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Comment by llm_trw | Hacker News Reader

The EU started as the European Coal and Steel Community which explains most of the beurocracy its saddled with.

It’s like saying the US started as a colony and that explains the lack of its progressive democracy and having a static constitution.

Just because something started as X doesn’t mean that evolution didn’t happen. The reasons for the bureaucracy are a lot and different but come down to power sharing between the stakeholders.

There were two revolutions in the US that changed its politic course significantly. The EU has always been a beurocracy first.

Bureaucracy.

The EU is the European Union. 500 million humans.

This legislation is a win for the common person. Trying to portray as foisted upon the public from on high = a propaganda twist too far.

So why not hold a referendum on it?

Because most people have little knowledge about the EU and are easily influenced. Direct democracy doesn't work well because of that if you ask me

So you'd say it has to be foisted on the common woman from up high?

Wasn't there a war in the US because of leaving states? ;-) How was that "referendum"?

Advancements are always foisted upon the common man without their consent.

You are simply confirming the parent's counter-take that the US starting as a colony was such a big influence that despite hundreds of years and 2 revolutions the US still lacks progressive democracy.

That's a very simplistic view.

I was answering another very simplistic view

I wasn't responding to your comment.

I mean, the fact that part of the country was started as a resource extraction colony, and another part was started as an experiment in puritanical religious extremism seems in retrospect to have been a bad sign.

Of course, lots of things seem portentous in retrospect, if we look back on the path we took, of course it turns out we passed lots of signposts pointing in our current direction.

While this is true, the idea behind this was not merely to collaborate on coal and steel production. The intention from the very beginning was that such tight economic coupling would make war impossible.

Germany has the idea of "Wandel durch Handel" (change through trade)[1], which is essentially that you can prevent and make war non-viable and eventually even change countries to follow democratic norms. The EU is the most extreme version of this.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandel_durch_Handel

"Schumann declaration", 1950:

"By pooling basic production and by instituting a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and other member countries, this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace."

The European Federation was the goal.

"a European federation" != "The European Federation"

How do coal and steel production imply a high bureaucratic load?

The ECSC (Treaty of Paris, 1951) started as one of the first projects for cooperation in post-WW2 Europe. The more important step towards as single market then was the EEC (-> Treaty of Rome, 1957).

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

How do coal and steel explain bureaucracy? Sounds non-sequitur-ish.

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