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Comment by _cenw | Hacker News Reader

People who don't see the problem with Edge must all be domain joined or on Pro for Workstations / Enterprise. Supposedly the browser doesn't annoy "confirmed" business customers as much.

I recently switched to the RC Insider ring just to get the EU digital markets update, which lets you uninstall Edge.

Because it started doing incredibly creepy stuff.

* Keeps asking me every day if I want to keep my new tab extension. No way to set a blank page either. If you don't use an extension, it's "Microsoft Home" (which doesn't even let you properly set your own background, and keeps showing me squids, no thanks). Despite me clicking no every time, it still occasionally disables it. I think there may be a timeout, and then the disabled plugin syncs everywhere.

* Asked me if it could shouldersurf my Kagi searches and scrape them to improve Bing. If I was Kagi, I'd think about blocking the Edge user agent.

* Upon clicking "no" on the point above, it changed my search engine to Bing.

* Edge also has a feature to regularly scrape other Browsers for their history to submit to Microsoft. Given every other Edge feature did not respect my consent in an honestly gaslighting fashion, I don't feel confident any browsing data on a Windows machine is private unless you install the above Release Candidate and set your Region to EU to uninstall Edge.

Here's the guide I followed. Just set your region to Ireland or something: https://www.partitionwizard.com/news/uninstall-microsoft-edg...

View on HN

>to get the EU digital markets update, which lets you uninstall Edge.

Again — as a former anti-EU person — I am reminded why I am now pro-EU. While nowhere perfect it is much better than not having an EU and way, way better than the US.

I've come across many anti EU persons and there are some broad categories:

- the uninformed, they have no idea about how the EU came about or what it does, but they're against it anyway

- the people on the receiving end of the regulations (anti-trust, advertisers, marketeers, bankers, data sellers etc). They have a very good idea about what it does, but it interferes with their preferred way of getting to more cash.

- the people that are nostalgic and that remember their country as it was 50 years ago and would like to go back there. They believe that because the EU happened to coincide with the downslide of their country that the two are related. What they usually forget is that without the EU that downslide would have been much worse.

- the people who genuinely believe that 'smaller is better' when it comes to politics and who tend to miss the wood for the trees: that in politics smaller is only better when you are very wealthy and can set your own rules. Think Switzerland. Everybody else will have a less privileged position and if they find themselves up against the giants of the world for whatever reason suddenly 'small' translates to 'weak'. In unity there is some strength so it makes sense for smaller countries to join in a larger unit, if only to curb the inevitable infighting (and the local wars that come with those).

I've yet to come across someone who actually spent some time figuring out what the EU actually does who remained against it. There is a lot of valid criticism against the EU bureaucrats: lots of them are grifters and there is quite a bit of corruption. But it is much worse in other places and on balance I'll take the grifters because I realize that politics as such is a grift of sorts, but it is inevitable, like taxes are.

Until we manage to change human nature no political system will be perfect. But given that the EU tends to stand up for the little guy and that they are powerful enough to make a difference but not so powerful enough that they are getting drunk on that power I'm ok with it.

Spot on. There's a lot to criticize the EU for and it's definitely in dire need of reform in some places, but overall it's a net benefit to all members despite the squabbles, that being anti-EU feels strange.

The wealthy countries that chose never to join like Switzerland and Norway have their own valid reasons to not join (fear of regulation on banking, fishing and oil that's not in their favor) and still thrive due to their wealth. But leaving the EU doesn't automatically turn your country into Switzerland or Norway like the UK expected.

People often do miss the forest from the trees and that stuff like quality democracy and unions like the EU are never a "fire and forget" solution but a rolling grinding game that must constantly be kept in checks and bounds witch citizen involvement and outcry, over generations, otherwise it slowly gets eroded.

> But leaving the EU doesn't automatically turn your country into Switzerland or Norway like the UK expected.

this was never expected or mentioned by anyone

Oh it was, and a lot, by both pro-Brexit parties and advocates, you probably don't remember.

