I think its a reflection of having govt dominated by lawyers.
Economist and social scientists would see this as a failure of markets, and do some analysis to figure out a balanced approach to create some sort of Laffer curve.
I think going the other direction and allowing a free for all situation with substances would be a problem too.
There is a reason why its in my interest to not have my neighbor stockpile chlorine in his basement.
The best example I can think of is the Israeli govt or the Chinese govt. Where the Israeli govt since they actually have a serious terrorism problem, do not have things like the TSA.
The other problem in the UK is old people who have been brainwashed to believe that drugs/homosexuality are terrible. Its going to take a generational purge for the political needle ( no puns intended ) to move.
There is a reason why its in my interest to not have my neighbor stockpile chlorine in his basement.
What does this have to do with drugs? Maybe some extremely fringe libertarians like the idea of no substances being regulated, but a purist attitude would have to extend even to things like weapons-grade plutonium. Nobody is proposing letting people have chemicals that have to be handled very carefully without following strict procedures.
Drugs can't explode and kill everyone within half a mile, but even with drugs I don't think anyone is advocating for complete anarchy. The most radical serious approach is one where any adult is free to buy whatever drug they want, but not in some kind of "free for all". Particularly addictive drugs, like opiates and meth, might need to be sold by the state. Other drugs could be sold privately but only by professional vendors abiding by a set of regulations.
Any solution that doesn't allow people to get the drugs they want doesn't address the argument that prohibition limits people's right to manipulate their consciousness, which is epistemologically one of the most important things someone can do. The problem of drug availability attracting more users can be solved in ways that don't keep them out of reach of people who have made a well reasoned decision to use them: cigarettes are highly available, but few Americans take up smoking today.
To oversimplify by a lot, Civil/Environmental = urban/industrial (e.g. industrial/municipal wastewater treatment, air pollution), Environmental = agricultural/resources (e.g. soil management, biofuels, soil decontamination for mining/oil).
That's roughly how it was divided at my college, anyway.
In the year 2100, 15 years after I am dead based on my life expectancy.
less than 10% of the world would be of american and European decent.
50% would be Asian and 40% would be African.
When I first heard it, it took me some time to think about what that means.
Think about what history books would read like in the year 2150. It would be sort of surprising to them that that the world was so eurocentric - they would prolly all be of same skin color and of a darker shade. The anti-immigration stance that is becoming so mainstream must feel to them similar to what reading about slavery feels to us.
There is also something much more profound, when we view historical data about dinosaurs or other species we always look at statistics of their representation - essentially out of factors that is outside their control, their is a peaceful extinction of the European gene pool, so you really cannot fault the reactionary response to it. Extinction is also the wrong word to use here, genetically the best features would get absorbed by the human species of all 'race'. Its inevitable but the recent surge in immigration is making people deal with that fact in a very direct way.
The world has always had less Europeans and people of white color skin then other shades, if you took every person in the world and randomly changed their location, it would be a huge shock to most white people that they are surrounded by non-white people. For everyone else seeing an extra white person a year is not as shocking.
The thing that is happening in england is also happening in america but its not as bad because of the sheer size of america.
In England a change in demographics is a lot more noticeable - either it be age, ethnicity, language or religion.
> less than 10% of the world would be of american and European decent.
> 50% would be Asian and 40% would be African.
World population has followed these proportions for most of recorded history.
The true aberration is that the last few hundred years, the West was much richer on a per capita basis than the rest of the world (due to industrialization and colonialism). If India and China manage to continue their growth, then we'll finally see this normalize.
Whites are now a minority in children under five years of age in the United States. Given the prevailing worldwide tower-of-Babel Zeitgeist, there is no reason why the same will not be true in Britain.
Hundreds of generations to build a civilization. A decade or two to squander it away. Disinheritance.
If private endowment wanted to fund those researchers - they would have already done so, since they respond to market forces and not on charity towards North Wales.
The reason why the EU was providing funding was because market forces were unwilling to.
Large Multinationals like Unilever, even for incremental decisions - like changing the type of light bulb, takes years to execute. This is why a large change in their business is so difficult and you need a very good CEO ( ask Marissa Mayer )
The decision UK made to leave the EU is akin for Unilever to switch from selling shampoos to selling software - and we are not talking about a multinational with 100,000 employees. We are talking about an entire country.
The UK -> EU export is 40% but even the rest of the 60% happens through EU treaties with other non-EU countries.
Not only will the EU trade treaty need to be renegotiated, but so does the 50 other trade treaty with other nations - those treaties took a lot of time and over 600+ negotiators to write, the UK only have 30 negotiators and about 2 years.
A reworking of the economy usually results is a lot of unemployment and retraining. Imagine if the C standard library made a small change in some function. Retraining means public investment or as the austerity people put it - deficit spending - not sure how much appetite the UK govt has to do something like that.
Regardless of how much people hate on Java and Oracle - if they suddenly disappeared it would be chaos and lose of GDP for many years before we retool our software on Python/Go etc.
Also there is uncertainty - usually the horizon for bringing new laws into action are declared ahead of time by 4-5 years to give people/businesses time to plan.
I talked to a senior diplomat recently. He said that when talking to diplomats from China, Russia, the US in the beginning of his career some 30 years ago, nobody asked about the EU opinion on issues. In the last 10 years, however, he never heard "what does Britain or France or Germany think about XYZ" but only "What does the EU think".
What some leavers don't realise is that the entire world had gotten used to dealing with the EU as a whole and that the world probably doesn't care that much about what Britain (or England/Wales) thinks about tariffs, terrorism, refugees, wars, human rights, etc.
Britain will have to follow the EU on many issues if it wants access to the common market.
Britain is going from having a very strong voice in a very powerful organisation that the world has to deal with to being a rather small country the world can largely ignore.
So politicians will stop asking "What does the EU think" and go back to asking "What do Germany, France, and the UK think, and are they in agreement"?
