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Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

From my perspective in the UK, it's been interesting (though frustrating) to watch what's been happening.

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.

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> t 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's like the world forgot the lessons of the past - the curses of nationalism, populism and ideology

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...

We have to find something to better than fear or hate to unify nations.

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.

Unfortunately people do not change. Look at our history, i fear that it's only a matter of time when we will see another hitler in disguise, but this time this will not be the jews that will be the target but muslims. You can feel populism all over the Europe, (i am from EU) every month right wing parties getting stronger and stronger, nationalism and populism EVERYWHERE. Only 30 thousand votes saved Austria from radical right wing president. Look at US also, political correctness in really excessive levels and not speaking about things made Trump so popular.

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."

> Unfortunately people do not change

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.

I guess the changes happen too slow for a single person to notice within a span of single generation. So I guess I'll have to die in hopes that I have done my duty to change the world for the better and the next generation will carry the torch for me.

I just hope that trend you are talking about will keep up but... I know someone that took part in World War II, he is alive still, this was not a long time ago, we are far from change my friend. Then look rwanda, somalia, balkans now middle east, north africa etc.

Perhaps it's been too long since we've had Beggar Thy Neighbor recessions or World Wars induced by stupidity?

You mention Japan, but even as a local I'm not sure which movement you're referring to regarding anti-beueaucratic populism.

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.

I was talking about nationalism and populism more generally. For example, I've read many times that the revisionist far right has growing influence, re-writing history books to hide Japan's actions in WWII, launching campaigns against those who criticize that period, etc.

It's possible to argue the same thing from the other side: the political establishment in many countries have forgotten that they have to earn their legitimacy by working for the benefit of their compatriots.

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.

But the way we're lashing back seems completely unproductive. Why not organize around a sane leader instead of electing bigger and bigger idiots in some kind of suicidal hope that the system will collapse?

You're asking why the angry mob is so disorganized? Angry mobs are angry mobs and demagogues are demagogues. My point is that the fault doesn't lie with the mob it lies with the people who let things come to this.

An angry mob is made of people who are individually responsible for their decisions. It doesn't matter whose fault it is; if the government won't fix it, the people have to organize to do it on their own, and an angry mob is not the best way to do that.

They aren't an "angry mob". They are people voting for what they feel to be their best interest. I find it interesting that you believe people voting to be an "angry mob" because 1) they don't listen to the political establishment on who they should vote for, and 2) they don't listen to the academic establishment on who they should vote for.

I never said they were. I was responding in general terms to the comment above mine. What disappoints me about this vote has nothing to do with the way people are organizing, but the thing they're organizing around. People are voting based on how they feel or what "side" they're on instead of thinking about what will actually have the best outcome. Cutting off the nose to spite the face and so on…

When has it ever been different?

The traditional left parties, in much of the English speaking world, have shuffled so far right (the "Third Way" types like the Lange, Blair, the Clintons, and so on) that there's slim pickings for have-nots to vote for. In the UK half of the Labour party and progressive institutions (like the Graun) spend more time attacking Corbyn for being, well, a Labour leader than they ever do going after the Tories. Clinton says that everything is sweet and the system can't (and shouldn't) be changed.

The institutions that used to provide alternatives political voices have been co-opted. So who are they going to vote for?

In proportional systems, you have parties popping up on the fringe, as older parties vacate them.

See Die Linke (The Left party) in Germany taking over territory perhaps once held by the SPD (Socialdemocratic party).

Pretty much - we have the same thing in New Zealand, but one of the dynamics we see here (I don't know if you get the same in Germany) is a huge hostility from the old left parties to the new left parties - there's an arrogant assumption that those voters "belong" to the old left, and a lot of derision directed at them (I guess a not dissimilar dynamic to the Clinton/Sanders split).

It's a bit more complicated in Germany, because Die Linke is in some sense a continuation of the former East German ruling 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 no sane leader has been produced by the political system.

In other words, why doesn't the pendulum stop swinging?

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.)

Do you have some links on the cyclic progression of civilization? Would be super interested to read more on that.

A good start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory

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.

> Why not organize around a sane leader

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.

We tried that. Sanders, Rand Paul. We had potential leaders that didn't always resort to shouting, that wanted another way. Now we have Trump Clinton.

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".

To a lot of folks, those candidates weren't appealing. They didn't inspire confidence that they could work on a populist agenda while also being competent political leadership. Paul more than Sanders, but a lot of people have trouble taking Sanders' rhetoric very seriously, or believing that it is well-based in facts, is well thought-out, isn't likely to have disastrous side-effects, that sort of thing.