They kept pointing at Switzerland and Norway as arguments of how well you can succeed without the EU.

There's a difference between saying "it's possible to exist without EU - see countries X and Y as an example" and "if we leave EU we will turn immediately into country X or Y". The first is reasonable argument, the second is completely ridiculous.

There is a difference indeed, but that difference was completely ignored when the referendum slogans were shouted precisely to lie to people that if they left the EU they would be in the same position as Switzerland and Norway which is an appealing prospect.

> when the referendum slogans were shouted precisely to lie to people that if they left the EU they would be in the same position as Switzerland and Norway which is an appealing prospect.

no-one ever said this

they were used as examples of countries that are successful despite being outside the EU

not that the UK would "be in the same position" if it left, i.e. becoming 10x richer per capita or starting to mass produce cuckoo clocks

> they were used as examples of countries that are successful despite being outside the EU

Completely ignoring the fact that both countries are 100% aligned with EU on basically all laws and regulations, have open borders with the EU etc. etc. etc.

Could you bring a couple of examples of such slogans?

The closest I can come up with:

"Singapore on the Thames"

But I'd assume it's more remainers pointing out that GB wouldn't be like Norway or Switzerland being dismissed as "Project Fear" and rembering the double negative as a positve affirmation by the brexit shysters.

Wait… so they just straight-up lied to the public by simply eliding the most likely outcome? Shocking.

Hm. It actually was. One of the major reasons the UK left the EU is because it would turn the UK into the financial center that it once was not having to deal with all these pesky EU regulations on financial markets. Small detail: it was the EU acting on behalf of the US that was the foundation for a lot of these regulations (mostly the fall out of a couple of really bad episodes) and Switzerland, one of the few hold-outs eventually also caved in to US pressure. So that sentiment was definitely there but it didn't work out. Meanwhile the UK is 100 billion(!) per year short compared to the in-the-EU alternative https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-31/brexit-is... .

Of course the marketeers working for the relatively wealthy fraction of the UK got paid handsomely. That wealthy fraction finds themselves without a hairs breadth of Brussels interference to enrich themselves further at the expense of the rest of the population in the UK, and they don't really care: they are now the largest fish in a much smaller pond and as long as the smaller fish can be kept in line they will make bank.

Not that any of the smaller fish would ever admit to being duped, after all this is a team sport and what matters is that your team wins, not that that which you have won is actually a step back.

> One of the major reasons the UK left the EU is because it would turn the UK into the financial center that it once was not having to deal with all these pesky EU regulations on financial markets.

Eh, yes and no.

A lot of the financial backing given to pro-Brexit politicians was from rich City types hoping to be deregulated, it's true.

But London, the financial centre, had some of the lowest support for Brexit (outside of Scotland). Areas like the West Midlands and Yorkshire had the highest levels of support, and they've got no financial industry to speak of.

What matters is not where the voters where, but where the money came from.

> Areas like the West Midlands and Yorkshire had the highest levels of support

Areas with higher unemployment and lower economic development and opportunities often tend to vote on the extremes of the spectrum out of desperation. It's easy to think the EU or foreigners too your jobs away and that leaving the EU will somehow make it better.

Ironically: those votes made their plight even worse. Spend enough marketing money and say the right magic words and you can easily get people to vote against their own interests. That's something I always hated about democracy: that people tend to be divided by talking points and emotional issues that don't matter all that much and then vote into power parties that will rob them blind. Case in point: in NL we have had a center-right coalition for a really long time. But that presumes that the fraction of people that voted for the main party (VVD) is wealthy enough that the VVD is accurately reflecting their interests. They don't! But immigration policy allowed the VVD to get a whole raft of people to vote for them. Such divide and conquer tactics are really nasty and subvert democracy at its core, it allows a few wealthy individuals (not quite 'the elite', but definitely the top 10% or so) to use democracy as the ultimate form of regulatory capture: it makes them become the regulators bosses, and they get to make the laws as well.

