Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit

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117 pointsreidrac206 comments

As someone with no horse in this race, I hadn't been following the debate leading up to the Brexit but I did see the aftermath on Twitter, FB, mainstream media, etc. What I saw was really fascinating - an almost universal outpouring of scorn and derision for "Leave" voters: Ageism. Racism. Classism - "Only uneducated old, poor, white people voted to leave".

It hit me then pretty hard just how much of a echo chamber places like Twitter, FB, and even the mainstream media now are and how poorly they sample and represent the views of everyone. Here was a democratically conducted vote for which >50% of a population voted "Leave", yet based on how one-sided the response has been you would think the votes must have been rigged.

I deeply suspect as well that the one-sidedness of presentation in the MSM is a root contributor to the massive divide that drove the Brexit. What you have here is a failure of empathy - as the article touches on, "every smug, liberal, snobbish barb that Ian Hislop threw his way...was ensuring that revenge would be all the greater, once it arrived". Here are ridiculed and marginalised people showing you that while they lack representation in Twitter, MSM, etc, in a democracy their vote is just as powerful as yours.

In some sense I actually find it quite a satisfying outcome when viewed in this lense. A simple analogy might be "A bullied child just threw a punch back at his bully even though he may have deep down known it'll get him in more trouble."

And a part of me wonders whether the same daily outpouring of hatred you see dumped on Trump/Trump supporters has also created a very large class of marginalized, ridiculed people who are going to let us know exactly what they think come time to vote -- and like the Brexit we may not even see it coming, because we live in the Twitter, FB, MSM bubble that does not accurately sample the people.

Interesting comment. I can't join you in finding the outcome satisfying. But it certainly is a wake-up call to those of us terrified by the idea of a Trump presidency.

Couldn't agree more on the bullying aspect. That's what I love about Trump / Brexit, it's nice to see the little guy throw a punch or two. It's also once of the best BATNAs to enter any negotiation with. Destroying the EU was such a better play than 'free college' or '$15/hr min wage', screw the table scraps go for the jugular, show them you aren't fucking around.

Cutting off the nose to spite the face comes to mind.

For sure, it's the tenacity that I love about it. If you're willing to reset to zero it's a lot more daunting for those with something to lose.

> it's nice to see the little guy throw a punch or two.

Its the only punch thrown in at least two generations, maybe three. That's a large part of the shock. When the bullied strike back against the bully, the bully is utterly staggered not at the force of the blow but that they dared to fight for themselves at all.

The crying I've seen was appropriate for a successful conclusion of operation sealion, not independence from an unelected foreign dictatorship and some international mega corporations.

Yeah if you think about it a country or supernation breaking up without bloodshed is amazing.

Its undercovered because when it happens its uninteresting.

The breakup of the Austrian and Ottoman empires in the early 1900s gets a lot of ink spilled. Or look at the dissolution of the concept of Iraq as a nation, currently.

Most people forget the Soviet Union broke up in the 90s without a world war. Or the British Empire dissolved with relatively low levels of bloodshed (not zero, but not "that much" compared to WWI and its continuation as WWII).

Also in binary world there are only extreme conditions and UK not being in the EU somehow magically requires a border wall and shoot to kill armed guards and extensive use of landmines and retarget all the UK nuclear arms to point at Brussels. Back to reality, the relationship will likely be as confrontational as USA-EU or maybe Switzerland-EU. Worst case maybe Turkey-EU. Or instead of comparing to EU, could compare to UK, and it'll be like Canadian-UK relations. As much as the pouters insist on being very loud incredibly sore anti-democratic losers, I'm not thinking anyone is going to send infantry brigades over anyone's border anytime soon in either direction.

Exactly, even after the American Revolution after 30 years they were playing reasonably nice again.

The bullied did not strike back at the bully though. They struck back at a nobel-prize winning strategist that has been working for 50 years to prevent military escalation.

So The Sun: Largest circulation of any paper in the UK... how is it not The Mainstream Media?

Likewise, Fox News is the #1 cable network in America. The mainstream media liberal bias argument hasn't held water for a very long time now. If anything the tables have turned.

Fox News were anti-Trump for a long time, just like its liberal counterpart. I don't know if it is still now.

The morning show was and is pro-Trump plus Hanity is his big cheerleader in the night slots.

One network versus the rest? That they are the highest rated probably should be analyzed versus the whole market. Apple having the best selling computer model didn't mean that OS X was the best selling OS (far from it).

Yes but it's kind of like "Fox News" versus most of the other ones. At least from my trivial purusual of them, many others lean the other direction, so the sum...

many others?

There's two, and no one actually watches MSNBC.

News Corp owns papers all across the US, and the left has basically ceded the entire AM radio spectrum to the right.

">50% of a population voted Leave"

Well... >50% of those who turned out to vote (among those allowed to), not the population. Democratic, but not very representative. The people that stayed home surely will think twice next time.

Plus there's this: It is now being reported that many Leave voters are aghast at what they’ve done, as if they never really intended for their actions to yield results.

> 50% of those who cared? Sounds just to me.

Sure, but it would have been true if the votes had been reversed. So, I think people understand the unstated bias. Remain was the "correct" vote and the leave, were therefore in the wrong, according to this bias.

That was a larger turnout than for any general election since 1992. If this result isn't valid, then the UK hasn't been a functioning democracy for 25 years.

The question is why those views of more than 50% of the population do not have airing in MSM or on social media. There's an argument that consolidated ownership of MSM is the culprit, but the latent issue might be that in the aftermath of the 20th century one can not take the high ground with the idea of national interest or sovereignty, particularly in Europe. We have a sense that we should be moving beyond that.

THEY DO. THE SUN WAS PRO-LEAVE. THE SUN IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

Apologies. I was projecting the US situation onto the UK. It's hard to see a parallel to Leave in the US that would highlight what I see in US MSM. Trump comes to mind, but advocacy for him is further outside the US MSM Overton than Leave was for the UK.

I upvoted you, but I'm terribly sad about the outcome of the vote. The OP pointed out that one of the constituencies, that of farmers with a lot of ties to EU farm subsidies, voted LEAVE because "handouts don't inspire gratitude" or some-such. What can we do, then, if we don't understand what can be done to "bring a population along" while we figure out where they fit into the economic picture? I'm sad to the point of wanting to tear my teeth out. My mother was born in Darmstadt 6 weeks before Hitler invaded Poland. The notion of a post WWII Pax-Europeana has always seemed provisional to me at best.

If it weren't so ironic to say "fighting the last war" I'd say it. After all, isn't that what the EU is doing? Essentially, that is the program.

Nationalism was a disaster in 20th century Europe, but local interests will never disappear, and let's hope local culture never does either. Full unification would be boring and soul-less. The flip side of that coin is that when you have a variety of cultures maintaining their differences, it affects trade and all economic activity. The history of the use of the 'commerce clause' in the US is a good example. It was the "go to" law whenever the federal government wanted to control the states.

The EU has tried too hard and created the inevitable backlash. Can we have nation-states in loose affiliation without the goal of entwining them ever deeper? That may be the thing that some people are scared of the most.

Part of the problem is "vote leave" became "vote leave because racist" so most of the vote leavers have kept quiet.

There is a whole bunch of reasons to vote leave and the debates for the last 6 months have been very informative. These, you missed. But radio 4 had debates most days from smart people on both sides. Older people listen to the radio and watch debates on the TV.

I was often surprised that the 'vote remain' people often couldn't answer simple questions. The biggest being with uncontrolled immigration (no possible way of capping a maximum) how do you plan for schools, hospitals, teachers, nurses. So you hear from teachers, day after day on the radio with these arguments and it becomes easy to vote out.

Then you have the popular radio 1 and other 'younger generation' tv shows, twitter, facebook, reddit etc that are posing the debate in a different light. Farage is an idiot (true.) Immigration is good, the EU is great and has done so much for us, we can fix the broken bits. Then it's much better to vote in.

A lot of people who voted remain did so because they were terrified that if the Tories had more power they would strip workers of their rights, decimate the NHS, privatise schools, etc etc (a lot of these things have nothing to do with the EU - sigh) so they voted in because they fear our own government!

Other people voted out because they hate our government - a sort of protest vote.

It's been a crazy time.

> The biggest being with uncontrolled immigration (no possible way of capping a maximum)

It's not "uncontrolled immigration" - an American reading this can't just turn up in the UK and start living and working there. It's free movement of labour between EU member states.

The irony, which politicians who were pro-leave are starting to hint at, is that even having left the UK will have to agree to free movement in order to have access to the EU market. People who voted leave because they were angry about internal EU migration are going to be disappointed.

>It's free movement of labour between EU member states.

That distinction is kind of meaningless when thousands of people can enter several EU member states pretty much unregulated, then disappear under the radar and go anywhere within the EU.

UK is NOT a Schengen country. There's a border under British control.

That may be possible in, let's say, Belgium. Someone enters through the Italian border, somehow tricks the border patrol, and then can go with no problem from Italy to Belgium.

That's not the case for UK. On enter, you need to cross a border with officers, customs, etc. You can't even cross the border unnoticed through Ireland, as Ireland is also not a Schengen country (there's no border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, though there are sometimes checks from Police in buses and so on). There's a border also in Gibraltar...

The Brexit campaign was mainly complaining about workers from Eastern Countries like Poland or Romania, where they have the legal right to move and work in the UK, due EU accords. Plus fear that Turkey may enter in the future.

So why were all those migrants camped in Calais, and why are smugglers transporting them clandestinely?

If there are already smugglers transporting migrants... what has leaving the EU accomplished?

>It's free movement of labour between EU member states

I am certain that even the most compassionate proponent of diversity would find it difficult to call the tens of thousands (?) of individuals from Roma populations in for example Romania and Bulgaria who have arrived throughout West and Northern Europe the past couple of years in any way, shape or form, "labour" ("homeless" is more accurate). I don't blame these people; I blame the governments of Romania and Bulgaria who abandoned these people, thought of them as a "problem" and decided to punt that "problem" over to other member states.

And of course, "uncontrolled immigration" also implies "uncontrolled emigration". There are quite a few British expats in the rest of Europe who may find their new work permit status uncertain. (And who found it difficult to vote in the referendum).

I am British, and I socialise with a whole host of young Brits who voted leave. A whole host of educated Engineers - software, civil, mech. A handful of NQT's, nurses, vets, doctors, and then a spattering of assorted jobs at large companies from banks to telecoms to charities to sales.

These are people I talk to one on one about all kinds of different issues - mostly philisophocal, rarely political - and they all had a few small things in common with the EU debate:

* a certainty that the UK is dying. There is less and less value here, and continuing with the current setup spells for a long slow death.

* an outright distrust of the political class and the media class. Most can cite cases where they have been outright knowingly lied to in ways most wouldn't realise.

* a feeling of betrayal by those screaming remain and insulting anyone who disagrees. These are people who were often close friends who just weren't the kind to get into the discussions we enjoyed.

So the obvious thing for these people to do? Vote leave. We can start the fight now and possibly survive, or delay it and definitely die. Why didn't they talk about it? They did. Just in places where there is no audience, only participants.