The distinction is less important than you think, because the second question gets at the heart of the issue and naturally follows the first. Unlike the US, The EU does not have a strong executive/legislative/judicial (and perhaps more-importantly, a shared language/national history) backbone that ties the member states together.
Also, the UK is still the 5th largest economy in the world by GDP ($2.8T). It may be 1/7 the size of the US economy and 1/4 the size of the Chinese economy, but it's hardly going to be ignored.
I think it's terribly naive to think they'll stop to ask what the EU thinks. They'll keep asking that, and if the UK gets mentioned it will be as an afterthought.
> Also, the UK is still the 5th largest economy in the world by GDP ($2.8T).
But relatively speaking, it's position is weakening year by year, as it's seeing anaemic growth compared to a large number of other economies.
More importantly, we're seeing the rise of more and more trading blocks, at a time when the UK has decided to stand outside. E.g. Africa is going to overtake the UK as a whole shortly. Hardly all that strange given we're talking about more countries than the EU. But ECOWAS - one of the regional pillars of the African Union - is on a trajectory to overtake the UK all on its own sometime in the next couple of decades, and with current growth it is likely more of them will.
It is pretty much inconceivable that the UK will remain 5th over the next decade, and it's looking likely that the UK won't even remain in the top ten over the next two decades, unless something happens to massively increase UK growth.
>I think it's terribly naive to think they'll stop to ask what the EU thinks. They'll keep asking that, and if the UK gets mentioned it will be as an afterthought.
You misunderstand my point. Even if, on the surface, they continue to ask what the "EU" thinks, they'll actually be asking (as they always have) what Merkel, Hollande, and (now) Theresa May think. Greece, Italy, Portugal, etc. don't have a say because they need to keep their heads down and continue to service their debt to the big 3 EU leaders, who clearly don't agree on much, even at the global level (war, trade agreements, etc).
Have you been to Africa? Have you seen the level of infrastructure (education, access to electricity and clean water) relative to violence (civil wars), corruption, and pillaging of resources (western countries, China) that continues to take place across even the most developed African nations?
The UK may not even exit the EU at the end of the day [1]. It's much too early to make such dire predictions for the future of UK growth. I prefer the simple or "naive" view that things will not change much.
[1] A referendum in the UK is not binding on the government of the day; it is advisory. The UK has a government with a slender majority (implying it will be tricky to ram things through parliament), it is looking for a new prime minister (and, possibly, a new leader of the opposition), the referendum result was close (the country is split) and no one seems certain who has the power to get the ball rolling by triggering the “infamous” Article 50.
The real question is, do Eurocrats know what the EU thinks ? My honest guess is, No. We know what Germany thinks, France thinks and Italy thinks. The Supra-state was an interesting exercise, an experiment of sorts that demonstrated the contradictions within Europe are too wide.
EU will die its slow death, Brexit is not the cause, its the catalyst.
I am very concerned that a Europe without the possibility of acting as one entity in the coming globalized world of big players like China and India will have much to say. How will we be able to deal with developments in the Middle East and Africa while the UK cowers away on its island and every one else does whatever they please? All this, while the US places its focus towards the pacific. Is mighty Britain going to stare down the Russians by itself? And I'm not talking about just the military.
The EU sceptics may be smug now but the EU is not some selfserving idea. It's now more relevant than ever.
1. The article clearly states that when calculating GDP, the yearly average exchange rates are used, not the spot rate, as was used for that sensationalist headline.
2. The pound is recovering, and has already climbed back up beyond the point when the calculation in the article was made.
3. 5th or 6th, honestly, what difference does it make? The point is that they're still a major player in the world economy.
The latest polls have shown dramatic drops in anti-EU sentiments after the Brexit poll. If those numbers hold up, on the contrary Brexit may lead to a gear-shift towards more rapid integration of the rest of the EU.
Many feared (and fear) Brexit for it's domino effect against european integration, but recently I'm seeing a silver-lining: EU-ropeans have to stop being complacent and take of euro-cracy for granted because they now know an exit CAN happen, and protest votes (even if only tangentially related to the issues at hand) have irreversible consequences.
So, I for one see the Brexit (the process, not the outcome) as positive to European democracy. The process will (and should) be long and hard to reach a fair outcome to both Britain and EU and voters will learn from this.
The EU is messy by design, despite its obvious democratic-deficits which needs to be tackled by those who believe in european integration. I'd rather have neighbours settle their issues and common goals in a messy, frustrating forum then in the good-old battle-field (military or economic).
The massive fear mongering campaign by pro-EU forces will blow up in their face when the UK continues to do phenomenally well past the New Year. The people don't like being manipulated.
> The massive fear mongering campaign by pro-EU forces will blow up in their face when the UK continues to do phenomenally well past the New Year.
How? Seems to me most of the predicted bad consequences were tied to leaving the EU, which (barring some mutual agreement with the EU on an alternate timetable) happens two years after Article 50 is invoked, which it has not yet been. Why would the UK continuing to do well while it is still in the EU discredit any of the predictions of problems stemming from leaving the EU?
Do you think the restructuring will happen overnight? Don't you think markets take into account expected future outcomes?
The Brexit crash was the beginning. The media told everyone to panic, so everyone sold. Then people realized how irrational that was. Personally, I'm hoping for more liberal-media driven sell offs. They're great opportunities to invest.
The future of the British economy is strong: an educated populace, competitive companies, and a pro-business government. They're going to get a great trade deal with America. They're going to do better than ever before having thrown off the beaurocrats in Brussels.
In response to dragonwriter below (I'm rate-limited):
In two years time is when the tariffs would kick in overnight in the absence of a deal. No company is stupid enough to wait that long to adjust their operations.
> Do you think the restructuring will happen overnight?
No, so actual consequences of leaving will take significant time to be clear after the exit, not be immediately apparent the day Britain finally leaves the EU.
(Which rather reinforces the point that they won't be clear long before Britain leaves the EU.)