In almost any normal society the 'left' would be 80 to 90% of the vote and if it isn't that's usually because of some demagogue or trick, immigration, religion, frustrations about various (often perceived) injustices and so on.

> Spend enough marketing money and say the right magic words and you can easily get people to vote against their own interests.

again, total rubbish

the working class mostly voted against mass low-skilled immigration from the EU

it was very much in their interests to cut off this stream of competition, and a few years later...

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-sees-fastest-wage-rises-...

to me it seems like they knew exactly what they were voting for (vs. EU regional development fund money for the town's middle class opera house/cultural centre/...)

>https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-sees-fastest-wage-rises-...

Hmm, the article is from February 2022, aka right when we had "peak economy" just before the wordlwide shit hit the fan and everything tanked again, so I'm curious how much of that wage grows was just due to the Covid money printing boom that drove up demand in all sectors, coupled with reduced immigration due to Covid travel restrictions, is the true cause of this this wage boost instead it being the cause of just "EU workers diluted our wages".

>it was very much in their interests to cut off this stream of competition

Except now they have even more competition from outside the EU, with the UK reaching migration records as of recently. And non-EU cheap labor tends to be even cheaper compared to cheap EU labor.

Of course the pandemic economic boom coupled with temporary cutting off of migration due to covid travel restrictions would cause wages to spike in 2020-2022 but that could very well be temporary now with the increase migration from non-EU countries and with lower investments into the UK due to the lack of EU membership bringing the labor demand back down within the next 10+ years.

My point is only time will tell whether Brexit will or will not improve working class wages, the past ~3 years were a anomaly on many fronts. We'll just have to wait and see.

> Hmm, the article is from February 2022, aka right when we had "peak economy" just before the wordlwide shit hit the fan and everything tanked again, so I'm curious how much of that wage grows was just due to the Covid money printing boom that drove up demand in **all sectors**

you answered your own question here

> Except now they have even more competition from outside the EU, with the UK reaching migration records as of recently. And non-EU cheap labor tends to be even cheaper compared to cheap EU labor.

there's a minimum salary requirement

previously this didn't apply to labour from the EU, now it does

so they've all but completely shut out low wage competition from the EU

sounds like they got exactly what they wanted

>there's a minimum salary requirement; previously this didn't apply to labour from the EU, now it does

Excuse me but how is this the EU's fault and not the UK's own fault for not enforcing some sort of minimum wages before?

Where I live now in Austria, there are legally require minimal salary bands negotiated yearly by unions for every profession, so no matter where you come from for work, an employer here is mandated to pay you at least that legal mandated salary regardless if you are Austrian, EU or non-EU, just so it's much more difficult for an employer to wage-dump by using desperate migrants.

So, what stopped the UK from enforcing minimum salary bands on all workers instead of going through the extreme self flagelatory route of leaving the EU and loosing out on the EU membership benefits instead? You might say that would have been difficult and complex to implement, but so was Brexit and that came with pain on the side.

To me, most of the issues the UK complained it was suffering because of the EU, like this one and others, were all self inflicted through poor internal policies, as other wealthy nations in the EU did have proper measures in place to not have the issues the UK had, so blaming the EU was UK's lazy way of pointing fingers for it's own pollical incompetence.

>sounds like they got exactly what they wanted

For now maybe, but long term that could be being penny wise but pound foolish. Investors invested a lot in the UK post 2014 because being part of the EU was a big selling point. Who knows how it will play out now that the UK is isolated and with open borders.

> So, what stopped the UK from enforcing minimum salary bands on all workers instead of going through the extreme self flagelatory route of leaving the EU and loosing out on the EU membership benefits instead? You might say that would have been difficult and complex to implement, but so was Brexit and that came with pain on the side.

