
Why Brexit Was Not a Mistake - barisser
https://medium.com/@abarisser/why-brexit-was-not-a-mistake-5f4ae40fd15f#.chhfn3rky
======
anexprogrammer
At _best,_ the jury is still out. We will be able to consider the question
rationally in, perhaps, a decade.

NONE of the Brexiters had any planning in place to get us from in EU to out. I
honestly don't believe any of them even expected to win. The _only_ politician
with a plan of any form was Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP.

Britain is now experiencing overt racism like the last 40 years of progress
didn't happen. Brexit has been taken as carte blanche to be proudly racist. I
have witnessed this myself, last week, in an area where I'd have expected it
to be non-existent.

The few politicians speaking are all seeking EU-lite, and it seems, wishing to
rejoin as much of the single market (with associated costs) as possible.

By most measures it looks like it's shaping up to be a disaster for Britain.

~~~
demonshalo
> At best, the jury is still out. We will be able to consider the question
> rationally in, perhaps, a decade.

You should have stopped there because that is the most rational conclusion to
this whole thing.

But regarding the racism part: if you haven't noticed, the entire west is
having a massive surge in racist ideologies. IMO it is one of two things,
either a) it is not racism but classified as such by the left, or b) it is
racism and the reason for its massive surge in the past few years are the
current policies in place. In both of these scenarios, a change is required.
Is Brexit that much needed change? I don't know. But what I do know is that
leaving the EU is not as suicidal as people make it sound to be.

~~~
peterashford
I happen to think the parent is quite right, but that I would go further and
say that Brexit is definitely bat-shit insane. The UK has now pissed off the
EU who will NOT be giving the UK favourable terms to leave the EU. Scotland
will succeed and NI... well who knows what will happen there.

And don't try and minimise the outbreak of racism in the UK as if it's
"happening everywhere". It's not happening here in NZ. And when people are
being abused by yobos specifically referencing the Brexit vote, it makes your
argument patently false and frankly, disgusting.

I've followed the arguments for and against and it's pretty clear that the
biggest common denominator in the Leave argument is "It's the immagrunts,
innit?".

I will give you that Brexit is not literally "suicidal" but economically it
will be close and it terms of the UK's image to the rest of the world - the
damage there is already done. You look like a bunch of racist, impetuous,
sulky, ill-informed yobos blaming the world's victims for the acts of the very
people you voted into office.

~~~
demonshalo
> the damage there is already done. You look like a bunch of racist,
> impetuous, sulky, ill-informed yobos blaming the world's victims for the
> acts of the very people you voted into office.

So lets see, which is more likely?

a) It just so happened that France, Sweden, Norway, UK and a bunch of other
countries turned racist over night (see the rise in numbers of voters for the
extreme right parties), or

b) you are wrong because you have an incomplete picture of how the world
actually looks like?

I'll let you decide which one it is.

~~~
peterashford
I am claiming that economic hardship coupled with a ready scapegoat at hand
leads to scapegoating. Are you claiming that this has never happened before in
the world? I'm pretty sure if I try REALLLY hard, I might even be able to
think of an example or two in European history.

You have to be pretty ignorant of history if you can't find parallels with
Irish, Jews or Blacks and different times and places. And YES I am saying that
just as in history when all those groups were demonised, this current bout in
Europe is racist.

------
DoubleGlazing
The author fails to take in to account the short term issues associated with
the Brexit.

For the next ten years, and probably more, Britain's economy is going to be
all over the place. It will be hard to keep things stable whilst new treaties
are negotiated and new trade links are established.

Britain is effectively rebooting its relationship with it's biggest trading
partner. There is no way that such a move cannot have significant negative
repercussions.

I've already seen such repercussions with UK friends who run small businesses
being impacted the drop in the value of sterling. Another UK friend who runs a
tourist coach business has been told by his EU based tour operator clients
that once the Brexit happens they may have to drop him as a supplier - which
now means a planned expansion has been put on hold. This is the sort of stuff
happening even before article 50 is invoked, once that happens then all bets
are off.

