty reasons[1].
You may prefer Trump, but the corrupting interests of business and politics very often intersect. I think it would be a mistake to assume he's neither corrupt nor corruptible.
[0]http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/donald-t...
You seem to be a Trump supporter, so there you go, you're not on the both-sides-are-evil boat. I have no qualms with you other than the obvious political differences.
I highly recommend reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer . It was written in the aftermath of WW2 and tries to break down the factors that go into the formation of mass movements like Naziism and Communism.
I wouldn't say we've reached the same levels by a ways, but the parallels between the situation then and now are chilling.
Today's vote only has two possible outcomes, but please don't perpetuate the myth that Americans have only two choices in November. Both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein would serve the public better as president than either of the two corrupt charlatans that the two wings of the Status Quo Party will nominate. If we want to improve the nation, and we want to do it by voting, we will be fools if we continue to vote as we always have.
What do you seriously suggest the people do to get another person besides these two?
Whether you like it or not, the fact remains that those who vote for a third party have always been a tiny minority and have ultimately caused elections to be lost to people even they think is the worse evil. Unless of course you respond with what your plan of action is and how it will work.
This is probably too political for HN, so I'll stop now.
People who vote against their own interest and focus on over-emotional bipartisan feelings are exactly the reason America's government keeps doing things that people don't like. They're so afraid of the "greater evil" that they'll even kill the greater good in a futile attempt to avoid it. The republicans will still keep on winning every couple of cycles, just as they always have. Voting for one of the two major parties is really a vote for the status quo of alternating republican and democrat governments. It's like sports, no team is ever really going to win. They just keep switching places.
The strawmen about only voting for the winner doesn't apply.
If you want to make voting your conscience easier, support something like eg Range Voting.
I am not so sure. I think there are other systems that can achieve this too. Eg a proportional system perhaps?
Anyway, yes, score voting is still a good idea if you can only elect a single candidate. People already understand how it works from sports.
Because I couldn't bear to be a citizen of a country that elects Donald Trump as president. I'd be too embarrassed in the face of my peers around the world. I already get made fun of enough for my country by my German, Swiss, and Korean friends for just the prospect of Trump winning. I couldn't live here anymore or represent this country when I travel. The people who surround me, my compatriots, would be too stupid, bigoted, and hateful in my view for me to continue living here.
For any other election, I'd happily agree with you and might even try to change the status quo. But the risk of a Trump presidency has my insides sinking.
But right now, I'm going to vote for anything to stop that guy from winning. Even if it means voting for a crook.
Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992. I'd say that shows what a third party candidate can do.
That margin is an epsilon, and its inverted for people with different pressing concerns than you.
The Republican party is full of people will be voting for Trump, not because they really like him, but simply to keep Killary out. That is their lesser evil.
This is the manufactured consent of US politics.
I've yet to hear an intelligent argument in favor of mass immigration, especially for a densely populated country like the UK. So, "stupid" to me is forcing a country with millennia of fairly consistent demographics to rapidly [0] turn into a squabbling Middle Eastern/North African/South Asian aggregate. Stupid. And by stupid, I mean stupid to the point of being utterly baffling.
[0] By historical standards. Britain is being re-settled a lot faster than North America was for instance. That took hundreds of years.
I agree, partially. Mass immigration is almost never a good idea. However, the populations you pointed out aren't from the EU so have basically nothing to do with Brexit.
It's good for the people moving!
(There are other arguments, too.)
That sort of attitude towards non-upperclass people on both sides of the political spectrum is why they are pissed off with the political classes, in fact. And they are not stupid to be pissed off.
My feeds are full of people who just absolutely cannot believe that other people hold "wrong opinions".
Anytime you see calls for "sanity" or the like you know the person is completely incapable of seeing something from another point of view. I've started to use it as a code word for "don't listen to this person".
If something went viral, I used to take that as a signal or indicator of how the majority of people think. Now when something goes viral, I think, "that's roughly how a lot of men and almost as many women, age 13 to 30, who are comfortable aligning with that particular opinion publicly, think."
Then I started considering what that might mean for television, movies, print, etc.
I always knew that media was skewed in favor of attracting the youngest audiences, because they're more valuable to advertisers. Now I'm also considering that maybe those forms of media are also skewed in favor of the type of person who tends to watch a lot of television, go to a lot of movies, buy a lot of magazines, etc. I used to think everyone did that, now I know a lot of people do it far less than others.
Daytime television, for example, is full of advertisements for private colleges that exist mostly just to take your SSN so they can pocket federal loan money and list you as the debtor. That's because people who watch daytime television tend to be uneducated and unemployed.
Daytime television is nothing close to a cross-section of humanity. It's content engineered to appeal mostly to people who don't go to school and don't work.
Now, what kind of people tend to watch primetime television? Or listen to terrestrial radio? Or buy a magazine at an airport?
As a result of media producers learning more about their audiences, pretty much every form of media eventually becomes an echo chamber.
But Bill Gates has said he reads every issue of The Economist from cover to cover, so they definitely know their audience. They'll be in the black as long as they can sell him and Richard Branson one Gulfstream every 5 years.