It's really easy. Germany has a minimum wage. Everyone has to get it. End of story. That's just a problem UK made for itself before and politicians who got pressured by their donors to keep the cheap labor as long as possible looked around and "uh ... its ... uh ... the EU is at fault!"

>and politicians who got pressured by their donors to keep the cheap labor as long as possible looked around and "uh ... its ... uh ... the EU is at fault!"

Spot on. All the problems the UK was complaining about were entirely self inflicted but also entirely fixable internally without having to leave the EU.

The EU was not stopping the UK form fixing it's shit, like implementing minimum wages or expelling illegal migrants, the same way the EU wasn't stopping Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Finland, etc. from taking care of their internal matters much better than the UK has.

> Investors invested a lot in the UK post 2014 because being part of the EU was a big selling point. Who knows how it will play out now that the UK is isolated and with open borders.

I'm sure the working class are devastated that foreign investors have potentially lost money

> Excuse me but how is this the EU's fault and not the UK's own fault for not enforcing some sort of minimum wages before?

it has one?

you have missed the point entirely, and have now dropped to arguing in bad faith

goodbye

>it has one?

Then it was a very poorly implemented one that obviously does not work.

>I'm sure the working class are devastated that foreign investors have potentially lost money

Who's the one responding in bad faith here? Investors aren't just the stereotypical Monopoly Man smoking cigars in his top hat while driving his convertible in central London.

Investors means all the companies opening up shop in the UK creating jobs for those working class people: semiconductor, auto manufacturers, aerospace, metal work, med tech, electronics, etc. Outside of the EU, the UK becomes less attractive to open up jobs there by international investors.

You clearly have no understanding what "investment" means and instead responding in bad faith to invisible straw men with a chip on your shoulder.

> One of the major reasons the UK left the EU is because it would turn the UK into the financial center that it once was not having to deal with all these pesky EU regulations on financial markets.

total rubbish, almost 100% of the City were pro remain, with maybe a handful of people/firms as leavers

I was on a trading floor that day, and the impotent rage at the "wrong" result was present from everyone, from the interns upto the MDs

what I imagine most of the Dutch went through last week

The traders and the bankers are not the same people.

I totally believe you and the traders tend to be very keen about what the near future is going to bring (barring black swan events).

As for the Dutch, yes, it's embarrassing.

plenty of bankers there too

Ok, so for some odd reason everything in your surrounding contradicts everything that I've been able to dig up on what powered Brexit. I'm happy to believe that this is your genuine interpretation of what happened but I'm going to stick with mine because it appears very much that that is what the aftermath has confirmed: that finance + wealthy parties put up the money that financed the Brexit campaign and that they are the ones that stood to gain from it most. Follow the money. That the economy as a whole shrunk doesn't seem to have impacted them much, their Pounds Sterling are solid and in the short term their doing fine. And if they don't, well, there's always the fluidity of capital when it wants to move across the border. Something that somehow is a lot easier than for an immigrant to make it into the UK.

Who do you think will take responsibility for Brexit?

> I'm happy to believe that this is your genuine interpretation of what happened but I'm going to stick with mine because it appears very much that that is what the aftermath has confirmed: that finance + wealthy parties put up the money that financed the Brexit campaign and that they are the ones that stood to gain from it most.

where did you get your information exactly? a section of the high quality British press?

there's your answer

remain had almost the entire British establishment behind it: the government, the civil service, all large political parties, most of the media, the City and all other industry. these groups mostly had their own self-interested reasons for wanting to remain ($$$ at risk dependent on the result)

leave had Aaron Banks, Farage and maybe a dozen other prats. they also had their own self-interested reasons for wanting to leave ($$$ at risk dependent on the result)

in terms of access to resources, remain absolutely dominated leave by several orders of magnitude

this was one of the reasons it was such a shocking result

> That the economy as a whole shrunk doesn't seem to have impacted them much

it didn't shrink as a whole, it's larger than it was in 2016

and since 2019 it's grown more than its France and Germany (peer nations), in both absolute and relative terms

- People who are employed by "the people on the receiving end of the regulations" and therefore get lower wages than in the US

Switzerland is the outlier, after the US it's a pretty steep drop. this is adjusted for Purchasing Power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

Average wage is a very narrow view of what ultimately translates into quality of life.

