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Comment by jonathanstrange | Hacker News Reader

It's sad that the discussion of Brexit and EU-related matters in general always revolve around perceived economic issues.

Sure, a healthy economy is important for everyone, but the long-term goals of EU have always been to create a unity of countries with largely shared values to prevent future wars (incl. trade wars and cold wars) and to increase collaboration in all cultural, scientific and social matters. To grow together instead of alienating more and more until a new war breaks out, like it always happened in Europe's past in almost every century.

And now it's all about the money...

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Many of the current conflicts within the EU arguably originate from the EU trying to be more than an economic entity.

It's true that the EU, and its antecedents the ECSC and the EC, has been a tremendous force for peace on the European continent but make no mistake:

It's original intent first and foremost was economic collaboration and prosperity.

The impact of international trade, however, goes way beyond mere economic considerations: If you trade with people from other countries you have to communicate and negotiate with them, which in turn helps with reducing prejudice and creating bonds between countries on a personal level.

In my opinion, this has done more for ensuring peace in Europe than lofty political goals.

The centrifugal forces that most blatantly show with Brexit but the alienation of other EU members also is a symptom of are mostly caused by EU politicians indiscriminately pushing for an ever closer political integration without considering if that's what people actually want in each and every case.

This shouldn't be a surprise though - Ever closer union has been the slogan since 1983. The EU has always been more than an economic entity, and is better for it IMO - economic union without political union is unstable and untenable in the longer term (just as one example, people in states like Greece have no effective political power over a brutal fiscal policy which impacts them deeply).

I suspect the intention was always to promote a political and cultural union via economic and fiscal union first, then gradually political union. This is why the Euro project is so misunderstood - in isolation between Nation States it is madness, if viewed as a necessary step to a federal European state it makes lots of sense.

Perhaps a federal state will always have too much concentration of power, however our short experiment with nation states over the last couple of centuries shows they are not a very good alternative IMO, and we'll hopefully find better forms of government (perhaps far more local power over tax/policy down at the county or town level with overarching federal entities for foreign policy and trade).

The nationalism we've seen resurgent across the globe, of which Brexit is a celebration, is the easy answer, but is not the answer we need, and will in my view lead us only to war.

I absolutely agree on the matter of nation states. Because they have been the reality for longer than any living human being can remember we usually consider them to be the natural order of things.

However, on a historical scale nation states are a fairly recent concept. Before the 19th century allegiances for the most part were much more local on one hand and centred around religion (rather than concepts such as nationality) on the other hand.

Nation states helped with getting rid of feudalism and gradually ushering in modern democracy. So, historically they certainly were beneficial. In my opinion, they're increasingly and continually becoming obsolete, though.

That doesn't mean, however, that a supranational entity such as the EU necessarily is the right solution to each and every problem in the future. As much as nation states served a purpose in pre-globalisation times the EU was useful in the post-war, Cold War era but it remains to be seen if or in which ways it can continue to be useful in the future.

On the matter of Brexit it'd be pertinent to ask why a disintegration movement should stop at a national level. Why not further devolve power to for example the countries the UK is made up of or eminent city 'states' such as London?

I concur in that I think some aspects are probably still best dealt with at a unified supranational level (foreign policy, currency, removing trade barriers) while a lot more should be handled at a local level.

That doesn't mean, however, that a supranational entity such as the EU necessarily is the right solution to each and every problem in the future.

Sure, perhaps a federal superstate isn't the answer - I certainly don't think it's a great answer for local gov, taxes or accountability, though given the world we live in surrounded by hostile autocracies I think having armed forces and trade at that level is advantageous, so that's why I'm for it, but further devolution of powers would be ideal in my view, if coupled with free movement of people and goods at a federal level. Given that I see no reason for Nations to exist.

Free movement of people at least within large federal states and later globally is a worthy ideal to strive towards - why should the place of your birth dictate the rights and opportunities accorded to you? Why should nation states claim the right to bestow and strip citizenship?

> why should the place of your birth dictate the rights and opportunities accorded to you? Why should nation states claim the right to bestow and strip citizenship?

These questions give rise to an ethical dilemma. On one hand you're absolutely right: The birth lottery shouldn't determine your opportunities in life. However, communities also have a legitimate right to try and ensure their continued sustainable economic welfare, which might be endangered if there are more immigrants over a period of time than that economy can reasonably handle.