Social capital is a form of intangible value, as is cultural capital. The "technical middle class" (not my terminology) in the UK is usually described as relatively lacking both of these things for a group of its economic status: "Members of the class report the lowest number of social contacts of any of the classes, though these do tend to be high status, probably mostly other professional experts. It is relatively culturally disengaged with both highbrow and emerging culture." (Wikipedia)

From what you say I'm guessing you don't see the service sector as a viable form of "value" in the UK's economy, and maybe you also don't think of culture (creativity in the arts, or heritage and museums) as a form of renewable and intangible value? Whether that can support the UK entirely is another matter.

It's also a matter of socialization in the sociological sense. This is a fascinating concept for the slightly alienated among us to consider(!), even if you disregard what sociologists do with it:

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

The arts are a source of renewable and intangible value. This is well known and a cornerstone of the life I live. I would list my own interests but it would be largely masturbatory to do so.

Unfortunately the growth and sustenance of British culture is largely hamstrung by the London centric governance of the last forty years. In many ways the entire brexit can be seen as an anti-London situation (everywhere but London and Scotland vote out, Scotland are on the SNP line who are anti-London).

Know this. The best and the brightest all left the county I grew up in. They are told by their new peers that they should look down upon the places they came from.

There should be no surprise that when my peers write verse it doesn't dream of home or that when they colour canvas it doesn't reveal our fells.

But they will accompany to the local great garden, and sit upon the grass, and talk of love, confusion, hope, and futures.

I hope that you're really happy of the outcome of your vote. You destroyed uk and global economy, even if you still Don't realise it. A nation with narrow minded people that cannot understand the simple consequences of their actions will not have the most happy outcome.

I think the parent post did give reasons for his vote, rational and reasonable ones. I disagree with them mostly and voted a different way, but if one vote in one small country can destroy the global economy then it was in pretty bad shape anyway. Lehman Brothers would not have caused meltdown in a financially secure global system.

We must respect our democratic outcome and turn it to the best advantage of everyone.

Perhaps a more democratic Europe. It seems a goal we can get behind.

Edit: ok he did not say how he voted only "friends of his".

I didn't like the tone of the reply I gave to a sister comment of lifeisstillgood's comment and have since deleted it. In it I pointed out that I had not specified whether I had voted, or who for. This is what his edit refers to and was, like the rest of the comment, an unnecessary level of pedantry.

Of course I voted the same way as the friends I had been discussing this with for years.

Rereading this again, I am still annoyed by the pedantry argument. We try to have discussions and conversations here, try to be precise to make that process clearer - and dismissing such attempts is not helping the goals. So please, don't make throw away dismissals. And be ways of assuming people of course vote the same way as their friends.

You realize the same people predicting the destruction of the British economy all had their fingers in the tanking of the Greek economy and/or predictions of growth that were blatant lies? See eg IMF Greek debt sustainability analyses and their continued wild exaggerations of sustainability. So there's plenty of reason to doubt such predictions or assume they are politically motivated.

Recall how EU/Merkel treated Greece, a country too entangled to leave, and note Brown's decision to keep the pound sterling was prescient. That creates plenty of skepticism of the value of the EU.

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2016/cr16130.pdf

The thing is, as a result of not being in the euro zone, the same sort of situation that Greece is in could not happen. In a way, it's really a disaster to have a monetary union without a fiscal union.

However, the main benefit of the EU is the single market, both in terms of goods locally as well as leverage for negotiating trade deals with other, non-European countries. That's going to be what hits them the hardest, because they won't get such a good deal, especially outside the EU

I posted clear facts that prove behind any reasonable doubt that uk economy will plummet. You can do all the predictions that you want, but if these are not based on facts then I will label them as fantasies and wishful thinking.

> I hope that you're really happy of the outcome of your vote. You destroyed uk and global economy, even if you still Don't realise it. A nation with narrow minded people that cannot understand the simple consequences of their actions will not have the most happy outcome.

Get a grip.

Has the UK economy been destroyed? No, the FTSE 100 dropped 3.15% on Friday, reacting to temporary uncertainty, and is up 1% on last week.

European markets fell far more, reflecting the fact they have more to lose from an acrimonious Brexit than the UK does.

What is narrow minded about voting to leave an anachronistic, sclerotic, anti-democratic political union, to which the UK contributes more money than it receives back, and from which the UK imports more than it exports to?

In all likelihood, the UK will leave the EU, but retain access to the single market through the EEA. This will enable us to enter into free trade deals with the rest of the world, which we are not able to do as EU members. There is nothing narrow minded about that.

> In all likelihood, the UK will leave the EU, but retain access to the single market through the EEA. This will enable us to enter into free trade deals with the rest of the world, which we are not able to do as EU members. There is nothing narrow minded about that.

You realize that most of the trade deals for the UK will not be favorable at all, right? As you mentioned, the UK has a negative trade balance.

If you voted for leave, you voted for the balkanization of Europe, and possibly the UK itself. History has proven time and time again that this is a bad and short-sighted idea (India/Pakistan partition, former Yugoslavian republics, Middle East, etc). It wouldn't surprise me if Canary Wharf suddenly relocated to Germany.

Actually negative trade balance allows you to get better terms than reverse. The country that export more has more to lose from tariffs and benefits more from lower rates.

The problem with being in the EEA is that you get all the negatives of being in the EU (free movement of people and paying into EU funds), but have no votes on how the money is spent.

This is a vast oversimplification.

See this paper [1] from the ASI which sets out the benefits of EEA membership over being a full member of the EU.

[1] http://www.adamsmith.org/evolution-not-revolution

3.15% in a single day while it triggered a massive destruction of European stock markets. The pound arrived to 1.33$, it was never at that level since 1985. 2000 people are being relocated from Morgan Stankey to Dublin or Frankfurt. Pretty much all the other banks are following the same plans. The financial services sector contributes for around 11% of the whole government tax income. Car industry is heading in the same direction. Even worse the uk won't secure any trade deal with Europe because the will want to discourage other nations to follow the same path. The damage to the uk and global economy will be huge, comparable to the 2008 crisis if not even worse. If someone doesn't get it I have all the rights of calling him narrow minded.

> 2000 people are being relocated from Morgan Stankey to Dublin or Frankfurt.

Sensationalist nonsense. Banks are considering long-term options for the worst case scenario if the UK leaves the single market. That is unlikely to happen.

> Even worse the uk won't secure any trade deal with Europe because the will want to discourage other nations to follow the same path.

The EU needs free trade with the UK more than UK needs it with the EU. The EU cannot afford to freeze the UK out.

As per the article the people that voted leave didn't really care about the consequences because they are at the bottom of the barrel already. So of course, they are not nice to fuck it up for every body else, but hey, they didn't setup a referendum in order to stay PM.

Parent is on topic and gives a slightly different perspective. I assume each of his friend had at least additional argument that probably align with one the messages of the Leave campaign as with the argument he listed most people would just stay home and not vote.

What is done is done, you better understand what those guys think because you will need their vote.

LoL. You could say exactly the same thing about the Remain campaign. Especially if you put yourself into e.g. the Greek position.

> Why didn't they talk about it? They did. Just in places where there is no audience, only participants

Isn't it interesting how many forms of public forums are not providing a greater venue for the exchange of ideas? As you implied, because of the one sided vitriol and group think on many public social media platforms, it tends to lead to suppression of dialogue.

As a professional, I am very worried about a ill-advised comment on social media having lasting consequences for my career. So I tend to avoid anything controversial.

For brexit, I've certainly held my tongue for fear of being permanently branded a racist by my colleagues. Chilling, when you think about it.

because of the one sided vitriol and group think

I can assure you, the vitriol was two-sided. Remain campaigners against Leave voters, Leave campaigners against non-British EU citizens.

That is very much two one sided situations.

The US little less than half the population of the EU and people can move anywhere at any time. Yet, 99% of the time it does not actually cause real issues with school planning.

So, I have trouble thinking this is your real issue?

In the US, we blame Mexican immigrants for school planning problems, language integration issues, etc. In the UK, they blame a variety of multilingual immigrants: immigrants from Poland to Pakistan.

We use strikingly similar scapegoating techniques in our political rhetoric.

Just a thought experiment. Imagine a world, where everyone can move anywhere in the world. What do you think it would happen ? Don't you think, that people in less prosperous countries would move to more richer countries. And what would that lead to, do you think people from richer countries wouldn't feel the hard impact on their economy ?

My point is this. In the USA, there are less cultural and economic differences between the states, so there won't be as many mass immigrations from one state to another. Now think about if USA decided over night, that it would open it's southern borders to all of South America, I think we all know what would happen.

And the same thing could happen in EU, because you get to huge cultural and economic differences on the borders of EU. Just think about Turkey and negotiations (their demands) to become part of EU. That would be a total disaster.

What good is EU or USA, if it can't keep ILLEGAL immigrants away ?

And then those people would repatriate funds, raising the quality of life in poorer countries and reducing the need to emigrate.

Labour is a tradable good, and as such the labour market must be an open as for any other goods (or services).

~3.5% of the US population is Illigal immigrants. If they want to come here they have. In fact over the last five years more people have moved from US to Mexico than Mexico to the US.

It's not really an issue because our 11 million illegal immigrants don't just desired to move to Montana they do what other people do and arrive in waves. Only issue US has with internal migration has to do with Job openings which are fairly easily to predict if hard to deal with. EX: Boom towns from fracking.

I agree. There is no empathy towards people who have their jobs out-sourced and need to compete with low-cost immigrant labor. The elite left-wing opinion likes to virtue-signal about income inequality, but there's an easy solution --cut immigration rates. If you reduce the supply of labor, the working class will see its wages increases. This is Economics 101, and the unwillingness of the elites to reduce immigration rates is what drives both Trump and Brexit.

Frankly, I'm voting for Trump because the working class desperately needs a pay raise or I'm afraid we'll eventually have a revolution. Moreover, I think the income inequality is what's driving our general economic malaise. We need to improve the job prospects of the working class for everybody's good. I'm using a throwaway because arguing against immigration is automatically considered rascist and verboten among the elite.

You think that Donald Trump, the very definition of wealthy elite, is seriously going to do anything to fix income inequality? As a business owner, having access to cheaper labor is absolutely in his best interests. Any policy he backs on immigration is guaranteed NOT to be based on the economic best interests of the working class.

>As a business owner, having access to cheaper labor is absolutely in his best interests

As a business owner, having a thriving, growing economy is absolutely more important than cheaper labor.

So many intelligent people on this website but I see so many fall into strange logical contradictions like this. How do you come to the conclusion that all wealthy elite cannot care to help repair income inequality? Do you stereotype 100% of wealthy people this way or only those you dislike, based on feelings?

No, I don't "stereotype 100% of wealthy people". I am talking about a single wealthy person, and I'm basing my opinion on his actions.

He can and will say whatever he needs to say to get support. Looking at the history of his actions is a much better indicator towards what he will actually do.

It's no contradiction - it comes from understanding the dynamics of the situation. It's a prisoner dilemma-like case. Repairing income equality requires cooperation of a lot of people - who are otherwise competing with each other. At any point during that cooperation, it is in each participant's short-term interest to screw the whole thing and go exploit workers right now.

