European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 684

On February 28 2017 01:07 LegalLord wrote:

When people start with "hurr durr rusha evil i h8 rusha" generally I find that they aren't worth talking to. In general everything that follows tends to be a roundabout rationalization of the fact. Fact is that this has nothing to do with Russia and your mention of it was basically just injecting your personal need to describe your disdain for it. I do of course see the benefit of using the "foreign devil" argument to try to insinuate that all your problems are the responsibility of a foreign country - but that makes you about as insightful as the British MP who said "Russia bombed Syria to encourage Brexit" and "Brexit happened because of Russian hacking." It's as stupid as it is tempting.

That "very few people care about ideology" is perhaps an indication that you are looking at a biased subset of the population. Because evidently that isn't true. It is true among a certain group of the population, yes, but it's not true overall. And I did talk about this, more than once.

I see no reason to keep a diseased project on life support for another decade. IF, and only if, the project is truly meant to fail, then it's better now than 10 years from now. It will mean we can repair and rebuild afterward.


Guess what? I don't feel the need to respond to every person who disagrees with me. I'm only here as long as I want to be. When there are lots of side-trolls just chomping at the bit to say "hurr durr u just dum" I have no reason to debate anything with them. You seem to be one of those side-trolls given that most of your contributions so far have been of the "LL is just being annoying" variety within this specific line of discussion. There's no requirement for me to take you seriously. And of course, your interpretation of my points is... lacking, to say the least.

On February 28 2017 00:53 LegalLord wrote:
And what if it stubbornly refuses to change, revealing that the issue is even deeper than it seemed?

On February 28 2017 00:57 LegalLord wrote:

The issue of internal divisions within the union.

Each "crisis" the EU has gone through within the past few years has shown a completely and utterly confused consensus that paralyzed its ability to deal with things.

On February 28 2017 01:20 Acrofales wrote:

I'd point out that so far it has been quite capable of being changed. You say the EU only exists since 1993, but that's a bit disingenious. The Treaty of Maastricht rebranded the EEC to make explicit what had been implicit for a while: that the EEC was no longer only about economic issues. And the EU itself has already undergone a transformation with the Treaty of Lisbon. The EU in its current form is simply the 5th iteration (or insert other number here, perhaps 5 is perhaps too many or too few depending on what treaties you count as being an impactful reinvention of the union) of a supra-national body governing certain aspects in the European community.

I'd say ~5 adaptations in about 60 years shows quite a remarkable ability to change with the requirements of its constituents. Especially if we compare it to traditional governments: a constitutional change is a huge deal, and in some countries outright impossible to even contemplate (hello USA). Of course, a large part of this was due to the experimental nature of the whole project: taking nations that have existed for hundreds of years and try to come up with some common policies is something that hadn't been done before at the scale of the ECSC, EEC or EU, so being flexible was an absolute requirement to have any success. But it also shows that to a certain extent that flexibility is built in. The EU is, without doubt, facing its largest existential crisis since its inception. But your approach of taking one look at the crisis and saying "fuck it, lets call it a day" is pathetic. Aren't you from a country that had half the union secede and then fought a bloody civil war, yet STILL stuck together?

On February 28 2017 01:26 bardtown wrote:

Five iterations all featuring more integration - the cause of the current crises - and an absolute rejection of any attempt to limit or reverse integration despite this being the popular consensus of what needs to happen. Very disingenuous to suggest that the EU is in any way dynamic or flexible. It is nothing more than a bubble.

On February 28 2017 01:30 LegalLord wrote:

And I'm not opposed to that idea of a European supranational body. It's a necessity for a fair number of reasons - European nations do need that kind of support because they're left in a world where individually they're no longer very strong, and the economic ties do genuinely help stop the effect of imperial ambitions.

It's the current iteration of the European project that is problematic. While I know you don't care much for nationalism and "the nation-state" it remains true that nationalism is an important force that isn't going away. A European project needs to respect the fact that nations are nations and that an "ever-closer union" is not the way forward.

I mention the EU being <25 years old because people talk about "the EU" as if it were the entire 70-year-old integration project. It's not. Criticism of one is not criticism of the other.

On February 28 2017 02:01 LegalLord wrote:

A feature of the modern Western world is a 50-50 split of "we love the status quo do very much" vs "we deeply despise the status quo" so a split in favor of the former is not enough, no.

On February 28 2017 00:57 LegalLord wrote:

The issue of internal divisions within the union.

Each "crisis" the EU has gone through within the past few years has shown a completely and utterly confused consensus that paralyzed its ability to deal with things.