Politics... World events

[Gorth]

28 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

1. The current EU actually reduces or limits the real power and choices  of citizens because of how laws can change through the EU that immediately can  make the citizens have less or no say 
2. The current Brussels HQ passes laws that can undermine the rights of countries and they end up losing sovereignty, so the EU becomes autocratic and less in touch with citizens right
3. What would you solution  be in summary, for example would you reduce certain Brussels law to grant more independence.  You always need to provide a high level alternative to any existing government model if you accuse them of such egregious policies and outcomes  
4. Finally are you someone who may have real opinions of historical events  based on work, levels of research and often lived experience that you naturally and normally believe and this view could shape other opinions which is how most of us formulate our views on topics, geopolitics  and ideologies. But if you were presented with irrefutable evidence that gave you a different view of your old opinion would you update and accept the new information? This can be harder than you think because older views are sometimes trenchant or exist in  worlds of   " subconscious bias " but its always better to update views that dont represent all the facts ?

 

1) & 2). Yes, because the decision making that affects you as an individual is now one (or more) step further removed from the parliament where your vote actually *matters*. You don't like party xyz in your country for example, vote them out. You don't like xyz in Brussels, sucks to be you, you better be prepared to ask how high should I jump? You're screwed. Apart from taking up torches and pitch forks, storm your local parliament and demand independence (or vote yes to Brexit as the UK did). Funny thing, if you had asked my even 10 years ago, I would have bet a six pack that Denmark would be the first country to leave the EU, followed by the UK.

3) You have it the wrong way around. It is NOT Brussels place to grant any independence to member countries in the first place. They already had it. Brussels took it away and that is the core of the problem.

4) I have changed my views (even radically) over the years. I used to be a "right winger", proud of my little country and its history until I started learning more and more about how the world works and now I don't give a flying **** about nation states, churches, corporations (and yes, banks). So my younger self had some very different views from my grown up (anarchist leaning) self who would rather see aforementioned crash and burn.

 

Edit: If you're looking for what I would suggest... I would say an "acceptable compromise" would've been leaving it at being the EC (which was what people signed up for originally) and scrapping the EU part.

[HoonDing]

EU should return Poland and Hungary to Russia.

[BruceVC]

53 minutes ago, Gorth said:

1) & 2). Yes, because the decision making that affects you as an individual is now one (or more) step further removed from the parliament where your vote actually *matters*. You don't like party xyz in your country for example, vote them out. You don't like xyz in Brussels, sucks to be you, you better be prepared to ask how high should I jump? You're screwed. Apart from taking up torches and pitch forks, storm your local parliament and demand independence (or vote yes to Brexit as the UK did). Funny thing, if you had asked my even 10 years ago, I would have bet a six pack that Denmark would be the first country to leave the EU, followed by the UK.

3) You have it the wrong way around. It is NOT Brussels place to grant any independence to member countries in the first place. They already had it. Brussels took it away and that is the core of the problem.

4) I have changed my views (even radically) over the years. I used to be a "right winger", proud of my little country and its history until I started learning more and more about how the world works and now I don't give a flying **** about nation states, churches, corporations (and yes, banks). So my younger self had some very different views from my grown up (anarchist leaning) self who would rather see aforementioned crash and burn.

Okay thanks for the detail again because now I do understand your overall opinion but its also made some of my answers irrelevant so I need to update some things, I may only respond tomorrow as it will take me about 20 minutes and I want to do some gaming now 

 

Edited December 19, 2020 by BruceVC

[BruceVC]

5 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

EU should return Poland and Hungary to Russia.

Hoonding !!!! That is a  terrible thing to suggest, we dont want to create such appalling choices because that would really take these countries backwards. The Russian answer to the EU is well known and these countries could join it anytime if they leave the EU

It consists of generally weak, autocratic and inconsistent economic policies that dont seem to benefit the member countries but Poland and Hungary could join if they wanted ?