This is why - again - economic development not only has to tie in with but often is a prerequisite for pursuing desirable ideals.

The European Economic Community was meant to prevent wars by tying the economies of European states together. Economic integration brings people closer and makes a break between them costly for all parties.

At the end of the day, the economy is our life, and it has a massive impact both on our day-to-day and on state affairs.

Money is the means through which that unity is established. Country join up because it makes economic sense, because that's a short term reward, the long term reward which is less chance of war, is more uncertain and politicians rarely get the chance to be allowed to think long term about big decisions like this. Hence the whole Brexit fiasco in the first place.

For the brexiters it hasn't in general been about the money. I think most recognised we'd take a hit to gdp but wanted freedom from EU control, less immigration and the like. The remainers have tended to focus on economics which may have been an error.

Dominic Cummings claims that the most effective of the Leave campaigns he was responsible for was the "£350m for the NHS" one.

The one that Farage started backing out of mere hours after the result.

Nonsense. Most high profile Brexiters are millionaires. And most people voted aren't working or don't understand modern supply chains.

Let me tell you the plan: Those troublesome EU workers have rights. Wouldn't it be great to ship in a load of people on visas from developing countries who aren't allowed to change jobs and who'll work for a pittance. That's why some of those millionaires are so in favour of Brexit. There won't be reduced migration, just a reduction in the rights of people who come.

Reminds me of a TED video I watched a few days ago. We shouldn't always be Interest first, there are always going to be Interest conflict. But Values, where we share a common ground is where we need to think first before Interest and a decision.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU

If we take a step back and notice how much time per day on an average we think/talk about money, it isn't a pretty picture. It seems as though every decision revolves around money and economy. Yes, I do understand a stable economy is vital to peace and the very existence of human race. But do we need to compromise so much and put money over everything?

Few days ago, the American president was talking about $110B when asked about the murder of Saudi journalist. That is just one example.

I agree that one of the main problems with current politics is the "experts know best" mentality, of which the reduction of political issues to their economic components is one example.

Scientists, economists and others should contribute with their specific expertise, but at the end of the day, it should be up to the electorate to make up their minds - which, in the case of Brexit, they did.

This faith in technocracy is in my opinion at the root of the democratic deficit in EU institutions - and also the myth that the electorate somehow "got it wrong" in the case of the Brexit referendum.

Gove: "The British public has had enough of experts"

Raab, later: “I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing,”

Experts: at this point you might want to consider stockpiling your essential medicines...

Come on, this is hacker news. We're all (supposedly) experts. You wouldn't let random members of the public rewrite your pull requests. We have to stand up for the idea that knowing the difference between a good plan and a bad plan matters.

But you would let the product owner do whatever he likes with the code. Does the Government serve the people or should the people serve the nation?

At other times on HN we've had the "would you commit a change that you knew would be unsafe, illegal, or even get people killed" discussion. Such as the VW "defeat device". Brexit is another one of those - the worst-case scenarios are extremely bad, and rather than addressing them seriously they get dismissed by the government and Brexiteers.

I have no idea what 'should the people serve the nation' means. Sounds like you wrote something that sounded cool but completely forgot that phrases should actually mean something.

In a representative democracy, the people elect others to represent them in the legislature (and sometimes if it is separate, the executive). There are different ideas as to how representatives should operate/vote. But you would hope that for issues that are too complex for the public at large, the representatives would make the decisions as they are in a better position to do so. Government being accountable to the people has proven to be the best form of governance, but governance by the people has never and will never end well.

Either the issue is too technical for the electorate, and you don't hold a referendum in the first place, or it's not, and you do, and then you live with the results. What you don't do is try to cancel the referendum if you don't agree with the outcome. That's disingenuous.

And yes, this is Hacker News, but no, I don't think politics can be reduced to technical issues. I'm not British and I don't have an axe to grind regarding Brexit. But it seems reasonable to frame the issue in terms of taking a cut in GDP in order to protect national sovereignty. Which goes to show that the issue goes well beyond economics.