If this cycle is about that, why would Trump have gotten the nomination? Jeb/Rubio were the golden boys of the GOP, and they got blown up by Trumps appeal.

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.

> Why not organize around a sane leader instead of electing bigger and bigger idiots in some kind of suicidal hope that the system will collapse?

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/

Because facts don't win elections, persuasion and emotions win elections.

I think this is probably key. People across the world are pissed at the political class – and I completely understand why.

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.

> I think this is probably key. People across the world are pissed at the political class – and I completely understand why.

Yes, but in the UK context they're voting for Farange, Johnson, et al. Who are as solidly establishment as they come.

Only by supposed proxy. Directly, they are voting to leave the EU.

Not at all. Nearly every Leave supporter I've talked with over recent months finds Farage and Boris just as foolish as any of the rest of them.

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.

Jeah, but with the EU Nike for example would have built there robot fabric in the UK. Now it will be somewhere in EU.

The UK just lost the biggest future lights out fabrics.

What does the UK plan to do?

FWIW I was remain. I have no idea how this will play out. Twenty or thirty years ago I would have had definite ideas of how a UK exit would have played (quite well), now I just don't know.

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.

> There is increasing wealth inequality, cuts to public services, less job security and so on

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...

These are Tory policies; Labor opposes them.

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.

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.)

>> These are Tory policies; Labor opposes them.

> 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.

>nobody with a platform is making the well-known arguments about why these things are very dangerous.

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.

I want to like the EU and this in fact what was pushed really hard for by the school system at least in Germany. But I can't fail to notice its many disadvantages. It is fundamentally even less democratic than the representative democracies it unites, supposedly run by technocrats that in fact follow agendas set by corporations/industry, with decisions that get sold to the public as inevitable. I hate what the Bologna reforms did to higher education for example, but there are many other instances where EU decisions had extremely negative impact, with sometimes almost no popular support.

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.

>It is a project conceived by US planners...

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.

It benefited Wall Street pretty good after they sold hundreds of billions in bonds that were in reality; junk.

Europe is a US ally; the US wants them stronger. Also, dis-unified Europe cost the US quite a bit in the first half of the 20th century.

> I hate what the Bologna reforms did to higher education

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.

I don't like that especially in Germany it has reduced the depth to which people were expected to study a subject to receive a degree (A German diploma in math took 5 years) and that they introduced grades that mattered along the way. This pushes students to narrow their focus and optimise good exam results. In the old system you had two exams that mattered, one oral exam after two years and your final grade was determined by a set of oral exams and your thesis.

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.

This is exactly why I also don't like the EU. Not the racist rhetoric UKIP is using, but because the EU is deeply undemocratic. The EU is one whole layer of extra politicians above those that we have already elected in local parliaments. It makes the distance between me and those who are in power much greater, both physically and metaphorically.

Plus, Germany, the UK and France are the big players in the EU. Naturally the union favors their agenda and overrules smaller member countries.

There is a theory that this is what happens when you have several generations live their lives without seeing a major war or crisis, and feeling its results firsthand. Presumably, that's when people, and societies as a whole, get too "cocky" and less compromising, because they don't fear the consequences enough.

Yeah, I think after a few generations of stability, when the last survivors of the last major calamity leave power, people start believing that this time is different, we've moved past war, without realizing that humans haven't fundamentally changed.

I think its more a statement on the perception of globalization and how it affects the working class in western countries, combined with some actual breaking down on how the whole trade thing is supposed to work (WTO, Doha round is now 15 years old !!!)

>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 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.

I've read that the reason US and other Western workers have done worse since the Cold War is due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and with it, the fear that the population might support communism if capitalism became too predatory.

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.

In the US this started during the Great Depression. Political leaders at the time were legitimately afraid of a socialist / communist uprising. The New Deal social welfare and income redistribution programs might have helped to prevent such an event.

Yes, exactly.

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.

What are the well-known arguments?

I don't think it's so much the forgetting of history as much as overreach on the part of those who would try to deny that human nature exists.

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.

> When people can see all around them that gender, nationality, race, and religion convey useful information about the people they meet

> 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.

> You say that as if it's assumed, but I don't agree and neither do very many others.

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.

You keep using the words "truth", "matter of fact", "accuracy", "evidence of their own eyes"; and refer to people who disagree as "liars", etc.

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?

I suggest reading through the blog I linked; Haidt is serious and well-respected. Alternatively, you can look at various impartially- (and usually government-) collected statistics that demonstrate group differences.

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).

> Muscular strength ... firefighting ...