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

But you dont want either country to leave the EU as they do contribute but more importantly I doubt the majority of their citizens would vote to leave the EU?

[Elerond]

3 hours ago, 213374U said:

 

That's a fair question. "Indirectly" elected isn't the same as just plain elected and while perhaps technically correct, the devil is in the details. Neither commissioners nor the president have to be MEPs. Parliament doesn't actually propose a candidate for the presidency, that's up to the Council, which is itself not "directly" elected either, even though Parliament has to confirm the nomination. Parliament cannot veto individual commissioners, only threaten to vote out the whole Commission. Which would be a fine check to the legislative power if there was such a thing as EU presidential elections, but there aren't. It's all backroom dealing.

So yeah, all in all, I think democracy is rather diluted in the workings of the EU, an issue further compounded by the issue you brought up about the weird way national parties sometimes align with EP formations. From the point of view of this anti-EU populist, the EU tries hard to sell the idea that it is democratic while being designed to be strongly insulated from the bedlam that is the European people's voting habits, political sensibilities and mood swings.

Commissioners for individual states are selected by governments of those states and Council if formed by members of governments of member states. President of Commission is selected by consensus of Council and confirmed by Parliament 

So Council and Commission are democratically elected (as long as all the member states select their governments democratically), but current way don't give people option to elect Council members or commissioners that goes against their government's wishes

But if people of member states want to directly pick their representatives then they could either change their states ad direct democracies or just change their laws so that state has to organize elections where people can directly elect their cabinet members and commissioner candidate (and of course new election if Parliament rejects proposed commission). 

Selecting Presidency of Council or President of Council is not democratic anyway as position goes to every member one after the other every six months. But otherwise governing institutions are result of direct or indirect democratic selection. Most anti-democratic thing of EU is that most of its citizens don't care enough who represents them in EU so that they would take that account in their state elections and also Parliament elections usually have low turnout, so there is usually quite little accountability for decision makers based how they have done their job and everything mostly depends on state politics. 

[majestic]

  

10 hours ago, Gorth said:

One small, but important difference (imho), apart from the original 13 states who formed the union, states who joined later knew what they were getting into.

Don't move the goalpost here. 213374U came up with a decent reply, although that's also a technicality more than anything.

9 hours ago, 213374U said:

That's a fair question. "Indirectly" elected isn't the same as just plain elected and while perhaps technically correct, the devil is in the details. Neither commissioners nor the president have to be MEPs. Parliament doesn't actually propose a candidate for the presidency, that's up to the Council, which is itself not "directly" elected either, even though Parliament has to confirm the nomination. Parliament cannot veto individual commissioners, only threaten to vote out the whole Commission. Which would be a fine check to the legislative power if there was such a thing as EU presidential elections, but there aren't. It's all backroom dealing.

So yeah, all in all, I think democracy is rather diluted in the workings of the EU, an issue further compounded by the issue you brought up about the weird way national parties sometimes align with EP formations. From the point of view of this anti-EU populist, the EU tries hard to sell the idea that it is democratic while being designed to be strongly insulated from the bedlam that is the European people's voting habits, political sensibilities and mood swings.

The Council comes up with the nominations in backroom dealings, that's true, but that is also true for my current government. We voted for parties, and they then dealt in back rooms to nominate ministers a chancellor and a vice chancellor, who had then to be approved by the president (that I actually did vote for, mostly for a lack of alternatives). Generally at least the chancellor is the lead candidate of the strongest party, but not even that is guaranteed. 

I don't like any of them, but that still makes it my elected government. It's not what I wanted or voted for, but in the end, what is democracy if not the will of the majority (of the people who can be bothered to cast a vote or are allowed to, at any rate)?

The commission is similar insofar as that it was made up by political decisions in every member state. It needs approval by the Parliament we've voted for, which last year has shown for the first time that  can remember that they can really give the Council a sweat or two if they want to - and it really is sadly what left us saddled with Uschi, the quintessential out of sight and out of mind politician that Gorth was referring to, someone Merkel was looking to get rid off because she made her government look bad.

