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Comment by adelHBN | Hacker News Reader

It boggles the mind why they went through with Brexit! Seriously.

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

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They were in the EU when this allegedly started, so it obviously isn't a magic cure for whatever the authors of the paper pretend it to be. So why is your immediate reaction to utter the feeling that Brexit is somehow going to make it worse?

Because it’s easier to blame Others for not being the centre of the universe any more, than to man up and do something about it. Lazy, nihilistic, CBF, post-Empire shitehole. What a sick, sad waste of potential.

Yeah, completely crazy to want your own self-determination.

Funny how that worked out for Ireland, right? How we were able to enforce our will on the UK?

The sovereignty axe swings both ways.

More independence gives you more degrees of freedom but less power. More unity gives you more power where you're aligned. To maximize effectiveness, in a purely selfish way, it makes sense to sacrifice degrees of freedom for more power if you're not particularly interested in those degrees of freedom to begin with.

The only ways Brexit makes sense are as sacrificing power absolutely (the North Korea Juche approach), or changing the degrees of freedom being exercised (giving up on the Western European social model).

I never really understand the special status given to national sovereignty. We all give up some control in a democratic system, from the local level upwards. Why is there some special status for the national level? What is it that’s so bad about giving up some control at that level as part of a greater system?

When you no longer really believe (or never did believe) in one of the fundamental pillars of the EU e.g. ever closer union.

If you don't believe in that then it's your duty to leave and let those that do continue forwards with an ever closer union.

The UK joined really hoping to push the EU more towards a confederation which it would've felt comfortable in, the whole "working from the inside" thing that people are always saying is the best way to influence the EU. But ultimately a majority of the rest of the EU wants much closer integration than the UK would've ever been comfortable with... so here we are.

And how much more self-determination are you enjoying this week vs last?

Meanwhile, I’m in a Tory safe seat with one of the most rotten MPs in the house. Every single election, my vote against them doesn’t do squat, thanks to the fit-up that is FPTP. And what about the “vast unelected government” that is our own UK civil service, which will no doubt grow even larger as we re-onshore the bureaucracy. Well, at least until the hard-right Tories slash public spending to the core, turning the UK into their low-tax haven for the super-rich—i.e. the same unelected elite who engineered this whole scam in the first place.

Sucker.

Are you a Londoner? This does not sound at all in touch with people in the north.

I’m a Scot living “Oop North” for over a decade, and very much aware of the attitudes round here.

Believe me, I was never a fan of provincialist Scotland and utterly despise the huge separatist chip on its shoulder and everything that stands for, so to see the English fall for the very same scam really jams in my craw.

Honestly, the sooner that Brits get to experience the same standard of living that Chinese factory workers now enjoy†, the sooner they’ll drink a big cup of STFU and realize just how unfairly blessed before now they really were.

No sympathies for them that got us into it; I only feel bad for t’kids.

† And, having come from grinding rural poverty, is still a step up for them.

You don't have to be dirt poor to have a cause for national sovereignty. The difference is Scotland has no sovereignty, the British/English do, inside the EU.

Now the UK is free to do...what exactly that they could not before?

Make their own trade agreements? Hold their government accountable without having a circle of the government and the EU blaming each other?

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