> Don't you think markets take into account expected future outcomes?
Yes, but that's just another set of predictions, not actual counterevidence to any conflicting set of predictions.
So, in your view, the UK is doing " phenomenally well" right now? I mean I have read other opinions, including "deep political, social, democratic and economic crisis" and "value of the pound plunges".
If the EU is trying to convince the remaining member states that "leaving is terrible, you should remain", then it's absolutely working:
They're in better shape than almost all of Europe. Germany being the main exception.
And as for today vs a month ago, what's the evidence for that? I see them in a very strong position. The anti-business Labour Party is doing poorly in the polls, and the Conservatives have quickly coalesced around a new leader. The FTSE100 and FTSE250 are doing fine. There's every reason to believe that both Hillary (judging by her policies over time) and Trump (by explicit statement) are eager to sign a great deal with the UK. The future is bright for Britain.
Hey, I added my second paragraph after you responded. I was rate-limited by HackerNews, so I couldn't reply to you directly. I usually explicitly call it out when I'm doing that, but I forgot to this time. This makes your post look quite daft, which is not fair. Sorry about that.
But I don't think that my post looks that daft, actually. There is still political turmoil which might be calming now, and the "The FTSE100 and FTSE250 are doing fine" is true because of the depreciating GBP. Ordinary people are going to see price rises and further uncertainty. Would you honestly say that the UK is in better shape than a month ago?
(my point is that my edit made it look like you didn't read my comment, based on phrasing, not because of how effective I think my argument was)
We'll see what comes of this, but as I said, I think Britain's fundamentals are very strong right now. There's no doubt that Brexit created uncertainty in areas where there was none before; markets hate uncertainty. Britain's trade relations were certainties within the EU, but so were uncontrolled migration and over-regulation. Now, on those and many more issues, the Brits themselves will decide and negotiate. No one is quite sure what they will do, especially after the next election. But if Britain makes the right choices, and at least for now I think they have leadership that's inclined to make those right choices, I believe that they will do better than they could have within the EU.
I stand by every single comment in this thread. The UK is doing well and I think they will continue to do so, fluctuations in the exchange rate and stock market notwithstanding. I'd stand by that even if they entered a small recession.
> The UK is doing well and I think they will continue to do so
The likely dissolution of the political entity currently known as the UK, more formally the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" would preclude it "doing well", not so?
I don't think there's gonna be another referendum soon. The EU referendum was already on the table during the Scottish referendum. The people of Scotland knew the risk. Everyone was loudly saying that these were once-in-a-generation votes.
Now of course, if support for Scottish independence consistently polls at over 60% for years, that's a different story. But I think that pro-independence forces are likely to weaken as Brexit proves to have been a good move.
Or not, in which case England loses 5 million people (England is 53 million btw) and some oil. On the plus side, they'd shake off a chunk of the electorate that seems to be set on economic suicide by socialism.
> I don't think there's gonna be another referendum soon.
> The EU referendum was already on the table during the Scottish referendum. The people of Scotland knew the risk.
Incorrect, it was sold as the other way around: Scotland must stay in the UK or it might be out of the EU. You are detached from reality. A second Scottish referendum is likely.
I know little of Britain's political system. If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit before then?
It's not clear if they'll be waiting until the end of the year.
David Cameron said he was going to wait for his replacement to start Article 50, and he would step down in October. Now that he's announced that he's stepping down tomorrow, we'll have a new prime minister much more quickly than anticipated. That might mean Article 50 could be coming within the next few weeks/months.
As there are already legal challenges to whether the PM can declare Article 50 without a new Act of Parliament [1] and that Parliament goes into Summer recess on July 21st until 5th September [2] then struggling to see how we're going to start much before end of September at the earliest.
> If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit before then?
Britain could have national votes every week if the Government decided to hold them, but the government seems disinclined to have another referendum on Brexit.
Technically yes. But I imagine that if they did everyone would be incensed and vote leave - to send a message. Whoever was in power at the time would be hoisted out in short order.
What makes you think that? The vote was met with such shock that it has re-raised the prospect of Scottish independence, and caused calls for referendums on Ireland, and has triggered the start of a small movement for independence for London (yes, most of the people who signed the change.org petition probably did it as a joke/out of anger, but there are groups organising more serious endeavours), and the signals all over the place is drastic increased devolution for London to placate anger here.
More than 4 million people signed a petition for a new referendum
On top of that we now know that most of the promises from the leave camp were flat out lies, and they've basically been shown to not have the faintest idea what they want to achieve.
I'm sure some would switch and vote leave out of spite, but frankly I don't think the vote was fair or democratic to begin with - it presented a false choice, in that "leave" could campaign on anything under the sun, with contradicting ideas about what leaving actually meant, and we see now the problems that causes: Did the 52% want EEA membership? Did they want full on isolationism? Something in between? We don't know. And we don't know how the results would be if they had to pick a specific option, but it is highly unlikely that they'd be unchanged.
It's sort of like D&D. Everyone in the country had rolled their character. Assume one roll of a D20. People who rolled 13+ were doing OK in life. 19s and 20s were rich. 1 to 12s are poor.
Cameron (our DM) came along and gave us all a free re-roll.
People with 10 or less voted yes. 11 - 15 were about 50/50 depending on risk aversion. 16 - 20 voted no.
The numbers are almost always going to sway in favour of change, there are too many people down at the bottom.
Sure, more options on how to leave would have been amazing, left-exit was interesting, green-exit was also interesting. Right-racist-exit was bonkers, but people liked it.
But remember that remain-the-same and remain-and-re-negotiate had both been tried. And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.
Next time you're in an Oxfam shop look at us. Picking over dead man suits for our next job interview. The shame of it. Jobs gone. High streets gone. Only option is to move to London away from elderly parents, our kids, our friends.
And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.
Yep.
Except for one teeny weeny insignificantly minor detail: these things have nothing whatsoever to do with the EU, and everything to do with the austerity/de-industrialization policies of neo-liberal UK governments, primarily Tory, but to a somewhat less extent also New-Labour.