This is partly because the islands are far more dependent on the EU than the mainland, but in Gibraltar's case it is particularly extreme. Without EU membership Gibraltar may not be able to have a border with Spain due to the territorial conflict. Spain already occasionally closes the border on a whim, for example when a Spanish fishing boat was arrested for illegally fishing in Gibraltar waters.
[edit] I don't want to get into a debate (w/commenter below) but basically both the UK and Spain claim that they own all the waters. International rulings so far seem to be leaning towards giving the UK some and Spain some; a lot of these rulings come from the EU courts which is yet another reason why those in Gibraltar have a very strong interest to stay.
While I'm amending my comment, I think it's interesting that there were any Gibraltar citizens who voted to leave. This shows that there is a solid 8% of the population or so that will vote how they feel is important despite a very strong economic incentive to the contrary. I'm simultaneously surprised at how few people voted to leave (only 4%!) and at how there were still people who voted to leave despite the obvious economic problems leaving would bring to Gibraltar.
Please, if you work on these things, try to help us understand what we're really seeing. Otherwise, your work is for naught, because we will all learn to say, "Bah, I'll check the results in the morning."
Do any of you have ideas about how better to display live results? Maybe a heat map showing the difference in the actual results versus the polled expected results?
It's hard though, there isn't much to compare as there isn't an 'expected way' regions vote. There's a rough idea, but it's seeming like these are not what people expected. My money is on Scotland and Ireland being overwhelmingly remain, Wales swinging unexpectedly to leave (partly because they are disenfranchised with the government), while in England the non urban areas going leave and the urban ones going stay.
In the case of a general election, we have the previous election on which to base our expectations. The UK broadcasters use the "swingometer" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingometer) in these elections, which is a useful visualisation of the change of vote share on a per-consitutency basis, indicating the meaning of the result rather than just the number.
The EU referendum has no recent comparable campaign with which it can be compared, making it much harder to do this.
Similarly, here is the 2012 election county map where "blue" had 5MM more votes than "red": http://politicalmaps.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-usa...
The Guardian do good election maps – this one has regional results scaled by population, so it's much clearer what's happening: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2016/jun/...
You can see a feed of results here: https://gist.github.com/inglesp/0b0ba9efcefe54f965be9b042afd...
Caveat: I'm drinking increasingly heavily.
All of the charts updated in real time based on how precincts actually voted compared to their predictions.
It's definitely made election night a lot less dramatic.
Leave only needs 2,105,984 more votes to win. [edit 12:15am EST] 1,715,256 votes now and closing fast. [edit 12:19am EST] 1,196,678 [edit 12:27am EST] 894,189 [edit 12:31am EST] 785,549 [edit 12:37am EST] 741,795 [edit 12:38am EST] 592,337 [edit 12:45am EST] 448,596 [edit 12:46am EST] 373,532 [edit 12:51am EST] 308,519 [edit 12:57am EST] 94,635 [edit 1:00am EST] 37,665 [edit 1:02am EST] 0. The UK has officially voted to leave.
Predicted result: Leave 52%, Remain 48%
Wow. So what happens now?
- Scotland voted 62% Remain. The SNP said it will call a second independence referendum if Leave wins. Many estimate that the independence movement will win this time around. Literally every single Scottish division voted to remain.
- Gibraltar will probably be royally screwed [0] as well as some other areas that are heavily dependent on trade/travel with EU countries
- The pound drops like a rock. Was stable at $1.48 all day, peaked at $1.50 earlier after Remain was doing well (~6pm EST), now at $1.33 (12:13am EST), now at $1.32 (12:21am EST) and the lowest level since 1985. In 1985 it hit $1.08, which was then the lowest value in a very long time.
- The pound is down 17% from the yen by the way.
- Other independence movements in other EU countries gain a bit of legitimacy. The euro drops (currently at $1.09, down four cents or 3%), and the yen gains (currently up 6%) (12:25am EST)
- For those of us fortunate enough to have our savings in dollars, everything denominated in pounds is currently on a 12% off sale.
http://www.investing.com/currencies/gbp-usd-chart
This is going to hurt...
Edit: now rebounding... Remain is winning now thanks to London.
Can anyone more familiar with UK markets offer suggestions on how I can trade this opinion?
If a higher percentage was thought to be a good idea, what would that percentage be? 60/40? 55/65? 70/30? I'm not advocating for this by the way, just figure it might be an interesting thought experiment.
> I suspect the result today was skewed by the big swing towards the 'Remain' vote following the assassination of Jo Cox
That's kind of what I'm getting at. With a vote so close it's almost a decision that could change day to day, or depending upon the weather. For a vote that can only happen every decade or three I don't think 50% is a high enough bar for change.
On the other hand, you don't want too high a threshold to make a change, like 3/4 to ratify, as js2 points out, because then you're effectively locked in to the status quo for too long.
Another way of doing this is to offer voters a third option, "neutral/undecided". When counting, you'd treat these votes as if they were in favour of the status quo, remaining in the EU. Then, if 51% of the votes are to leave, Britain leaves the EU. After all, if you're neutral about something, you stick with what you have, rather than disrupting things for no good reason.
3-4 a.m. (10-11 p.m.) - Results from half of the counting areas are in
Around 5 a.m. (midnight) - About 80% of counting areas have reported results
7 a.m. (2 a.m.) - All votes are likely to have been counted and the official result is expected shortly after.