Every business owner may truly care about thriving, growing economy. Hell, they could all be nice people who are unhappy about exploiting their workforce. But any ability for cooperation drops rapidly as competitive tensions increase. So yes, without external guiding force, them choosing what's best for all longer-term would literally be a miracle.

Exactly, it's a classic tragedy of the commons situation. The most rational move is to maximize your own gain, despite the obvious collective result.

There are conditions that can cause the rational action to switch to self-moderation, but I don't see any of them being likely in this scenario.

>without external guiding force, them choosing what's best for all longer-term would literally be a miracle

Do you agree that have had quite a few miraculous people in our history as a nation? Many founding fathers, presidents, judges, military service members, and the like have chose what is best for the long-term at the expense of themselves.

I am trapped by your logic on this one anyway - the rich can't or only in a "miraculous" case chose a non-self enriching endeavor; so the discussion is futile, in your world, no human can solve this issue. Hopefully Google can get that Skynet system up and running soon, to resolve all these issues! :D

> Many founding fathers, presidents, judges, military service members, and the like have chose what is best for the long-term at the expense of themselves.

Not saying it doesn't happen; it does rarely, and under special circumstances. Also it's not that people really need to be pushed hard to do good things - it's more that everyone is entangled in various incentive structures preventing them from doing good, and you could argue that rich and powerful are generally subject to much stronger incentives to do bad than ordinary people. It takes strong character and luck to be an exception. Elon Musk can and does think long-term and for the betterment of everyone - for which he is constantly ridiculed by the media (or even here), not to mention loads of people being constantly perplexed by Tesla's and SpaceX's business decisions, because they can't understand that a company can really exists just as a means to realize some non-short-term, non-monetary goal like getting us to Mars or getting transportation off fossil fuels.

Hell, we've generally created a system that attempts to forbid companies from long-term, cooperative thinking. Just almost any kind of strategic cooperation on the market is being called "anti-competitive practice" and discouraged with severe punishments. And for good reason, probably - companies tend to cooperate against society, not for it, and governments tend to not like rich people being powerful enough to work around them completely. As companies get successful they're being asked to go public - and that's usually enough to destroy any possibility of working for long-term good in them - public shareholders tend to not give a damn about the company mission or deeds beyond their means of making immediate profit. It takes special trickery, like Google did, to keep the company in control of individuals capable of thinking longer-term.

For better or worse, we tend to force rich people both culturally and legally into being greedy and short-sighted - so let's not act surprised if that's all most of them do.

> Do you agree that have had quite a few miraculous people in our history as a nation? Many founding fathers, presidents, judges, military service members, and the like have chose what is best for the long-term at the expense of themselves.

No actually, we've had virtually none, and this easy to see if you attempt to count them and state their numbers in terms of percentage of the total population inclusive of their lifetimes. 1000, even 10,000 such are merely statistical noise basically equivalent to 0.

What you're doing is reasoning by anecdote, thinking a few examples mean something by ignoring the hundreds of millions of times the anecdote is wrong. You have to look at all of the people if you're going to make relative claims like "quite a few" because it's not quite a few, it's practically none.

Whether or not Trump will actually do anything about income inequality, he talks about it, convinced the voters in the Republican party he would do something about it (saying that the wealthy paying less in taxes than secretaries is absurd, promoting tariffs, eliminating illegal and therefore often underpaid immigration), and apparently convinced the pro-business Republican establishment that he would do something about it judging y their state of half-panic, half-rebellion.

There's a lot to not like about Trump but claiming that he wants to represent the interests of the wealthy elite is the exact opposite of the package he's selling.

More than just being a wealthy elite business owner, Donald Trump has been sued thousands of times by contractors for simply not paying them for work they've done.

If he ever cared about income inequality, he could have started by paying the bills to the people he hired to do work for him.

And of course your comment was instantly downvoted. This referendum, and the globalist reactions to it, have been a real eye-opener for me at least. I'm not about to vote for a Donald Trump (sorry), but it seriously raises the alarm about the Clintons, Obamas, Ryans, and Romneys in the USA.

Viewed with a critical eye, is the "Dream Act" about human rights? Or is it about cheap labor? We see things like TPP which are anti-worker on their face. Who is truly pro-labor anymore? Look at Clinton's record and indifference, who is the real war-hawk? Why are the anti-Trump people chanting in Spanish and waving Mexican flags, beating people up? Trump frightens me, but his enemies are quite clearly not my friends.

Are "Leave" voters more likely to be uneducated because they're stupid? Or because they're getting shafted? Are Trump supporters more likely to be uneducated white men because they're all stupid bigots? Or because they're too getting shafted?

Lining up policies, on Trump's side you have plenty of terrible ideas many of which seem like reflexive jabs. Many of them seem unconstitutional. But on Clinton's side, you have actionable, legal, and sinister ideas that will perpetuate a status quo that is getting worse by the day for the middle and lower class.

I cannot in good conscience support either side, but I'd be lying if I said I don't secretly prefer Trump and his ideas right now, just slightly.

> Why are the anti-Trump people chanting in Spanish and waving Mexican flags? Trump frightens me, but his enemies are quite clearly not my friends.

You're frightened by people speaking Spanish waving Mexican flags?

No, fear is your invention here. I speak Spanish. It doesn't make these protests any less nonsensical. They want to be able to remain in the country illegally so they can do what exactly? Be Mexican nationalists? There's a great place to do that already.

You are assuming that the protesters are only reacting against Trump's promises to crack down on illegal immigrants. Some of them might be, but I think they are reacting against a heck of a lot more than some political candidate promising to better enforce existing laws. I can think of all sorts of things Trump has said that might anger Hispanics or (legal) Mexican immigrants.

There are also a lot of people protesting Trump for all the wrong reasons, or in ways that make Trump look like the grown-up in comparison. It's hard not to have at least some sympathy for him in those situations. Still, I try to judge people by their own statements and actions, not the statements and actions of the worst of their detractors.

You conveniently left 'beating people up' out of that quote.

Chant, sure. Wave Mexican flags, no problem. Beat people with rock sacks and throw eggs at them 'because they were asking for it'. Yeah, nuh-uh, not for me thanks. That's where it crosses the line in to scary.

I added that to my comment a moment after submitting because it was important. Parent was probably already reading/replying at that time.

Thanks for the clarification.

I find it hilarious that "beating people up" somehow got missing from the quote in you post.

Yes, I am frightened by people attacking political rallies, especially when waving other country's flags. What is so strange to it?

Try to get out of your USA bubble of thought. I live in Poland. Let's say there is a presidential candidate, who dislikes Russia and is in favor of tighter integration with EU and stronger defense on east border. Now imagine that his supporters are attacked on rallies by people waving Russian flags, chanting "Russia" or "Putin". Why wouldn't you be afraid of them? I would want them out of my country.

We can spin it some other way too. For example suppose that after Snowden revelations (top European politics' phones tapped by NSA) Angela Merkel says she won't have any more of this USA bullshit, but her supporters are attacked on a rally by Americans chanting "USA USA USA" (or "NSA NSA NSA") under American flag. Still cool for you?

I added that to my comment a moment after submitting because it was important. Parent was probably already reading/replying at that time.

When those people are pro "reconquista" or saying Make California Mexico Again, maybe. But I'm afraid of what it says about a growing part of the population that thinks it's good or OK. I think it shows a terrible divide forming. Maybe the melting pot has cooled off and we're getting chunky.

Wave a US flag around Central America and see how that goes. I've been threatened down here several times because someone thought I was American.

> Wave a US flag around Central America and see how that goes.

Giving US track record of invasions, dictatorship support, and all kinds of meddling, what are you expecting? A kiss on the cheek?

I haven't seen any indication that EU migrants cut wages, the data indicates it isn't true, see the lack of correlation between migration and changes in UK citizen wages in the fourth chart on this page:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0260242c-370b-11e6-9a05-82a9b15a8e...

Also, Britain is not America. Real wages in the UK consistently go up across all income levels, and have done over the last 30 years, partly because of 'left-wing virtue signals' like minimum wages, and working tax credits.

One of the difficulties faced by the left is trying to satisfy the problems of inequality within the native population while also trying to advocate for (poor) immigrants.

The native poor might not see how one can both satisfy one's own country's poor's problems while also trying to address issues faced by foreign poor and that not taking away from what they believe they are owed (access to jobs, prosperity, preservation of culture, affordable housing, etc.)

> The native poor might not see how one can both satisfy one's own country's poor's problems while also trying to address issues faced by foreign poor

But the non-naive poor see that even though that might be possible, it's not being done.

So let's put this in a family perspective. A family of five, the breadwinners are just getting by, but they decide to add a foster child. Maybe the foster child doesn't get first dibs on things, but the other children might not appreciate the new situation where things could be spread more thinly in an already tenuous situation.

It could be competition for jobs, ability to find affordable housing, decent schools, preservation of culture (let's remember the anti gentrification movement whose main complaints are loss of culture as well as displacement/loss of neighborhood character).

>Frankly, I'm voting for Trump because the working class desperately needs a pay raise or I'm afraid we'll eventually have a revolution.

I'm sorry, what? When has Trump given any indication that he is a champion of the working class?

Or on the other hand, can you find a single economist who implies that building a wall on the Mexican border will cause an increase in wages for the working class?

I'm trying to figure out if your post was ironic intentionally.

With your injection of the wall comment, your post is as text book as straw man arguments get.

Econ 101 tells us that reductions in supply drive up demand.

Reductions in workforce size drive demand for workers. Employers will pay more for an employee when the pool is smaller. We are in the opposite now, employers can be extremely selective because there are 100s of people applying for the job. So why not demand the college graduate with 5+ years experience for the part-time barista job?

Sorry, was there another actual anti-immigration policy framework that Trump was putting forth other than "build a wall"? (edit sorry, I forgot, and besides "ban Muslims"?)

Again I'll ask, can you point me to a respected economist who advocates for Trump-style isolation policies as a way to increase wages for the working class? Thanks in advance.

edit: Seriously just gonna downvote and slink away? Put your money where you mouth is and tell me what Trump's immigration policy is or admit that he's nothing but a blowhard shouting "ban Muslims" and "build a wall". I'm sorry that you don't like having his own stances pointed out to you or that it exposes your obvious cognitive dissonance.

Good luck getting a Trump supporter to respond with consistency when you can't even get those kind of answers from the candidate. Whatever he said a week ago has no bearing on what he will say next week.

It's noteworthy that 2 of us responded but the attack artists like yourself didn't provide anything other than anger, sarcasm and feelings-based logic..

Sorry, I forgot your weren't seriously asking - just trying to be caustic.

Not that you genuinely care, otherwise you could have evolved your position by going to Trumps website where there is an entire section devoted to immigration issues. Beyond your MSNBC-Tier talking points about Wall & Ban Muslims; e-verify, defund sanctuary city curtailing the current laws, detention of illegals, criminal penalties to visa overstays and many more.

Your appeal to authority style argument won't be a very strong one, so I won't be finding "respected" economists who agree with me.

fakeedit: I can't down vote posts.