I agree with your points though, mostly. The Commission should be nominated by the Parliament. That would also indireclty give the Parliament the right to propose laws. Perhaps the Council should be knocked down to an actual council, or at least made up differently. Going with the member states head of governments isn't the best approach. It feels impossible to make significant changes, because it's not just the voting habits and politicians of your own country that come into play, but everyone else's. And when you a case like Merkel, well... 15 years and counting. Geez. Just end it already, Germany.

I also agree with Sharp_One and Gorth insofar as that we don't need a beaurocratic behemoth in Brussels that deals with issues best left to the individual member states, but we'd probably disagree heavily on which areas that should be.

So what was my point again? I kind of lost track and have vectored away a good deal. Oh, right. I'm with you guys in terms of the EU needing reforms and shouldn't move for even more centralization indeed. I'm against picking up Nazi and alt-right diction on the way there. Hell, maybe in your political landscape it's not the Nazis that always come up with the argument that person X or Y has not been elected by the people. Last time when a chancellor resigned, for instance, the Nazis immediately started claiming the the new one was never voted for. We don't vote for our chancellors anway, parties are always free to nominate whoever they want. Even a replacement if one resigns. Weird concept for people who would rather ask the Führer who should be the next in line, but eh.

8 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Majestic why you trying to starve countries into submission?

I'm not, silly. I just said Skarpen is trying really hard to change my mind about it.

Edited December 20, 2020 by majestic

[213374U]

9 hours ago, Elerond said:

So Council and Commission are democratically elected (as long as all the member states select their governments democratically), but current way don't give people option to elect Council members or commissioners that goes against their government's wishes

Heh. No, it's not democratic if just because you won a vote for something else, you automatically get appointed to a different office or position at the Union level and the only way to prevent that is abstaining from the whole process or getting some other prat indirectly elected to that instead. It's not democratic because you were appointed by someone who won a vote, either. That's really stretching what "democratic" means.

But hey in this day and age, words mean whatever, so sure. Discussions never failing to devolve into semantics arguments because apparently a ****ing triangle can have any number of angles now if we consider the eleventy billion dimensions postulated by the unproven string theory that are completely irrelevant to the matter at hand anyway is why I give politics a wide berth for the most part. You do you.

 

 

8 hours ago, majestic said:

The Council comes up with the nominations in backroom dealings, that's true, but that is also true for my current government. We voted for parties, and they then dealt in back rooms to nominate ministers a chancellor and a vice chancellor, who had then to be approved by the president (that I actually did vote for, mostly for a lack of alternatives). Generally at least the chancellor is the lead candidate of the strongest party, but not even that is guaranteed. 

Yes, that's more or less how it works here too, but being a commonly accepted practice doesn't stop it from being ****. Political parties are essentially legal mafias. Let me elect my MP directly. Of  course, unelected apparatchiks might object and it's harder -and more expensive- to buy off individual candidates than a handful of party bosses who get to enforce voting discipline and decide who goes on which lists. So fat chance we'll ever see that without a complete system crash.

After 2020 though, there may be hope yet (for the crash).

Edited December 20, 2020 by 213374U

[Elerond]

4 hours ago, 213374U said:

Heh. No, it's not democratic if just because you won a vote for something else, you automatically get appointed to a different office or position at the Union level and the only way to prevent that is abstaining from the whole process or getting some other prat indirectly elected to that instead. It's not democratic because you were appointed by someone who won a vote, either. That's really stretching what "democratic" means.

 

People don't even elect people to cabinet positions. At least not usually. People elect group of people to represent themselves and then those people negotiate with each which parties will form government/cabinet and then those parties decided who will which cabinet positions. And those who get cabinet positions will also represent their countries in international bodies which include Council of European Union. Cabinet also names their representative to Commission of EU.