And the EU was, if anything, a counter to those forces, with structural funds, with labor standards, with investments by non-UK firms in the de-industrialized parts of the UK for access to the common market etc.
And leaving the EU will make these things worse.
So voting against the EU to protest these conditions is not even cutting off your nose to spite your face, it's cutting off your nose to spite someone else's face!
While it deserves the word "pathetic" I can't bring myself to it. It really is just sad. Very, very sad.
There probably should have been some more options on the paper, seeing as how people voted Leave for many disparate reasons and with many disparate ideas (or no idea at all) of what to do instead, and there is no way to keep all of them happy.
In fact there may be no way to keep any of them happy, since apparently many of them voted Leave for impossible/EU-unrelated reasons: to keep non-EU immigration down; to spend money we won't even have on the NHS; because they don't like what the UK government has been doing and will keep doing outside the EU with even greater impunity, etc.
"Pathetic" 1. Arousing sadness, compassion, or sympathy, esp. through vulnerability or sadness; pitiable.
Seems fair enough. "Name-calling"?
"Rich people": I work for a university as support staff. I earn under the median UK wage and surely well under the median HN wage. We've had deeper and deeper cuts year on year for the past several years and post-Brexit an even bigger chunk of our budget looks like disappearing along with our best academics and researchers, not to mention other support staff, foreign language teachers/cataloguers/negotiators, etc. Education and research careers have been a route into the middle class for many and it's a shame to see that threatened - even more of a shame when the people who voted for it, the press, politicians have hardly even acknowledged it's a problem.
But have fun assuming that only rich people are interested in science or can get any benefit from cooperating with colleagues elsewhere in Europe...
"Welcome to the real world" - I know, right! Though I should point out that this is my first post on this thread, so I'm not the people you were talking to earlier. Perhaps they have reasons you'd like better.
And I still think it's a crying shame to flush science, research and education in this country down the toilet just for the sake of waving two fingers at some unknown bureaucrats and uncaring politicians, whether I get paid or not.
To address the description of the source of the problem offered upthread? Voting against the people actually responsible for the problems in UK elections (general elections and otherwise.)
If the problem is in Westminster, voting against the EU does nothing to solve the problem.
So when you are upset with a specific person, do you also randomly punch someone else who happens to be nearby?
If you are unhappy with what the UK government is doing, and the things you say you are unhappy about are 100% UK gov, not EU, then the time to "vote the bums out" is the UK general election.
Really having a hard time figuring out what you were/are trying to accomplish.
The problem is that it is not at all clear how many would have voted leave if they knew what specific version they would get. It's not as easy as saying these options have been tried (and as someone else pointed out: only certain variations have been tried - most of these issues are down to domestic politics), because people who voted because they believed in "left-exit" may very well have preferred to remain rather than end up with "right-racist-exit" for example:
One side was allowed to sell a fairy-tale that was customised for each recipient, while the other had to deal with reality. The fairy-tales may have been appealing, but only one of them can even potentially become reality.
The reality is that we're ending up with something that nobody voted for, because it hasn't been put together yet. The only thing we do know is that it won't look like any of the promises, because most them have already been shown to be lies.
As it stands, remaining is the most democratic option, as it is the only promised alternative that actually exist and that we have an indicator of the level of support for, and the only option that doesn't rule out substantial subsets of the others later on.
Barring that, many of us will do what we can to minimise the ability for the Leave voters to harm us, by fighting for independence.
> And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.
And I respect that a lot of people got it hard. But none of that has anything to do with the EU, and everything to do with the same governments that have been lying to you for decades (and yes, I include New Labour in that).
Brexit is going to affect those of us who are most angry about this least in most respects. I can deal with the economic fallout. I'll benefit from the housing market collapsing, as we can afford to take advantage of it. The impending interest rate drop means I will now pay less on my mortgage per month than I had budgeted with paying per week when we took it out before the financial crisis.
Meanwhile those in the most precarious situations are likely to get hit by slowdowns coupled with the effects of a government that doesn't give a shit about them.
And with the EU gone, a bunch of regulations that have prevented successive UK governments from stepping all over you will be gone.
If this country doesn't get ripped apart by independence movements, it will be torn apart through anger that'll make the winter of discontent seems like a polite garden party at the current rate when people realise the effects of Brexit.
How would you know if your vote would count for anything? If the people voted OUT and the government ignored it who's to say what other votes they will ignore.
This has been debated to death, 99% of politicians agree that the vote is cast, let's move on.
By this argument we'd only hold elections once, and move on.
A central aspect of a democracy is that people are allowed to change their mind, and that people are allowed to continue to campaign for a decision to be overturned.
So no, we won't move on. Even after a Brexit we won't move on - some of us will fight to rejoin, some of us will work for independence (for my part, I've offered to help one of the groups starting to work for independence for London).
But this is not over, even it if takes breaking the UK apart to finish it.
There isn't going to be a Britain to have that vote. Scotland is leaving and the Brexit vote has reraised the spectre of terrorism in Northern Ireland.
> Not only will the EU trade treaty need to be renegotiated, but so does the 50 other trade treaty with other nations - those treaties took a lot of time and over 600+ negotiators to write, the UK only have 30 negotiators and about 2 years.
The UK hasn't done their own trade negotiations for over 30 years. The EU has. They haven't got the right people with the right experience to do this (yet). They need to hire the best they can, or outsource, in order to get things in place within the deadline once the UK parliament has voted the referendum result through and Article 50 is submitted.
It is going to be tight. I imagine that Whitehall is in a shit storm right now.
The EU has done an extremely bad job of signing trade deals. Much smaller countries have managed to do a much better job. I wouldn't look at the EU and say "we need the same setup" because the EU deliberately makes it hard for itself to sign deals by insisting that they try to satisfy 28 different countries simultaneously, who don't use the same language and which all have their own random domestic priorities to handle.
