<story><title>UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-politics-39424391</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s at stake here is more fundamental than federalism: it&amp;#x27;s self determination. Throughout history, discrete groups have waged wars of independence to ensure that they can have a government that reflects their shared history, culture, and values. My family is from Bangladesh, which fought a war to separate from Pakistan over cultural&amp;#x2F;linguistic differences. In another example, Israel is engaged in an existential battle to ensure the existence of a sovereign nation for its people.&lt;p&gt;In Europe, exactly the opposite is happening. People are being prodded to give up their sovereignty to a supra-national bureaucracy, and to be assimilated into a hetrogenous body politic with hundreds of millions of other people with which they share little other than said bureaucracy. People in the U.K. were very rightfully afraid of what that could lead to and decided they wanted to get off that train.</text></item><item><author>folli</author><text>I absolutely see the advantages of having common standards, tariff agreements etc. to make trade across borders easier (i.e. something akin to the European Economic Area). I&amp;#x27;m however also a proponent of federalism, because I believe that for a democracy to truly work it is necessary that the people still feel responsible for their votes and their decisions. This is something which I&amp;#x27;m missing in centralised and unitary states after they reach a certain size and heterogenity. I&amp;#x27;m aware that the European Union is not (yet) a unitary state, but it is certainly shifting away democratic power from a more regional democratic system to a centralised government.&lt;p&gt;I agree that the UK&amp;#x27;s decision to leave the EU is not an optimal one (and potentially costly), but I believe it&amp;#x27;s long term the right one, given the current state. An alternative would be to change the EU within, to force it to focus on its core competencies (which I mainly see as a trade union, and leave most of the political decisions to its nation states); however I&amp;#x27;m not sure that this would happen without any big bang, such as the Brexit might have been.</text></item><item><author>ealexhudson</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a big believer in not having assumptions and testing things with actual experiments. This is one experiment I&amp;#x27;d rather not be participating in, though.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s difficult to see very much positive about this move; certainly there will be some benefits, but I expect greatly outweighed by the negatives (which will include higher prices, lower employment and probably lower standards for UK workers - the EU has consistently been the only organisation willing to drag us out of the dark ages).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>barrkel</author><text>The core concept in EU law is subsidiarity. Look it up if you&amp;#x27;re unfamiliar - by treaty, the EU may only make laws where actions by individual countries are insufficient. I think you&amp;#x27;re being incredibly one-sided and myopic, if not ignorant.&lt;p&gt;Collective action problems are real. Nation states are a poor way to deal with many cross-border problems, just like individuals without a government is a poor way to deal with many problems in a community. Pooling sovereignty is a bargain: it&amp;#x27;s trading away freedom on one axis to gain freedom on another - freedom from certain kinds of problems. Whether it&amp;#x27;s war vs peace, mercantilism vs trade, security, administration of commons - there are real tradeoffs, and real wins to be had from pooling sovereignty.&lt;p&gt;The single biggest practical loss, that I feel most for the UK, is how her youth will have their horizons cut much shorter. The EU will be just another country; work visas will dissuade millions.</text></comment>
<story><title>UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-politics-39424391</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s at stake here is more fundamental than federalism: it&amp;#x27;s self determination. Throughout history, discrete groups have waged wars of independence to ensure that they can have a government that reflects their shared history, culture, and values. My family is from Bangladesh, which fought a war to separate from Pakistan over cultural&amp;#x2F;linguistic differences. In another example, Israel is engaged in an existential battle to ensure the existence of a sovereign nation for its people.&lt;p&gt;In Europe, exactly the opposite is happening. People are being prodded to give up their sovereignty to a supra-national bureaucracy, and to be assimilated into a hetrogenous body politic with hundreds of millions of other people with which they share little other than said bureaucracy. People in the U.K. were very rightfully afraid of what that could lead to and decided they wanted to get off that train.</text></item><item><author>folli</author><text>I absolutely see the advantages of having common standards, tariff agreements etc. to make trade across borders easier (i.e. something akin to the European Economic Area). I&amp;#x27;m however also a proponent of federalism, because I believe that for a democracy to truly work it is necessary that the people still feel responsible for their votes and their decisions. This is something which I&amp;#x27;m missing in centralised and unitary states after they reach a certain size and heterogenity. I&amp;#x27;m aware that the European Union is not (yet) a unitary state, but it is certainly shifting away democratic power from a more regional democratic system to a centralised government.&lt;p&gt;I agree that the UK&amp;#x27;s decision to leave the EU is not an optimal one (and potentially costly), but I believe it&amp;#x27;s long term the right one, given the current state. An alternative would be to change the EU within, to force it to focus on its core competencies (which I mainly see as a trade union, and leave most of the political decisions to its nation states); however I&amp;#x27;m not sure that this would happen without any big bang, such as the Brexit might have been.</text></item><item><author>ealexhudson</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a big believer in not having assumptions and testing things with actual experiments. This is one experiment I&amp;#x27;d rather not be participating in, though.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s difficult to see very much positive about this move; certainly there will be some benefits, but I expect greatly outweighed by the negatives (which will include higher prices, lower employment and probably lower standards for UK workers - the EU has consistently been the only organisation willing to drag us out of the dark ages).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vkou</author><text>&amp;gt; What&amp;#x27;s at stake here is more fundamental than federalism: it&amp;#x27;s self determination.&lt;p&gt;Yet, Britain has done its best to deny the same right to self-determination to its subjects.&lt;p&gt;Self-determination seems to be an excuse trotted out to support existing power structures. &amp;quot;We should secede from _____ - but nobody should secede from us.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Britain and Ireland, Britain and India, Britain and Scotland... Britain had to be dragged, kicking and screaming through every single one of those conversations about self-determinism.</text></comment>