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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Globalization was one of those things that overall has brought good to the world [See China, India]. With it, there was necessary move towards equilibrium.

Poor countries got richer and rich countries didn't grow as much. It brings wealth to global businesses [Apple, Toyota, Siemens, etc.] But brought with it stagnant wages in developed nations [EU, US, JP, etc.] but wage growth in CN, IN, BR, ZA, etc.

Then you had the anti-WTO anti-globalization movement who sympathized with third world countries [because 'exploitation'] and were anti-big business and pro blue collar workers in developed nations --but how were those countries going to develop without globalization? And of course, anti-globalization also meant more nativism and non-westernization of developing countries... yet they were mostly pro immigration to developed nations [which goes against the don't dilute culture attitude for developing nations]

Schizophrenic.

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Economic globalization, which has indeed brought good to the world overall, is not the same thing as political unification, which has not. We don't need to have everyone in the world belong to a single country in order to reap the benefits of globalized specialization and trade. Political unification just means that people have less and less voice in how they are governed. The EU's rules are written by unaccountable bureaucrats; I'm not at all surprised that Britain voted to exit from that.

I agree. To pick a low-hanging fruit, the EU's internet legislation can only have come from bureaucrats completely detached from reality.

Which legislation do you mean?

(Genuine question. I can see some examples, such as the completely idiotic requirement that forces web sites to have those exceedingly irritating pop-ups for consent to have cookies. Whoever wrote that law clearly didn't understand how web sites work, socially.)

Cookie law, “right to be forgotten”, hate speech laws, etc.

Which rules are you talking about?

In terms of being a political union, the EU doesn’t even do that much. It does do some things, but those things tend to be overall small and also relatively uncontroversial.

The bulk of the work the EU does in “creating” rules in unifying regulations. For the common market to exist (i.e. to drive economic unification) you need unified regulation. Otherwise trade barriers would exist.

That means you have to write lots and lots of deadly boring regulation. And that’s what the EU did. Yawn. All a very technocratic process.

(I’m also not sure why you think people in Brussels are unaccountable. That’s such a cliché propaganda line with no basis in reality at all.)

> Which rules are you talking about?

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=OJ%3AC%3A...

http://europa.eu/eu-law/index_en.htm

The Constitution for Europe alone is more than 400 pages. For comparison, the US Constitution is about 10. (Unfortunately the US legal code is probably as lengthy and baroque as the EU's by this point.)

> For the common market to exist (i.e. to drive economic unification) you need unified regulation.

No, you don't. Global markets existed before the EU and didn't need "unified regulation" (meaning regulation by politicians and bureaucrats, as opposed to regulation by the ordinary process of voluntary trade) in order to work. This idea that the only way to have common markets is by lengthy, boring political regulation is precisely the misconception I am arguing against.

When country a calls for diameter x and country b for a different diameter y then you cannot sell your thing in both countries. The EU would then come and say that the actual rule is diameter z, problem solved.

Your view on this is hopelessly naive and really anti-intellectual and dishonest.

> When country a calls for diameter x and country b for a different diameter y then you cannot sell your thing in both countries.

You're still assuming that countries have to set standards. Many standards are not set by countries at all; they are set by markets, by buyers and sellers realizing that a common standard is in both their interests and agreeing on one. (You are also assuming that it is always a good thing for the same product to be sold in both countries--that there can't possibly be good reasons why two different diameters might be used in different places. If standards are left to markets--i.e., to the people who are actually directly affected by what is bought and sold--then those kinds of issues take care of themselves.) Your view on this is hopelessly blinded by your assumptions.

That's just not the world we live in. Contradictory regulations exist in places with no unifying framework and create trade barriers. That's a reality and no wishing for market solutions can solve that.

You are living in a fantasy world.

> That's just not the world we live in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Electrical_Code

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Standards_In...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSF_International

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade_certification

What are these? They are just a few examples of private organizations that develop, maintain, and enforce unified standards for products, within the US and worldwide. There are many, many others.

> You are living in a fantasy world.

No, you are, with your belief that the only way to get unified standards--assuming that we are dealing with something that needs them--is for governments to set them. Governments can set standards, yes. But they are not the only way to set them. IMO they are usually the worst way to set them, because government officials have the least stake of all parties involved in making the standards the best ones possible.

Software patents and copyrights have been pushed through the EU back door. I guess it happens in other areas too, but I'm not following them.

"Harmonizing" of rules tends to take away rights from the general public - much more often than it does to give them.

I'm not so sure. For issues that matter to a smaller number of people a political union can help as there is a bigger and more diverse voice for that particular issue (AFAIK software patents are not happening in the EU).

If software patents get lobbied through a fully independent UK/GB/EN (whatever it ends up) government there will be less protest as there are less people to make a noise.

On the flip side I hope it makes people more politically active, if the EU isn't there to make the decision for you (in support or against) then it is left to the people of the independent country to influence their government.

Entering into that conversation whatever the issue can only help understanding and rational decisions.

> For issues that matter to a smaller number of people a political union can help as there is a bigger and more diverse voice for that particular issue

This reminds me of the old joke about regular expressions, which I'll paraphrase thus: Someone has a problem, and they say, hey, I'll just get the government to fix it! Now they have two problems.

The only reason why small groups of people with a common issue have to have a political voice is that big governments give out special privileges to people, so every interest group has to lobby to get the privileges given to them instead of someone else. But if governments couldn't give special privileges to anyone, then nobody would have to lobby for them.

So 'unaccountable' does not equate to the European Parliament having no power to forward a bill while a group of twenty eight unelected Commissioners have the power under the treaty to meet behind closed doors and override in secret any decision of parliament at will and even bypass it altogether by issuing Commission Regulations?

This is nonsense. There are many, many regulations are driven by trade. There is no effective way to perfectly separate the economic from the political. People need to get a long and agree on many matters in order to trade. Getting people in line is politics, trade is economics, but they are two sides of the same process.

> People need to get a long and agree on many matters in order to trade.

No, they don't. They only need to agree on what is being traded and at what price.

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