It is logical development. During our history we went from tribes, to villages, to city states, all the way to national states. Merging several smaller states into one block to counter influence of other large blocks follows all the past trends and it is inevitable to happen.
Only thing which stands in the way is jingoistic nationalism, luckily thanks to internet and social networks kids does not really develop sense of nationalism to their country as they can tell no difference between somebody from Albania, France or Niger. And they can see that all the people have more less the same problems and more less the same desires and only thing which separates them is language and few obscure traditions of their ancestors.
This also runs contrary to dismantling EU - European states weren't merged from outside by some Godlike power, but from inside by European themselves. It was a logical thing to do, to increase trade and to make Europe more competitive. If you would erase EU today with a magic rubber, something like EU would exist again within 30 years.
Wait until jingoistic EU nationalism emerges... we're there.
> luckily thanks to internet and social networks kids does not really develop sense of nationalism to their country as they can tell no difference between somebody from Albania, France or Niger...
That's both incorrect, younger generations do develop a strong sense of patriotism, it is even actually on the rise in Europe, and a ludicrous and very sinister rejection of culture ("few obscure traditions of their ancestors"... sounds like New China or the USSR...)
In fact, in the current international context what the article describes is the rise of a pan-European nationalism.
> A futuristic EU soldier stands guard, laser blaster at the ready. European fighter jets zoom through the sky over thumping Eurodance beats. An imaginary map shows a vastly enlarged EU, swallowing everything from Greenland to the Caucasus. Welcome to the wild world of pro-Europe online propaganda, where the EU isn’t a fractious club of 27 countries but a juiced-up superpower on par with China or the United States, only wiser and more cultured.
Yay, a millitaristic EU bureaucracy, after decades of dismal economic and social outcomes, with the typical bureucratic disdain for European peoples, and Germany at the helm. What could possiby go wrong?
Seems more like the EU has descended into a "paper tiger", it's now reported the Russians are mapping out all the EU military bases in advance with drones from cargo ships near EU shores. Will be a real sh*t show to see the results when the Russians attack NATO across multiple fronts, and the EU is forced to place rifles in the hands of all these EU kids sending them to the front lines . . . as you have admitted: "decades of dismal economic and social outcomes . . ."
>when the Russians attack NATO across multiple fronts, and the EU is forced to place rifles in the hands of all these EU kids sending them to the front lines
Let me know when Russians will be able to establish air superiority over Ukraine. Attacking NATO without any plausible way to build air dominance will not end well for Russia. Furthermore attacking NATO will open Russia to attack from Ukraine, which will want its territory back.
Or they could integrate it within a wider framework of allyship, or at least let it be, as both of which it has been asking for several decades, instead of advancing towards, ramping up the rhetoric, fueling millitarism, and crossing red lines.
Especially since the EUs bigger competitor is US and China, and they could very well use it as an ally, never mind getting the far cheaper gas and other resources than they get now. The whole treatment of the whole thing the last decade or so has been beyond stupid.
> Or they could integrate it within a wider framework of allyship, or at least let it be, as both of which it has been asking for several decades, instead of advancing towards, ramping up the rhetoric, fueling millitarism, and crossing red lines.
This is exactly what happened and how we got here: turning a blind eye to the destruction of democracy and the growing authoritarianism in Russia, buying oil and gas in the hope that economic cooperation would keep Russians in check out of self-interest at least, ridiculing and belittling the security concerns of Eastern Europe, and ignoring Russia's aggression and wars and constant advances, such as subverting countries like Belarus into dictatorships loyal to Moscow and deploying nuclear missiles and offensive weapons ever closer to Europe.
This approach worked so well that missiles are now raining down on European cities every night, killing innocent people in their homes, with no end in sight, as the Russian dictator relentlessly demands a return to the Cold War era, when half of Europe was a Russian prison camp.
EU is indeed a paper tiger. Europeans do not understand that the biggest threat to their sovereignty always has been America, not Russia nor any other Asian country and they are about to pay the price for it
Nukes are always the absolute last resort. Do you think the EU wants to kickstart the global nuclear holocaust just because Russia keeps flying drones in their airspace?
If nukes were such an obvious cheat code to victory, Moscow would have just nuked Kiev instead of struggling in embarrassment for 4 years.
Do you think that Russia wants to Kickstart a nuclear war considering they would start the war?
The reason why Russia hasn't used nukes against Ukraine is simple: it would cause Russia to be isolated completely from China and even seen as a unhinged potential enemy and it would most likely be seen as an attack on nato and if nothing else would normalize nuke proliferation as now countries who don't have nukes sees that a new precedent.
What the see in front of them (and dislike) was achieved precisely because EU has been going towards what they want in the manner it did, and has been run by the same people who would also run the full blown version of what they want.
Kids are definitely not stupid. They just are more malleable to picking up the current trendy group-think pushed onto them by the media and education systems, while they just haven't dealt with taxes, labor, housing markets, debt and crushing CoL to bring them to reality yet.
I'm curious what "reality" would deliver them in terms of clarity/truth/policy leanings, and how it differs from whatever they're pushed currently.
If I've learned anything from my 40+ years on this earth it's that there are no guarantees that adults/grownups are more reality-based than late teens, but they are usually more convinced they are.
> If I've learned anything from my 40+ years on this earth it's that there are no guarantees that adults/grownups are more reality-based than late teens, but they are usually more convinced they are.
Yes exactly, we're just seeing the usual tired tropes making the rounds to dismiss this rather than trying to engage with the ideas.