So saying it is not democratic is changing meaning of democratic representation as it has been for centuries

[BruceVC]

21 minutes ago, Elerond said:

People don't even elect people to cabinet positions. At least not usually. People elect group of people to represent themselves and then those people negotiate with each which parties will form government/cabinet and then those parties decided who will which cabinet positions. And those who get cabinet positions will also represent their countries in international bodies which include Council of European Union. Cabinet also names their representative to Commission of EU.

So saying it is not democratic is changing meaning of democratic representation as it has been for centuries

2133, Elerond is correct, you cannot be selective with the definition of democratic just because you want it to suit your interpretation of a political narrative 

[majestic]

6 hours ago, 213374U said:

Yes, that's more or less how it works here too, but being a commonly accepted practice doesn't stop it from being ****. Political parties are essentially legal mafias. Let me elect my MP directly. Of  course, unelected apparatchiks might object and it's harder -and more expensive- to buy off individual candidates than a handful of party bosses who get to enforce voting discipline and decide who goes on which lists. So fat chance we'll ever see that without a complete system crash.

After 2020 though, there may be hope yet (for the crash).

That would be something. I mean, I'm generally not one for conspiracy theories (I love them and enjoy reading and hearing about them though), but our dear chancellor, the Glorious Messiah, Sebastian I, went to Switzerland, met with some people from Roche and then suddenly decides that we should do mass Corona testing where, curiously enough, Roche test kits are being used, even though mass testing turned out to be completely ineffective right next door in Slovakia.

Then the people had the bad sense to reject his idea - mass testing had a really bad turnout and found barely any new infections. The obvious solution? Third lockdown starting from after Christmas until January 18th, with a week's quarantine afterwards for people who do not attend the mass testing on January 16th and 17th. 

The reaction of a petulant man-child who can't deal with rejection and criticism.

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

That would be something. I mean, I'm generally not one for conspiracy theories (I love them and enjoy reading and hearing about them though), but our dear chancellor, the Glorious Messiah, Sebastian I, went to Switzerland, met with some people from Roche and then suddenly decides that we should do mass Corona testing where, curiously enough, Roche test kits are being used, even though mass testing turned out to be completely ineffective right next door in Slovakia.

Then the people had the bad sense to reject his idea - mass testing had a really bad turnout and found barely any new infections. The obvious solution? Third lockdown starting from after Christmas until January 18th, with a week's quarantine afterwards for people who do not attend the mass testing on January 16th and 17th. 

The reaction of a petulant man-child who can't deal with rejection and criticism.

Well the virus and its spread are real so you should support this type of government initiative to help address the pandemic 

Lockdowns are never nice but if you need to go through one again its for the greater good of your society and they generally achieve the result  so I wouldnt see any problems there 

It also  sounds completely self-inflicted, citizens rejected mass testing so you force government to implement something else to understand the virus spread and to slow it down? You should have agreed to mass testing because then at least your government would have some data to work with

And I wouldnt think just because it failed in Slovakia that would mean it is going to fail in Austria ?

[213374U]

8 hours ago, Elerond said:

People don't even elect people to cabinet positions. At least not usually. People elect group of people to represent themselves and then those people negotiate with each which parties will form government/cabinet and then those parties decided who will which cabinet positions. And those who get cabinet positions will also represent their countries in international bodies which include Council of European Union. Cabinet also names their representative to Commission of EU.

So saying it is not democratic is changing meaning of democratic representation as it has been for centuries

Yes. I know how the process works. I simply vehemently disagree with your opinion that it's "democratic" that if someone wins a national vote they automatically get representation and nomination powers at the Union level, with no recourse, as a substitute for an electoral mechanism of appointment.

The way representative democracies work in general is that the person in charge of cabinet appointments has to be elected themselves -- the appointment freedom is a prerogative of the chairman. I am already not a fan of "representative" democracies such as our own where this step is already omitted and the president is proposed and voted by MPs rather than by electoral vote. But the EU takes it a step further where the chairman of the Commission is chosen by backroom dealing between heads of government who may or may not have been directly elected themselves (the same is true for the president of the ECB btw). This person in turn has free reign to distribute power as they see fit among the, again unelected, Commissioners. And the only check to this is the theoretical motion of censure mechanism that requires a laughable two-thirds majority. To no one's surprise, this has never happened, and will never happen. Hell, the EP has never even failed to sign off on the EU budget, despite consistent reports of material errors and inaccuracies by the Court of Auditors.