And now, we can watch as the project that has brought peace and prosperity to more than almost any in history unravels. And yes, Europe has been failed by horrendous, narrow-minded economic policies of the EU, but a previous generation of leaders who still remembered the horrors of war would not have sacrificed Europe for their own narrow benefits.
[0] http://delong.typepad.com/delong_long_form/2015/01/the-futur...
The Europe of < 1910 was very different. Socially, politically, and economically. If the EU dissolved today, I don't believe France and Germany would be at war within 200 years. So long as strong democratic values persist in Europe, peace, I think, is a certainty.
Watch this movie, it's brilliant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Civil_War
Look at Gibraltar. Channel tax havens. Nuclear submarines and oil platforms in Scotland. All these situations will now have to be renegotiated. Negotiations between states sometimes fail, and when they do, there's always that extension of diplomacy behind the corner: war.
There are endless fault lines all around us, which will be opened by renouncing the superior structures keeping them together.
The european project has failed in this sense. Europe is not the euro nor the current european institutions.
Hopefully one day Europe will be the people.
We only need a couple of generations of old angry men to die off, and then we'll be ok.
What is being voted on is simply whether the good bits outweigh the sucky bits. Or whether the sucky bits are at least reformable.
Existence of the sucky bits is beyond question.
So far, I've seen most commentators cast aspersions on the UK public for squandering an opportunity for peace and unity. I wish more people would entertain the notion that the EU was so badly run and so antithetical to the UK way of life that leaving was the right choice, however sad it was that the EU dream didn't become reality.
[0] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/06/brexit-ant...
It's exactly this idea that discussions predicated on group identity are somehow outside the realm of legitimate politics that leads to the very resentment that made Britain leave the EU.
It's a shame, because if the EU had treated this issue as a political one, subject to compromise and regulation, they'd have been able to come up with a political solution. Instead, a lot of people treated this issue as a moral crusade and provoked a huge, destructive backlash.
God, homo sapiens is doomed.
External immigration is a huge issue in many parts of the EU, and a common rallying point for the anti-immigration right. Especially Muslim immigration has become a major political issue in many EU countries. There is probably a coalition that could be put together with a hard-line view on refugees and external immigration (and one is sort of forming in opposition to the Merkel-led coalition's more accommodating view). But internal EU movement is a much smaller political issue in much of the rest of the EU (though it is a big issue in non-EU, but Schengen member Switzerland). Anti-immigration parties elsewhere in Europe, like Sweden Democrats, are mainly animated by worry about Muslim immigration from outside the EU, and don't really have the beef with e.g. Polish immigrants that some of the UK anti-immigration groups have.
In some ways, one of the main thrusts of this effort, the wish to be more independent and having self determination and resulting in more control over employment and immigration is understandable. Unlike the US where anti-immigration brings calls of racism, in the UK the animus is against people of the same "race". (it also affects people from non-EU, and of non-European descent, but less so).
I think this is the attitude evidenced when people decry "gentrification". Or No "Californians" in Portland, OR or Seattle, WA. People don't mind immigration (influx of outsiders) or change, so long as it's controlled to some degree and they have a benefit (unaffordable housing and competition for blue collar jobs from regions who are used to lower wages, makes it a wedge for people of that economic class).
Probably the saddest referendum result in my lifetime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vot...
It was genuinely one of the worst referendum campaigns of all time though. I'm still haunted by the 'if you vote for this then babies will die' adverts.
Something like Approval Voting or even better range voting would have been worth it.
Elections, however, are not based on popular vote.
Regional variations are the only reason things haven't been decided yet.
I doubt we'll stand by and stomach a far right dogwhistle government. Most of the politicians advocating leaving the EU also want to abolish the Scottish parliament.
What happens if the UK as a whole decides to leave the euro zone, perhaps by a small margin or perhaps by a lot, but for some reason Scotland decides buy a 15% margin to stay in the euro zone.
Is there any reason to think we might see Scotland decide to stay with the euro zone it leave the UK in that case? Or are the ties so strong that the UK would probably stay together no matter what even if one of the member nations has a strongly different opinion?
I wonder what will happen in Northern Ireland. My understanding is that it will be split in half in terms of voting leave/remain.
Scotland had an independence referendum less than two years ago, where the outcome was a good 45%-55% in favour of remaining in the UK. However, the majority of representatives in Scotland remain pro-Scottish independence. Continued membership of the EU was an important argument during the independence campaign – with the pro-independence side wanting to remain, and the pro-UK side warning that Scotland would lose EU membership if it voted for independence.
It's likely – but not certain – that there would be a second independence referendum in Scotland on the basis of being 'forced' to exit the EU. But it's not going to be pretty, and there have been a lot of elections in Scotland recently – no doubt everyone is getting a bit fatigued. It's not clear at all what the outcome would be, either, or if Scotland would even be able to maintain EU membership.
Honestly I was surprised when this whole issue came up because I assumed that the EU and the Eurozone where the same thing. I know the UK never decided to adopt the Euro so I just assumed that they weren't part of the EU.
The UK has been a bit frosty about the prospect of further EU integration, possibly with good reason in some ways.
...ya know, just in case you weren't confused enough already!