The trope is youth being uninformed, and it's not the trope being dismissed, but their viewpoints as if they're less valid, but rarely discussed on merit.
And as for specific ideas, the root level parent simply stated
> The kids are idiots.
which I feel captures the trope perfectly. You then half refuted it, but later restated it not as an intelligence issue but an experience one, which is where I was curious what the basis for the assertion was.
OK but what evidence is there of the youth being more informed than tax paying adults?
You called it a trope but you haven't rebuted it.
Personally, I am now smarter than I was 10 years ago, and 10 years ago I was smarter than20 years ago. I am yet to meet someone who would admit they were smarter as a teenager than they are now.
1) I never claimed that the youth are more informed than (tax paying?) adults.
2) A trope is a trope regardless if it happens to be true or false.
What I was trying to convey is that you shouldn't dismiss a group on any basis other than the merit of a claim (usually by a member of a group and not representative of the entire group), which both assertions failed.
3) What should I rebut? One claim that the youth are idiots and one claim that they are uninformed because they have paid less tax yet? Ok, neither are logical conclusions to any premise.
4) You may be representative or you may be an outlier.
> I am yet to meet someone who would admit they were smarter as a teenager than they are
This is not a good basis to draw any conclusions from. Also it contradicts your initial assertion of your OP?
>If I've learned anything from my 40+ years on this earth it's that there are no guarantees that adults/grownups are more reality-based than late teens
You don't think that adult taxpayers with full time careers and mortgages have a higher chance at a better understanding of the state of play, than kids who can't spell their name without asking CHatGPT?
This has been the official line and "correct thought" for decades so it is unsurprising that it should yield results. It has gone into over-drive with, or thanks to, the war in Ulkraine, and renewed push for the EU to involved itself in military matters. Similarly, anyone who does not agree with further political integration, or objects that it is already too much, is depicted as wrong and, gasp, obviously "far right", as very well examplified in this article.
Manufacturing consent works.
> "No one is putting into question the existence of the EU anymore, but they fundamentally disagree [on] what they should do,*"
This is a little misleading because this has actually been the main contention, not the very existence of the EU/EC even since the days of Margaret Thatcher. The debate has always mostly been about political integration, and that's what is being suppressed more and more.
The far right may have been, in general, opposed to the EU but the fallacy, again, is the current use of the term "far right". Taking France as an example, the National Rally is now the largest party by votes and number of MPs, it is the main party of the right and not "far right", which is FUD. It has embraced the general euroscepticism of the traditional French right, including from the Gaullists (De Gaulle's political movement) but not the outright dismantling of the EU.
Edit: Really the HN crowd has become very obtuse and narrow-minded... What's the point of posting these articles if commenters are only allowed to agree, or disagree, depending on what is the expected correct reaction?
> This is a little misleading because this has actually been the main contention, not the very existence of the EU/EC even since the days of Margaret Thatcher.
Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC - she supported remain in the 1975 referendum but she had been long out of any significant political influence by the time integration became more political.
Looking at more recent British politics at the time of the 2016 referendum it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
I think part of the problem is that the EU's founding treaties both indicate it is a supranational organisation and promise ever closer union. I would argue that just reflects differences in what different groups of people want.
> Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC
Exactly, she was pro-EEC but "Eurosceptic" in that she didn't want this to morph into a political union. I mentioned her to illustrate that the debate on what the EU should be and how far political integration should go, if go anywhere at all, has been going on forever but is more and more "smothered" by accusations of being "far right" for often being not too different from Thatcher.
Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.
> it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
That's not true. Of course it was a political union, and that was the point of the referendum. Remember the pro-Brexit's line that the people had been sold a trade organisation (in 1975) but got a political union, instead. Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful
> Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.
I do not think it was much of a backdoor. Anyone who looked at it could see where it should lead.
1. Further political integration was expected at the time of currency union
2. A currency union requires some amount of fiscal union to be stable so its idiotic to have one without the other
> Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful
I think part of the problem is that people do not understand how the EU works. A lot of people have a very poor understanding of how their national political system works.
Such notions were also shot down when people had a chance to vote again and again (against the expansion of EU powers), but the bureucrats kept pushing and advertising (with public money) for it, and blackmailing countries with withdrawal of funds if they don't consent to them.
>I'm curious - how do you see Europe surviving if not through further integration?
I don't, with or without further integration. Not everyone or everything is meant to survive. Everything has a shelf life. The Roman empire also collapsed. Rearranging the deckchairs of the titanic doesn't change the outcome.
>What is your preferred model? All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?
A union is good, but the EU only worked at preventing another world war between members, not at helping us be united against foreign entities, because you can't force unity between different dethatched cultures just because we're neighbours, as proven by Yugoslavia, the USSR, etc.
Every EU member is still driven by self interest and own group preference, which will be the EU's doom. Like Spain doesn't really care as much about the Eastern war as Poland or Romania do because they're far away from the war and don't see why they should pay more taxpayer money for it. Germans care more about something happening in Austria than about what's happening in Bulgaria. And so on.
>I don't, with or without further integration. Not everyone or everything is meant to survive. Everything has a shelf life. The Roman empire also collapsed. Rearranging the deckchairs of the titanic doesn't change the outcome.
Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?
Yugoslavia broke up mainly due to ethnic not cultural differences, it wasn't Croatian Serbs against Bosnian Serbs.
And the entire point of a healthy relationship is to compromise and try to understand the other side, which is the point of the EU.
So Spain contributes to the east as a compromise for getting heavy subsidies themselves.
>Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?
Are you the opinion police?
