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Comment by DasIch | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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'.

> 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.

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