The other interesting aspect is London: a part of the UK whose expected resounding Remain vote[1] is far from the only way it's increasingly politically, culturally and economically different from the rest of the UK...
[1]Lambeth just voted 78%/21% for remain...
You might wonder, if "Leave" wins, whether Scotland's next independence referendum won't succeed as well.
I think it's the opposite. IIRC, if Scotland votes to leave but the rest of the UK doesn't, the Scottish independence movement leaders have said that that will renew their push for another independence referendum.
I wouldn't be surprised if Scottish voters viewed 'Leave' vs. 'Remain' as a proxy vote for leaving the UK, rather than the EU, and were voting with that in mind (even if they would want to be part of the EU as an independent Scotland).
Apparently the low oil price has banished the prospect of Scottish independence for now at least.
dang?
This is unlike the Scottish independence referendum which was a Yes/No vote on if Scotland should to be independent. It's not specifically about either option this time.
All that said, “Brexit referendum” is a name that's been used. (And if the result goes a certain way, well…)
Bremain! Get the hip abbreviations right :)
If in doubt, a simple click will solve any ambiguity which could arise with the Elderberry Unicorn referendum happening in Patagonia also today.
It's not looking good for remain, but it's really early.
Also, the chances are the BBC world service radio is covering it in your area.
(She's also Queen of all Australian states individually.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...
Makes for great public media in many cases.
Those could very well be provided by the private market.
The Wikipedia article you link to states "The money received is first paid into the Government's Consolidated Fund. It is subsequently included in the 'vote' for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in that year's Appropriation Act, and passed back to the BBC for the running of the BBC's own services (free from commercial advertisements)."
How do you see this as "no government funding"?
What funding package is that? Did you mean EU grants?
> that each UK citizen has to pay with the purchase of a TV)
The licence fee is payable if you are in the UK and watch live TV as it's broadcast. "live", "TV", and "broadcast" are defined in statute and statutory instruments.
To be clear: I have no other evidence of a fix, nor am I talking only about this election. I'm saying, the question needs to be asked and the problem needs to be dealt with proactively through security and other means.
But here are some thoughts:
* Security requires making an attack more costly than its worth. How much are the results of a major election worth? It's priceless, existential even to some. The fates of nations and billions to trillions of dollars could be on the line. State intelligence services have many motivations to control the outcome. Is it even possible to secure something that valuable?
* Elections have been fixed for generations - probably for as long as there have been elections; it's certainly plausible that someone would try and succeed.
* The systems that need securing are not in a locked room, but spread across a nation, with a large number of operators. Again, very hard to secure. Finally, at least in the U.S., election systems aren't know for their security.
* If it was fixed, would anyone investigate? Would they even want to know? It would undermine the fundamental mechanism of democracy. What if the U.S. presidential election was fixed, what would happen? A do-over?
* Other than smoking guns, what better evidence could we have of a fix than a mis-match between pre-election polls and the outcome?
In short, there's a very strong motive, long-established precedent, and opportunity.
Edit: I did some math and figured it out. Thanks for the help, hehehe
It gives a different perspective to the early votes coming in...
Amateur guestimate, remain will see 1.55, leave will see 1.30
United will only be in the name of the country after today. This is the beginning of years of trouble ahead.
I'm not after an argument, i'm an average joe who works and has a family. Explain to me why important to vote remain, thats all.
A Leave vote would probably negatively affect many European research projects. The EU's framework programmes [1] are funding many collaborations and exchange programs. If the UK leaves, non-British researchers might need to to leave the UK, British universities would get isolated from the rest of European academia, long-term projects would have their funding canceled, etc. Even if EU and UK somehow would find a way to continue research cooperations, the uncertainty will have negative consequences right now. While this might not directly affect the average joe, it would negatively affect quite a few people I know.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_Programmes_for_Resea...
EU and US leaders seem to keep on stating there's nothing wrong with Islam, while e.g. Islamic countries still have the death penalty for non-straight or non-cis people. It seems like doublespeak to say it's great, yet not admit the obvious problems. Anyone speaking up and pointing this "emperor's clothing" situation out is going to resonate well with people. I've considered myself very left and liberal for most of my life, yet I'm now viewing these right-wing parties favorably. Maybe I'm getting older (34) and losing my grip, or maybe there's some serious issues.
If I'm getting this wrong, please tell me. I have a hard time seeing how rational people can come to a different result on this matter. Note I'm not saying anything about individual Muslims, just that no one seems to want to recognize the obvious problems that many people's beliefs seem to have.
No offense intended; please let me know what I'm missing. (FWIW I'm against all religion.)
Policy matters. The right wing proposal is religious discrimination. In the US we don't make exceptions for religions we don't like. You don't have to like Islam. You can believe that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with western pluralism. If you are American the moment you decide that's a good reason to start getting ok with religious discrimination is when you've given up on the very ideals this country was founded on.
By reinforcing the idea that Islam is a threat to the pluralism of Western society, we're also reinforcing extremists' narrative about a clash of civilization.
Really, the only winning move is not to play. That is, treat terrorist attacks as normal crimes and let the police handle it.
> the only winning move is not to play. That is, treat terrorist attacks as normal crimes and let the police handle it.