>the entire point of a healthy relationship is to compromise and try to understand the other side, which is the point of the EU
The problem with compromise is that everyone becomes equally unhappy. And when everyone is unhappy strange results come at elections.
EU member states are so different, that you can't have regulations that benefits an economy like Denmark and also simultaneously one like Romania. Which is how places like Romania now have German energy and grocery prices but Romanian wages and pensions. Not exactly a great compromise for a lot of Romanians.
>So Spain contributes to the east as a compromise for getting heavy subsidies themselves.
It doesn't matter how it is in reality, what matters is how Spanish voters perceive it come election times. Elections are always won on vibes and feels rather than facts and arguments.
>The problem with compromise is that everyone becomes equally unhappy. And when everyone is unhappy strange results come at elections.
And the alternative is exactly what?
Compromise is not a negative or a positive otherwise healthy relationships wouldn't be defined by those who find compromises.
>EU member states are so different, that you can't have regulations that benefits an economy like Denmark and also simultaneously one like Romania. Which is how places like Romania now have German energy and grocery prices but Romanian wages and pensions. Not exactly a great compromise for a lot of Romanians
What specific regulation is causing tremendous benefit to Denmark but is causing harm to Romania?
And if Romania pays a lot for energy spot price then that is on Romania, similar to Germany, on top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU.
>It doesn't matter how it is in reality, what matters is how Spanish voters perceive it come election times. Elections are always won on vibes and feels rather than facts and arguments.
Then the fault is at those who do understand facts for not approaching vibes with better vibes, I can agree with you that neo politics has been the biggest catastrophe for Europe.
But the only reason why people follow vibes is because of the lack of social, political and cultural issues being part of what it means to be political and instead politics is portrayed as at best as a numbers game and at worst technocratic (just look at chat control, sounds wonderful when your experts are the police and lobbyists but sounds awful if politicians were invested in social perspectives).
>>Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?
>>Are you the opinion police?
>For asking a question?
Calling someone a doomer then pretending you were just asking a question is bad faith argumentation so I'll have to end the conversation with you.
>What specific regulation is causing tremendous benefit to Denmark but is causing harm to Romania?
That was only a though exercise for an example. But to answer your question with something concrete it would be auto industry regulations for example. If China would destroy Eu's auto industry, Denmark wouldn't care since they don't have one, they'll reap the benefits of cheap Chinese import but it would wreck auto making countries like Slovakia or Romania.
>And if Romania pays a lot for energy spot price then that is on Romania, similar to Germany, on top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU.
No, that's on the EU, since the EU forced everyone to tie electricity to gas energy prices in the name of environmentalism which disproportionately affects poorer countries.
> On top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU
Doesn't matter that the EU doesn't regulate the food prices, but it's the outcome of the EU free market it led to for poorer nations like Romania and obviously Romanians aren't happy.
A lot of EU market regulations have negativity affected the poorer people of the poorer member States. And they still have a right to vote.
What do you mean by "Europe"? Yes, Lithuania has a problem, but the UK, France and Germany do not.
> What is your preferred model?
There are lots of alternatives to turning the EU unto a federal state with its own armies. Alliances for one. It has been NATO that filled this role for over 70 years, and successfully so against a far more powerful threat than Russia.
> All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?
Lots of "insignificant little countries" seem to do rather well. Switzerland, Singapore, Norway,.....
I can see the nationalist appeal of belonging to a big powerful country, but it does not really do the people of a country much good.
> Two of those three little countries have to follow EU law without having any say in it - my point exactly!
The same is true for any treaty. The same is true for internal negotiations within the EU.
> Think about economic extortion from the US and China, how would little Lithuania defend against that?
Could the EU do much better than the larger countries can do by themselves? Especially in the long term its much lower growth rate means its going to be a relatively smaller and smaller economy compared to the US or China.
Despite all the expansion, the EU at the time the UK left was a much smaller proportion of the global economy than the EU at the time the UK joined.
Its economy is a lot smaller than that of the US, and smaller than China in PPP terms, and is growing much slower than either.
Do you have import and export number that adjusts for transhipments? What is the economic impact of the trade?
Even the UK which was an EU member until recently, has a free trade deal with the EU, and is right next to the EU geographically trades more with the rest of the world - and that is including a lot of transhipment trade (look up "Rotterdam Effect"). You can find the same for lots of EU countries.
Why would "Europe's survival" be at stake without further integration? Why would Lithuania need to stand up to Russia, China, or the US? (In terms of defense there are military alliances. They have never required political union or giving up sovereignty)
Edit as you added things:
> Also, the National Rally is clearly far-right.
Making outrageous claims does not make them factual.
> It was founded by former Waffen SS-members, for chrissake.
That's the FN that preceded the RN, some other founders were involved in the Resistance, too. That's the typical FUD narrative I mentioned, which takes the situation in 1972 and uses it to describe 2025. Are you saying that the majority of French MPs are Nazis? That's obviously ridiculous. Most US founding fathers were slave owners, so obviously the US are pro-slavery, like the Democratic Party that used to support slavery... Equally ridiculous. Again, today the RN is the main party of the right, nothing more. Their positions today would have made them in Chirac's rightwing government in 1986, not in the FN of the time.
The situation today is more like this: "Why Serge Klarsfeld, the renowned Nazi hunter, says he's ready to vote RN" [1] clearly a little different from your claims...
Do you think Lithuania can in any way negotiate on anything approaching equal terms with any of those?
What you're asking for is effectively to become a client state of one of the above.
I notice you didn't address the elephant in the room regarding the National Rally, i.e. its founders being actual Nazis. (like, the Hitler kind, not just random right wing extremists).