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

As someone born and raised in a communist country (what is now Czech Republic), I can tell you it is precisely because we DID NOT FORGET what it was like, that we're against the direction EU is going [0].

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...

Honestly? Eastern Europeans, of all people, got massively subsidized by the EU. Biting the hands that feed you is a great recipe for building resentment and mistrust, which brings conflict and ultimately war.

That's kinda the point, isn't it?

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.

> the subsidies feed mostly the politicians, and the hands of their well-connected friends who are the true benefactors.

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?

Sure. The squandering of EU subsidy money on nonsensical "well chosen" projects is hardly a tinfoil hat conspiracy. It's been covered by most major media in detail [0].

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]

[0] http://hledej.idnes.cz/clanky.aspx?q=zma%F8en%E9+dotace

[1] https://euobserver.com/opinion/129961

The EU is nothing like the Soviet Union. That is itself propaganda, and undermines everything else you write.

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.

The situation with Trump vs. Hillary and Brexit vs. Bremain seems almost identical to me, especially after having watched the TV debate the other evening (the first political debate I've ever watched in the UK).

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...

Is remain Hillary or Trump then?

> 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.

I'm a little bit put off by the mentality of "both sides are bad" that a lot of people seem to have in both of these issues.

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.

Assuming that you think Trump would somehow be a disastrous clown - or at least more of a disastrous clown than Hillary. Really, it's Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich here, but from my perspective, Hilary has done nothing to inspire confidence, and a great deal to make me wary - Trump might be a jackass, but he is generally a shrewd operator, and really not liable to simple corruption.

> but he is generally a shrewd operator, and really not liable to simple corruption.

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...

[1]http://fortune.com/2015/08/14/donald-trump-lawsuits/

My comment was mainly aimed at people who agree with me that Trump would be a disaster and Hillary would simply be the continuation of the not-so-great status quo. To those people, I plead to stop making the both-sides-are-evil argument.

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'm no fan of Hillary, but have you listened to what Trump has been saying?

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.

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...

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.

A myth? We literally only have two choices. There is not a single chance that someone else will be elected unless someone within either of the parties does something.

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.

Some people have already done something, and both of the candidates I mentioned by name in the parent comment will be on the ballot in your state. Please vote for one of them! Don't vote for what you know to be "evil"; that wouldn't be rational. No one will stop you from voting rationally, except yourself, by listening to the "literally only two choices" bullshit that the media spoon-feeds you.

This is probably too political for HN, so I'll stop now.

I want to listen to you (I'd write in Bernie to be honest) but unfortunately it's not realistic. I've come to this conclusion by observation of reality, not from the media. I don't even consume much American media.

You're saying you only want to vote for a party that could win. Why? For the satisfaction of feeling like you made a difference? If the polls showed that the "greater evil" party was winning by a large margin, would you vote for that too because the lesser evil one has zero chance?

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.

Run some computer simulation. In a first-past-the-post system, voting for anything but one of the top two contenders is throwing away your vote.

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.

http://www.rangevoting.org/

Score Voting or Approval Voting, yes. It's the only way to ensure—like mathematically guarantee—it's safe to vote for your favorite candidate _always_.

> It's the only way to ensure—like mathematically guarantee—it's safe to vote for your favorite candidate _always_.

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.

Why? Getting a bit political here, and I'm sorry, I just need to answer the question then I'll cut it out with the strong political views:

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.

If you can tell a difference between Trump and Clinton, you have discriminating tastes indeed.

the fact remains that those who vote for a third party have always been a tiny minority

Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992. I'd say that shows what a third party candidate can do.

It does. It shows a third party candidate can surpass expectations and still come nowhere close to winning a state.

> Shouldn't we all just accept the lesser evil, by however small a margin it's less evil?

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.

They are incredibly similar movements. I think we're confronting the leading edge of disgruntlement as the working class is displaced by technology, globalization, and cheap immigrant labor. Immigrants become the scapegoat when it's really more complex than that. But the defenders of remaining an open society have a hard time explaining how they would fix these. Tech and urban elites have generally done well in this new world.

incredibly stupid people with fears like immigration

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'm not saying that arguing against immigration is stupid... Just that the way Brexit was arguing was devoid of any real factual data or rational arguments. They were playing purely on people's emotions.

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.

> I've yet to hear an intelligent argument in favor of mass immigration, [...]

It's good for the people moving!

(There are other arguments, too.)

There is no mass immigration into the UK. That's the lie, I think.

Calling people "incredibly stupid" if they're worried about immigration is a bit condescending, especially if they are observing the immigrants compete for jobs with them.

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.

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