Views (cont'd): Independence referendums
Sep. 4th, 2017 06:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcI have mentioned being doubtful about independence referendums; this entry probably merely summarizes previous ones. The Scottish National Party's portrait of an independent thriving Scotland in which little changes in terms of the relationship with the rest of the UK sounded most unlikely. There may be some more plausible story whereby Scotland leaves the UK, adopts its own currency that falls enough to make remote services like call centers by skilled English-speaking staff a useful kind of export, but with an aging population and finite oil the SNP's story seemed to me like a short-sighted pipedream and I feel that Scotland has enough in common with the rest of the UK that breaking away would be an overreaction.
The UK's breaking from the European Union I am less clear on. I like the idea of the EU and I often appreciate regulations that it imposes upon the UK: I think those laws, for example on food quality or how corporations may use our personal data, are a good idea and I greatly doubt that a wholly independent UK would have acted similarly. More personally, it is sad to see EU citizens feeling unwelcome and leaving the UK as I think we benefit both economically and culturally from their being with us.
However, I do agree that there is a democratic deficit wherein cloth-eared EU governance overestimates its own competence: at least those who lead the decision-making are more arrogant than they are correct. Perhaps the European Commission and its president have more power than accountability. If the UK's breaking from the EU somehow pushes useful reform on the remainder then perhaps it will have been worth it. The UK will be harmed by poor relations with the EU in the medium term, especially given that the UK's negotiations have appeared so poor that it makes me suspect the secret goal of a
Even excepting the UK, national or regional politics too greatly affect EU governance. I hope that at least the core of the EU can find its way toward something more like the US where there is more central willingness to redistribute funds among the states by need, by means of social security and whatnot. Many of the common threads binding the US may have been achieved by indirect means, in anything from Supreme Court justices being inclined to perceive penumbras, more than Justice Gorsuch probably will be, to making the Federal funding of programs in a state conditional upon on what the state's legislature enacts, but I think that it has found a good balance. Despite my fear of an increasingly fragmenting society, the US remains more cohesive than not, yet with enough variety, especially across the spectrum of libertarianism, that many different kinds of people can find an agreeable place within it.
The UK's breaking from the European Union I am less clear on. I like the idea of the EU and I often appreciate regulations that it imposes upon the UK: I think those laws, for example on food quality or how corporations may use our personal data, are a good idea and I greatly doubt that a wholly independent UK would have acted similarly. More personally, it is sad to see EU citizens feeling unwelcome and leaving the UK as I think we benefit both economically and culturally from their being with us.
However, I do agree that there is a democratic deficit wherein cloth-eared EU governance overestimates its own competence: at least those who lead the decision-making are more arrogant than they are correct. Perhaps the European Commission and its president have more power than accountability. If the UK's breaking from the EU somehow pushes useful reform on the remainder then perhaps it will have been worth it. The UK will be harmed by poor relations with the EU in the medium term, especially given that the UK's negotiations have appeared so poor that it makes me suspect the secret goal of a
hard Brexit, but perhaps there can be some rosy future (by which I plan to be back in the US anyway) where outside the customs union the UK can have close relations both inside and outside a reformed EU.
Even excepting the UK, national or regional politics too greatly affect EU governance. I hope that at least the core of the EU can find its way toward something more like the US where there is more central willingness to redistribute funds among the states by need, by means of social security and whatnot. Many of the common threads binding the US may have been achieved by indirect means, in anything from Supreme Court justices being inclined to perceive penumbras, more than Justice Gorsuch probably will be, to making the Federal funding of programs in a state conditional upon on what the state's legislature enacts, but I think that it has found a good balance. Despite my fear of an increasingly fragmenting society, the US remains more cohesive than not, yet with enough variety, especially across the spectrum of libertarianism, that many different kinds of people can find an agreeable place within it.