Even without border wall, if all those measures are implemented immigrating illegally to US will make less economic sense. Also a lot of immigrants will self-deport after they fail to get any job due to e-verify enforcement.

* Triple the number of ICE officers.

* Enhanced penalties for overstaying a visa.

* Detention—not catch-and-release.

* Defund sanctuary cities. Cut-off federal grants to any city which refuses to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

* Nationwide e-verify. This simple measure will protect jobs for unemployed Americans.

* End birthright citizenship.

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

Well technically reductions in supply drive up price (in this case the wage). Demand presumably is what it is. But I think that's what you meant.

Yeah, but lower-class wages especially are pretty flexible. This is especially true with temporary workers, and contract ones. In the end, it'll just mean less people get higher-paying jobs. This won't really matter anyways, because importing goods is always possible, especially when their production is relatively simple. You might then say we could work out some trade agreement such that outsourcing is more difficult, but if you also intend to "give the working class a raise," that'll just make everything more expensive. Couple this with the lower rate of employment as a result of those higher wages, and you just reduced the purchasing power of like, a lot of people.

I think the only clear solution is a basic income, but the political system isn't built for good solutions. Trade relations are becoming more and more important as more of the world develops, which means the traditional working class in developed nations is going to get kind of shafted over the next few decades. It sucks, but much like the whole guilded age, people will eventually learn to do something else.

If you think cutting immigration is the answer to excess in the labor supply, I am afraid you are going to be disappointed. Automation, globalization are much more influential.

>If you reduce the supply of labor, the working class will see its wages increases. This is Economics 101

No, this is not economics 101. Cost of living will go up as supply of workers dwindles. Also, every worker is also a consumer. Someone who earns $50k will in turn spend that money or put it into banking or investments or savings for later spending.

> Frankly, I'm voting for Trump because the working class desperately needs a pay raise or I'm afraid we'll eventually have a revolution. Moreover, I think the income inequality is what's driving our general economic malaise. We need to improve the job prospects of the working class for everybody's good.

But that's an argument to vote for somebody on the left!

Note that you are generalizing based on what you observed on your particular social network.

I find nothing satisfying in this by the way. The UK just burned billions without a valid reason for it. It's really parallel to Trump's campaign. He promises he'll make America great again, but has never bothered discussing HOW he proposes to achieve that. Similarly, the Brexit folk are in limbo at the moment, backtracking from some of the promises they made to the people - which of course they can't sustain. Guess what, UK was not in the Schengen to begin with, so they always were in control of their border. Oh wait, those immigrants we have are from former colonies, can't really blame that on Europe, can we? The money it costs to be part of the EU, guess what, is not a much as we stated before - and we'll need to pay a fee if we want to trade with the EU. The UK will never get a better trade with the EU - that would be delusional. I could ramble on...

Wow, thanks. I had NO idea about the Schengen region. This makes the LEAVE vote even more completely insane in my mind.

While they aren't part of Schengen, they are part of European Economic Area which requires free movement.

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

Right on!

Don't they intend to stay in there and have similar deal like Norway? Norway had to accept free movement.

No one knows. That is where the instability comes in. That is why there is an effect on the price of the British pound, markets etc.

I think Switzerland put some limitations to free movement recently. The EU retaliated by removing access to student programs like ERASMUS for Swiss citizens. A nasty story.

If this is true, it's quite counter-productive. It's in EU interest to send as much people as possible on Erasmus and be pro-EU. Banning will backfire on the long run. I hope some kind of solution for UK students can be forged. Majority of young ppl in UK voted remain, is would be terrible to punish them.

In all likelihood the UK will retain access to the single market through membership of the EEA and EFTA.

This does mean the UK will have to continue allowing free movement.

That said, members of the EEA have the power (under Article 112 of the EEA Agreement) to place an "emergency brake" on free movement if "serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties" liable to persist are arising.

Although much of the leave vote was driven by opposition to uncontrolled migration, and continued participation in the single market will be seen by many as backtracking on this, this power (which the UK does not currently have as an EU member state) should be a sufficient degree of control for most.

Shouldn't the fact that citizens of the EU must piecemeal deal with a crazy mishmash of inconsistently applied arcane rules that are hard to keep in your head generally a sign that the STAY vote is completely insane?

Do you know off the top of your head: what is the difference between the European council and the council of the European union? Which states are part of the European council on human rights? When the EC has or has not authority over the ECB? When or when not the MEPs have authority over the ECB? The EC?

You can find this here: http://europa.eu/about-eu/institutions-bodies/index_en.htm http://www.learneurope.eu/index.php?cID=317

By the way, this is a moot point, since the UK was not a member of Schengen, European council on human rights, Eurozone. However, UK will want to stay in the EEA, meaning it will have to comply with basically all the things the Brexit people wanted to avoid - like regulations, the free movement of Europeans & membership fees - but with significantly worse terms, and losing the ability to vote. This is a real head scratcher IMHO.

> the UK was not a member of [...] European council on human rights

If you mean the European Convention of Human Rights, yes the UK has signed it as all EU members have to. The current government's election manifesto explicity wants to exit and replace it with a "British Bill of Rights" with fewer protections on labour or on humane treatment of convicts or foreigners.

I reject your premise for the following reasons:

- The citizens never deal directly with the rules governing the formation of the institutions of the EU.

- The rules are not inconsistently applied.

- The latest overhaul of the EU composition rules was performed in 2009. Which parts of it are arcane?

- The rules are all written down, there is no need for anyone to keep them in their head.

what is the difference between the European council and the council of the European union?

The European Council is composed of the heads of state of all EU members. The Council of the EU is a topical assembly, and consists of the respective ministers of all member states (e.g. when discussing finance, the Council consists of ministers of finance).

Which states are part of the European council on human rights?

That does not exist. The acronym ECHR can refer to either the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty that predates the EU, or the European Court of Human Rights, the agency entrusted with arbitrating disputes concerning the former. Its signatories are all states of Europe, including Russia and Turkey. Together they are called the Council of Europe.

The only relation between the EU and the ECHR is that the EU has made court decisions binding. For members of the Council of Europe that are not EU members, the ECHR has no enforcement mechanism.

When the EC has or has not authority over the ECB?

EC customarily stands for European Commission, which never has authority over the European Central Bank.

When or when not the MEPs have authority over the ECB?

They never have. The ECB is informed and directed by the European Council, but not dictated.

The EC?

The European Parliament has the power to reject members of the European Commission when they are nominated.

> The UK just burned billions without a valid reason for it.

This is just markets responding to temporary uncertainty. Far more was wiped off European stocks than the FTSE, reflecting the fact that investors are more worried about the future of the EU than they are the UK.

> He promises he'll make America great again, but has never bothered discussing HOW he proposes to achieve that.

The argument for a better future upon leaving the EU was clear and realistic. Leaving the EU puts power back in the hands of the British people to decide their own destiny, for better or worse.

> Guess what, UK was not in the Schengen to begin with, so they always were in control of their border.

Although the UK was not in the Schengen Area, it had absolutely no control over migration from other EU countries.

As a member of the EU, every single citizen of the EU has a right to live and work in the UK indefinitely. 700 million people could turn up on the UK's doorstop tomorrow and there's nothing the UK could do about it.

That's what is meant by the term 'uncontrolled immigration'

> The money it costs to be part of the EU, guess what, is not a much as we stated before - and we'll need to pay a fee if we want to trade with the EU. The UK will never get a better trade with the EU - that would be delusional. I could ramble on...

The UK was a net contributor to the EU. That is undeniable. For all the funding the EU provided to projects in the UK, we were getting back pennies on the pound.

Who says we will need to pay a fee to retain access to the single market? Norway does, but it is a net exporter to the EU. The UK is a net importer. If anything, the EU should be paying the UK to join the single market.

> Far more was wiped off European stocks than the FTSE, reflecting the fact that investors are more worried about the future of the EU than they are the UK.

The FTSE losses seem smaller because they are denominated in Pounds, which tanked the day after against the Dollar ... and the Euro.

The UK was a net contributor to the EU.

And of the 11 net contributors during the years 2007-2013, only Austria and Finland payed less than the UK if measured relative to GNI [1] (eg Austria and Finland 0.24%, UK 0.25%, France 0.29%, Belgium and Germany 0.35%).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union#E...

Schengen just means that there is no border control at the border of other Schengen countries. People from other EU countries can still enter and live in non Schengen countries, they just have to show a passport. That is not really control of your own border.

If 5 million people decide to move from Finland to Ireland in the next month there's nothing anyone in either country can do to stop them. One is schengen country one is not. Both are in the EU.

Good comment. You have obviously put some thought into the matter.

Any thoughts on what can be done about reducing those feelings of marginalization?

The tech community does seem very disconnected from Average Joe these days.

Something that perhaps hasn't been adequately explained is that much of the "mainstream media" in the UK was not pro-Remain.

Although their sales are declining, daily newspapers remain a fixture of British political life. In particular, the Daily Mail and the Sun are extremely popular, with circulations over a million each[1]. And just a few years ago they sold vastly more copies than they currently do.

The stock-in-trade of nearly all these newspapers is rightwing populism, and nearly all were stridently pro-Brexit. Long before this referendum, they sold copies by demonising immigrants and the EU, through hysterical, mendacious reporting. For decades, they have poured lies and poison into the hearts of a huge swathe of the British electorate. Their readership matches almost exactly with those who voted out: Old people, poor people, white people.

A lot of pundits have spoken of Brexit as being about disenfranchised voters giving a bloody nose to the political establishment, or being fed-up with the runaway effects of austerity an globalisation. Yet when Brexit voters are asked why they voted the way they did, most don't talk about getting revenge on some abstract metropolitan political elite, defying the mainstream media, or even about their own relative poverty. Instead, they talk about immigration, and taking back power from Brussels. And that's basically all they talk about.

On the liberal left, there has been an attempt to take these concerns at face value, talking about the potential negative effects of large scale immigration. But even this ignores an important fact: Many of the communities most opposed to the EU, and most concerned with immigration, have actually experienced almost none of it, and have in fact benefitted greatly from EU redistribution of funds from richer parts of the UK to them, via redevelopment funds.

Personally, I don't believe in explanations about resentment at those providing handouts. I think it comes down to certain rightwing narratives, about immigrants, and about the EU, being printed and reprinted by the mainstream, rightwing media for so many years that they have become articles of faith amongst large parts of the British population. They have taken on a life of their own, nowadays spread via social media, and are essentially immovable.

Frankly, the biggest surprise of Brexit to me is that anybody would be surprised. Anti-EU and anti-immigrant reporting has been such a pervasive part of the British political landscape for so long that it would be an astonishing repudiation of media influence if people hadn't voted out. But, as it was, they did.

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

> Long before this referendum, they sold copies by demonising immigrants and the EU, through hysterical, mendacious reporting. For decades, they have poured lies and poison into the hearts of a huge swathe of the British electorate.

If only British electorate. I'm Polish, and a lot of people here that I know personally are anti-EU - and quite a lot of their anti-EU arguments are about evil bureaucracy that straightens bananas, reclassifies marine animals and otherwise keeps inventing ridiculous rules. And each time I tried to verify those claims I always ended up tracing the source to a British newspaper that took a perfectly reasonable and sane regulation and mispresented it, or even lied about it. If this is indeed the source of those stories, then British press has fucked over many more people than just their own electorate.