Generally I agree, but I think it needs to be portrayed as peace-loving people of all religions against homicidal maniacs of all religions.
I completely agree! But it's not as if every religion is equal. It'd be strange to say that, for instance, Jainism, has (or had) anywhere near the violence (even proportionally) that, say, Christianity or Judaism has (or had).
It reminds me of programming or tooling debates, where someone jumps in with "well pick the right tool for the right job" or "all software has bugs". It feels somewhat dishonest to imply that no group has a larger problem. And I don't mean terrorism -- that's small enough in raw numbers to not matter -- I mean overall social views like what's described here[1]. Reading those numbers, am I wrong to think it's a clash of civilization?
1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
Again, I'm asking in all honesty, no intention to offend, troll or provoke. I thank you all for your responses.
Lacking data, I'd guess that violence is proportional to power and not to the religious teachings. Janists don't control any large armies (yet). But if a Janist PM of India nuked Pakistan, would you be shocked?
> It feels somewhat dishonest to imply that no group has a larger problem. And I don't mean terrorism -- that's small enough in raw numbers to not matter -- I mean overall social views ...
It's impossible that every group has equal problems, of course, but many other factors may determine the social views, as an example: Is the group concentrated in a certain region? I'll bet Mormons have a stronger belief in democracy and civil rights than (pick some religion concentrated in a non-democratic country). Is the group disproportionately poor or rich? Old or young? Well or poorly educated? Does it have a political structure that lends itself to certain types of behavior (for example, I don't know about religions, but for nations democratic structures generally yield more peaceful behavior)? etc.
Think of it from a scientific basis: Can we control for other factors and isolate behavior down to religion? It seems almost impossible. And what is religion? Scripture? Teachings? The local clergy? Family? Personal beliefs - even those change. Within religions, there is enormous variety in observance and belief; very few if any blindly accept all their religion's teachings. It seems impossible to paint the individuals with a broad brush.
And regardless, I think it's unjust to judge any individual based on anything but their own actions. It's not right to guess what they might do and condemn them for it.
I'm not suggesting condemning anyone. Just condemning their views and making it publicly unacceptable, and perhaps letting that provide some advice to immigration policy. Similar to how the Mormon church was let know in no uncertain terms that racial discrimination was not OK, despite their religion.[1]
A blanket ban (based on what, like you say, professed religion?) is extremely uncomfortable for exactly the reasons you lay out. But so is pretending there's nothing objectionable and that there's just a few people here and there that have "extreme" views.
My only point in this whole thread is that the reason a lot of people might be leaning right is that the left politicians I've seen don't seem to be willing to admit there might be belief issues. No need to condemn anyone, just condemn certain views. Note some ideas are not OK, and that the US or EU's values need to win out.
I'm not pretending; it's just a few. Just because I disagree doesn't mean I'm pretending - maybe you're wrong.
Can you point to one U.S. immigrant who has stoned another American for adultery (referring to your other post)? Do you have any data of such problems actually existing? It's obviously absurd to claim these things will happen.
I think you are wrong about "belief issues"; it's just an alarmist response to normal human behavior based on a very simplistic model. People in poor, undemocratic countries have less understanding of these things than people brought up in the West. But the U.S. has been integrating those people for hundreds of years - Europe wasn't always a bastion of liberty and democracy - and almost all Americans descend from immigrants from (then) non-democratic countries. I would guess.
Have some faith in the values of democracy, liberty, and tolerance: They do have very broad appeal and are adopted by nations world-wide, from Japan to Indonesia to India to Botswana to Brazil. You might recall many Mideast countries recently had revolts pushing for those things. Finally, most immigrants know the U.S. stands for freedom and choose it.
>it's just a few
Going off the percentage numbers from Pew and the demos from Wikipedia, I get these numbers for those in favour of death for apostasy: 50M in Egypt. 53M in Bangladesh. Around 110M in Pakistan. That's 200M people right there -- how can that be a "few" in any meaning of the word?
Egypt was one of those countries with revolutions, wasn't it? Jordan is rated the most free or democratic among Arab countries, yet over half the population is in favour of death for leaving a religion.
Unless these numbers are totally wrong (and I'd love to hear that), I'm not sure this is just alarmist. But at any right, it should explain why these right wing politicians are getting support. Someone looks at these surveys, sees these numbers. Then a leader gets on the TV says there's zero problem with Islam, that it's all peaceful people, and only a few extremists. So are the surveys/research simply and utterly wrong?
Maybe it does not matter, and people that migrate will drop those views, or the ones without those views are the only ones that want to come. But I think plenty of people view it dishonest to claim there's no issue with those beliefs in the first place.
Again, thank you for explaining. This thread has given me some points to consider even if I don't agree.
If they want to come to our countries, they have to respect our laws.
They want to stone people? Jail them.
Those nations aren't a threat to our civilization precisely because of how their society works. They distrust themselves far too much to wage a jihad against our civilization.
Those terrorists thrive on our own radicalization and fear.
Every time someone shoot up an mosque, they win. Every time a politicians talked about banning Muslims from an entire country, they win. Anything they could do to create a 'us-versus-them' divide further their narratives and aims.
The only thing we can do is move on, continue our lives as if they are not a threat at all, and let the police handle their duties.