When a government is clearly deadlocked and damaging the country rather than delivering on its promised better deal, people don't insist there is anything "disingenuous" about suggesting that the country might be better off calling another election rather than the living with their mistakes for the originally-proposed full five year term. Why would a referendum in which the EU status quo lost narrowly to a range of optimistic alternative visions of the future, most of which are now ruled out be any more irrevocable?

It seems far more disingenuous to frame the issue in terms of taking a cut in GDP in order to protect national sovereignty when the Leave campaign's key argument was framing it as the precise opposite: their headline claim was about how much more money our government would have to spend on public services. Sure, some of the people that voted Leave would have accepted the "less EU jurisdiction for less GDP" tradeoff, but certainly not enough of them to have won the referendum if they believed that was the choice they were making.

> To grow together instead of alienating more and more until a new war breaks out

Between NATO members?

As long as it stays together, I doubt it. Which is why it's been successful in preventing another global conflict for the last 70 years, and hasn't been impotent like the League of Nations and the United Nations. But then, things that quietly work don't get much attention.

So if Macron and EU friends continue their power grab, and further develop the EU army, provoking Putin near his borders. Secede from NATO, leaving the remaining members to continue operating in their interests. More factions with vested interests capable of mobilising against each other. I wonder if anyone was really paying attention yesterday?

Money is very important to people who don't have much money. If you are a plumber whose wages are going down and down because the market is being flooded with cheaper Eastern Europeans, you know who to blame. Of course I don't expect HN users who are sitting on a pile of money in SF or London to ever understand this.

Or are Brit plumbers simply overvalued and Eastern Europeans represent the true value of plumbing? I’m not sure if I should put a /s here or if I actually believe this.

That Brit plumbers are more expensive does not mean they are overvalued. It means they are not cost effective, and that means they'll get less jobs. You can only be overvalued if anyone is actually paying you for your job. The reason that they're expensive is that cost of living is too high.

So the real question to ask is, do British plumbers expect a too high quality of life?

Anything has to be overvalued because there wouldn't be benefits then.

Neither proposition is true to the exclusion of the other. British ${plumbers} have had it easy; those from the East will work for less.

Until the foothold is gained, and then the immigrant's prices start to go backup when they establish themselves better in their new home. All of this is still a market force, and is how it works in general. On another note, I think you need to see a list of what people think they are gaining for a good comparison to this list of what you are potentially losing.

Depends if you value plumbing as a skill or something anyone with a few basic tools can accomplish well enough?

Or maybe people who seemingly understood this "simple issue" forgot to see how the economy takes a hit, because of thousands of reasons, the middle class in GB becomes less wealthy and thus has less money to pay for plumbers.

And then maybe realize that it's all the same plus a bunch of downsides, but now the cheap Eastern Europeans cannot be blamed anymore.

My experience suggests that people in dire circumstances, regardless of location or time, will always find ways to blame foreigners for it.

They actually understand it very well. Many of them complain about the same thing happening with H1B workers.

Yes, money is important. But it is not the only thing that is VERY important to most poeple. As a EU citizen I am yet to see any overflow whatsoever of plumbers! Nor do their wages, at least in my country (in Scandinavia) seem to go down at all.

That point aside, EU /is/ a peace project and will continue to serve that purpose as long as it is standing. I do not dare think too much of how fractured western Europe would be at this point in time if we had to rely on Russia and USA for our peace.

EDIT: switched ""rely"" to "rely". Not sure why I quoted it in the first place.

Had a little look around for empirical data and came across this, looks like trade wages are about stagnant but this is only over a few years. https://infogram.com/2018-trades-salary-survey-electricians-...

I see you've created an account just to make provocative statements on various political issues, which isn't the purpose of HN.

The "immigrants depress wages" trope is never that simple, as the UK is about to find out. In an economy where unemployment is very low, like the UK, they need that supply of labour to keep business ticking over. Should it disappear, growth will become constrained, and prices (along with wages) will have to rise.

Well, microeconomic theory is not that complicated either. If you take a particular labour market, and increase the supply, the point of equilibrium for wages shifts downwards. The magnitude of the shift depends on the elasticity of demand. If demand is fairly static, as is the case for basic services such as plumbing, then the shift in wages will be large.

Now, the question of immigration is not just about economics. It's a political question, so other factors come into play. But as far as the economic part is concerned, there is no question that substantial immigration depresses wages in specific labour markets.