Changing their name does not make this any less true - hell, one of their founders was talking about putting a Jewish singer in the oven (!!!) only a few years ago.
> What you're asking for is effectively to become a client state of one of the above.
You optimist! It seems more like one has to be a client state for all of the above simultaneously and be punished whenever contradicting orders are handed down.
>Do you think Lithuania can in any way negotiate on anything approaching equal terms with any of those?
Do you think Lithuania, or other such small countries like Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, etc, can negotiate on equal terms with the EU?
I got news for you, when you're small country bordering large empires, you're gonna get absorbed into one or the other, whether you want to or not, because you don't really have a choice.
Lithuania doesn't need to negotiate with the EU, they are the EU.
The others can't, of course. That's the point! We become one of the predators instead of staying prey like them.
> I got news for you, when you're small country bordering large empires, you're gonna get absorbed into one or the other, whether you want to or not, because you don't really have a choice.
Exactly! That's why we need to build our own empire based on our own rules instead of letting foreign dictators gobble us up.
The EU is us, not national governments. National governments are a relic of old tribal days, we are all Europeans.
I do not feel represented by my national government at all, all they do is get in the way. If we can finally get rid of those impediments, we will be able to project so much more power.
>National governments are a relic of old tribal days, we are all Europeans.
Says who?
Tribalism along with own group preference, is one of the core human instincts, in line with the search for food, shelter and the reproductive instinct. You are free to ignore this instinct because you feel more academically enlightened or something, but you will be in for a rude awakening when you'll find yourself in the minority and eliminated from the gene pool by those who let themselves driven by basic instinct and will vote and reproduce accordingly.
>If we can finally get rid of those impediments, we will be able to project so much more power.
Yes, if we can get rid of local democratic governments with direct accountability and replace them with an unaccountable EU dictatorship, we'll have so much power projection.
> Yes, if we can get rid of local democratic governments with direct accountability and replace them with an unaccountable EU dictatorship, we'll have so much power projection.
I'm glad we agree! I think a Titoist approach would work best, though I also like some elements of Xi Jinping thought - namely the technocratism. What would your preferred model be?
Among the populations of all regions of the EU, only the city of Budapest identifies more with Europe than with their country or region. Even that might be just a protest against Orbán.
EU was supposed to be an economic union, but it morphed into a politicaly cancerous union.
Now it's evocing emergency acts to bypass union member states when it sees fit.
On using Russian frozen assets:
>> The vote put forward by von der Leyen reframed the issue of frozen Russian assets as an economic emergency rather than a sanctions policy. This allowed the Commission to invoke Article 122 of the EU treaties, an emergency clause that permits decisions to be adopted by a qualified majority vote instead of unanimity, effectively bypassing veto threats from countries opposed to the move.
>EU was supposed to be an economic union, but it morphed into a politicaly cancerous union.
The EU started with noble goals, but given enough time, the purpose of any large bureaucracy shifts to growing even larger and only existing to justify its own existence, rather than serving its original intended purpose.
Remember the "What would you say...you do here?" Bobs from Office Space where workers in useless jobs couldn't explain why their job is needed but they insisted they were needed.
You see this in the corporate world on a daily basis, but government bureaucracies are no different.
Same can be said about private corporations. We humans still havent figured out how to structure institutions without constructive destruction in the end. Democracies and free markets both have this correctiv destruction built in and both mechanism are under attack.
Lets hope we still get chances to vote out autocrats peacefully and smash oligopols as the sovereign.
>We humans still havent figured out how to structure institutions without constructive destruction in the end.
And we never will. There's nothing to figure out here, since human greed is constant everywhere. No matter what perfect system you think you create, over time, power hungry greedy sociopaths climb to the top, and steer it to favor them and their cronies until it collapses.
And the EU was always meant to be political, even the EEC was political since I have no clue how you form economic ties without passing legislation.
If anything the EU was built to respect sovereignty of a member state than a union considering they have to evoke emergency power to avoid violating that sovereignty.
This is not what the people asked for, wanted, or were told, though. The issue is the insiduous nature of the "ever closer union" that advances by stealth, deception, manufacturing consent over time, and sometimes by just ignoring what the people have said.
And then, now and then the people suddenly realise, too late, that on an ever growing range of issues their country has become powerless because a change of policy is either no longer within the country's power and is banned under EU law and treaties... and the web is being woven tighter and tigher little by little.
There is no support in member states for leaving the EU or dismantling the EU. "Eurosceptimism" is by and large only wanting to loosen and restrict EU oversight of member states(which again has been the main debate for decades) but even that is anathema and "far right", which should really raise red flags in people's minds even without going full conspirationist.
You are not the people and you do not speak for them. You are one person, just as I am. I want this, and I was told this - clearly, it's in the founding charta!
Right wing populists always pull this parlor trick of framing their views as the views of the people. The people have many different views, you do not speak for us.
There was no EU wide vote, so you cannot claim "the people" want or do not want things.
It hasn't just been communicated in the founding charta, but communicated and confirmed over and over and over again. [0]. If you have a problem with what member states do, then I actually agree - that's why we need to get rid of that layer!
I never claimed your opinion didn't exist, I just called you out for trying to frame your opinion as the one of "the people".
Well, this is the idea at the heart of it which has been pushed for many decades in some form or another. The EU/EEC etc started like the Zollverein which helped Germany unite.
Personally I wish the EU had modelled itself more around Switzerland than the USA which is fast turning into its primary model.
(By the way, some far rightists have pushed a united Europe for some time. The two ideas are not necessarily contradictory. Oswald Mosley was such a person.)