Quite frankly, there are lot of other things that kill people more than Islamic terrorism.
But at what point are the views of a group or religion a problem? Suppose a hundred million members around the world are in favour of death for leaving the group. Is that enough for western countries to say hey, that's not acceptable? To note that there may be a serious incompatibilities in beliefs?
I'm not sure hypotheticals help here; it's hard to address issues that lack the dimensions of reality.
> Is that enough for western countries to say hey, that's not acceptable? To note that there may be a serious incompatibilities in beliefs?
In another post you said you didn't mean to troll, but I'll say that this question seems like one.
Again, I'm not sure what this question would mean in reality. Each individual has their own beliefs; democracies outlaw certain behavior; I don't see what their religion has to do with it. A person either follows the law or not, regardless of their religion. We can't imprison or punish people based on some prediction of future behavior, and that prediction based purely on religion would be absurd. Maybe we should imprison all poor people, who commit crimes at a higher rate, or all men under the age of 30 - imagine how much lower the crime rate would be then! Also, all politicians.
Here's Pew Research on the topic[1] I'm going off. According to this, 74% of Egyptian Muslims favour sharia. Of those, 81% support stoning for adultery, and 86% for death for apostasy. Egypt has 80M Muslims, so that's around 50M people in one country alone, that believe in death for leaving the religion.
I'm not saying anyone should be punished. Just that some groups, overall, seem to have many members with views opposite what the country wants. Is this not a fair subject to discuss when talking about integrating hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, into another country?
I am uncomfortable with a blanket ban on a particular religion, because it's not accurate enough. But to pretend there's absolutely no signal at all doesn't seem good either. I'm don't agree we should just assume everyone will put such extreme personal views aside.
Thank you for excusing my poor phrasing.
1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
Generation after generation, many immigrants to the U.S. have come from poor, backward countries and brought beliefs that would horrify you (and me). The Americans who had came before had the same reaction to them you do. But don't worry: In a generation or two, the descendants of those new immigrants will say the same thing about the next group.
> to pretend there's absolutely no signal at all doesn't seem good either
Copied from a response to another post of yours:
many other factors may determine the social views, as an example: Is the group concentrated in a certain region? I'll bet Mormons have a stronger belief in democracy and civil rights than (pick some religion concentrated in a non-democratic country). Is the group disproportionately poor or rich? Old or young? Well or poorly educated? Does it have a political structure that lends itself to certain types of behavior (for example, I don't know about religions, but for nations democratic structures generally yield more peaceful behavior)? etc.
Think of it from a scientific basis: Can we control for other factors and isolate behavior down to religion? It seems almost impossible. And what is religion? Scripture? Teachings? The local clergy? Family? Personal beliefs - even those change. Within religions, there is enormous variety in observance and belief; very few if any blindly accept all their religion's teachings. It seems impossible to paint the individuals with a broad brush.
You seem like you understand data; projecting from a survey of Egyptians to the likely behavior of every U.S. immigrant of a certain religion seems like an incredible stretch.
"36% of 16 to 24-year-olds believe if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death, compared with 19% of over-55s"[1]
"27% of the 1,000 Muslims polled by ComRes said they had some sympathy for the motives behind the [Charlie Hebdo] Paris attacks"[2]
Apostasy is also a crime in rich, well-off countries, like the UAE. Between seeing how these nice countries operate, and these surveys of UK residents, I don't think it's a stretch to think some views might come with large migration. Again, this does not require discrimination against individuals. But it should allow criticism of views/beliefs, and informing the immigration selection process, perhaps via quizzing.
And you know, it doesn't even need to be targeted. Simply knowing that there's a large enough group with such views might be enough to quiz _all_ immigrants on those topics. That way it's non-discriminatory.
But I'll turn it around: under what circumstances would you agree with more filtering, increased quizzing, or any such thing based on a group's beliefs?
I hadn't really thought about it until you said this now, but freedom of religion in this country predates gender equality, racial equality, and even slavery. There were founders of this country who were ok with slavery but drew the line at religious discrimination!
This has nothing to do with restricting immigration of certain groups for WHATEVER reason. That is the prerogative of a sovereign nation. In fact, it was only since the 60's that the US allowed mass immigration from non European nations.
If you are referring to Muslims whom are also US citizens, I agree with you. We need to very careful that Muslims in the US are treated with the same rights as anyone else.
Just from my own perspective, I'm an Episcopalian; we were the first major Christian denomination to appoint an openly gay bishop, and our official policy is pro-LGBT and pro-same sex marriage. There are approximately two million of us, 1.8 million in the USA; we're not huge, but we're hardly a splinter group. Yet I've known both left-wing atheists and right-wing Baptists who first refuse to believe that I'm pro-LGBT, and then tell me that I'm not a "real" Christian, I'm a lone outlier with delusions of belonging. This despite the fact that more than 50% of all American Christians, of any denomination, describe themselves as pro-LGBT!
I feel like the same thing applies to Muslims. There are groups, sects, denominations whose official policy is horrible, violent bigotry, and that should be resisted. But just knowing that a person is a Muslim doesn't tell you anything important about them.
But to suggest it provides zero info is wrong. By knowing someone lives in San Francisco, you can adjust your probability that someone votes Democrat, for instance.