You couldn't pay me to live in the US. I've gotten very close to immigration, but after seeing up close what kind of predatory situation a new immigrant into the US lands in I figured it isn't for me. Though I totally understand why you would want to move there if you are from a country in Asia or Latin America. Then it is a huge step up. But from Europe (ok, one of the wealthier countries in Europe) it felt like a big step down.

50K in Sweden is like 100K in the US. And that's before we get to the distribution of that income, which in the US is extremely lopsided, far more so than in the EU.

That's fair, but pretending there's no downsides to regulation besides for some uber-wealthy owners isn't

Let's have some of those downsides then.

wages, adjusted for purchasing power see the wiki link. innovation suffers. more government intervention is needed. I'm not saying these are slam-dunk, but there are upsides and downsides to everything and one doesn't have to be a millionaire to be anti-regulation (I am not, and I am) EDIT: moved a period

> wages, adjusted for purchasing power see the wiki link.

That's a non-starter for me, purchasing power is relative to the society you live in, not an absolute that you can use to compare across countries unless everything is the same, and the USA and the EU couldn't be further from each other. Especially when looking at average rather than at say the part that is below the average distribution wise.

> innovation suffers.

Innovation suffers the world over from Silicon Valley, and more importantly the wealth concentration there. No other region in the United States has managed to come close to challenging SV, and neither did Europe (or any other region in the world, for that matter). Wealth concentration is like gravity.

> more government intervention is needed.

In what way? I really fail to see the connection here.

> I'm not saying these are slam-dunk, but there are upsides and downsides to everything and one doesn't have to be a millionaire to be anti-regulation

But it is perfectly possible to be a millionaire and to be pro regulation. Because out-of-control businesses are just as dangerous in the short term as out-of-control governments are in the longer term, the difference is that the businesses tend to live a lot longer (they are essentially immortal unless they really blow it).

I don't know much about Sweden salaries but if it's close enough to general EU I believe it might be MUCH harder to get a net 50K job in Sweden than a net 100K job in the US.

Sure, in the US you will have less "prepaid" services or might need to pay much more for specific stuff but that's kind of the point of freedom of choices. You get to make your own mistakes without entering a collectivist group that on average is bound to make more costly mistakes.

> You get to make your own mistakes without entering a collectivist group that on average is bound to make more costly mistakes.

The costly mistakes of not being bound to your employer because of life insurance.

The costly mistake of not having to think about mass shootings in schools

The costly mistake of having acess to working public transport and generally great public infrastructure.

The costly mistakes of...

Source: I live in Sweden. I have friends in the US with high paying jobs who still have to spend a week on two on the phone with their insurer after an illness, and who can't get anywhere witout a car.

What about the people who see the existing EU as an anti-democratic bureocracy

What about them?

Do they see the federal government of the United States also as an anti-democratic bureaucracy?

Do they see their own government as anti-democratic?

And if not why do they see the existing EU as different?

Do they understand how EU representatives are chosen?

Do they follow EU parliamentary proceedings and do they understand how EU law interacts with local law?

All of those are important questions and usually the more people answer 'yes' to the above the bigger the chance that they see the EU as a net positive.

What does the US government have to do with anything :/

I am a pro EU person but I feel you are being quite dismissive of an important issue. Namely that understanding the EU governing structure is very impenetrable to a great number of people, much more so than their national government. The foundation of democracy is that citizens distribute power. How does democracy work if citizens have very little idea about how that works in the EU?

Then you also have people from smaller coubtries who are quite concerned about centralization tendencies in the EU.

> Namely that understanding the EU governing structure is very impenetrable to a great number of people, much more so than their national government.