Everyone wants central planning until the appointed central planners do something that disadvantages them specifically. Then they suddenly remember they want national sovereignty to protect their interests from the central planners.
That's how you have massive pro an anti EU splits in the same country. Because central planning tends to produce massive economic gaps between the winners and losers of the planning policies.
That's a problem a much bigger country like China doesn't really face surprisingly, despite having central planners, and despite having plenty of different nationalities! Maybe Euros could learn a bit from them and democratic centralism too
China is only interested in its minorities as a means to promote tourism. Horrible example. Children are put into boarding schools in many places where they are forced to use Mandarin.
It is currently bussing in lots of Mandarin speakers into Hong Kong to undermine Cantonese. It has done a good job of undermining Tibetan as well.
China will destroy or subsume all native culture in every nation/land it gains control of. China is following the Colonial model of divide, conquer/conquest and containment, except this is all happening in the modern era.
In both cases, they still learn their respective language in parallel to Mandarin, which is the national language. So I don't understand how this is evil or smth.
>Personally I wish the EU had modelled itself more around Switzerland than the USA which is fast turning into its primary model.
The EU has not modeled itself around the USA, what are you on about?
>(By the way, some far rightists have pushed a united Europe for some time. The two ideas are not necessarily contradictory. Oswald Mosley was such a person.)
Had no idea who Oswald Mosley even was, but looking him up, he's been dead for 30+ years now. It's disingenuous to paint such long deceased people as still representative for their original cause today.
People change, organisations change and countries change over the decades. What was a democratic/left-wing point 30 years ago (strict immigration controls) is now considered far right extremism.
The EU, in its form back then from 30 years ago is different than the EU beast of today which swallowed the previously separate EU, EEC and EC post 2009. The US of 30 years ago is different than the US of today because society has changed a lot since then both demographically and economically.
You can't dig up people from 70 years ago as representative for the same ideologies because both the ideologies and the people are different now. That's like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror.
Right wing people have and will be Eurosceptics (Euro here meaning the EU org in Brussels, not Europe the continent) since they don't want to be led by a foreign org that's not directly accountable to them.
I think you missed my point. The idea is not new at all. Winston Churchill supported the idea of a United States of Europe, and so did certain figures way back in the EEC days. If an idea is promoted over the course of decades, of course some kids will promote it later.
I heard ideas being promoted in the early to mid nineties that are only coming about now. In fact the 1980s, "Star Trek the Next Generation" does that in several instances (such as AI assistants and tracking everyone's location electronically.)
"Had no idea who Oswald Mosley even was, but looking him up, he's been dead for 30+ years now."
Erm, that was my point. It's not a new idea and has long been promoted across the political spectrum including the far right.
"The EU, in its form back then from 30 years ago is different than the EU beast of today which swallowed the previously separate EU, EEC and EC post 2009. The US of 30 years ago is different than the US of today because society has changed a lot since then both demographically and economically."
I see it largely developing to plan. It started as a kind of customs union in Benelux and has been on that road ever since.
The absorption of the Iron Curtain countries has been its biggest challenge, and if it expands outside Europe that won't be some great shock either. There has been talk of adding Turkey and even Morocco to the EU for decades.
"You can't dig up people from 70 years ago as representative for the same ideologies because both the ideologies and the people are different now. That's like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror."
Yes, you can. It's historical progression. There was a roadmap for EU development that was being discussed as far back as the seventies and even the fifties.
"Right wing people have and will be Eurosceptics (Euro here meaning the EU org in Brussels, not Europe the continent) since they don't want to be led by a foreign org that's not directly accountable to them."
That isn't true. Plenty of right wing people have been Europhiles, even the far right.
On the flipside, there have also been plenty of left and far left Eurosceptics. Left wing Brexiteers in the UK are/were a thing. They called their movement "Lexit" but have been mostly written out of accounts, which tend to focus more on Farage and the right wing ones. Their arguments are not usually based around migration, but local democracy and also their notion that the EU was capitalist and neoliberal, and revolved around trade and money.
>It's not a new idea and has long been promoted across the political spectrum including the far right.
Did those far right people wish for the current version of the EU, or the 1970's ideal of the EU?
Because without accounting for the massive societal changes since then, it's disingenuous to say those people were having the same ideas of today back then.
Pretty sure back then the far right's ideal of the EU was one when you could leave your bike unlocked without it getting stolen, christmas markets didn't need to have anti-terrorist attack barriers, and Sweden and Germany didn't top the charts of sexual assaults per capita.
>That isn't true. Plenty of right wing people have been Europhiles, even the far right.
Like who? Give me someone living and active today.
It is logical development. During our history we went from tribes, to villages, to city states, all the way to national states. Merging several smaller states into one block to counter influence of other large blocks follows all the past trends and it is inevitable to happen.
Only thing which stands in the way is jingoistic nationalism, luckily thanks to internet and social networks kids does not really develop sense of nationalism to their country as they can tell no difference between somebody from Albania, France or Niger. And they can see that all the people have more less the same problems and more less the same desires and only thing which separates them is language and few obscure traditions of their ancestors.
This also runs contrary to dismantling EU - European states weren't merged from outside by some Godlike power, but from inside by European themselves. It was a logical thing to do, to increase trade and to make Europe more competitive. If you would erase EU today with a magic rubber, something like EU would exist again within 30 years.
Wait until jingoistic EU nationalism emerges... we're there.
> luckily thanks to internet and social networks kids does not really develop sense of nationalism to their country as they can tell no difference between somebody from Albania, France or Niger...