But with Islam, I see articles like this[1], which say "88% of Muslims in Egypt and 62% of Muslims in Pakistan favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion". So it seems fair to say if you know someone is from there, and they are Muslim, then there's a high probability they have those kinds of views. At least, as far as we can go off this survey. Am I misinterpreting this incorrectly?
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01...
death penalty for non-straight or non-cis people
Instead of immediately penalizing gay people, they offer them sex reassignment surgery. It's just as bad, but in a different direction. It works out better for trans people, but not at all for gay people.
It's the same propaganda the Nazis used, with similar results. Read some old Nazi propaganda; it was "based on concrete actions", group guilt, etc.
> Note I'm not saying anything about individual Muslims
I'm not sure what else you could be saying? Could you explain?
You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held.
When I meet Catholics, sometimes I do quiz them on the huge amount of damage the Catholic Church has done to people by fighting birth control (and a good chunk of my family is Catholic). I've been tangentially involved with a medical clinic in Guatemala for years, and have seen how damaging this is to people, firsthand. (And I hear STDs in other countries have done even more damage.)
If a country was designing a health system and was facing a bunch of Catholics trying to join the decision board, they'd be perfectly justified in saying "hey, the Catholic church has some harmful views on this health issue; we're not saying you do, but we'd like to make sure we're on the same page before you come onboard". Is this unreasonable?
I don't like hypotheticals because we can always construct one to justify anything. Want to justify torture? Invent a hypothetical 'ticking time bomb scenario'.
It depends on people's individual beliefs; if you want to restrict the board to certain beliefs, you'd better ask everyone.
> You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held.
I don't understand how a group can hold beliefs. The mechanism doesn't exist; humans are not hive minds. More importantly, you can't accuse the group without accusing all its individual members. Unless you want to unjustly penalize the >1 billion individuals and apply group guilt, there's no application for this 'group belief'.
The Catholic Church as an institution, is different from the group of all Catholics.
That said, I think the difference is one of degree, not of kind. There are violent Christians, too, after all -- and violent Jews (ask the Palestinians about these) -- and violent atheists. There are many places in the world where the Western concept of human rights has not caught on, and you don't have to be a right-winger to suggest that we who believe in such rights should continue to press the concept on others (even as we continue to clean our own houses).
You don't really say exactly what it is that you're agreeing with the right-wing parties about. If you're suggesting that Muslim immigrants should be excluded from the US, for example, that would seem to contradict your claim that you're not saying anything about individual Muslims.
So what is it, exactly, that you think "rational people" couldn't disagree with?
As far as liking the right, only the right wing parties seem to be willing to openly say there may be an issue with the group beliefs. Your comment, which is sensible and accurate, does not seem to be what I've seen most left-leaning people saying. I've not heard EU/US leaders say anything like "X religion has some serious issues, but we need to work to fix those issues". But again, perhaps I've got sampling bias.
Here in California, in 2008, we had Proposition 8, which rescinded the right of marriage which the state Supreme Court had declared less than a year earlier was available to same-sex couples. After that, it was noted that violence against gays increased. The vote was taken, by some, as an official statement that discriminating against gays was okay.
What do you think would happen if Obama said "Islam has some issues"? Don't you think there would be plenty of people who would take this as an excuse to start beating up Muslims? The fact that he didn't even mean his comment to be taken that way would be no defense against this very predictable consequence of his saying it.
I think he has to stick to the line that "Islam is a religion of peace". The vast majority of Muslims, after all, are peaceful. I've even read about mosques working with the FBI to help identify potentially violent people. We need that kind of partnership to continue and expand, and to make that happen, it's important to express that side of the truth, if you will. Saying "Islam is a religion of peace" says "if you're a Muslim who abhors violence, the US is on your side". That's a good message!
I don't think anyone on the left is unaware of the risks posed by violent extremism, Islamist or otherwise. It's more a question of what is the best response. As tempting as it is to say, Let's just keep out the people who seem most inclined to do such things -- if that means all Muslims, I think that would be a terrible mistake, as it would keep out large numbers of desirable citizens in order to stop a few violent crazies. (Of course I have no objection to deporting individual immigrants who have committed crimes or otherwise demonstrated a predisposition to violence.)
But could you explain why you say it's only a few people? I guess it all hinges on what is meant by "a few" and "peaceful".
Because according to Pew Research, the number of Muslims worldwide that support death for apostasy is very high - hundreds of millions[1]. This is not a fringe/extremist/radical minority. Major, rich, countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE have severe penalties for religious-based "crimes" or sexuality. Even in the UK, the percentages are in the double-digits for those that support violence against cartoonists, or death to apostates. The views and numbers on homosexuality are likewise appalling and indefensible.
You mention Prop 8 but sort of draw the opposite conclusion. The Mozilla CEO supported Prop 8, and he was cast out. Mormons got some bad rep due to their involvement with it. But these countries do far, far, worse, and our leaders don't condemn them?
Maybe you're right that professing there's no problem is the best tactic. But it's going to look very insincere, perhaps outright dishonest, to many people.
1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
- Perhaps the research is wrong. I'd love to hear that these numbers are total fabrications. But all I've seen when I look is a lot of handwaving about interpretations and No True Scotsman arguments.