One of the journalists who wrote these fake stories is Boris Johnson, one of the leaders of the leave campaign.

Funnily enough, BoJo went increasingly downmarket because of these sort of fabrications. He started his career at the Times - probably the only Murdoch paper with aspirations of fact-checking - and was fired in very short order for falsifying and inventing quotes.

I just learned about http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ in another Brexit thread...

Thanks! If there is any reason why the EU should be happy about Britain leaving, it is this.

Do you really think it's possible to bully white people (as a function of their whiteness and in the UK)?! I have no doubt that you can bully people who happen to be white (I'm white and I was bullied), but that's not the same. To class this as racism seems on its face ridiculous.

I don't think he was insinuating racism. Instead, he is remarking on what he sees in social media, as people blaming this specifically on "old whites".

I think on a purely statistical level this is somewhat true, certainly the polling suggests it.

However, millennials should really be just as mad - if not more so - at themselves for either a) not voting (under 30 turnout being much lower than over 50), or b) not taking it seriously (it's becoming clear some people voted "leave" because they didn't seriously think it was a viable outcome and wanted to just register their dissatisfaction with the government).

The polling also seemed to suggest that remain would have a comfortable victory. What people are not doing is tracing the source of the statistics. They lead to pro-remain lobbyists. I don't know if the statistics are correct or not, but what I can tell you is that I see absolutely no mention of statistical methods in the various graphs reported in the media.

What I've learned: If I ever need a lobbyist, I'm hiring these guys - https://infacts.org/ (In case you are wonder, they are the source of all those wonderful graphs you've seen in the newspapers on the demographics of voters)

So I've heard something similar before...wouldn't showing remain winning make remain voters complacent and less likely to vote?

This is my point. Polls generated by lobbyists are constructed to influence people. If you have a poll and it doesn't say what you want, you bury it. Otherwise you use creative sampling techniques to generate the result you want.

This is fine because we can just ignore them just like we ignore studies by Apple showing the iOS is 10x better than Android. It's marketing. The problem is that lobbyists realise that they can simply write articles and hand them to journalists who will print them almost untouched. Sometimes newspapers will bypass the journalist outright and print this kind of propaganda directly if it aligns with their goals.

With this issue you can see this directly. Simply find the source of every graph on this topic printed in a newspaper and it will lead back to the web site I linked to without fail.

You are assuming those that didn't vote wanted to remain.

Not voting shows disengagement, indecision, or disdain. Anyone regretting not voting at the moment is likely reacting to the tone of the resultant hyperbole than any actual knowledge or opinion.

Yes, it's pretty easy to bully white people. Of course, you'll be bullying 99%, not the 1%.

To do that, you just have to bill white 99%-ers for privileges that 1%-ers gave themself. Tell white 99%-ers that it's somehow solely them who are responsible both for their own sad fate, for taking 1%-ers to power, and also for every racial and classist abuse there is.

> Do you really think it's possible to bully white people

> but that's not the same

If you blame a specific race|color of skin for whatever reason yes that's racism.

It doesn't matter if one tries to redefine the word "racism" in order to feel like he is doing something acceptable socially.

Each time I see "white tears" on a mug, or articles online blaming "white people" for this and that like on Techcrunch , I feel like we're going backward , not forward.

I say that as a black man.

More racism doesn't fix racism. Redefining racism to make it politically correct doesn't change the vile nature of racism.

What's next, blaming jews because they are mostly white and more successful than others ? and that wouldn't be racism because they are white ? we've already been there we've seen where it leads ...

But that's where we are today, there is an acceptable racist speech, blaming white people , and the rest. Strangely, the economic system that creates and generate inequalities between races is never put in questions by the "new racism" pundits.

People would be better able to see it coming if they didn't choose to ignore it. Twitter is very quick to remove pro-Trump hashtag from trends and autocomplete, Facebook has a huge, well documented history of censoring conservatives. On places like Reddit, admitting you are a Trump or Brexit supporter provokes no political discussion, but immediate insults of being a racist, or sexist, or a bigot, or xenophobic. Why bother engaging if you're just going to get yelled at?

Social media is becoming so much of a "safe space" that having a place to freely express ideas has become a liberal echo chamber, which is great for people who want to feel like they're always right, but the same people then blame things like Brexit on those old, white racists.

They would've seen it coming if they had ever dared to listen.

It caught me by surprise the other day to learn about this. It's not just Twitter and Reddit and Facebook. It's also college campuses and public events, and weird unexpected places like public radio (Planet Money, I think, or Freakonomics. I can't remember which). It's made me question my political loyalties.

Personally, it's swung me from the left to the center. I never thought the left would be the ones censoring and controlling speech.

> I never thought the left would be the ones censoring and controlling speech.

The old Soviet Union was infamous for pervasive censorship.

It's not fair to compare the democratic left with the autocratic communist movements, just as it's unfair to compare the democratic right with autocratic nazist/fascist movements.

In the US anyways, I had always associated "the left" with equality values, the side of science, truth, sanity. Pro civil rights. Etc. I have no love for conservative values (oppression of marriages, religion, etc.) But online I see so much censoring of things the left doesn't like. Not even arguments, just screaming racist/bigot/etc. Look at those protests: it's just people screaming slogans and yelling down anyone that talks. (Like that famous Bernie rally where people got on stage and said they'd shut him down if they weren't given the mic right now.)

So I don't bring it up as much - some folks get really upset when I do. And it's always the same. "He's racist! He's an idiot!" If I lived in a liberal/urban area I think it'd be very hard to have friends if I let my views known. I bet there's tons of people like this and it's gonna be a big shock when the votes come in.

> I had always associated "the left" with equality values, the side of science, truth, sanity. Pro civil rights.

Those are core libertarian values, too. Where the left differs from libertarians, though, is the left does not value property rights and tends to believe in centralized economic planning, price fixing, etc.

The bias of NPR is as obvious as Fox news. And I really like many NPR programs. Radiolab is another classic example.

If you cannot detect it, then you've fallen for it. With Fox News it's presented directly, like a minister in a church giving a sermon. With others the One True Way is presented indirectly and this is harder to recognize at first. That's one reason why older people are more conservative, you need a certain amount of crystallized knowledge to see it.

How bias at NPR and Radiolab works is that they selectively leave out facts that won't contribute to the narrative they are trying to construct.

This is partially based in politics but it is then exaggerated because of the medium they are working with which it harks back to the old radio broadcasting system i.e. uni-directional. There's not a lot of "What about X?" going on outside of the company, so if your firm has a monoculture that is going to be expressed in your product. The questions asked are purely rhetorical because they also provide the answers. This can make you sound very sophisticated to the novice but dumb as rocks to an insider.

For a practical example of worldshaping views, consider doing an macroeconomics program without any reference to the critiques of the Austrian school. Now consider doing a similar program using materials exclusively from people like Hayek and Mises. Or having a entire discussion about global warming and alternative energy while pretending nuclear energy doesn't exist, something my country has done successfully for decades.

Right wing propaganda makes you biased beyond rationality and left wing propaganda makes you ignorant but superficially confident. Both groups believe they have the right model of the world. Sometimes they're even right.

The right wing often pattern match too much e.g. Blacks are bad because they kill whites at a higher rate than in reverse. It goes unmentioned that of course men also kill women at a much higher rate than in reverse, but that doesn't make the character of men intrinsically bad. Getting rid of all the men wouldn't really help any. A statistic is a single number and the world is stuffed with complicated correlations.

The left wing don't believe in patterns at all. Every day is full of random surprises totally unconnected to the previous day. You see that in the present with Orlando's terrorist attack. This was ludicrous to see. I felt like the reporters on the BBC were presenting information about an Act of God like a freak lighting strike.

If the school shootings which periodically occur in the US were secretly all connected to some special organization, I think that would be pretty interesting information.

Once you spot the mechanism of bias, the selectivity of their attention, then it is easy to see that both the left and right have relatively simplistic models of the world. They're not wrong. They're just models.

The bias isn't the surprise. I'd like to think that the core NPR demographic understands that every narrative has a bias. The surprise is that the mainstream left is exhibiting behavior previously associated with the far-right.

> Social media is becoming so much of a "safe space" that having a place to freely express ideas has become a liberal echo chamber

I don't think this is true at all. Racists, fascists, sexists, and general bigots make avid use social media to attack people. Recently Mic did a piece on the (((trend))) to use brackets around names on Twitter, and how it's actually something Neo Nazi's use to target people ( see: https://mic.com/articles/144228/echoes-exposed-the-secret-sy... )

What you're seeing is people who were formerly oppressed and unable to voice their opinion properly are now able to, and in exactly the same way as the people who have been attacking them.

The outpouring of hatred I see dumped on Trump and Trump supporters almost entirely seems to be a reaction against the outpouring of hatred coming from Trump and Trump supporters, coupled with genuine fear about what might happen if he wins the election. His opponents and the media have in general treated him with vastly more respect than he has given any of them.

I really don't like Trump (yeah, I'm bitter), but "the outpouring of hatred coming from Trump and Trump supporters" is really not the case. There are a lot more supporters getting their butts kicked than doing the kicking (still happens). It just isn't reported like that. Its amazing to watch twitter (don't use the hash tags, they don't seem to show) and see what people say.

> And a part of me wonders whether the same daily outpouring of hatred you see dumped on Trump/Trump supporters has also created a very large class of marginalized, ridiculed people who are going to let us know exactly what they think come time to vote -- and like the Brexit we may not even see it coming, because we live in the Twitter, FB, MSM bubble that does not accurately sample the people.

I am skeptical of Trump's general election chances. His polling was reasonably accurate throughout the primary campaign season and I'm not sure voters in the general election will be more likely to hide their support of Trump than voters in the primary elections.

But you are absolutely right about the contempt poured on the classes that will vote for Trump. And you can see the extent to which that hatred and contempt has completely permeated the establishment, the media culture, and the sunny sides of the Internet - look at how many people on HN comment about how they are 'terrified' of Trump, or that he has no policy ideas other than Make America Great Again.

Look, I can absolutely, one-hundred-percent get behind not supporting Trump and not voting for Trump. But dig down deep: what terrifies you about Trump? He doesn't drink coffee or alcohol, he doesn't appear to have any mental issues, he doesn't have any kind of loose cannon reputation in his business dealings. And he's 70 years old, he's not going to change. And if you're cynical of Trump, you can definitely say that Trump is all about Trump. He builds all these big buildings and casinos and puts his name on them. Clearly, he cares about his legacy. He might have awful, awful policy ideas, but he's not stupid: he's not going to act against his own self-interest (to make his mark) and he's going to be limited by the power of the office of the Presidency. There would be reason to be discouraged if Trump won the election; there would be reason to prepare to do battle on many policy fronts, if Congress somehow isn't totally anti-Trump. But terrified? Why?