That's both incorrect, younger generations do develop a strong sense of patriotism, it is even actually on the rise in Europe, and a ludicrous and very sinister rejection of culture ("few obscure traditions of their ancestors"... sounds like New China or the USSR...)
In fact, in the current international context what the article describes is the rise of a pan-European nationalism.
As long as Europe isn't a nation, it can't be nationalism. Maybe intrantionalism?
https://archive.ph/QIXO0
> A futuristic EU soldier stands guard, laser blaster at the ready. European fighter jets zoom through the sky over thumping Eurodance beats. An imaginary map shows a vastly enlarged EU, swallowing everything from Greenland to the Caucasus. Welcome to the wild world of pro-Europe online propaganda, where the EU isn’t a fractious club of 27 countries but a juiced-up superpower on par with China or the United States, only wiser and more cultured.
Yay, a millitaristic EU bureaucracy, after decades of dismal economic and social outcomes, with the typical bureucratic disdain for European peoples, and Germany at the helm. What could possiby go wrong?
Seems more like the EU has descended into a "paper tiger", it's now reported the Russians are mapping out all the EU military bases in advance with drones from cargo ships near EU shores. Will be a real sh*t show to see the results when the Russians attack NATO across multiple fronts, and the EU is forced to place rifles in the hands of all these EU kids sending them to the front lines . . . as you have admitted: "decades of dismal economic and social outcomes . . ."
>when the Russians attack NATO across multiple fronts, and the EU is forced to place rifles in the hands of all these EU kids sending them to the front lines
Let me know when Russians will be able to establish air superiority over Ukraine. Attacking NATO without any plausible way to build air dominance will not end well for Russia. Furthermore attacking NATO will open Russia to attack from Ukraine, which will want its territory back.
Or they could integrate it within a wider framework of allyship, or at least let it be, as both of which it has been asking for several decades, instead of advancing towards, ramping up the rhetoric, fueling millitarism, and crossing red lines.
Especially since the EUs bigger competitor is US and China, and they could very well use it as an ally, never mind getting the far cheaper gas and other resources than they get now. The whole treatment of the whole thing the last decade or so has been beyond stupid.
This approach worked so well that missiles are now raining down on European cities every night, killing innocent people in their homes, with no end in sight, as the Russian dictator relentlessly demands a return to the Cold War era, when half of Europe was a Russian prison camp.
This scenario was a lot scarier before 2022.
EU is indeed a paper tiger. Europeans do not understand that the biggest threat to their sovereignty always has been America, not Russia nor any other Asian country and they are about to pay the price for it
So nukes don't exist?
Nukes are always the absolute last resort. Do you think the EU wants to kickstart the global nuclear holocaust just because Russia keeps flying drones in their airspace?
If nukes were such an obvious cheat code to victory, Moscow would have just nuked Kiev instead of struggling in embarrassment for 4 years.
Do you think that Russia wants to Kickstart a nuclear war considering they would start the war?
The reason why Russia hasn't used nukes against Ukraine is simple: it would cause Russia to be isolated completely from China and even seen as a unhinged potential enemy and it would most likely be seen as an attack on nato and if nothing else would normalize nuke proliferation as now countries who don't have nukes sees that a new precedent.
How does that contradict what I said?
> Do you think the EU wants to kickstart the global nuclear holocaust just because Russia keeps flying drones in their airspace?
No, but I think the threat of nuclear holocaust will make it so Russia won't move beyond their little toy excursions.
As far as I know, nuclear powers have never been invaded before.
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The kids might as well be idiots but they ain’t surrounded by incredible smart and brilliant adults either.
Can you blame them for wanting something different from what they see in front of them?
What the see in front of them (and dislike) was achieved precisely because EU has been going towards what they want in the manner it did, and has been run by the same people who would also run the full blown version of what they want.
Again, I’m not saying “the kids” are wrong or right. I’m just saying that dismissing it with a simple “they’re idiots” is probably reductive.
Because if you’re a naive young kid and you see what’s happening in front of you, what are you supposed to do?
Kids are definitely not stupid. They just are more malleable to picking up the current trendy group-think pushed onto them by the media and education systems, while they just haven't dealt with taxes, labor, housing markets, debt and crushing CoL to bring them to reality yet.
I'm curious what "reality" would deliver them in terms of clarity/truth/policy leanings, and how it differs from whatever they're pushed currently.
If I've learned anything from my 40+ years on this earth it's that there are no guarantees that adults/grownups are more reality-based than late teens, but they are usually more convinced they are.
> If I've learned anything from my 40+ years on this earth it's that there are no guarantees that adults/grownups are more reality-based than late teens, but they are usually more convinced they are.
Yes exactly, we're just seeing the usual tired tropes making the rounds to dismiss this rather than trying to engage with the ideas.
What is the trope being dismissed and what is the idea you feel isn't discussed?
The trope is youth being uninformed, and it's not the trope being dismissed, but their viewpoints as if they're less valid, but rarely discussed on merit.
And as for specific ideas, the root level parent simply stated
> The kids are idiots.
which I feel captures the trope perfectly. You then half refuted it, but later restated it not as an intelligence issue but an experience one, which is where I was curious what the basis for the assertion was.
>The trope is youth being uninformed
OK but what evidence is there of the youth being more informed than tax paying adults?
You called it a trope but you haven't rebuted it.
Personally, I am now smarter than I was 10 years ago, and 10 years ago I was smarter than20 years ago. I am yet to meet someone who would admit they were smarter as a teenager than they are now.
