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  But it wasn't obvious before the vote. At least not to
  the average voter.

I've heard it suggested [1] that the leave vote is indicative of a lack of trust in our political institutions. I think that's an interesting point of view, because it explains a lot about the recriminations about the result.

If you think our institutions are basically sound, and you hear dire warnings about brexit from government economists, national and foreign politicians, journalists, think tanks, business leaders, academics and industry bodies you'll naturally think "these well-credentialed experts all agree, only an idiot would ignore all these warnings"

If you think our institutions are unsound, and you hear dire warnings from the bodies that failed to predict or prevent the 2008 financial crisis and that told us Iraq had WMDs they could launch within 45 minutes, you'll naturally think "these bodies are just mouthpieces for the PM, only an idiot would believe all these warnings"

In other words, it _was_ obvious to _remain_ voters that we should remain - it just wasn't obvious to _leave_ voters because they approach the question with different world views.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brexit-is-only-the-lates...

>> And it's all come out AFTER the result.

>The is actually a very good point. People are acting like it was all incredibly obvious that voting Leave was a terrible thing to do. But it wasn't obvious before the vote. At least not to the average voter.

I cannot disagree with you hard enough. All of the things that are "coming out" now were refuted during the lead up to the referendum, not only by the Remain campaigners, but by the experts the Leave campaign was so clever to disqualify. The was a handful of people/companies/economists that sided with Leave, while the lion's share was solidly with Remain - and they all said it was a terrible thing to do.

> But it wasn't obvious before the vote. At least not to the average voter. A lot of the blame for that has to go to the media who printed anything the Leave campaign.

Which succinctly sums up why simple democracy is a bad way to make large scale decisions. It's good it was non binding.

>In fact you can barely see the change on this graph: > http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=10Y

The reason you can't see it isn't that the drop isn't significant. It's because it's only been a week, and on a 10 year scale, it's just that last pixel on the graph. Meanwhile, it has shifted the entire graph upwards.