Brexit was a harsh political awakening for young people | Hacker News Reader

Brexit was a harsh political awakening for young people

blogs.spectator.co.uk

19 pointsalexbilbie31 comments

It's interesting to note that the usual excuses that are given for low turnout among young people--feeling like their vote won't make a difference--were not present here. This was a direct referendum: what should we do? No politician who will court the youth vote then do something else. Yet, turnout was still low. Which begs the question: why should anyone care what young people think when they can't be bothered to vote, even when there is literally nothing standing between their vote and the result they want?

It is difficult to find sympathy for young Britons. One could blame their first-past-the-post system, for enabling Cameron's gamble. But the voters turned down the mathematically-superior alternative vote in an earlier referendum.

So is it the media? The lack of a Swiss-style double vote? Both could have been prioritised as electoral demands by the populace.

Ultimately this falls on the British people, for not turning out and not doing their research. The sad truth is that rebalancing Europe will be a cost borne by the next generation of Americans.

It could be also that younger people were more undecided about what to vote. I don't really know, I'm not even from UK, just an hypothesis.

> why should anyone care what young people think when they can't be bothered to vote

The answer is as you suggested: no one cares. It's really a double whammy, since not only do they not largely vote, but those that do contribute less $$.

Hispanics turn out to vote at lower rates than whites. Why should anyone care what they think?

The poor turn out to vote at lower rates than the rich. Why should anyone care what they think?

Those without college degrees turn out to vote at lower rates than those with college degrees. Why should anyone care what they think?

I get the point that you're trying to make and you're not entirely wrong. But I think you're ignoring structural factors that lead to certain group's voices being under heard in the body politic. Those groups should be responsible for reforming themselves sure. But those outside the groups are a little bit responsible too.

"But those outside the groups are a little bit responsible too."

How? If you can't even be bothered to show up why is it other people's responsibility to coddle you?

When one person doesn't vote, it's their fault.

When an entire demographic group is systematically underrepresented, you have to wonder if it's something about society that is pushing them away from the polls.

Maybe it's just all their fault.

> The poor turn out to vote at lower rates than the rich. Why should anyone care what they think? > Those without college degrees turn out to vote at lower rates than those with college degrees. Why should anyone care what they think?

It's the reverse. That's the whole point of "one person one vote", which was kind of a big deal in the beginning of the 20th century. People died for that.

Besides, I find your entire idea flawed.

Why ? To put it bluntly because the choice has always been between "the 51% oppress the 49%" and "the 0.01% oppress the 99.99%". If you want to experience the other end, be a construction worker in the middle east for a while. I think I know which you prefer.

Secondly, when push comes to shove the globalization represented by the EU has systematically worsened the economic situation of most Britons. Tech and finance industries in central London don't seem to see this, but ... If you compare actual living conditions provided by a tech wage in central London with living conditions afforded by a Ford job 30 years ago at Dagenham you might be surprised, not in a good way - especially by the size of realistically available accommodation. Which might give one aspect of a far more reasonable explanation for why Britons aren't having kids then what is usually trotted up by the press - speaking as someone who has done so. Now compare 99% jobs ... waiter or cleaner in central London, and what living conditions that provides. Because that's what most of the service sector jobs are.

The short of it is, the globalization movement has -to put it mildly- not delivered the promised economic prosperity, and should be thrown into the bin. Pensions getting cut, systematically worsening medical care, constant mass firings replaced by "do you want fries with that" jobs that pay a third, ...

Let's go out on a limb here and say that a lot of Britons aren't happy with the evolutions of the past 30 years. Free capitalism and free markets are "winner take all" systems and work by throwing workers under the bus.

I think you missed the point.

The young often say they don't vote cause there is no one to vote for.

The was a direct vote on a issue, they couldn't be betrayed, and they still didn't vote.

So perhaps they are just making excuses.

I didn't miss the point. I agree that "there is no one to vote for" is an excuse. But what is the real reason they don't vote? I can think of several hypotheses:

  - They haven't yet developed the habit of voting
  - They are busier booting up their lives than more established adults
  - They move around more and are not yet embedded in their community

None of these are reasons to think that their preferences should matter less.

What's your hypothesis for why the young vote in fewer numbers?

There lives have just 'been' so far. It's a foreign concept to interact out side of their world.

This is also selfish and ignorant but that's young mammals.

There's some evidence that young people thought it was just an opinion-seeking referendum, and didn't believe that a leave vote would trigger leave even if the leave vote won. (This is a slightly different form of the "voted leave, thinking that most people would vote remain, because I don't want remain to be an overwhelming win".)

If that's true then it's not surprising a bunch of young people didn't turn out.

And, about young people: Before the ref a bunch of people were asking if the vote could be extended to 16 and 17 year olds. This is going to affect them, and it would have been good to include them.

The government declined.