You can say a lot about the EU that needs fixing but their documentation is excellent. What it needs is for the national governments to get better at communicating how and when they interact with the EU and what the practical effects are. The bigger problem is that anti-EU forces within the EU (usually: populists) do their level best to take every problem in their own societies and spin it in such a way that the EU looks like the culprit. Which makes people believe that if the EU were to go away that everything will be unicorns and rainbows.

> Then you also have people from smaller coubtried who are quite concerned about centralization tendencies in the EU.

Yes, that's one of those peculiar cases: they somehow believe that as smaller countries in a much larger world that they would be able to do better than as a bloc. This makes no sense at all and despite many examples to the contrary quite a few people believe this. But common sense unfortunately isn't all that common and as Brexit proves beyond a doubt going it alone isn't better, it is far worse.

To the tune of a trillion per decade for the UK, money that they badly needed. That there is no serious investigation of how the UK public was swindled surprises me, but then again, it probably shouldn't, after all, those that would be in charge of such an investigation all ended up making out like bandits and they certainly aren't going to risk killing their golden goose even if it dumps the rest of the population of the UK into poverty.

> they somehow believe that as smaller countries in a much larger world that they would be able to do better than as a bloc

Yeah colonies too would have been economically much better off today had they not experimented with national liberation, but thats not how people think. They dont want to be paying taxes to a place they see as foreign. Nor do they want foreigners telling them how to do things. You are aware we are talking about old Europe here, and not Canada, Australia, or the US? The one that fought two world wars with itself in just over a 100 years. Not to even mention the other 2000 years of its long and very bloody history. I am very happy that the EU exists, but for Europe slow and steady wins the race. Centralization is not the answer because then countries with smaller populations get dominated by bigger countries.

I'd rather be dominated in a political arena than in a military one, which is pretty much the alternative. At least as it is the small countries can throw their weight behind the larger one that has their interests most at heart.

As far as colonies are concerned, that's a very thorny issue and also even further off-topic, and for NL (where I'm from) it is a very much embarrassing issue.

“I'd rather be dominated in a political arena than in a military one”

Is that really the only choice nations face? Just a binary eu or no eu, domination either by treaty or by military force? What about diplomacy?

Ask Canada how that's working out for them.

Diplomacy is great, but trade wars are real and between nation states trade wars are extremely nasty if one party has an economy 10 times that of the other.

So yes, there is a third option, but it isn't all that pretty either. Within the EU there are no trade wars.

I wonder if it is embarassing enough to return all the benefits of imperialist plunder to their original owners. Or pay restitution to all places where NL was involved in slave trading.

Anyway, as far as EU is concerned it is not off topic. Many of the smaller countries (even some big ones) within the EU were once seen as rightful spheres of influence/dominance by the old European imperial powers. You dont have to go outside the continent to talk about national liberation. Do you remember how WWI started?

Centralization is not without its dangers. Take for example Yugoslavia. This was a very decentralized federal republic in which constituent republics, nationalities, and autonomous regions, had a pretty big political autonomy. During late 80s Serbian politician Slobodan Milosevic led a movement that tried to centralize the government. He argued that it would make the country more efficient and better capable to address economic problems. Serbs were the numerically dominant nationality of Yugoslavia. Serbians supported centralization, non Serbs didnt. A very bloody war ensued and the country fell appart.

> How does democracy work if citizens have very little idea about how that works in the EU?

Democracy doesn't work if the citizens do not care about the very entities that administer their lives on their behalf. The EU isn't impenetrable, or at least no more impenetrable than the national and local governments, but most people just do not care enough to learn how it works.

Admittedly, that apathy has been reinforced by many national politicians who wanted the EU to remain abstract and obscure in order to better use it as scapegoat for their own failures.

> Do they follow EU parliamentary proceedings and do they understand how EU law interacts with local law?