It really is a great system -from the pols perspective- because they get to propose and pass unpopular legislation at the EU level and appoint thoroughly dislikable people who will do the dirty work (re: ECB), which then they can bemoan at home as evil EU oppression so as to save face. And to add insult to injury, in a classic exercise of deflection by people who refuse to be held accountable -and echoed by yourself- the shortcomings of the system get blamed on people's "lack of engagement". But sure, it's all perfectly legit and democratic, because someone, at some point, got elected to something. Beatings will continue until morale improves and so on.

I am not changing any meanings. Politicians and political scientists just keep adding qualifiers that distort and dilute the meaning of the concept. But even if I were, your whole argument is an appeal to tradition fallacy.

Edited December 20, 2020 by 213374U

[Zoraptor]

The 'lack of engagement' argument really is a classic of its kind. We have it here for local councils, and it's always used as a way of defending how bad they are at pretty much everything. You think the mayor/ council/ utilities is/ are awful? Why didn't you vote for an alternative then? Hmm, because the alternatives were awful too, the system is broken and can't be fixed by design, so what was the point? You could have had 100% turn out and the candidates would still have been the same bunch of awful options implementing the same awful policies in the same awful system, and you don't get to vote for most of the really important roles either, they're all appointed by said awful candidates when they win and when their incompetence catches up with them they just vote for another rates increase/ fuel tax/ levy...

I'd have to admit to not being familiar with the rest of the EU, but Britain certainly used its appointments to get rid of politicians who would be domestic embarrassments or make trouble without a golden handshake, then again the UK was a past master of blaming the EU for everything so running down its reputation with bad appointments was something of a hobby. Here in NZ we're far more wholesome, our embarrassing or potential troublemaker politicians get sent overseas as ambassadors instead...

[BruceVC]

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain-freight/stranded-truckers-fume-as-they-wait-to-leave-uk-after-covid-blockade-idUKKBN28X0SB

Have you guys been following these  terrible truck queues in Dover trying to leave and enter the UK in France

What a nightmare, imagine being a driver and being stuck in those lines for days  

 

[Gorth]

An interesting report from PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) on the world in 2050:

Top 10 economies in 2050, according to PwC’s The World in 2050 report

1. China
2. India
3. US
4. Indonesia
5. Brazil
6. Russia
7. Mexico
8. Japan
9. Germany
10. UK

Key findings from PwC website:

https://www.pwc.com/world2050

I would have loved some estimated figures in an easy to view place though. The figures are there in graphs, but... meh, I'm not an economist. When the trillions are flying around, it becomes too abstract for me to comprehend. How many Big Macs was that again?

 

[Gfted1]

The UK will be stronger than every other EU member except Germany? Delicious. I guess they were right.

[Maedhros]

2 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

The UK will be stronger than every other EU member except Germany? Delicious. I guess they were right.

Will be? They already are and have been for a long time. They'd be an economical powerhouse in Europe with or without Brexit.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Maedhros

[Malcador]

3 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

The UK will be stronger than every other EU member except Germany? Delicious. I guess they were right.

Relatively nothing will change, from that list looking at a current one by absolute size. 

Sort of a shame.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Malcador

[Elerond]

3 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

The UK will be stronger than every other EU member except Germany? Delicious. I guess they were right.