1) I never claimed that the youth are more informed than (tax paying?) adults.
2) A trope is a trope regardless if it happens to be true or false.
What I was trying to convey is that you shouldn't dismiss a group on any basis other than the merit of a claim (usually by a member of a group and not representative of the entire group), which both assertions failed.
3) What should I rebut? One claim that the youth are idiots and one claim that they are uninformed because they have paid less tax yet? Ok, neither are logical conclusions to any premise.
4) You may be representative or you may be an outlier.
> I am yet to meet someone who would admit they were smarter as a teenager than they are
This is not a good basis to draw any conclusions from. Also it contradicts your initial assertion of your OP?
>If I've learned anything from my 40+ years on this earth it's that there are no guarantees that adults/grownups are more reality-based than late teens
You don't think that adult taxpayers with full time careers and mortgages have a higher chance at a better understanding of the state of play, than kids who can't spell their name without asking CHatGPT?
People more bought into the status quo are less likely to be neutral observers.
This has been the official line and "correct thought" for decades so it is unsurprising that it should yield results. It has gone into over-drive with, or thanks to, the war in Ulkraine, and renewed push for the EU to involved itself in military matters. Similarly, anyone who does not agree with further political integration, or objects that it is already too much, is depicted as wrong and, gasp, obviously "far right", as very well examplified in this article.
Manufacturing consent works.
> "No one is putting into question the existence of the EU anymore, but they fundamentally disagree [on] what they should do,*"
This is a little misleading because this has actually been the main contention, not the very existence of the EU/EC even since the days of Margaret Thatcher. The debate has always mostly been about political integration, and that's what is being suppressed more and more.
The far right may have been, in general, opposed to the EU but the fallacy, again, is the current use of the term "far right". Taking France as an example, the National Rally is now the largest party by votes and number of MPs, it is the main party of the right and not "far right", which is FUD. It has embraced the general euroscepticism of the traditional French right, including from the Gaullists (De Gaulle's political movement) but not the outright dismantling of the EU.
Edit: Really the HN crowd has become very obtuse and narrow-minded... What's the point of posting these articles if commenters are only allowed to agree, or disagree, depending on what is the expected correct reaction?
> This is a little misleading because this has actually been the main contention, not the very existence of the EU/EC even since the days of Margaret Thatcher.
Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC - she supported remain in the 1975 referendum but she had been long out of any significant political influence by the time integration became more political.
Looking at more recent British politics at the time of the 2016 referendum it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
I think part of the problem is that the EU's founding treaties both indicate it is a supranational organisation and promise ever closer union. I would argue that just reflects differences in what different groups of people want.
> Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC
Exactly, she was pro-EEC but "Eurosceptic" in that she didn't want this to morph into a political union. I mentioned her to illustrate that the debate on what the EU should be and how far political integration should go, if go anywhere at all, has been going on forever but is more and more "smothered" by accusations of being "far right" for often being not too different from Thatcher.
Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.
> it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
That's not true. Of course it was a political union, and that was the point of the referendum. Remember the pro-Brexit's line that the people had been sold a trade organisation (in 1975) but got a political union, instead. Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful
> Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.
I do not think it was much of a backdoor. Anyone who looked at it could see where it should lead.
1. Further political integration was expected at the time of currency union 2. A currency union requires some amount of fiscal union to be stable so its idiotic to have one without the other
> Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful
I think part of the problem is that people do not understand how the EU works. A lot of people have a very poor understanding of how their national political system works.
Such notions were also shot down when people had a chance to vote again and again (against the expansion of EU powers), but the bureucrats kept pushing and advertising (with public money) for it, and blackmailing countries with withdrawal of funds if they don't consent to them.
The voting will continue until morale improves!
I'm curious - how do you see Europe surviving if not through further integration?
How do you envision, say Lithuania standing up to Russia, China or the US?
What is your preferred model? All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?
Also, the National Rally is clearly far-right. It was founded by former Waffen SS-members, for chrissake.
>I'm curious - how do you see Europe surviving if not through further integration?
I don't, with or without further integration. Not everyone or everything is meant to survive. Everything has a shelf life. The Roman empire also collapsed. Rearranging the deckchairs of the titanic doesn't change the outcome.
>What is your preferred model? All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?
A union is good, but the EU only worked at preventing another world war between members, not at helping us be united against foreign entities, because you can't force unity between different dethatched cultures just because we're neighbours, as proven by Yugoslavia, the USSR, etc.
Every EU member is still driven by self interest and own group preference, which will be the EU's doom. Like Spain doesn't really care as much about the Eastern war as Poland or Romania do because they're far away from the war and don't see why they should pay more taxpayer money for it. Germans care more about something happening in Austria than about what's happening in Bulgaria. And so on.
>I don't, with or without further integration. Not everyone or everything is meant to survive. Everything has a shelf life. The Roman empire also collapsed. Rearranging the deckchairs of the titanic doesn't change the outcome.
Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?
Yugoslavia broke up mainly due to ethnic not cultural differences, it wasn't Croatian Serbs against Bosnian Serbs.
And the entire point of a healthy relationship is to compromise and try to understand the other side, which is the point of the EU.
So Spain contributes to the east as a compromise for getting heavy subsidies themselves.
>Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?
Are you the opinion police?
>the entire point of a healthy relationship is to compromise and try to understand the other side, which is the point of the EU
The problem with compromise is that everyone becomes equally unhappy. And when everyone is unhappy strange results come at elections.
EU member states are so different, that you can't have regulations that benefits an economy like Denmark and also simultaneously one like Romania. Which is how places like Romania now have German energy and grocery prices but Romanian wages and pensions. Not exactly a great compromise for a lot of Romanians.