Although I didn't vote for Brexit myself, I've spoken to a number of Brexit supporters.

While they might not know the precise details, they know that a "Constitution for Europe" was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, it was changed into a "Reform Treaty" in 2007 which meant most countries' voters didn't get a vote on it, and after Irish voters rejected that, they had to have a second referendum on the same treaty the year after.

They feel they have seen how EU law interacts with local law, and they don't like it.

> While they might not know the precise details, they know that a "Constitution for Europe" was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, it was changed into a "Reform Treaty" in 2007 which meant most countries' voters didn't get a vote on it, and after Irish voters rejected that, they had to have a second referendum on the same treaty the year after.

But that's fine isn't it? After all, if we didn't get a 'Constitution for Europe' (which I'm ambivalent about) the treaty got us most of the benefits and as far as I can see today none of the drawbacks. Those drawbacks that were mentioned did not materialize, which seems to be the case with most EU law: there is an enormous amount of racket about how it will cause problems down the line but that almost never happens.

> They feel they have seen how EU law interacts with local law, and they don't like it.

Given how EU law has kept dutch politicians in line during the last decade or two I'm pretty happy with it. Without EU law NL would arguably in much worse shape re. international trade, privacy, anti-trust, agriculture, climate commitments and a whole bunch of other subjects.

Of course if you're a climate denier or you want to return back to the guilder none of those arguments matter but in general I see far more positives then negatives. Those local politicians that are clamoring the hardest for splitting from the EU bear the most scrutiny: likely their agenda requires a lack of oversight to succeed.

> But that's fine isn't it?

To a Brexit supporter, the French, Dutch and Irish people were all opposed to the constitution/treaty, and other countries would have rejected it as well if their referendums hadn't been cancelled, and yet it was forced through anyway by a body that considers voters an inconvenience to be worked around.

When Brexit supporters call the EU 'undemocratic' this is what they are referring to.

Of course, that's not the only reason for Brexit. British politicians deserve a reasonable portion of the blame; for several decades prior to the vote they could straddle the fence on issues like immigration, by telling people "we can't do anything, it's the EU"

Well, if that's what they believe they are comically misinformed. As it was the main reason that constitution would have been a good thing is that it would - hopefully - create a more level playing field. But the UK already had an exceptional position within the EU, and now it has none, with all of the downsides of being outside of their nearest neighbors and largest trade bloc.

It's going to be a long road back to inclusivity and if and when that happens you can bet that it won't be the nice exceptional situation that was there before.

> Well, if that's what they believe they are comically misinformed.

Ah yes, you've just reminded me of one of the other issues: Some Remain campaigners had difficulty engaging with people who were on the fence about the EU without calling them ignorant yokels.

> It's going to be a long road back to inclusivity and if and when that happens you can bet that it won't be the nice exceptional situation that was there before.

Absolutely agree with you here - Brexit was such a bloodbath politically a UK re-entry won't be on the cards for a generation IMHO.

> Ah yes, you've just reminded me of one of the other issues: Some Remain campaigners had difficulty engaging with people who were on the fence about the EU without calling them ignorant yokels.

In other words: The truth hurt. And out of spite they cut off their own nose. Well, whatever works for them.

> In other words: The truth hurt.

There it is again.

Let's not engage with the person in an economically deprived area who suspects that increasing the supply of workers might lower wages, or the person who's struggling to afford a house who suspects that increased demand for housing might raise prices.

Unfortunately the remain campaign seemed to have very few people who could engage with the substance of such arguments, in the language of the people who hold them - like pointing out a lot of immigrants are working in the construction industry, building more houses.

For every one campaigner who could engage in such discussion convincingly, remain seemed to have ten ready to sneer at such voters' comical ignorance and mutter that they were a closet racist. You can see how that went.

Obviously the villains are the bad faith actors who tried to sell leave no matter what. How do you deal with those?