The fundamental reason is that Trump represents the same type of people in America that Brexit represented in the UK. You could group voters in America into two different classes: the traditionalists and the cosmopolitans. The latter group are more likely to be university educated. They're more likely to be immigrants. They're more likely to participate in online discussions. They have experience with people from all around the world. They dominate the media and the political establishment. America is little more to them than a patch of ground with a Constitution. You and I are probably cosmopolitans, and we pretty much rule the western world. And we live in a bubble.

The former group are usually older. They are often less educated. They and their families have lived in America for a hundred years, or even longer. Their America is more than a patch of land with a Constitution. It's a home, it has a shared culture, it has an official language, and they are proud of who they are and they love their culture. They know it wasn't that long ago the US was more than 90% white and the rest of it black. The same goes for the UK, except you have people whose ancestors have lived there for a thousand years or more. The new cosmopolitan, globalist economy has left them behind. They subsist on what little work they can find and often various forms of welfare.

Cosmopolitans celebrate multicultural London, where white British are now a minority. Traditionalists feel a vague sense of despair that their country has been taken from them without a fight, their culture extinguished one little bit at a time as the cosmopolitans tell them that this is how it's going to be, and they had better get out of the way or be called racists. Traditionalists want to know why it's so important to have a cosmopolitan London rather than an English London.

I live in Mississippi, which voted for Trump overwhelmingly. I'm an extreme edge case - I think based on the election results and exit polling, there were maybe five other white Obama voters in my county. Make no mistake, these people don't vote Republican because they think that Republicans have their back. They vote Republican because they feel that liberals in general have nothing more than sneering contempt for them as backwards hicks. They know perfectly well that Republicans are pro-business, not pro-traditionalist - thus why you see the Republican establishment in panic and revolt over Trump. Trump is a godsend to them. I don't think they believe that Trump will fulfill all his promises. They think they can't return to a pre-globalist world. What they hope is that he will be able to fuck the establishment cosmopolitans. They talk about Trump getting into the White House and finding out "what's going on" and sending half the government packing and the other half to prison. They voted Trump because they wanted to hear "you're fired!"

When you start looking for the contempt, you see it everywhere. For example, look at all the hand wringing about how Trump voters are white men - they must be racist, voting for their perceived self-interest. Yet when blacks voted overwhelmingly for Obama, voting for their perceived self-interest, it was noted, it is used as an election strategy, but there weren't thousands of news articles condemning them for being racist. (Except in niche conservative outlets that nobody cares about.) There are unbelievable amounts of contempt and hate poured on these people. It is not that their views are to be disbelieved, or refuted, or argued with: they are to be ignored, unspeakable, considered stupid, called racist. They are not even worth mentioning or talking about if you can get away with it, unless it's to make them a butt of a joke or to generate clicks for outrage.

I think Clinton will likely win, but the split between the traditionalists and the cosmopolitians will only grow worse. Maybe we can age out of it - I think the Internet has been a great cosmpolitian-izing force, whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing. If not, I'm afraid it will come to a worse head than Trump somewhere down the line.

NB: I do see some value in the traditionalist worldview. I don't think free trade has been the savior I thought it would be. I'm not convinced the idea that people should uproot themselves and follow the jobs around is a great idea. And I suspect the big push for immigration has a lot more with benefiting big businesses by increasing the supply of labor than it does noble ideals about freedom of movement.

Your comment was a long read, but insightful and worthwhile.

> But dig down deep: what terrifies you about Trump?

His arrogance. (Some will level the same criticism at Hillary, and I don't disagree as much as those people might expect. But Trump is on another level.)

His narcissism. I mean, seriously: he's giving a press conference on the morning after the Brexit vote and he spends the first several minutes talking about his golf course??? [0]

His astounding shallowness. He doesn't know, or even care, about how things really work. Impugning the integrity of a sitting Federal judge, without a shred of evidence except that the case is going against him (as it almost certainly should, from what I've read), shows an utter lack of respect for the institutions this country is built on. That in itself would be terrifying in any major Presidential candidate.

I doubt he's even an honest businessman. That's not based on much, I admit, except the Trump University case, but it would be consistent with what else I know about him.

I don't think he believes in anything except himself. I don't think he has any positions except that he should be in charge. And wisdom is a foreign concept to him -- he doesn't even care that he has none.

> And he's 70 years old, he's not going to change.

I see you've been reading Scott Adams.

Yes, Trump is intelligent -- all the more terrifying, given his other qualities -- and has mastered both the art of persuasion and that of acting powerful. He invites people to project Father onto him, telling them he'll take care of them. And that is something a lot of people are very eager to do.

I think you should ask your fellow Mississipians if they know how things are in Putin's Russia.

[0] http://www.newyorker.com/uncategorized/brexit-should-be-a-wa...

Thank you for this comment!

First let me say I really appreciate your comment.

The flip side is that using evidence is immediately dismissed as elitist. Studies performed by governments and universities are either corrupt or ivory-tower nonsense. How are you supposed to have a rational discussion if simply pointing to facts and data is alienating?

And to answer your question, what I find terrifying is that anger is what propels the vote for Trump and Farage et al. It's not even self-interest. These people are going to hurt themselves, and everyone else in their country, because they feel that they're being ignored? We're siamese twins and they've got a gun pointed at our shared foot. How is that not scary?

I genuinely believe that the biggest problem in the developed world is the economic problems of the working class. But the majority of them have spent almost all their political capital on fighting against things that have nothing to do with economics (e.g. gay rights), or fighting for things that have objectively and immediately worsened their situation (e.g. cutting government benefits and consumer/worker protection regulations) for the vague promise of a better economy in which things will improve again for them, even though after 40 years and many right-wing governments that has never materialized.

How are you supposed to address that kind of self-destruction without sounding condescending? How do you debate someone who thinks it's all a big conspiracy, and that the only ones they can trust are those that say the things that they already agree with?

You could group voters in America into two different classes

You could, but that division would be so arbitrary that your grouping would have no meaning beyond what you started with. The primary problem in the US is the same problem that plagues UK politics: the mistaken belief that binary politics is sufficient for democracy.

As I see it, the best thing that can happen for the UK now is if both major parties fracture in multiple small groups. That would even the playing field for the dozen or so local interests that have existed, but have never been able to make a meaningful impact.

"And a part of me wonders whether the same daily outpouring of hatred you see dumped on Trump/Trump supporters has also created a very large class of marginalized, ridiculed people who are going to let us know exactly what they think come time to vote -- and like the Brexit we may not even see it coming, because we live in the Twitter, FB, MSM bubble that does not accurately sample the people."

I don't know if the scorn heaped upon Trump voters created their marginalized condition or feelings, so much as it amplified and emotionally validated those feelings. Trump's supporters have been economically marginalized for 30 years and running, as have the equivalent Leave voters in the UK. Media polarization has contributed to an increasingly wide cultural gap, as well. And now, our obvious scorn and contempt for these people aggravates their feelings of marginalization; it confirms to them that that we, the system's apparent winners, don't have their interests in mind.

> I deeply suspect as well that the one-sidedness of presentation in the MSM

Are you implying the 'mainstream media' was overwhelmingly in favour of staying in the EU? That is very wrong. These are some headlines from The Sun and The Daily Mail (which are by far the two largest newspapers in the country) from the ten day period running up to the vote:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cln4QsSWgAA228h.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CllrH-9WQAANAeT.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClJgCXwWEAQLtRf.jpg

http://cdn.thejournal.ie/embeds/twitter/f27fd2d833060ed084e8...

http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/5...

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClWAiflWYAAzWlE.jpg

http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_600_noupscale/5...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClgdZBtUYAQ9s7y.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ck3LA0-WkAEI_On.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClgWY7GWQAQ0Wqp.jpg

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/15/suns-brexit-boo...

http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_600_noupscale/5...

I understand your intent but please don't find this satisfying. Many who voted 'out' did so simply because they felt they had no other method of getting their voice heard. They used the referendum as a way to express their loss of faith in UK politics, answering a different question to the one asked. It's a complete failure of the democratic process. Regrettably, those same people will likely be by far the worst effected by the result.

You are thinking that you have no stakes in this race. I honestly think that you are wrong. And your rant about "bullied children" is just the proof you have no idea what you are speaking about. British people are living in a sovereign nation and they decided to leave a sovereign super-national entity. I live in UK since 2010 and I think I should express my opinion. People in Wales voted out even if their jobs are mostly paid by EU. Wales is by far the poorest part of uk and it's heavily subsidised. By EU. You can put as much rethoric as you want in your post but it doesn't change reality. The facts are that the pound crashed to 1.33 against the USD (last time it arrived to that level I was not even 5 years old, in 1985, and for sure didn't happen in one day). A lot of companies here are going to lay off/relocate jobs. Scotland is going to have a new referendum for independence, probably the same will happen to north Ireland and Gibraltar. Economy in Europe is completely messed up. Italy stock exchange had the worst crash EVER. Spain lost 12% and Greece 13%. In a single day. .SPX lost "only" 3.5% in a day. I know how much I contribute to uk economy (> 1 thousand of pounds of taxes per week) and a lot of my friends that are on a similar level are thinking to leave before end of the year. This referendum will trigger a global crisis, regardless of your belief to be safe and "out of the race". On a more personal level I'm really disgusted about British people. I wish I could be in some other country where they would rationally decide who they want instead of being in a nation that doesn't want immigrants at all. So I will let them be happy about their victory and as soon as I can I will move to somewhere else. I hope this comment can give you a better reality view from someone that lives there and has first hand experiences instead of relying on Twitter (that I don't even use) or all the other trendy social networks that you mentioned.

I am pretty sure British are OK with you (aka somebody paying 1K/week in taxes) staying in UK. At worst you will have to get work visa with minimal efforts no matter what. In contrast to US, UK has well functioning visa system for highly qualified workers

Free movement of labour benefits workers in poor countries immigrating to UK and mostly affluent/rich UK citizens working in Europe. It's of no use to middle class and down - they are not moving anywhere. If EU stopped at free movement of stuff and did not do free movement of labor (beyond visa free travel), it would have been much better union.

Blaming UK voters for Spanish stock exchange losses is just asinine - generally you should pay very little attention to daily stock market moves when decided policy for next 50 years. It's too finicky and move for no reason at all.

I am pretty sure British are OK with you (aka somebody paying 1K/week in taxes) staying in UK

They have a weird way of showing it then.

If EU stopped at free movement of stuff and did not do free movement of labor, it would have been much better union.

The rest of Europe disagrees. So ultimately, I think this move is for the better on both sides of the channel. You get to keep your island, we get to keep our freedom.

> Here was a democratically conducted vote for which >50% of a population voted "Leave".

50% of those who voted, not of the population. The turnout was ~70%; of that ~51% voted to leave.

So for every 10 eligible voters, 7 bothered to turn up. Of those seven 3.5 voted to leave; 35% of the electorate voted leave unless my maths and assumptions are incorrect.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2016/jun/24/the-are...

Except that >50% of the population did not vote to leave. >50% of the voters voted that way. Looks like the turnout was 72% or so, the claim is the turnout for the youngers was low.

Are there really a significant number of regretful Leave voters? This trope seems to have been uncritically adopted by Remain supporters.

There were a few interviewed on the BBC the morning of the result. So I think that inflated the perception that there are millions of them.

Getting interviewees to say what you want them to - easier than you think.