I've actually read trade deals. The idea that there's only a handful of people in the world who can negotiate these things is ridiculous.
Could you provide some examples of countries striking better trade deals.
Its also two things negotiators and knowing your strengths.
The world's best negotiators wont be able help you very much if you do not have much to offer.
Also I am skeptical of your assertion that anyone could write trade deals. It requires a very deep understanding of economics, international finance, geopolitics and a bunch of other topics - I would say being able to be a good trade negotiator is a lot more difficult than being a programmer and has far more profound consequences.
Chile is a good example. More deals, better (more often including services) and earlier.
Like I said, I've read trade deals. One I actually read almost from start to finish (the recent WTO deal on upgrading customs rules, I forgot the specific name).
If Chile can sign trade deals with much bigger economic powers, much more quickly than the EU can, I see no reason why the UK would be unable to. Can you justify your assertion that trade negotiation is much harder than programming, or is that just a feeling?
Signing deals fast is easy. Signing deals that cover everything is easy. It's useless to talk about this without analysing what actual benefits they get out of them.
What do you think is better about Chile's trade deals compared to, say, the UK's access to the common market? The UK's trade deal with the EU was surely more powerful than Chile's relationship to the US.
It's not in the EU's interest to have a free trade agreement with China; the US doesn't have one either.
China pursues a mercantilist strategy in many respects. Take steel, for example: unrestricted trade with China would wreak havoc on Germany's steel industry, with potential knock-on effects further along the value chain - and there's no guarantee that China would keep steel prices low after predatory pricing.
Are you saying "any trade deal is better than no trade deal?". Just because the EU doesn't have one with China doesn't mean Switzerland's deal is better.... than a deal that doesn't exist.
I think it was BBC that said that UK government has literally just 6(yes, six) people who have any sort of experience in international trade negotiations, since UK hasn't done it alone in so long.
Even if the UK had the people to start trade negotiations right this second, they're not allowed to until they leave the EU and it takes years to negotiate such an agreement.
It would take decades for the UK to catch up to the EU on trade agreements again, if they ever do.
The UK can negotiate deals before exit, just under EU law it can't sign them.
However, why obey EU rules when you're about to leave? The only reason to do this would be to leave on good terms. But the EU sees Brexit as a betrayal that must be punished severely to try and scare other countries into not leaving. There are no "good terms" by their choice, not the UK's.
So the UK should start immediately violating whatever EU rules are convenient to do so, once Article 50 is invoked.
The EU is a huge group of people with a huge range of opinions on Brexit. It's not clear at all that the EU will try to inflict as much damage as possible. It wouldn't be a very good idea either because that would hurt the EU as well. There's almost certainly going to be a compromise of some kind.
I doubt any trade agreements the UK might be able to get, would be worth the backlash of turning the EU into an enemy. Especially considering that anyone the UK would want to trade with, probably doesn't also want to harm their relationship to the EU. That last point alone probably ensures that nobody is going to start trade discussions with the UK anyway until after they leave.
I wish I could agree. For me to agree I'd have to believe the people who control the EU are representative of the people they rule and are willing to compromise.
However they have already shown very clearly that they aren't like that. Given the total absence of compromise previously I see no reason to expect any now, unless quite a few of the current leaders of the Commission and EU countries are removed.
The EU will use whatever tactics it can to preserve its own power, national populations be damned.
Nowadays, not so much. Perhaps that's Juncker, or perhaps it's the fact that it's now so large. See how Cameron's negotiation went (or rather, didn't).
Besides, most of the compromises were simply not forcing the UK to do new things. That's only seen as a compromise because the EU is run by people who believe every member should be forcibly 'harmonised' through automatic implementation of new EU laws. If the EU was more like a standards body that simply recommended laws instead of mandating their implementation, there would be no need for allowing alternatives to be seen as "compromise"
If you don't mandate implementation, you don't have a level playing field; you have a race to the bottom on everything from tax levels to working laws to product standards. Game theoretically, everybody loses in a race to the bottom.
There would be no point in an EU that couldn't mandate laws.
The EU does not control tax law, yet apparently lots of people believe it still has a point. The EU cannot mandate tax or worker rights outside of the EU either. So the only way to stop a "race to the bottom" is to become entirely protectionist and go full North Korea.
Suffice it to say, the EU could have taken many structures that are not the one it has now.
> If the EU was more like a standards body that simply recommended laws instead of mandating their implementation, there would be no need for allowing alternatives to be seen as "compromise"
\
Then why have an EU?
The problem for the UK is that they always want have all the benefits but they don't want all the duties.
The UK is not being punished by the EU. The UK punched itself a bloody nose and a few teeth out before jumping into the horse trading, shark pool that is international diplomacy.
There are lots of small favours that the UK will now need to hand out to get what it wants from EEA member states. These favours will cost. Its loosing a institute or a foundation there.
Its clear that the UK benefited a lot economically from being in the single market and regaining access under new agreements is going to be costly. That is not punishment. That is the real world, the UK ate its cake no one is going to give it a new one for free.
I really don’t mind the brexit voters, them I understand. I can’t understand how a conservative party launched itself in the most revolutionary course imaginable over internal politics. Not just reversing 40 years of slow progress in one direction but burning it all down to the ground. Over a very badly phrased referendum.
I think Cameron will go down in history as a terrible PM, a modern day Chamberlain.
When that treaty is merely "you cannot sign trade deals" I don't think people signing trade deals would care. That rule exists for the EU's benefit, not for the benefit of member states.
Thats not the point of deals - merely convincing your prospective trade partner that a deal is unfair to you at that time is a hard sell.
The UK signed the deal knowing the consequences of it, why would another country sign a trade deal with you knowing that you will not follow the terms due to your countries internal politics ?
Why would anyone in the EU want to negotiate or do anything other than stall until the UK is under WTO rules? Wouldn't they want the UK in as weak a position as possible?