But people who voted enacted their agency so they don't get a free pass. They let themselves fooled and pulled the trigger. Is it their fault? Who knows. But the ones pulling the trigger don't get a free pass.

Right. I think some people simply prefer less concentration of power. I suspect it boils down to personality, maybe the big five traits largely determine where one sits with respect to freedom/control of other peoples.

Thanks, very nice summary and categorisation. Two nitpicks:

* In my view Switzerland is not doing fine because it is wealthy, it is doing well as it was historically difficult terrain to conquer (thus no one bothered to invade it in most wars) and because today it is surrounded by wealthy democracies, all of which are part of the EU and economically closely integrated with Switzerland through the EU-Switzerland agreements. If France wanted Geneva 'back' it could do so without much resistance, similar to the Russia-Ukraine and China-Taiwan dynamicy but this doesn't fly with the other EU countries looking on.

* I can't think of any EU bureaucrats who got in the news for corruption or similar, rather it always seems to be the national political caste which are then sent to Brussels as representatives. So the parliamentarians and commissioners, all of which are political appointees or get their post based on national party lists, and the political staff they bring along. See Qatargate - all Italian and Belgian politicians and party staff.

Fair point on .ch, yes, the geography really helped. Some questionable banking probably also deserves a mention.

Yes, true, there are plenty of local politicians that 'go to Brussels' and end up exporting their own corruption. The Bureaucrats are for the most part clean, though there have been some cases. One problem is that - just like everywhere else - the oversight body is understaffed.

there's really nothing else to say. nice mic drop.

> the people on the receiving end of the regulations

This sometimes does include the average citizen. In particular various ecodesign rules resulted in household devices being forcibly replaced with versions perceived as inferior (whether justifiedly or not), and most washing machines will default to an EU mode that doesn't work well, takes exactly two hours and 59 minutes, but is more energy efficient.

The EU also has serious problems with a lack of democratic oversight, sometimes leading to legislation that couldn't be passed on a lower level getting reintroduced through the EU "back door" on behalf of either governments or lobbyists. The parliament, for example, doesn't get to propose laws - only the commission does! And by being "far away" from the public eye, bad proposals can often get very far before civil society even realizes they exist.

I still think even the legislative influence is a net positive, and the practical benefits of standardization and open borders are massive, but let's not pretend it's perfect and purely awesome for "the little guy".

I never intended for it to be presented as perfect and on average the little guy sees a lot of return from Brussels.

But there is plenty to be improved still, however, I'm cynical enough to realize this may well be as good as it gets.

You forgot one:

- Don't touch my fish

What does this have to do with the EU? This just sounds like decent regulation.

EU is pretty much all about regulation

Well yes, that's what governments do. They regulate things (it's usually called laws, which the regulations are not called, so it is clear they have to be translated into local law first), they make deals, they coordinate responses. What do you expect the EU to do?

Like eIDAS? That's not very appealing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109494

Regulation can be bad or good. I was stating a fact about what regulations and EU have to do with one another. I believe that EU has big problems however I also believe that it has a much bigger potential. I am also glad that UK left because no one can have preferential treatment.

The EU wants to use this trust relationship to break all encryption.

The EU doesn't want anything. The EU follows the wishes of the governments of the countries as one representation of the will of the people and the parliament as another representation. You want them to not break encryption? Maybe vote for better representatives next time.

> I don't feel confident any browsing data on a Windows machine is private unless you install the above Release Candidate and set your Region to EU to uninstall Edge.

You are still coping thinking you can somehow outplay Microsoft. You can't. Stop using software made by obviously hostile entities.

hey, thanks for clicking on my profile to leave a snarky drive-by comment

you can stop now

You know, people say to fear AI, and maybe yes, maybe no. But I know one thing.

Fear Microsoft.

Decades of Microsoft breaking the law, anticompetitive behavior, and just acting like scum. And openai took their money. Openai is in bed with them. To me, this means openai's intentions are clear.

Because only scum, take money, and partner with scum.

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