There are about 1.5m 16 and 17 year olds in the UK.

That's looking like a bad decision.

Remain lost by 1,269,501 votes.

Given that turnout among 16/17 year olds would have been far from 100% and that at least some of them would have voted Leave, it doesn't look like extending the vote to them would have been enough to change the result.

This divide beaten the haves and have nots, between the young and the old, and a sense that the old will determine the fates of the young through polls, conjures up images of Japan's concerted voting demographics where the elderly dominate and dictate elections and the young feel increasingly disenfranchised.

Or the US, where our response to the losers of globalization is, "That sucks (for you.)"

Mix with some racism / xenophobia, and out pops Donald Trump. Who is scary, but eventually we'll get our own Nigel Farage: someone who manages to say the quiet parts quietly...

We've had that for years. Americans aren't subtle - they needed someone to come out and 'say what is on his mind' for them.

So the young are grousing that the vote didn't turn out the way some of them preferred. As noted, youth turnout was low, meaning many in that age bracket didn't care or were willing to let the "older" citizens to decide for them.

In any case, the effects of the vote will be determined over time, presumably the lengthy negotiation will be an opportunity for voters to have their say, so the youthful non-participants could yet participate.

The linear ramp of age-vs.-participation implies the inevitability that as the young cohort is seasoned by real-world experience, they'll replicate the patterns evident among older voters in this election. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Beware the statistics in this post. They don't show that turnout was low among young people, they show that turnout was relatively low in areas that had a lot of young people, except for Oxford and Cambridge. Ditto all the other graphs showing correlations between age, income, education, etc. There are a lot of potential confounding factors that can account for that, although it's the best you can do statistically since voting is anonymous.

> the freedom of movement that the EU offered them

If this is desirable, why can't it be had through agreements between pairs of countries without there having to be a European union that you hand over many other powers to?

The same goes for other things related to barriers between countries.

Because the EU requires that negotiations be done with all member states as a whole. So if you let people in from Spain, you also have to let them in from say Romania. That's why the EU was threatening to tighten tourist/bussines trip visas for U.S. and Canandian nationals: http://www.dw.com/en/european-union-to-consider-reimposition...

I don't see that this answers my question. Why can't, say, Great Britain make such an agreement with, say, Spain, and then make the same agreement (or choose not to) with Romania?

Btw, non-EU countries in Europe are already in on some of the agreements that exist between EU countries, without having to agree to everything else the EU does. Wouldn't that be a working kind of collaboration?

If they join schengen, that includes all schengen countries. Also, not sure on this, but in your example, Spain would be negotiating with UK, while it is not allowed to (without the EU) as it is part of the EU.

Probably because the government of Spain and Romania have ceded that power to the European Commission, which is appointed by the Council of the European Union not elected.

I guess what I'm asking is why we need the EU in the first place when it comes to issues like this one when we could make that kind of agreements anyway, without having to cede all power.

You don't need to, but the EU is that way.

We don't even know what is going to happen in the real world, that's difficult to make projection in a hypothetical world were the EU was built differently.

For example, would the UK have voted out in the first place in such a world ? Would Turkey be a member of the EU ?

Edit: Let's add a bit more info. The goal of the EU was to become the USA of Europe. Can each State of the USA determine its own immigration rule directly with foreign nations ?

This is going to be an interesting issue. Freedom of movement was one of the strongest drivers in the vote - the desire to control immigration. So freedom of movement will be lost by popular demand, not just a side effect.

As a purely practical matter, try counting the number of unique pairs of N countries. It's N(N-1)/2. With N = 28, you would need 378 separate agreements. A nightmare to keep track of. That's one big reason why we have things like the WTO etc., to replace a jungle of different rule sets with a single set of them.

> the freedom of movement that the EU offered them

There are many countries which are not in the EU, but one can still freely move between them (they signed the Schengen treaty).

Freedom of movement exists independently of Schengen. Freedom of movement gives you the right to move freely between the territories of the states, but does not preclude border control. There is/was freedom of movement between the UK and the rest of the EU, even if the UK performed border checks. Freedom of movement meant that if you prove that you are an EU citizen, they can not prevent you from entering.

The pillar that supports this and other freedoms is the political machinery in Brussels ("the EU"), and without it it all comes tumbling down. European states are not to be trusted to act in the interest of all Europeans when left on their own. They have proven the opposite throughout history, and will do so again. Make no mistake, these rights and freedoms will disappear without political union.

> if you prove that you are an EU citizen, they can not prevent you from entering

Well, since a few years they cannot (don't want to?) prevent from entering even those ones who are _not_ EU citizens. Moreover, one can enter the EU even without a passport or any other identification document.

> The pillar that supports this and other freedoms is the political machinery in Brussels ("the EU"), and without it it all comes tumbling down.

I agree -- this situation is (mostly) a result of the political machinery in Brussels.

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