The leave camp didn't have a plan, but even if they did there would still be
major negative effects on the UK. And so far people have only focused on
issues surrounding trade the movement of people. There are dozens of other
issues that will need to be dealt with as well such as standards compliance,
product safety certifications, cross border consumer issues, science/R&D
partnerships, the NI peace process, OpenSkies agreements and so on and so on.

Lets assume the author is correct in his thinking and that in 10-20 years the
UK economy will be thriving, you can't deny it will have been a very, very
painful journey to get there.

------
the_mitsuhiko
I find these "it's not so bad" posts laughable. There is zero direction and
people already seem to know that it will be okay. People seem to forget that
stable countries disintegrated not so long ago in Europe. One just think of
what happened to Yugoslavia.

------
vixen99
Not a word here about democracy. Lord Monckton summed it up very well: Where
are the counter arguments?

"My three reasons for departure, in strict order of precedence, were
Democracy, Democracy, and Democracy. For the so-called “European Parliament”
is no Parliament. It is a mere duma. It lacks even the power to bring forward
a bill, and the 28 faceless, unelected, omnipotent Kommissars – the official
German name for the shadowy Commissioners who exercise the supreme lawmaking
power that was once vested in our elected Parliament – have the power, under
the Treaty of Maastricht, to meet behind closed doors to override in secret
any decision of that “Parliament” at will, and even to issue “Commission
Regulations” that bypass it altogether.

Worse, the treaty that established the European Stability Pact gives its
governing body of absolute bankers the power, at will and without
consultation, to demand any sum of money, however large, from any member
state, and every member of that governing body, personally as well as
collectively, is held entirely immune not only from any civil suit but also
from any criminal prosecution.

That is dictatorship in the formal sense. Good riddance to it."

------
abcampbell
Points for ambition, but after opening the article by saying you disagree with
the consensus economic analysis, you pretty much disqualify yourself from
having an opinion on the economic analysis...

 _Britain could and should declare free trade unilaterally with every other
nation, whether they reciprocate or not. They would become an incredibly
dynamic and prosperous trading hub._

First, not sure if you understand how trading hubs work.*

Second, not sure you are listening to why people think Brexit is bad for the
UK economy if you think this is the solution.

The biggest economic risk to the UK from Brexit doesn't come from the fact
they now have to renegotiate access to the EU internal market, it comes from
the fact that Scotland might decide to go independent.

In turn, that has unleashed a ton of uncertainty for banks like Royal Bank of
Scotland that, you know, take deposits and make loans denominated in British
pounds to Scottish people.

Even if you could manage the transition across independence, redenomination
and recapitalization, the potential shock to credit/liquidity is sufficient
that a LOT of babies are likely to get thrown out with that bathwater.

~~~~

* It's not really tarrifs that are the big constraints to trade these days, it's stuff like regulations (please no plastic in our baby formula, thx China), IP, 'dumping' etc.

That and the fact that giving nonreciprocal market access would mean you end
up spending even more on imports than you receive in income from exports (they
already do this...a lot).

Meaning you have to borrow money to finance consumption...until you borrow so
much that the rest of the world stops lending you money...

this is (partially) why trading hubs tend to form in places that _export_ a
lot vs import a lot.

