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Comment by emsy | Hacker News Reader

What I're read so far about pro-leavers:

-They are stupid.

-They are xenophobic racists (over 50% of the population!).

-Trump welcomes the Brexit, so being pro-leave is stupid.

-Old people vote "leave" since they don't have to face the consequences as long as the young people, and old people have no clue.

-"Leave" votes come mainly from E.U. subsidized areas, thus they bite the hand that feeds them.

-Pro-leave doesn't even know what the E.U. is.

I have read a lot of insults regarding either position, but the attribution of stupidity comes almost always from the "Remain" camp. Which comes close to saying: there are no reasons to vote for leave, so they must be stupid. How stupid.

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Well, what are those reasons that are so impactful that people should have voted "Leave"? Because I have not really heard a single informed argument about that, and the public discourse for Leave has shown an enormous gap in knowledge about what the EU actually is.

If you don't search for it, you want find it. I am not sure if the "Leave" people voted for it for the right reasons or the wrong reasons (xenophobia).

I think its fairly easy to make a case of why the EU is a bad institution. I have made so here and other places. I think people are blinded by the idea of the EU but ignore the actual EU. Can anybody deny that the EU has shown horrible management in everything related to economics? We have a Great Depression level crisis and now a horrible slow recovery. 90% of this hole crisis could have been avoid if the EU and specially EMU were such horribly setup institutions. The EU is not really democratic either, when it should be the most democratic. It should improve on the state of institutional democracy, while in reality its a very clear step back. Take a look at Swiss Federalism and Direct Democracy, its a much better set up for a system but many of the ideas are nowhere to be found in the EU.

Britain has economic problems right now because a lot is changing, but I see no reason that the long term growth should be negatively impacted by this. In the long term I think it can be a net positive. It all depends on how Britain will operate going forward.

The people of the UK voted for the Conservatives, on an explicit platform of austerity.

Only 37% of the population was needed for this, but this is because the UK voters had been apathetic about the opportunity to reform the voting system.

So how can they claim to be disappointed by the EU adopting the same polities?

Because the EU is soled on a platform of European Unity and how they are the highest achievement of the European Political classes.

The UK has a reason for their bad system. They have a very gradualist history. Compare it to France, where we are talking about the Republic 5 right now.

If we are doing a project for European Unity is should actually be better then everything else. It should be better then Switzerland, not worse then the UK.

The sovereignity of the UK is the most important argument. The way the EU resolves regulations is an undemocratic process (for the citizens of the affected countries, not inside the EU). Most people dismiss this argument as conspiracy BS, but I can encourage you to read up about it.

Of course many people voted because they want to "close the borders" but: 1) This doesn't invalidate the sovereignity argument. 2) The protectionism/anti-immigration stance is a reaction to the existing politics, not the cause. And it's something we currently see all over Europe.

There are more valid arguments for leaving the EU, but I think the argument for democracy is the most important one. Saying there are no good arguments to leave is dishonest or ignorant.

What if over half the population is racist and stupid, though? I don't want to get into an argument about whether that's actually true of Britain, but if you would indulge the hypothetical: what do you do at that point? Is it right, in a democracy, to try to disenfranchise and demoralize racist bigots with nothing to offer but an endless supply of bad ideas? Is it time to just give up on democracy altogether at that point?

What's the answer? It is something you should consider, because while you can argue it isn't actually true in this case or that, certainly you have to admit it is theoretically possible. It seems like a failure mode one should anticipate and be prepared for. (I must admit, I have no good answers, and so am not prepared.)

What else do you expect to read they day afterwards? The arguments have been made before the referendum repeatedly and in detail. There is no point in going over them now.

It's disheartening, because I often see these insults from liberal, intellectual people. It shows a disability do empathize with 50% of the population, which I find worrying.

It's still early, at this point this shows that the people involved are human and have emotions they're expressing.

Lots of people didn't vote, so leave won even though only 37% of the population voted that way.

And this is why statistics can be misleading - 72% of the population turned out for the vote. Almost a record.

It's pointless at best, actively harmful at worst, to compare the voters vs the non voters in an attempt to make the result seem undemocratic. The non voters abandoned their ability to influence this issue; if they had wanted to participate, they had plenty of opportunity to do so.

72% of voters, not 72% of the population. Kids don't vote, neither do transient workers and a few other demographics.

Honest question, what percentage of the population voted to join the EU originally?

67.23% of all votes cast. Turnout was 64.62%, so 43.2% of all registered voters [1]. As fraction of total population, it was 56.23 million in 1975 [2] and the total number of Yes votes was 17,378,581, so 30.91%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Commun...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingd...

I haven't read too much into the topic until a week or two ago but I've seen those exact arguments coming up time and time again. Given how close it was I think remain shot themselves in the foot by not articulating their points.

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