No. This is the zero-sum mentality that has been causing the EU such serious economic problems.
Trade creates wealth and wealth is not zero sum. Trade deals get signed because all parties involved believe it will be to their mutual benefit. Why would you want to sign a trade deal with a weak country? It is self-defeating: you would get little out of it.
Parts of the EU establishment seem locked in a mindset that they can only grow by taking things away from others. I saw a lot of discussion post-Brexit by countries that want to abuse regulatory passporting to try and force banks and other high-earning firms into other EU countries, but no discussion at all about making those countries naturally more attractive. It's the equivalent of saying "We will grow our economy by forcing Facebook to relocate its HQ from Silicon Valley to France by passing a regulation saying they must do so". Even if you brought overwhelming political and economic power to bear and somehow forced the Zuck to move to Paris, it'd just be a terrible idea for all sorts of long term reasons.
> Trade deals get signed because all parties involved believe it will be to their mutual benefit.
I think that's optimistic. Deals get signed fundamentally because each side individually benefits. A better deal will see the weaker partner able to grow as a result, but that's not necessary for it to be worthwhile to the stronger partner.
> Why would you want to sign a trade deal with a weak country? It is self-defeating: you would get little out of it.
There's always a stronger and a weaker player at the table. It might take some fiddling to work out which is which, and it's certainly not limited to a single axis, but deals still happen.
> abuse regulatory passporting
I don't see that as abuse, that's just playing the game with the pieces that are on the board. From France's point of view, given the choice between a quick zero-sum win where they gain the limited number of banks available and a long-term mutual win where everyone grows, why not do both?
usually the horizon for bringing new laws into action are declared ahead of time by 4-5 years to give people/businesses time to plan.
There's a legal requirement as part of the Lisbon treaty that as soon as a country invokes Article 50 (leaving the EU) they have 2 years to negotiate treaties with all parties involved, after which all existing EU treaties with that country cease to apply. That means, from the day the government invokes Article 50, there is a maximum of 2 years access to EU funding for any science project in the UK. Any project that will take longer than that has pretty much zero chance of getting funded in the first place. Given the fact that Theresa May might invoke Article 50 on Thursday, getting a long term project funded is going to be impossible.
She's said she won't invoke article 50 before the end of the year, so there's a little breathing room at least.
> "What is important is that we do this in the right timescale and we do it to get the right deal for the UK," Ms May told ITV television, reiterating that she would not trigger the article this year.)
Europe and Antarctica are the only two continents on Earth to see no net positive growth to their economies in the last few decades. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to put such economic under-performance down to at least in part the frankly outdated 70s era customs union that the EU is based on.
China recently rated the UK as the number one soft power in the world [1] ... rather than just judging countries on the size of their economy, "soft power" is a measure of a countries ability to achieve its aims through diplomacy and influence. The UK has links of language, culture, trade and kinship across the globe dating back to the time of Empire.
Unshackled from the failing trade block of the EU I don't see any reason why the UK couldn't carve out a very acceptable niche for itself operating again as an independent sovereign nation.
This wasn't a corporate decision just based on raw economic numbers. This was a decision based on principle rather than pragmatism. It's democracy in action, and sometimes it's messy.
China recently rated the UK as the number one soft power in the world[1] .
Hmm...the article does not say that China is the source of the ratings: "compiled by Portland, a London-based PR firm".
Let me repeat that: a London-based PR firm rates Britain highly. In other news, the pope says vatican tops in catholicism and the US president thinks US is the greatest.
In addition, "Britain scored highly in its “engagement” with the world, [..] its diplomats staffing the largest number of permanent missions to multilateral organisations".
Hmm...
And finally: "But many of the assets that pushed Britain to the top of the soft-power table are in play. In the next couple of years the country faces a referendum on its membership of the EU; a slimmer role for the BBC, its prolific public broadcaster; and a continuing squeeze on immigration, which has already made its universities less attractive to foreign students. Much of Britain’s hard power was long ago given up. Its soft power endures—for now."
You are obviously correct in that this decision was not based on pragmatism (which seems very un-britsh to me). Your post also illustrates what the decision was actually based on: misinformation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think that the reaction will be simply to adopt minimal changes in the short term in ways in which Euro treaties and laws are brought wholesale onto Westminster statute books. Significant change will only occur over time and limbo is to be avoided where possible - not just for the UK, but for everyone else as well. This is the only thing that would make sense even if everything was planned and orderly, which I think we can all agree is not the case.
I think you're underestimating the psychological aspect of Brexit. We Europeans feel betrayed and abandoned by the Brits. Especially since they always demanded and got special deals on everything EU-related anyway. Their arrogance will finally get to them. Plus we have access to another 27 countries so the loss will not be huge for us.
No matter when official negotiations start, trade and other collaboration will start declining immediately. I mean, why would I go on vacation to a place where I'm not welcome? Why would I do business with a country where risks are high and benefit low?
From an EU leadership perspective, in order to deter other potential exits the conditions will be harsh. After the exit UK will have to stand in the back of the line for new negotiations, lower priority than e.g. Turkey and Ukraine. Within 10 years or so things might have normalised but in the short term Britain will absolutely suffer because of this.
I think this will happen to some extent, even if just as a result of uncertainty that prevails when nobody knows what the formal situation will be. There is a range of European sentiment, but for sure a lot of disappointment.
All countries in the EU have a keen idea of their self interest at all times, and the UK is no exception. The national interest here has always been wholehearted participation in the single market deepening and expansion and little interest at all in the larger political project, which did not exist when the UK joined the EEC. "Special deals" do not fairly characterise the relationship.
I don't think that EU leaders have an urge to make the UK suffer that is dominant over the desire to have good neighbours and a healthy, stable future. We have all done well out of the relationship and we want to prosper together in the future. Europe needs wholehearted cooperation on the issues that unite us, and that needs good faith and an appreciation of what we still have.
