
Emmanuel Macron Wins French Presidency in Boost to EU - rayuela
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-07/macron-set-to-defeat-le-pen-to-become-france-s-next-president
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orf
Further discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286630)

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nafizh
Relieved to see Le Pen not getting elected. But don't see how an establishment
candidate like Macron will deliver for the people. Capitalising on that
frustration, again, FN will come back for the 2022 election stronger, leaving
only someone like Melenchon calable of defeating them.

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hyperbovine
Wouldn't the establishment candidate have been a member of either the
Republican or Socialist party? I do not see how you can call Macron a member
of the establishment except insofar as he is educated and successful.

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mamon
Macron was working in a Rothschild owned bank, in the president Hollande's
administration, and also was a ministry in Socialists government - he's really
well connected to the establishment.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron)

~~~
hyperbovine
Right but my point is that if you preemptively disqualify everybody that held
high positions in industry or government, who's left to rule the country?
Idiots like Le Pen.

~~~
mamon
I didn't say that you should "preemptively disqualify" them, just that calling
Macron "anti-establishment candidate" is laughable.

Government and big corporations are the very definition of establishment.

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peterlk
This is a huge win for global order. Had France elected Le Pen, the EU would
likely have collapsed. The next important election is the German election,
which appears to be leaning more liberal than those in the US, Britain, and
France. So long as Germany elects liberal or moderate conservative, the EU
will stick around. This will make greater tensions over Brexit, and give the
rest of Europe greater leverage in the negotiations.

It seems to me that many of the current (reasonable) arguments for nationalism
and ending globalism stem from the belief that Westphalian principles still
apply just as strongly now as they did in in the 1960s. If this were true, it
would make sense for China, Russia, and the US to look inward, and all compete
independently to become the global hegemon. However, in a political climate
governed by instantaneous information transfer and diminishing privacy, global
order becomes something different. People paying attention have much more
information than they used to, and this makes the peoples' relationship to
their government different - namely, it diminishes the need for trust. In such
a system, why should officials need to negotiate on behalf of the interests of
people? There do still exist circumstances in which this is necessary, but
broadly, there is probably more cultural commonality between Hong Kong and New
York than New York and Wichita. And more interestingly, there is probably more
in common between Elko NV and Kalgoorlie/Boulder Australia, than
Kalgoorlie/Boulder and Sydney or Elko and San Francisco.

How does global order change to cater to this paradigm?

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mozumder
Ok how do we in the US promote globalism and cause us to join the EU with
Canada, Mexico, and China (and anyone else that wants to join)?

What? You thought we globalist were going to stop at 50 states?

There's no fundamental reason we can't get rid of borders and open the world
up to free movement and trade.

Countries that trade with each other don't go to war against each other.

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adrenalinelol
There's also no reason you can't have borders indefinitely. Open borders have
the draw backs of depressing wages. In an era where income-inequality is one
of the top issues in the political debate, this is an area that's a non-
starter until it can be done in a way that won't exacerbate said issue.

~~~
mozumder
> Open borders have the benefit of increasing wages.

Here, I fixed your mistaken statement for you.

If you want to make money, you better make sure the people you are trading
with are also rich.

Open borders are a good way to do that.

~~~
RobertoG
Have you been around the last 40 years?

Why do you think that everyday more people is against globalization and they
are becoming more nationalist? something in the milk?

~~~
mozumder
> Have you been around the last 40 years?

Yes I have. Third-world Asian countries have been doing great.

> Why do you think that everyday more people is against globalization and they
> are becoming more nationalist? something in the milk?

So you're saying the vast majority of the world, which are currently
benefitting from massive incomes due to globalization, is against it?

You should tell the billions of people across the developing world that. I'm
sure the average Bangladeshi, who had their incomes go up by 5x over the last
20 years, is going to appreciate you telling them that globalization is a bad
thing.

~~~
RobertoG
I'm not saying they shouldn't get improvements, quite the opposite, I'm saying
that we should be able to do better and without reducing the quality of life
in countries where capital formation is already developed.

After all, Bangladesh it's [not so
impressive]([https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...](https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK:CHN&ifdim=region&tstart=831420000000&tend=1430949600000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false))

And I'm not sure neither about the [5x over
thing]([https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...](https://www.google.es/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gnp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:BGD:IND:PAK:CHN&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false))

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throwaway7645
If you have zero understanding of current French politics like me, John
Oliver's free show on YouTube has an excellent breakdown of why this is so
important. All the candidates have some serious cons, but the frontrunner for
the nationalist party is pretty sketch and her father (party's founder I
believe) has openly denied the holocaust I believe. Disclaimer: I know pretty
much nothing and am not French.

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surfmike
For all the faults Le Pen has, it's not fair to smear her with her father's
views. She distanced herself from him and expelled him from the National
Front.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Her opinions are not significantly better though.

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adrenalinelol
Not exactly a surprise, if the polls were wrong this time, they'd have needed
to be off by nearly ~15 points in both directions. This is the first big win
neo-liberalism has had in a short-while. Time will tell if it was due to
Macron being a good candidate or Marie-la-penn (sp?) turning people off.

~~~
RobertoG
"Time will tell if it was due to Macron being a good candidate or Marie-la-
penn (sp?) turning people off."

Well, it's only an anecdote but a French friend told me this morning: "It's
not a good day when you have to vote somebody that you despise."

Interestingly, I had almost the same conversation with an American friend in
the last USA elections.

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EGreg
It's funny how the Macron-LePen debate video wasn't even in top of google
results for that exact phrase.

US politics are way more interesting for the rest of the world.

~~~
Mailtemi
It's not funny, just an algorithm. I'm living in Bulgaria and Google News
shows that news as a top story.

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blibble
it is concerning that the EU's incompetence has contributed towards 35% of
French voters choosing the extreme right

on the current path, she will be in in 2022 (especially as youth are heavily
voting Le Pen)

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chvid
Too bad the EU is already fatally wounded.

Trapped by its own bureaucratic institutions, the EU is incapable of solving
its two key problem areas: Immigration thru the asylum system and handling of
the economic depression in southern europe caused by economic policies set by
the EU.

~~~
hyperbovine
The voters of France, which suffers from both of the problems you mentioned,
appear to emphatically disagree.

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maolt
25% of french voters did not show up.

12% of voters that did come vote put in a blank ballot paper.

Macron received 65% of votes despite being against the most opposed competitor
on the french political scene.

We do not seem to give the same meaning to "emphatically disagree".