Rank	Country/Territory	GDP (US$million)
	World[19]	83,844,988
1	United States	20,807,269
2	China[n 2][n 3]	14,860,775
3	Japan	4,910,580
4	Germany	3,780,553
5	United Kingdom	2,638,296
6	India	2,592,583
7	France	2,551,451
8	Italy	1,848,222
9	Canada	1,600,264
10	South Korea	1,586,786
11	Russia[n 4]	1,464,078
12	Brazil	1,363,767
13	Australia	1,334,688
14	Spain	1,247,464
15	Indonesia	1,088,768
16	Mexico	1,040,372

 International Monetary Fund (2020 estimates)

Rank	Country/Territory	GDP (millions of current Int$)
	World	130,186,703	[8]
1	China	24,162,435
2	United States	20,807,269
—	European Union[n 2][10]	19,397,267
3	India	8,681,303
4	Japan	5,236,138
5	Germany	4,454,498
6	Russia	4,021,733
7	Indonesia	3,328,288
8	Brazil	3,078,901
9	United Kingdom	2,978,564
10	France	2,954,196
11	Mexico	2,424,511
12	Italy	2,415,410
13	Turkey	2,381,594
14	South Korea	2,293,475
15	Canada	1,808,995
16	Spain	1,773,364

List by the IMF (2020 estimates) (PPP)

They predicting that order among European countries don't change and general increase of GDP in Europe, Japan and USA will be minimal and there is massive economical growth in India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia

Although they use PPP estimate, which estimates how much local priced goods they could by with their GDP (USA prices are used as baseline), instead of nominal GDP.  Above you can see how these two methods differ from each other 

People in rich EU states would be probably bee more interested to see predictions for this list

Rank	Country/Territory	Int$
1	Luxembourg	112,875
2	Singapore	95,603
3	Qatar	91,897
4	Ireland	89,383
5	Switzerland	68,340
6	Norway	64,856
7	United States	63,051
8	Brunei	61,816
—	Macau	58,931
9	United Arab Emirates	58,466
—	Hong Kong	58,165
10	Denmark	57,781
11	Netherlands	57,101
12	San Marino	56,690
13	Austria	55,406
14	Iceland	54,482
—	Taiwan	54,020
15	Germany	53,571
16	Sweden	52,477

GDP (PPP ) per capita International Monetary Fund (2020 estimates)

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Elerond

[majestic]

6 hours ago, Gorth said:

PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers)

Consultants are like eunuchs. They "know" how... 

 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, majestic said:

Consultants are like eunuchs. They "know" how... 

I don't know if consultant jokes would be as funny if more people knew how many big companies can barely keep their fingers out of their own noses.

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Achilles said:

I don't know if consultant jokes would be as funny if more people knew how many big companies can barely keep their fingers out of their own noses.

They're always funny of course. Even consultants laugh at them, I bet.

A sheep farmer is tending his flock when a city slicker rolls up in his BMW, hops out and asks, "Hey, if I tell you exactly how many sheep you have, can I take one?" The farmer nods, so the city slicker opens his laptop, calls up some satellite photos, runs some algorithms, and announces, "You have 1,432 sheep."

Impressed, the farmer says, "You're right. Go ahead and take one." So the city slicker loads one of the animals into the backseat of the car. "Now," says the farmer, "I'll bet all my sheep against your car that I can tell you what you do for a living."

A gaming sort, the city slicker says, "Sure."

"You're a consultant," says the farmer.

"Wow!" says the consultant. "How'd you know?"

"Well," says the farmer, "you come from nowhere even though I never asked you to. You drive a flash car, and wear a smart suit. You told me something I already knew. And you don't know anything about my business. Now give me back my dog."

 

[Guest]

9 hours ago, majestic said:

They're always funny of course. Even consultants laugh at them, I bet.

Yeah, they're both cute.

Dead wrong, but cute.

Here's another one for your collection:

[majestic]

On 12/31/2020 at 9:27 AM, Achilles said:

Yeah, they're both cute.

Dead wrong, but cute.

So, are you a management consultant or did you just have positive experiences with them?

I'm honestly curious, no more jokes.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

So, are you a management consultant or did you just have positive experiences with them?

I'm honestly curious, no more jokes.

Both. Latter before the former :)