Getting interviewees to say only what you want them to - basically impossible.

Hard to know for sure, but there's this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/24...

Who knows? It's establishment propaganda built on mined quotes from vox pop interviews. Remain supporters are parroting everything uncritically that paints people who voted opposite them as morons.

Anecdotal as it is, I will say this: I saw a number of Facebook posts prior to the election from millennials who said they were voting leave and when challenged replied "well, remain is going to win anyway".

I do think this was the belief held by a sizable number of people voting - they didn't think the vote had any real chance of succeeding, and used it as a protest vote against the current government.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you could imagine somebody in their 60s or 70s whose retirement was heavily invested in "safe" stocks waking up the day after the vote and finding their pension down 20% feeling a little sore.

Probably not.

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/746820394217259008?...

>Vote split // On the #EUref result (Remain / Leave):

Happy: 4% / 92%

Unhappy: 88% / 1%

Indifferent: 7% / 5%

(via ComRes)

Thank you.

This brings to mind Jean-Baptiste Queru's (Yes, that JBQ, the head of AOSP) 2015 post regarding the structural problems inherent in the EU's fiscal policy. Read it: whether you agree with his analysis or not, it will make you stop and think.

https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/CPB9bwHqsfn

He's advocating for fiscal union, but in paractice this requires a "United States of Europe". The proud nations of Europe don't appear to be ready for this level of union yet.

It's an open question whether the current crisis is a long term step away, or will lead to the relatively radical reformation required to achieve closer union.

What's really the point of us stopping and thinking about it. I'd like to see Larry Page, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg think about it. Cause its the same story with the Billions they have accumulated. Unsustainable.

This:

>>> Amongst people who have utterly given up on the future, political movements don’t need to promise any desirable and realistic change. If anything, they are more comforting and trustworthy if predicated on the notion that the future is beyond rescue, for that chimes more closely with people’s private experiences.

I talk to too many people who have given up yet, for some horrible reason, they still want to vote. They vote to make their assumptions reality. The problem is that giving up is too easy. It plays into the hands of a great many interest groups.

The climate is dead, so why bother trying? Let me drive my lead-powered car for my last few years. The economy is going to tank no matter what we do, so let's take a payday loan and head to Vegas.

Those of us with more than a decades or two left on this earth must force such people to come to terms. The world is going to keep on turning. Rather than wax nostalgic for a past that never really was a thing, we choose to actually try to fix things today. If that means ignoring calls for a return to glory days, so be it.

> Those of us with more than a decades or two left on this earth must force such people to come to terms.

We can start with a massive wealth redistribution backdating to 1973. How does that sound and when can we start?

" Brexit was not fuelled by hope for a different future. On the contrary, many Leavers believed that withdrawing from the EU wouldn’t really change things one way or the other, but they still wanted to do it."

"This taps into a much broader cultural and political malaise, that also appears to be driving the rise of Donald Trump in the US. Amongst people who have utterly given up on the future, political movements don’t need to promise any desirable and realistic change."

I know quite a few Trump voters and read quite a few forums on that discuss the GOP race, and they are expecting change ("real change" as I'm often told). I think this assumption is pretty far off. I see it a lot in the US media, but I think its some internal justification for why people might believe something different than themselves. After all, people really cannot actually be supporting Trump, right?!?

A book just came out expressing part of the phenomena by Dana Loesch (conservative media whose preferred candidate also didn't win) https://www.amazon.com/Flyover-Nation-Country-Youve-Never/dp... - Its bit a "provocative" (ok, a lot) in tone, but might round out the discussion.

Has it really been less than 100 years? The point of the EU was always a "lesson learned" from Versailles.

So you "pay more than you get back"? The EU simply put is and was insurance there won't be another V2 landing in London, because the next version would certainly be carrying a nuclear warhead.

All the destruction of WW2, and it only took a generation to die to forget all about it.

I would challenge point 3. The Brexit campaign did make promises of future, where the Remain camp didn't.

It's politics 101: highlight the positive. Remain side was labelled "Project Fear" - all they talked about were the negative consequences of a brexit outcome.

We know from fundamental psychology and game theory research people have different risk preferences for upside and downside. We also know from past political campaigns, that positive rhetoric is usually victorious.

The confusing thing about this is that on the surface, it's the Leave side that appears negative. A big part of its message was anti-immigration, anti-modern-world, counting on xenophobia to get them the numbers.

But they offered a promise of better. Take control. Things will change if you vote. All the Remain-side had to offer, were threats of things "getting even worse".

They failed to see that the status quo was disappointing to a huge demographic, not something they felt desperate to maintain. If the future seems already grim, you might want to pick the carrot over the stick.

I campaigned for Brexit over the last month and am excited with the outcome. However very disappointed with reaction in the international media - it was a complex debate with good arguments on both sides. Former MEP Daniel Hannan presented some of these arguments in an excellent speech at the Oxford Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzNj-hH8LkY

I don't think this article, or many of the other articles, accurately portray the mindset of leave voters.

Firstly, I'd like to start off with saying yes: there are many problems to leaving the EU, but consequently there are also many positives. This isn't a one sided issue. There is an array of reasons to vote either side.

One of my older British friends that I used to work with consistently held the following opinion:

> Me: Do you think Britain will exit?

> Friend: I sure hope we do [...] We never wanted into the EU in the first place, back in the 80's. The whole population was up in arms about it [...]. Our politicians refused to join unless we got certain exceptions. Like keeping our own money and a few other things. Now we are financially supporting the EU. Too many idiots in government though.

> Me: Looks like you've voted to leave! Also, the currency has fallen. I'm going to buy some GBP tomorrow when it hits 1.30 USD to 1 GBP. I'll sell it to make a quick buck.

> Friend: Finally. We only joined because our then prime minister John Major forced us to join. We didn't even elect the dude, he took over after Maggie Thatcher left. The pound will recover fast, so stock up now :)

Now, I'm not saying that he is right about everything, although I do trust his judgement, but I will say that I feel he accurately represents most of the 40+ group's opinions on the EU.

His age group feels:

  - EU is an amorphous blob that has no accountability to it's actions 
  - EU is redundant 
  - The VAT that is set by the EU is antithetical to good trade deals 
  - Sending any amount of money to an organization you do not support is out of the question
  - Undemocratic (Unellected officials draft the laws, people from other countries vote on things that directly effect you)
  - The EU is making a push to blur country boarders to the best of it's efforts
  - The migrant crisis' effects on the UK are a byproduct of how the EU operates

As far as I can tell, all of these points are either real problems with the EU or will soon become real problems for the EU. I don't think it's outrageous to say that, and I definitely don't think it's crazy to want to leave an organization like this. This is exacerbated by the fact that, as it seems, Britain is the least-EU like country in the EU currently. Their cultural and social values are very different from the many other cultures that are in the EU. Due to this, they are often on the loosing side of agreements (almost 70% from the last figure I saw [0])

What is really worrying to me is that people are now saying "You're old, so your vote shouldn't count." This is a trend I see more and more. I feel it's crazy to say something like that, but it definitely speaks volumes for where our western societies are headed in the next few years.

In the end, this won't really change much either way. The UK has one of the worlds largest economies and now they can make trade deals to encourage buys from around the world to come to their door step. I know that I'm sure ready to buy some British-made food items in the USA (It's been a while since I was able to get someone to send me more marmite). [0] - http://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/uk-meps-lose-most-in-the-eur...

EU is an amorphous blob that has no accountability to [its] actions

Neither has the House Of Lords. Do your friends know of the existence of the EC Transparency Portal?

"As a European citizen, you have a right to know how the European institutions are preparing these decisions, who participates in preparing them, who receives funding from the EU budget, and what documents are held or produced to prepare and adopt the legal acts. You also have a right to access those documents, and make your views known, either directly, or indirectly, through intermediaries that represent you.

This webpage is designed to be your window on this world, giving you direct access to information that will help you to be better informed and better prepared to follow and participate in the EU decision-making process, to enjoy your rights and to play your role as a European citizen to the full."

http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/index_en.htm

EU is redundant

There is no other supranational committee that has been able to harmonize so many different national laws. You can argue that its goals are undesirable, but not that there's a different entity that achieves the same goals on the same scope.

The VAT that is set by the EU is antithetical to good trade deals

VAT is not set by EU policy. The policy only sets minimum VAT percentages of 5 and 15 percent, and no maximum. The UK VAT rate is 20%, well above what the EU requires.

Sending any amount of money to an organization you do not support is out of the question

Taking that argument at face value, does that mean that citizens should not pay tax if the party they voted for does not win the election?

Undemocratic (Unelected officials draft the laws, people from other countries vote on things that directly effect you)

Most UK laws are also drafted by unelected officials, that's what ministerial departments are for. And you can't have it both ways: either it is undemocratic and people can't vote for it, or it is democratic and people do vote directly.

The EU is making a push to blur country boarders to the best of it's efforts

What push? Open borders was one of the founding principles of the union, so that is neither surprising nor a covert agenda.

The migrant crisis' effects on the UK are a byproduct of how the EU operates

The migrants themselves are a byproduct of failed (and failing) supranational intervention in the Middle East, Libya, Somalia, and other parts of the world. Why not blame the US, UK and UN for those?

I am just presenting the arguments that my friend and many people like him feel.

I'm not the one to campaign to, I'm a US citizen who don't really care about the vote.

Make these points in TV, radio, and all that jazz. I'm just tying to give an unbiased representation of the 'other sides'' views.

I know, it's just extremely depressing that people were basing their vote on either misinformation (leave) or scaremongering (remain). There were good ideological arguments to be made on either side of the debate, I guess that's what makes the outcome for me so unsatisfying (I'm not from the UK either btw, just mainland Europe).

True, the BrExit echoes the feeling of a working class who have been marginalized by the leadership who said they would represent the will of the people. True of Trump supporters and Sanders supporters.

I spent a bit of time reading about the political and media elites in Britain ignoring the plight of the working class.

1. Apparently, the British people never had a referendum to join the EU. The elites decided for them.

2. Unlike the leadership of our "union" the United States, the leadership of the EU have not been given a mandate to lead by the voters.

3. 20 years ago there were 0.9 million immigrants in the UK, now 3.3 million.

4. Prime Minster Cameron said he would reduce the yearly 330,000 immigration rate to 10,000 or so and he broke his word. Had he done what he said he'd do, BrExit may not have (probably?) would not have happened.

5. Apparently these immigrants get four years of social support. The social systems are stressed as is the National Health Service. Of course, the elites can choose to use the private Harley Street doctors, something the working class would be unable to do.

6. Cameron did not have to call the BrExit referendum, but chose to call it because of his hubris thinking that it could not possibly win.

The British political elite like their American counterparts have refused to hear the suffering of their citizens. They have been marginalized by elites who lack empathy.

Instead of listening to the voters, the political and media elites simply berate those who do respond such as Trump. They call Trump a racist because he is against illegal immigration. He has never said he is against Mexicans who have legally immigrated to the US.

In the US, the media elite also refuses to use the correct phrasing of illegal immigrant and using the term "undocumented" which is bad reporting because the correct term is illegal.