It's very likely he is a remainer, considering the nature of this forum.
Stats show there was (is?) a clear divide between leave and remain along geographical, age, and class boundaries, which are most certainly correlated with higher education and/or interest in technical subjects.
> I think that the reaction will be simply to adopt minimal changes in the short term in ways in which Euro treaties and laws are brought wholesale onto Westminster statute books
Assuming countries are willing to grant the UK alone the same terms as the EU as a whole, and don't (ab)use this chance to negotiate a better situation for themselves.
If I am not mistaken - individual countries are not willing to negotiate trade treaties before the UK invokes article 50.
Even if by some miracle Theresa May decides to withhold invoking article 50 before creating new treaties using back channels with the 50 other trading partners of the UK, it wont be possible to enact them until the UK leaves the EU
and negotiates a new trade deal with the EU.
Not precisely. The idea is that no discussions about anything will occur before Article 50 is invoked. Article 50 kicks off negotiations for the practicalities of leaving the EU. After that, and only after that, negotiations for UK's following status are supposed to take place.
Neither of these conditions are in the interest of the EU or the UK if talks are to be amicable and realistic. Amicable and realistic talks are very much in the interests of all concerned - and I guess from the EU point of view, the leadership resolution in the UK could have been a lot worse. The rules are meant to discourage les autres, but there is little appetite at the moment for other countries to flirt with leaving. Also rhetoric is beginning to calm down as well - no more calls for immediate Article 50 invocation and UKIP have faded into the background a little.
"Neither of these conditions are in the interest of the EU or the UK if talks are to be amicable and realistic."
Well, that's your opinion. EU officials and heads of government appear to disagree with your view of what's best for them, having consistently and unerringly insisted that there will be NO negotiations whatsoever until Article 50 is invoked.
Except that this is not the case. In the last week, already, we have had senior government officials from several member countries recognising that this is not a realistic stance. And the foreign secretary explicitly mentions that UK is having precisely these conversations.
The new administration is setting up a brexit department and accumulating expertise necessary to start negotiations. Talk is of article 50 invocation by year end (I think).
In the last week, already, we have had senior government officials from several member countries recognising that this is not a realistic stance.
Citation needed.
I have never seen this, and a quick check reveals the opposite:
"Ms Merkel added: “We have spoken to Britain and made clear there will be no negotiations with Britain until they have made their application, and there will be no cherry picking.”"
The EU will not really negotiate using back channels, the only miracle the UK can hope for is that it would be deemed that a full vote in both houses is needed to invoke Article 50 and hopefully it would fail.
I agree with everything you say about the economics of the situation, but ours is the omly industry I know of where inability to make enough money to pay for a sufficient workforce translates into a workforce shortage. A cattle rancher isn't going to compalain about a "ranchhand shortage" if she can't afford to pay enough to attract them.
It is not. The rancher would just hire an illegal immigrant often and it happens all the time on farms and restaurants. It doesn't fly in office environments and in positions where the salary cant just disappear in the books.
Secondly, only the technology industry has a massive pipeline of overseas workers available...so naturally there is constantly a "shortage" as a means to increase the pipeline of overseas workers.
I'm not saying NOT to hire overseas workers. I'm saying to be honest about it. Say -- we refuse to pay market wages and would rather that new graduates not find work than pay them a living wage for the Bay Area, instead we'll hire offshore workers desperate to flee their countries and willing to shack up 3 to a studio apartment.
The whole thing is based on unrealistic expectations. People work somewhere in the Bay Area, or launch a startup there; it's one of the most expensive areas in the country, maybe the world. Then they don't want to pay enough so that there is no shortage of employees.
So then the talk turns to bringing in H1Bs who will work for the low end of the "prevailing" (Ha!) salary.
Why don't these companies cut to the chase and just open an office in India? Or have the entire operation there?
Or are some of them actually not trying to change the world by delivering better toast to your door, and they just want to live in the Bay Area?
It's a form of off shoring. They create a fake shortage, lobby for more H1Bs, pay the national average for fair market, which is laughably low for the Bay Area, and there you have it. The tech shortage sponsored by Facebook...
This is untrue in my experience as the equivalent in an office environment to hiring an illegal immigrant would be subcontracting a 'job' to either a staffing agency whose H1B employees get paid piecemeal and billed out for different amounts. I've also worked with independent contractors who if you added up their low pay on the level, wouldn't be making adequate pay.
Heck, I've worked contract jobs through staffing agencies trying to make end meets and had the job location charge for parking which would be reimbursed 3 months later. Good luck getting ur money if you are working the next job and can't afford the time to follow up for that check.
There are plenty of ways companies dance around the same entity of illegal immigrant wages.
The system of usury against land ensures that land costs adapt to absorb all available income after food/clothing/energy costs have been accounted for.
Why is silicon valley more expensive to rent in? Because people came with money and the banks agreed to loan at a multiple of the new wage ceiling.
If wages increase x4 guess what will happen?
We need to stop banks creating debt to issue against land otherwise it will always absorb all income. And therefore all productivity gains flow to the land owner.
Bay area is infamous for many housing supply constraints in regulations. As far as loans increasing the demand side, banks can be pretty strict with %20 down payment restrictions. Which is why once houses go out of the dual income high earner price range ($1-1.5 million), you start seeing it overflow to other less desirable regions in the bay area.
Which given that land is limited (you can only go so far out before you are in another place) then the price of the building will increase. It is possible to end up in a situation where even very wealthy workers cannot afford to rent within hours of a city. Sydney, Melbourne, London and Vancouver are examples where this is starting to happen.
it has not happened yet but it is certainly pricing many out at lower ends of the income scale.
Because supply and demand. High salaries attract a lot of people to the bay and communities systematically refuse to build new housing to meet the demand so the price goes up.
You can do whatever you want to the banks but that won't change the fundamental of 2X people trying to live in X houses.
No, many hot-spots have large rentier presence including people "owning" and renting out multiple residencies which causes huge supply pressure.