Oh sure, and if you're a plumber whose wages are going down and down because businesses aren't investing, you know who to blame, too.

Blaming based on hypotheticals is fun, even even more so when the hypotheticals sound plausible. Let's do more of it!

Personal anecdote: about four years ago, living in London, I needed a plumber to do a small job just before Christmas (replacing a leaking shower tray).

Of the three who came out to quote, we went with the Polish one because he was the most professional in his manner, gave us a written quote on paperwork with a company VAT (tax) number, and gave us confidence that he would do a quality job using quality parts.

This he did, for the amount he quoted.

As for cost? His quote was the most expensive.

And if you build cars for Nissan's European plant in Sunderland, you know who to thank... except that Sunderland voted to leave. So clearly the leave vote was not based on rational economical terms.

The economy isn't a zero-sum game, and of all the countries in the world it would be most hypocritical for the UK to criticise globalism...

Multiple studies have shown that in a lot of areas that's total bollocks, and in the pockets where it is true, is a fraction of a percentage difference: https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/

Try harder when trolling.

Are plumber wages really going down, though? I am not familiar with the situation in the UK, but in Denmark where I live, demand for plumbers (and construction workers) has outstripped supply for many years now. It's difficult to find a plumber who's willing to pick up the phone let alone commit to a job, and when you do find one, they are outrageously expensive. In this environment, I have a hard time sympathising with anyone who complains that e.g. Polish workers are coming and offering to take the assignments for less money.

Plumber wages in the UK are above average and growing faster than most salaries, and self-employed plumbers in undersupplied regions can make six figures whilst turning down a lot of work. Of all the industries to pick to argue "the market is saturated with too many workers", plumbing and specialised construction workers have to be the weirdest

The problem with the EU is that it's a half measure which turns out to be worse than all or nothing. The original idea of creating a "United States of Europe" is a laudable one but it may now be further away than it was before the EU was formed.

The gap between wealthy Northern countries such as Germany and less-well-off southern countries such as Greece, Portugal, or Spain has grown substantially.

And now it's all about the money...

For as long as money has existed, that's what it's always been about. Money is the means to survival and prosperity. When people exploit one another for it, resentment is the product. Resentment is the most powerful emotion of all; it's what leads to war.

> The gap between wealthy Northern countries such as Germany and less-well-off southern countries such as Greece, Portugal, or Spain has grown substantially.

Has it? Over what time period and by what measure?

At the time when the UK joined the EU in 1973, all three of those countries were military dictatorships!

<pedantic> Portugal was a dictatorship but not a military one. It was in fact the military that overthrew it.</pedantic>

That's not my experience as a German living and working in Portugal. Economic differences between countries will always exist, just like there are poorer and healthier regions within every country, but in daily life these play no role. Differences are superficial, people here and there share the same values and overall culture, and European countries are migrating rapidly towards each other in these terms.

Of course, not paying for structurally weak regions has always been a popular topic among the inhabitants of richer parts (see the Länderfinanzausgleich), but in the end this attitude is just selfish and unrealistic. The EU sceptics of today are the same kind of people who were against the unification of Germany yesterday. Let's all go to war with Prussia then.

That may be true, as far as cultural "western" values of democracy, liberty, secularism, etc go. However the vast gap between the economic standard of living of e.g. Germany and those of Portugal are a source of (justified) friction. The less wealthy states see themselves as subservient to Germany and the wealthier states, with no real power and no real say in how the (supposedly democratic) union is run.

That's not how the Portuguese see themselves and their role within the EU.

That being said, of course, there will always be friction, just like there is friction inside nations due to unequal distribution of wealth and structural disadvantages of certain regions. That was my point. Monetary transfers and other aid to certain regions are unavoidable unless you want to get into a vicious long-term downwards spiral. That's the same everywhere, whether in Europe, in China, or in the US. If you leave the economically weak countryside without any help and perspective, they'll turn against the rich regions some day or migrate towards them, and you've made things worse than if you transfer money right from the start and try to decentralize resources and services from the beginning.

Portugal is currently doing fine, but other countries don't do so well. There will always be a region that is not doing well. It is wholly unrealistic to expect this not to be the case within a union of any kind - whether it's a union of states/regions within a country or a union of nations.

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