~~~

World Bank tarrif data: [http://bit.ly/293JtWZ](http://bit.ly/293JtWZ) Melanin
in baby formula: [http://bit.ly/29nVRQH](http://bit.ly/29nVRQH)

~~~
abcampbell
Someone wrote this up better than I could

"With or without tariff issues being resolved — which are actually irrelevant
to the access issue — the claim is false. Tariffs do not prevent access to a
market. They simply impose a tax on entry. The actual barrier is regulatory
conformity — what is known generally as a non-tariff barrier (NTB) or,
sometimes, as technical barrier to trade (TBT)."

[https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/what-s-wrong-with-the-
wto...](https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/what-s-wrong-with-the-wto-
option-1fcbf5e8cee6#.3o8nbxy0s)

------
peterashford
Regarding the "champion of free trade" idea that the article raises - this is
pure fantasy. The idea of dropping your trade barriers and just hoping by some
magic sense of fairplay everyone else will do the same is ludicrous. Ignoring
the prima facie illogic of expecting selfless altruism from your trading
partners, I know from experience that this will not work - as does everyone
else in NZ. We know this because it was the brain-dead approach our
governments took in the late 80's. It has lead to us having NOTHING to offer
in trade deals as we'd already given away the family silver.

TL;DR, the OP is seriously confused about how economics works.

------
pi-err
Points:

\- "unrestricted free trade will be awesome"

\- peace is not at stake, au contraire

\- decentralization is awesome. And small is beautiful!

\- it doesn't matter that it's a little about xenophobia

It sounds more like a prayer to Ricardo and the Seven because there really are
no arguments given. "Let's try this awesome experiment because we're awesome!"

We'll hear this a lot - especially from the Boris Johnson side of the
equation.

And the UK may well get the best out of this. It could become the mythical
european Dubai, half fiscal paradise and half tech/creative/trade hub. This
would also mean that the biggest losers would be the exact same people would
voted for Brexit: white, older, English middle class. Politically, this will
be interesting.

~~~
gonvaled
> This would also mean that the biggest losers would be the exact same people
> would voted for Brexit: white, older, English middle class.

You will always have trickle down economics to make the middle class much
richer.

Oh, wait, this does not seem be to be working as expected [1]

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25)

------
gonvaled
That graph is of course correct, but the question remains, at _what level_ do
you centralize? The idea of the EU is that the central point _is_ the EU, and
that it is the EU which makes deals with the rest of the blocks.

If we follow through with the idea that the ideal level is the nation state,
the you have 200 odd countries doing deals with each other. Not very
practical.

OR, we have several world regions doing deals with each other, plus the UK.

Which is a version of "Beggar_thy_neighbour" policy [1]: in a world in which
countries in world regions are cooperating with each other by making
compromises, there is _always_ the option by one of those countries to play
dirty and try to game the system (for example, tax heavens).

Note: this applies to _big issues_. There are things which are better decided
at the national, regional or even the city level.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggar_thy_neighbour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggar_thy_neighbour)

------
tomohawk
And then there's this:

[http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/683739/EU-
referendum-...](http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/683739/EU-referendum-
German-French-European-superstate-Brexit)

~~~
vlehto
"anti-EU sentiments running high in eastern Europe, Scandinavia and France."

"Greater Germany" all over again? Makes perfect sense actually.

~~~
peterashford
Yeah, the EU is just as good a scapegoat as immigrants.

------
k__
I think it's good in the long run too.

Maybe UK decunstructs itself, because Northern Ireland and Scottland leave it
and join the EU anyway.

The EU can use the rest of UK to create an example, so no other country will
leave in the future.

After that I think Londons tech hub will spread more to Ireland or Germany.
Many people already use Ireland to create cheap companies and Berlin pushes
hard to become the SF of Europe.

These will be bad times for the UK but I think it will wake the people up and
they will fix their country.

~~~
dingaling
> The EU can use the rest of UK to create an example, so no other country will
> leave in the future.

If the EU shows that the only way it can maintain unity is by punishing those
who try to leave, many will leave.

They will absolutely _not_ 'create an example' of the UK because that would
amount to fueling the nationalist voices in France and the Netherlands. Even
in Poland there are people who are now uncertain that they want to be in the
EU.

------
Oletros
> If you have ever travelled to Europe and tried to buy clothing, food, or a
> computer, this is why they are so much more expensive than in the US

I would like to see some figures for that, but I think that more than tariffs,
the author is not taking into account the VAT, the price of carburant and some
other things.

~~~
grenoire
VAT is definitely significantly higher than the US in most EU states, even
double. It contributes greatly to the higher prices. Additionally, the
different currency and shipping costs add a considerable sum too.

------
gonvaled
> There has been peace in Europe because, frankly, the Europeans are weak.

What is this? Most of the regions in conflict in the world are, according to
the scales he sets, "weak".

