Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

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No. Just the opposite.

Having lived in Europe ... I was absolutely shocked at the dissonance between their elite and their plebes. It's laughably crazy.

It's so much, it's almost unbelievable.

Euros come from a historical situation wherein they hyper-powerful nobility ruled all.

They overthrew that - but the condescension still very much exists. Now - when you go to Oxobridge or a 'Grande Ecole' you're party of the elite, they go off and give each other the plumb jobs, protect each others careers and act like rulers.

Because even on the other side of the fence - the socialists - are led by intellectuals, not so much by 'the people' (i.e. labour) - both sides of the aisle are utterly out of touch.

Brexit itself should be a shock to no one who has the pulse of Europe.

It's only shocking to the disconnected chattering classes.

They consider anything anti-EU to be 'fringe' and 'far right' - when in fact about 1/2 of Europeans would dump the EU if given a chance. Even in Germany 48% don't like the EU - not to say they would dump it but they don't like it.

And it's not just Europe, and not only based on class.

A former Obama White House official described the regulatory capture of US copyright policy as "extremists are people who talk only among themselves".

For me, perhaps the most disappointing aspect of election press coverage, has been the inability to generalize. To see the monster in the mirror. Much was written about Trump supporters tolerating lies, living in an echo chamber, and believing absurd things. But I haven't seen a single article pointing out the similarities to Fortune 500 CEOs making press statements that directly contradict their SEC filings, and getting no grief for it. And to beliefs like "makers and takers", and 'let them build and assemble the things, but we'll keep the manufacturing design and engineering'. I recently talked with a Harvard professor who had taught the latter years ago, asking "WTF? Anyone with a manufacturing background would have told you that's absurd. What happened?" He said, "It was the idea in the air at the time, the thing everyone was saying".

"Everyone". Groupthink, being out of touch, seems a prominent failure mode of the US political establishment. And it gets very little analysis.

On issues such as manufacturing the hard political truth is that these jobs have been lost both to innovation and through trade (of jobs). Manufacturing jobs have been sacrificed to get cheaper products and the focus has been set on services. I think that overall this is quite reasonable and long term we will look at this transition the same way we look at the transition from agriculture to industry now.

Nevertheless this also means that while the majority profits some smaller though still significant part of the population gets screwed by this.

This isn't exactly the message you put out so you wrap it up in some euphemisms for voters. This has nothing to do with being out of touch, this is politicians and CEOs saying what they need to be able to do what they want.

Socialism and Communism has always been led by intellectuals. Marx was hardly a member of the proletariat for example.

Additionally this is overall hardly a European phenomenon. People tend to associate mostly with people similar to themselves, especially when it comes to education which correlates to income and jobs.

The education system reinforces this strongly in most countries. In the US this begins as early as starting school based on which school (district) the parents can afford. In Germany you have Students being separated by education level after primary school (4th grade). If you go to university you might almost never interact with people with a different education level, apart from family or the people you buy stuff from.

I'd also wonder just how many of those 48% that don't like the EU, would miss what the EU offers. I'd wager most not just don't know what it offers but don't even really know what exactly is bad about it.

> I'd wager most not just don't know what it offers but don't even really know what exactly is bad about it.

This is a good reason why the EU should fail, and why people voted for Brexit, which will hopefully go some way to making that happen.

To the average citizen, the EU is a gargantuan bureaucracy, burning through enormous sums of money, whose main concern seems to be churning out reams of incomprehensible regulations. It also has some courts that overrule our national governments from time to time.

I like the concept of a more integrated Europe, but the EU is just the first attempt at it.

To the average citizen the majority of regulation is incomprehensible because it deals with things they never have to deal with. I care that the food I buy is safe not precisely how regulation and standardization makes it so or that I personally understand it. The entire point of representative democracy is that I don't have to.

The vast amount of "regulation" is simply standardization to simplify trade in the single market. The industries affected themselves tend to want it even while people make fun of it in the media.

The amount of money invested in the EU is really not all that enormous, besides it's not like it disappears in a black hole. It seems like any significant infrastructure project in the EU gets at least some EU funding. Especially Eastern Europe has benefitted greatly from that and we all benefit as the East catches up with the rest of Europe.

In any case you can't just scrap the EU and start fresh and instantly come up with the perfect solution. This is not how politics and policy works or has ever worked. Any non-trivial system is built iteratively through incremental improvement, especially large systems. A more integrated Europe is achieved by improving the EU not by replacing it with some fantasy that will never come to fruition.

> Socialism and Communism has always been led by intellectuals. Marx was hardly a member of the proletariat for example.

It was led, but one of the official foci was "Arbeiter bilde dich", "worker teach yourself". Basically, a goal of the saner strands of the left is to make what we call "intellectual" right now the new baseline. And with good reason. The only way to make a political system like democracy work is to build a good education system to get "mündige bürger", emancipated citizens. And originally workers thought for their education(it is telling that https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeiterbildung exists only in German), recognising it as a tool that the upper classes used as an advantage. But for decades an anti-intellectualism has developed, reinforced by the "get a good career" educational goals(and if you want to be conspiratory, also a shift against critical political education pushed by those in power. I don't believe in that though, I just think in the well meaning pursuit of a "good education to get a job" in what is just too little time and with too little resources luxuries like politics get cut as collateral) . And elitists on the left,center and right, who think they were born smarter than everyone else didn't help either, thinking they need to "lead the masses" or that they can decide acceptable options.

As before, one of the real goals should be to fight together to ensure everyone reaches the level of education that allows them to participate in an informed political process.

My main point was that elitism in Europe and the US are totally different.

Barack Obama was born to a broken family, father a Kenyan and absent, they were poor, he grew up to be president.

It's possible in Europe 2016, but I don't think likely.

Most American CEO's and millionaires are self-made, the average American millionaire drives a pick-up truck. The head of Goldman Sachs grew up poor.

European leaders are a whole different breed of 'detached from the plebes'.

You're not too far from the truth in some of this, but what is your goal?

I have no goal. :)

Then you have no allies

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