Brexit the economy and house prices part 7: Brexit Harder

buglawton

Herzlos wrote: »

The collapse of Rome is an interesting one; they certainly outgrew their sphere of influence and it became unmanageable, but would the same happen in a more connected modern world?
We can travel from one end of the empire to the other in a single digit number of hours. We can send messages in seconds that may have taken weeks to arrive previously. We can talk in real time and make perfect copies of documents.


Indeed, but I'm just trying to explore the whole "EU dictatorship angle". EU forcing us to enact laws we don't want was one of the more valid leave claims. It seems to me a bit like the trade deals thing; going it alone sounds good in theory but no-one has any practical suggestions as to why.

I'd be a lot more suggestive to these claims if anyone making them had anything to back them up.

Good points about the disappearance of distance in the modern connected world.

Thing is, other things have changed too. Distance has also relatively disappeared to all other points of the globe and to new potential trade partners in areas growing faster than the EU.

But also, the amount of complexity, a central authority taking with one hand and giving back with another, has grown exponentially within the EU. Another whole layer opportunity for fraud and waste with poor transparency exists because of the EU.

LHW99

After we fought back against the Romans the UK quickly reverted and lost all the advances that the Romans bought.

Not sure that is the whole story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/late_01.shtml


"With the withdrawal of imperial authority, Roman Britain did not magically cease to exist. In fact, the emperor had lost control several years before. Britain had long been a bolt-hole for pretenders to the imperial purple, and in times of crisis it had a history of seceding from the empire and looking after its own affairs."

Sounds familiar!

Herzlos

I wonder if all of those crises were fictional, too.

buglawton wrote: »

But also, the amount of complexity, a central authority taking with one hand and giving back with another, has grown exponentially within the EU.

Which is natural in any kind of system, and leads to me asking why the UK is the right size for a government, rather than, say, England or Cornwall?

Another whole layer opportunity for fraud and waste with poor transparency exists because of the EU.

Which is why the EU is making efforts to improve transparency, whilst the UK seems to be trying to restrict it?

Arklight

phillw wrote: »

The Romans took over by force, the EU gives stability through co-operation. After we fought back against the Romans the UK quickly reverted and lost all the advances that the Romans bought.

Actually the Romans never left as such. Magnus Maximus who was a usurper British emperor took the British legions to attempt to overthrow Theodosius in Rome but in an outcome no one predicted he died, and the legions never returned.

The Romano-British, pretty much everyone south of Scotland by that point considered themselves Roman, were told they would have to defend themselves. Something they were uniquely incapable of doing. It would be like us being told we suddenly had to protect civilisation from endless hordes of woad stained psychopaths, or police Glasgow on a Saturday night.

Under constant attack from the Picts the Romano-British paid the Angles and Saxons to come and fight for them. They predictably decided that they'd stay forever and keep shaking down the Romans (which is how the Romano-British were seen on the continent) from the comfort of their armchairs. And the Dark Ages was born.

Fun fact. Sussex, Wessex and Essex are the names for South, West and East Saxony, and East Anglia was East Angle Land.

I wonder how far you have to go back to find a Britain free from immigrants...

Zero_Gravitas

Arklight wrote: »

I wonder how far you have to go back to find a Britain free from immigrants...

Given that the earliest humans developed in Africa, and current evidence suggests that humans arrived in what is now Britain about one million years ago, then every single one of us is either an immigrant, or the descendant of an immigrant...

(Cue the sound of some leavers exploding in indignant outrage)

Malthusian

Herzlos wrote: »

Which is natural in any kind of system, and leads to me asking why the UK is the right size for a government, rather than, say, England or Cornwall?

A lot of people in favour of English or Cornish independence think it isn't. The reason the powers that be are so terrified of Brexit is because they're terrified that once that train of thought has been allowed to start, it will be driven to its natural conclusion.

Arklight

Zero_Gravitas wrote: »

Given that the earliest humans developed in Africa, and current evidence suggests that humans arrived in what is now Britain about one million years ago, then every single one of us is either an immigrant, or the descendant of an immigrant...

(Cue the sound of some leavers exploding in indignant outrage)

I've travelled all over the world and my observation is that there are far more "people like me" on the commuter trains and snack bars of Mumbai and Tokyo than there are on the playing fields of Eton.

Nationhood has always been a fabrication used by the upper classes to make people afraid of people who are just like them, and oblivious to their exploitation by people who are unlike anyone.

How Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson get to be some sort of example of vox populi is beyond me. Oh wait, it's because we are "all English."

Crashy_Time

Arklight wrote: »

I've travelled all over the world and my observation is that there are far more "people like me" on the commuter trains and snack bars of Mumbai and Tokyo than there are on the playing fields of Eton.

Nationhood has always been a fabrication used by the upper classes to make people afraid of people who are just like them, and oblivious to their exploitation by people who are unlike anyone.

How Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson get to be some sort of example of vox populi is beyond me. Oh wait, it's because we are "all English."

In that case why is there such anger and opposition to the happy rainbow umbrella that is supposedly the EU?

smipsy

i bet it's because there's "such anger and opposition to the happy rainbow umbrella that is supposedly the UK" and "such anger and opposition to the happy rainbow umbrella that is supposedly the US" and so on

meaning at the very worst EU is exactly the same as everything else.

at which point one can eject itself from Planet Earth and look for a more suitable place

Arklight

Crashy_Time wrote: »

In that case why is there such anger and opposition to the happy rainbow umbrella that is supposedly the EU?

The constituencies which returned the highest levels of leave votes were those with the lowest levels of immigrants. Or to put it another way, the less you come into contact with foreigners the more distrustful of them you are likely to be.

Some Leave areas, like Essex, exist because they are populated by people who historically left London's East End because they wanted nothing to do with immigrants. But this isn't the case for most constituencies.