Unlike the leadership of our "union" the United States, the leadership of the EU have not been given a mandate to lead by the voters.

Yes and no. The leadership of the EU (council) is composed of the leadership of its members. The controlling house (EP) is voted directly. The only part that isn't chosen directly is the commission (EC), and those members are nominated by the council and vetted by the EP.

But the EU indeed does not have a mandate to lead. The EU proposes treaties, not legislation. It is up to the national parliaments to implement legislation that meets the EU treaties.

The social systems are stressed as is the National Health Service

So are those in the other EU countries. Maybe it has something to do with a global financial crisis that started almost a decade ago?

However, as many have pointed out even before the vote, the EU migrants are responsible for only a small part of the strain in the NHS: https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-immigration-and-pressure-nhs/

"in 2014, migration from the EU added £160 million in additional costs for the NHS across the UK [..] The same technique suggests that £1.4 billion in additional costs were caused by other changes in the number and age of people in the UK"

"immigrants from the European Economic Area made a more positive contribution than UK natives—and a far more positive contribution than immigrants from outside the EEA"

"The UK paid £674 million [in heathcare costs] to other countries, while receiving just £49 million in return. [The NHS is] simply failing to charge when it is supposed to—recouping only a fraction of what should be around £340m from other countries."

Cameron did not have to call the BrExit referendum

Yes and no. Yes, he had to because it was a campaign promise. Many say that it was this very promise (to hold a brexit referendum) that gave him the election victory at all. No, he did not have to make that promise during the election campaign, but he did anyway, partly to win over voters, partly to soothe anti-EU voices in his own party.

The elites who made up the EU did not want to give EU members the mandate to elect the leadership of the EU. It is semantics to say that the EU only proposes treaties and it is the up to the individual countries to pass the legislation. The point is that an unelected body, a body appointed by elites who appear to be clueless about the feelings of the citizens of the EU, dictates policy that has to be enforced by member states.

For example, PM Cameron wanted to keep his word about reducing the number of immigrants to 10,000 per year from 333,000 but he was not allowed to because of EU leadership who was unelected. Offices in the EU should be elected by the people just as they are in the United States.

The additional burden on the social services was caused by the increased number of immigrants from 0.9 million 20 years ago to 3.3 million today. The original member states of the EU when Britain first joined were by and large of similar economic wealth to Britain. But then the EU started adding much poorer member states from the former Soviet Union (eg Eastern Europe) and it is these immigrants that lowered the wage rates in Britain (Microeconomics) by competing with Brits for low-skilled jobs and at the same time created an enormous burden on social services which paid for four years for these uneducated immigrants.

The increased NHS costs due to immigration would be about £6 billion. There are 3.3 million immigrants out of a total British population of 64 million and an NHS budget of £115 billion. To say that immigrants added only £160 million to the NHS budget, or a mere 1% increase simply isn't credible. Someone is fudging the numbers.

Readers of HN are in a position to challenge numbers fed to them and since I reported that there is 3.3 million immigrants and that the population of Britain is around 60 million, it should have felt wrong to see that the increase for immigrants, 5% of the population would only be £160 million. The NHS budget is £115 billion so 5% of that would be about £6 billion. Clearly this "facts site" that you are quoting is fudging their numbers and probably shouldn't be trusted for anything.

As mentioned earlier, the people should have been able to decide whether they wanted to remain members of the EU. The Elites clearly didn't want them to decide. Regardless of PM Cameron's reasoning for calling the referendum, he and other elites had the hubris to think that they were right and that they could not possibly lose. It simply shows how out of touch the elites are with the will of the people whom they are supposed to represent.

Similarly the "rise of Trump" and that of Sanders was caused by the hubris of the Republican and Democratic elite who thought they could use dollars and connections to dictate policy instead of realizing that American is supposed to be a democracy.

Representative Eric Canter, the second most powerful person in the House of Representatives lost the primary to a political unknown -- an event which "could never happen." The reason is that he simply did not listen to his constituents who were against immigrants who broke the law to stay in the US. His constituents were against illegal immigration.

One might have thought that the Republicans would have learned from Cantor's loss, but they had the hubris to ignore this clear warning sign that people do not want illegal immigration. Jeb Bush, Rubio, were for illegal immigration.

If Jeb Bush had listened to the voters and campaigned against illegal immigration, if he had spoke up about the export of factory jobs out of the country as Trump did when Carrier air conditions closed an Indiana factory and moved the jobs to Mexico, then he probably would have been the Republican candidate. It was Bush's hubris, that of Rubio, Paul Ryan, and other Republican leadership that they could ignore the voters that created Trump.

Similarly, it was the hubris PM Cameron and the other British Elite that had the led to ignoring the will of the voters even after he had agreed to reduce immigration to 10,000 from 333,000 that to the BrExit situation.

PM Cameron wanted to keep his word about reducing the number of immigrants to 10,000 per year from 333,000 but he was not allowed to because of EU leadership

No, he blamed the EU to hide his own government's failure. EU immigration accounted for only 50% of the 300,000. So his own government allowed 150,000 non-EU immigrants into the country. The EU had nothing to do with that. You may have had a valid point if the total immigration number was 160,000, of which 150,000 from the EU. But not now.

Readers of HN are in a position to challenge numbers fed to them

Thank you, I can, and I will. First of all, the 3.3 million immigrants are not all from the EU. If the numbers for other years are similar, at most 50% of those are from the EU. I suspect the number is even smaller because EU citizens can also more easily move back home.

Secondly, the EU citizens entering the country are mainly migrant workers, that implies that they are on average younger and more able-bodied than the native population. So your argument that the 1.6 million EU migrants are a similar burden on the NHS than the native (elderly) population is a stretch.

Your £6 billion figure comes completely without backing, so I will reject it because of the above.

The people were upset about all immigration independent of whether they were from the EU or not. The BrExit vote was about all immigration, not just that from the EU. The working class hardly cares whether their jobs are taken or wages depressed by EU immigrants or immigrants outside the EU.

You present no data about immigration ages (many parents, grandparents presumably come with their adult children to stay in Britain). In addition, immigrants from poorer countries independent of age may have more health problems and unhealthy behaviors (eg, cigarette smoking) that are more expensive to treat. Thus, without additional data about the health characteristics of the immigrant population, it is reasonable to assume that their health problems are consistent with those non-immigrants if not more expensive because of unhealthy environments and lower quality medical care in poorer countries that the immigrants came from.

Thus it is reasonable to assume 3.3 million immigrants, about 5% of the population consuming 5% of the NHS budget of £6 billion. Even if this were off by a factor of two, it would still be £3 billion, not £160 million.

The £160 million additional increase would suggest that the NHS additional cost for 5% of the population is 0.15% of £115.

The "fact source" you cite seems to have some sort of political axe to grind for a 0.15% increase for 5% of the population is simply not credible.

A liberal echo chamber? Have you not seen r/the_donald ?

Have you not seen the problems with censorship in r/the_donald ?

Reddit is the largest liberal echo chamber on the net, every character of it's content is actively moderated.

It's exactly the point being made here - liberal strategy as been to define and label opposition as racist/sexist/*ist for a very long time now. So those of us who disagree are just bigoted against incessantly. Many of those in disagreement with liberal ideas just vote instead of debate because it's tiresome having people generalize and stereotype you ad nauseum.

>liberal strategy as been to define and label opposition as racist/sexist/*ist for a very long time now.

Are you going to sit there with a straight face and claim that Donald Trump is not racist or sexist? Or that the GOP hasn't consistently been fighting against LGBT rights for decades?

The person you are responding to means to say that they are unhappy with being called on sexist/racist behavior and can't we just go back to the good old days where white male dominance was the cultural norm?

Please don't use racist language on HN.

> Are you going to sit there with a straight face and claim that Donald Trump is not racist or sexist?

Scott Adams has some interesting commentary on this:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/146157026376/how-to-un-hypnotiz...

"Trump has never mentioned race beyond pointing how how many African-Americans and Latinos support him. Ask your anti-Trumper to offer evidence otherwise. Then point out…"

Do people actually buy this absolute bullshit? Just unbelievable. Good one. I guess he hasn't called migrants from Mexico rapists? I guess his discussion of the judge's race and nationality wasn't racist either? yeah?

And yes, separating out his xenophobia and religious discrimination against Muslims is much better than lumping that in with his other racist speech. Now I'm dying to support him.

His fellow GOPers are calling him a racist and yet somehow I'm expected to just ignore reality? Scott Adams is really a piece of work in this blog post of mental gymnastics. The little pity party he throws for himself at the bottom is a nice touch. God forbid someone hold those voting for fascists accountable. It's almost like minorities and LGBT folk have more at stake or something.

I would hardly call pointing out the judges membership in La Raza a latino supremacist group racist?

Scott Adams isn't very smart, I don't think. His blog posts and essays are, far more often than not, really surprisingly shallow.

Regarding Donald Trump's racism, this is how he can be racist without saying "black people are stupid and smelly" on national TV:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

In general, I like to read viewpoints that are different than mine, it's challenging. Listening to people who agree with me is boring. Dog whistle politics is certainly pervasive in politics on all sides, and it is an important thing for people to recognize.

Yeah, me too. I just like it when the writers are at least a little insightful. I never get that sense from Scott Adams.

It reminds me a little of being back in high school when I read his stuff, a few decades ago, when my pals and I were starting to, tentatively and sloppily, feel out bigger philosophical ideas about the world.

The irony of that post is it doesn't use any of the persuasion tricks he talks about. I almost wonder if it was meant as a parody.

You couldn't have intentionally done a better job of proving my point.

I make a political statement. The first response is; Pivot target away from me and to a straw man (Trump & GOP). Label the straw men with your narrative of *ist and begin the appeal to common sense fallacy.

You also triggered me by changing the conversation away from liberal attack methods and bringing up LGBT issues.

So if you're not defending Trump or your support of Trump then what is your point? You just want to support a sexist, racist and bigot without having to be held accountable for it?

And the shitty, completely out-of-the-blue joke about triggering at the end. Nice that you want to allude to blanket dismissal of social causes just because I brought up LGBT issues. The only way you could be a bigger cliche is if you called me an "SJW" and spit on the ground afterward. Grow up. I'm done with this pointless conversation. Happy Pride, asshole.

you can ignore or flag the obvious trolls.

Both of you have broken the HN guidelines. Please (re-)read them and don't do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

You are free to create your own subreddit, with your own moderation rules, with the exception of not brigading which seems very reasonable. There is no longer any central community on reddit (since /r/reddit.com was made inactive), speaking as if reddit is one voice is very strange to me.

@robothampsters wrote here:

> Reddit literally changed their algorithm for r/all to stop the_donald from showing up.

2 minutes (!) after being posted his comment was already [dead]. Very interesting...

I hope the only reason is that he didn't provide source for his claim. So there it is: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06...

Let's check if this comment will become [dead] within a few minutes as well.

Yes, r/the_donald was regularly getting to the top of r/all before the change. However so was r/sweden with the anti-trump memes and r/enoughtrumpspam . So either let it be a trump-antitrump war or alter r/all to be something useful such as promoting posts that are exceptionally highly upvoted across all subreddits.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11978455 and marked it off-topic.

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