As a general matter, I would expect that hard-liners would be less interested than moderates in emigrating to a West they see as hopelessly decadent. Certainly, if they want to live in a country where Sharia is the law of the land, that's not going to happen here, or even in France. So I expect there's a substantial amount of self-selection going on already.
That said, I'm sure there is a clash of values in some cases. I recall reading about a woman walking her dog in NYC -- she happened to go past a mosque, and was accosted by one of its members (dogs are "unclean", apparently). I certainly think it should be impressed upon the members of the mosque that they have no right to control who uses a public sidewalk, and that walking one's dog is perfectly legal. They've come from a very uniform society into a very pluralistic one, and they're just going to have to get used to it.
I think such clashes are of the same kind as other debates about the degree to which adherents of a religion may impose their views on others: debates over abortion rights, state-sponsored prayer in public schools, religious displays on public property, Israelis settling in the occupied territories because they believe God gave them the land, etc. etc. I think it's important to keep in mind that it isn't just Muslims who try to do this.
Anyway, in principle I have no problem with interviewing applicants for immigration (and/or their friends and relatives) to estimate their predisposition to violence, and rejecting individuals who seem so disposed. In practice, I admit, that sounds like a hard thing to do well. But I think it would be better for us to try such an individualized approach than to impose blanket restrictions on entire religious/ethnic groups.
Interesting that you should bring up Brendan Eich. I originally signed an online petition calling for his ouster, and then as I read more about the situation, came to regret doing so. Not because there was any indication that he'd changed his views, nor because I came to see the pro-Prop. 8 campaign as anything but one vicious calumny after another, but because he had made a credible pledge not to let his views affect his treatment of Mozilla employees, and a considerable majority (though admittedly not 100%) of those employees believed he would live up to it. Certainly, had he stayed on as CEO, and failed to live up to his pledge, he could have been ousted with much better reason and less debate. I now think he should have had the chance. Instead, he was a lightning rod for a lot of pent-up anger that many, including me, had over the success of the Prop. 8 campaign and had not really had any target to direct it at.
> But these countries do far, far, worse, and our leaders don't condemn them?
Well, along with the risk of fanning the flames of anti-Muslim prejudice, there's also the fact that some of these regimes are, at least nominally and for the moment, our allies against Daesh, the self-styled Islamic State. However bad you think Saudi Arabia is, and I'm sure I agree, Daesh is much worse. I have not been paying attention to exactly what our leaders have and have not been saying about Daesh, but I'm not under the impression that they've spared the group any criticism.
I don't entirely disagree with you. But I think the situation the world is in is very delicate, and wise leaders will choose their words very, very carefully.
I also think it's important for us as individuals to resist identity-group politics. The better we all get at seeing people of other cultures as human beings -- however misguided some of their beliefs might seem to us -- the better the world's chance of navigating these perilous shoals.
Because Britain left?
And the response to this madness of leaving is to also leave?
At least I have the pleasure of knowing that Brits have to through all the border rules and lack of freedom of movement now. No more "pop over to Paris" for the weekend, or any other part of Europe!
I've never seen a coherent argument explaining how free trade deals have helped anyone but small groups at the expense of larger ones.
In fact, the actual direct evidence of trade deals are this:
1. Massive job loss for American workers. 2. Tax losses for the communities whose factories move across borders. 3.No actual job creation in its place based on the labor participation rate (lowest since these deals became common). 4. Corporate profits at highest level since before these deals. 5. Wealth inequality approaching depression level era. Interestingly, our gini coefficient tends to approach that of Mexico and China the more we trade with them.
Strongly suggest picking up a few technical and historic economic textbooks.
Monnet - one of the original drivers behind the formation of the EU - had this to say:
"Europe's nations should be guided towards the Super-state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation."
To be clear, these weren't some sort of evil oligarchs at work: they wanted there to never be another WW2, another Hitler, etc.
But the nature of the EU, from the outset, was much as its critics today contend.
More at http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/679277/History-EU-how....
Correction: that is not a quote from Monnet but a summary by a contemporary of his. He actually said:
"Via money Europe could become political in five years" and "… the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would … the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal.
Monnet actually said:
"Via money Europe could become political in five years" and "… the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would … the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal."
That being said, I think there is an increasing feeling within the EU that this is no longer the correct approach.
Not that I'm disputing the quote (I have no idea) - but Monnet was not the only person driving the formation of the ECSC, and I'm not sure any of the others involved had the same views.
Mussolini was hired by the King of Italy at (metaphorical) gunpoint to run the country, and ultimately fired him once the gun was no longer being held to his head.
That can't be the case, since the Reichskanzler was not voted for in any way. He was appointed by the Reichspräsident.
Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reichskanzler in 1933. In march 1933 there were new elections, but this time already under control of Hitler (as Reichskanzler) and the NSDAP. The NSDAP still did not get a majority of the votes, even though there already was a lot of terror against the opposition.
Hitler was never voted into power by the Germans. Even though the NSDAP was the strongest party in the last elections, they never had the majority of seats in the Reichstag in free elections and even not in the first non-free election.
HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE ITALIAN REPUBLIC,
HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE GRAND DUCHESS OF LUXEMBOURG,
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF THE NETHERLANDS,
*DETERMINED to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe,[...]*