Credit also typically increases ahead of wages which squeezes people further.
This isn't supply of people vs supply of homes, this is supply of credit. If you neutralise this you will see prices fall and be paying less of your labour to banks.
2008 - the credit taps ran dry => huge crash. Before that near unlimited credit saw land prices increase hugely. Neither on the up or the down did we see wages have such volatility.
I don't know why it is outrageous to say the solution to high rent is to build more.
We shouldn't worry about "squeezing" people out. Ours is a HUGE nation. We have A LOT of natural resources and there is no reason why we can't let people build more (outside of protected areas, of course).
People who are "priced out" should move to places where rent costs less. I keep hearing about property owners having enough political clout to block further development, depressing supply. They placate existing residents with tiny portions of rent-controlled apartments.
I fail to see how "gentrification" is a problem at all in the bigger scheme of things.
I don't think people renting out more places is a problem. If landlords hold supply out of the market to prop up prices, we can discourage such actions with a more dynamic property tax that places a realistic tax burden on under occupied or unoccupied property.
All that being said, we definitely need to figure out some way to peoperly educate people about personal finance.
I'm not arguing not to build more I'm simply arguing with the notion that the main problem is one of supply and demand. It is not, there are other problems in the mix including taxing labour not land.
> there are other problems in the mix including taxing labour not land
I agree to some extent. Property (land) taxes have to be high enough to discourage people from leaving it unused. I have no problems with fully replacing personal income tax but I'm not an expert and I have no idea if we can realistically raise the same tax revenue from land tax alone.
>> People who are "priced out" should move to places where rent costs less
It is a huge nation, but one where 70% of the tech jobs are stuck in SF/SV. I can move to Lincoln Nebraska and pay $400/mo in rent, but I sure as heck wont find an employer seeking a python job.
Clearly people are where the jobs are and price pressures respond accordingly. What fuels those price pressures are, IMHO:
1. banks creating near unlimited credit against land which at best eclipses productivity gains leaving workers no better off and rentiers collecting all the gains
2. the rest of the population working out that the game is rigged and piling into real-estate speculation as the only game in town.
I'd have expected someone in a country with a crippling house price bubble in many cities to get this.
Rents can only increase if the supply is limited compared to the demand. Anything that decreases supply why demand is high will only increase prices. The solution is to either increase supply or decrease demand for housing.
I guess they didn't get the memo on this in all the pre 2008 countries where supply was being added like crazy and so was credit and prices rose before a huge crash.
It's very naive to think that this is simply any one factor, especially supply and demand alone.
The complication with the supply/demand story is speculation. What happened pre-2008 was demand was artificially boosted by speculators (i.e. a bubble). The true demand for housing didn’t change much, but the speculative demand for housing driven by rising prices and cheap money increased massively. The downside of all speculative bubbles is when they pop.
The best way to avoid speculative run ups in prices (and subsequent crashes) is effective taxation. Of course taxation of land is not popular with the rich and powerful as it can’t be avoid.
Exactly. Forcing supply below demand through zoning restrictions does help, but once speculation begins this hurts supply also.
It amazes me on HN where on most other complex behavioural problems if someone came along and shouted "it's because of X" they would be laughed out to cries of "it's more complicated than just one thing".
Yet when it comes to millions of people with varying priorities interacting with government and the banks anyone who comes up with anything more complex than "it's supply and demand" is told "no, I've done econ 101 thank you".
Hacker news can't be bothered with Georgism, they've done econ 101 syllabus (provided by their establishment).
Not at all. We know in hindsight that the pre-2008 run up in prices was a bubble, but at the time this was debatable. I am just trying to explain to the OP that prices are set by supply and demand, but that demand may not always be rational.
Personally I do think it is a good idea to try and avoid speculative bubbles in assets and the best way to do this is via taxation.
Markets can stay irrational for a while, however the crash was a direct result of over supply. Land is plentiful and city's only have reduculys prices through poor infrastructure or artificially reduced development.
Land is plentiful. Land with the correct planning permission is not.
Credit however is not constrained except by a willingness to borrow and on the up this is near-unlimited. Fortunes are made not by doing but by speculating and then at the end the workers pick up the tab.
Would love to know how anyone could downvote this!
Come on, let's hear how rents are not tied to wages in a thread about remote working providing higher wages than the local area but lower wages than the hot-spot.
This seem to be exactly how it works. A lot of states and countries have tried to fix the problem by introducing housing benefits – but guess who, in the end, gets that money?
> many startups cannot afford to pay 400K to developers
It's a good point, but I wouldn't expect a construction company that could only pay 20% of cost to hire cranes to complete many buildings.
So maybe startups in that bracket just aren't viable under their current models. Maybe they need to rethink their salary/equity mix to make up for lack of cash.
I have seen a few with AR15s near South Kensington Station.
Got really scared since in my head they could just point it towards me and press a button to end my life in a really painful way.
My daughter's school is right near there so I am familiar with their presence. The reason you see them around is the nearby Lycée Français Charles De Gaulle and a few embassies like Yemen, Venezuela, etc. They are not there often, and usually only when there is terrorist activity in France.
There are embassies in the area, but Kensington Palace is nowhere near the South Kensington station. The borough of Kensington & Chelsea is a somewhat elongated rectangle with the palace on the northern end at Hyde Park and the south end at the Thames.
Economist and social scientists would see this as a failure of markets, and do some analysis to figure out a balanced approach to create some sort of Laffer curve.
I think going the other direction and allowing a free for all situation with substances would be a problem too.
There is a reason why its in my interest to not have my neighbor stockpile chlorine in his basement.
The best example I can think of is the Israeli govt or the Chinese govt. Where the Israeli govt since they actually have a serious terrorism problem, do not have things like the TSA.
The other problem in the UK is old people who have been brainwashed to believe that drugs/homosexuality are terrible. Its going to take a generational purge for the political needle ( no puns intended ) to move.