>So Spain contributes to the east as a compromise for getting heavy subsidies themselves.
It doesn't matter how it is in reality, what matters is how Spanish voters perceive it come election times. Elections are always won on vibes and feels rather than facts and arguments.
>Are you the opinion police?
For asking a question?
>The problem with compromise is that everyone becomes equally unhappy. And when everyone is unhappy strange results come at elections.
And the alternative is exactly what?
Compromise is not a negative or a positive otherwise healthy relationships wouldn't be defined by those who find compromises.
>EU member states are so different, that you can't have regulations that benefits an economy like Denmark and also simultaneously one like Romania. Which is how places like Romania now have German energy and grocery prices but Romanian wages and pensions. Not exactly a great compromise for a lot of Romanians
What specific regulation is causing tremendous benefit to Denmark but is causing harm to Romania?
And if Romania pays a lot for energy spot price then that is on Romania, similar to Germany, on top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU.
>It doesn't matter how it is in reality, what matters is how Spanish voters perceive it come election times. Elections are always won on vibes and feels rather than facts and arguments.
Then the fault is at those who do understand facts for not approaching vibes with better vibes, I can agree with you that neo politics has been the biggest catastrophe for Europe.
But the only reason why people follow vibes is because of the lack of social, political and cultural issues being part of what it means to be political and instead politics is portrayed as at best as a numbers game and at worst technocratic (just look at chat control, sounds wonderful when your experts are the police and lobbyists but sounds awful if politicians were invested in social perspectives).
>>Why have strong opinions if you're really just a doomer?
>>Are you the opinion police?
>For asking a question?
Calling someone a doomer then pretending you were just asking a question is bad faith argumentation so I'll have to end the conversation with you.
>What specific regulation is causing tremendous benefit to Denmark but is causing harm to Romania?
That was only a though exercise for an example. But to answer your question with something concrete it would be auto industry regulations for example. If China would destroy Eu's auto industry, Denmark wouldn't care since they don't have one, they'll reap the benefits of cheap Chinese import but it would wreck auto making countries like Slovakia or Romania.
>And if Romania pays a lot for energy spot price then that is on Romania, similar to Germany, on top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU.
No, that's on the EU, since the EU forced everyone to tie electricity to gas energy prices in the name of environmentalism which disproportionately affects poorer countries.
> On top of this grocery prices are not regulated by the EU
Doesn't matter that the EU doesn't regulate the food prices, but it's the outcome of the EU free market it led to for poorer nations like Romania and obviously Romanians aren't happy.
A lot of EU market regulations have negativity affected the poorer people of the poorer member States. And they still have a right to vote.
What do you mean by "Europe"? Yes, Lithuania has a problem, but the UK, France and Germany do not.
> What is your preferred model?
There are lots of alternatives to turning the EU unto a federal state with its own armies. Alliances for one. It has been NATO that filled this role for over 70 years, and successfully so against a far more powerful threat than Russia.
> All of us staying in little insignificant countries, kowtowing to larger powers?
Lots of "insignificant little countries" seem to do rather well. Switzerland, Singapore, Norway,.....
I can see the nationalist appeal of belonging to a big powerful country, but it does not really do the people of a country much good.
The threat isn't just military and it's not just coming from Russia.
Think about economic extortion from the US and China, how would little Lithuania defend against that?
Two of those three little countries have to follow EU law without having any say in it - my point exactly!
> Two of those three little countries have to follow EU law without having any say in it - my point exactly!
The same is true for any treaty. The same is true for internal negotiations within the EU.
> Think about economic extortion from the US and China, how would little Lithuania defend against that?
Could the EU do much better than the larger countries can do by themselves? Especially in the long term its much lower growth rate means its going to be a relatively smaller and smaller economy compared to the US or China.
Despite all the expansion, the EU at the time the UK left was a much smaller proportion of the global economy than the EU at the time the UK joined.
The EU is both the world's largest importer as well as its largest exporter. Its economic leverage is unmatched.
Its economy is a lot smaller than that of the US, and smaller than China in PPP terms, and is growing much slower than either.
Do you have import and export number that adjusts for transhipments? What is the economic impact of the trade?
Even the UK which was an EU member until recently, has a free trade deal with the EU, and is right next to the EU geographically trades more with the rest of the world - and that is including a lot of transhipment trade (look up "Rotterdam Effect"). You can find the same for lots of EU countries.
The EU is actually 3rd for both imports and exports. Still massive but... 3rd. In 2024 (in trillion USD):
Exports: China 3.8, US 3.2, EU 2.80
Imports: US 4.0, China 3.2, EU 2.6
You can't just add export/import number for each EU countries to find the EU number because EU countries trade a lot among themselves.
The fallacy is obvious right there...
Why would "Europe's survival" be at stake without further integration? Why would Lithuania need to stand up to Russia, China, or the US? (In terms of defense there are military alliances. They have never required political union or giving up sovereignty)
Edit as you added things:
> Also, the National Rally is clearly far-right.
Making outrageous claims does not make them factual.
> It was founded by former Waffen SS-members, for chrissake.
That's the FN that preceded the RN, some other founders were involved in the Resistance, too. That's the typical FUD narrative I mentioned, which takes the situation in 1972 and uses it to describe 2025. Are you saying that the majority of French MPs are Nazis? That's obviously ridiculous. Most US founding fathers were slave owners, so obviously the US are pro-slavery, like the Democratic Party that used to support slavery... Equally ridiculous. Again, today the RN is the main party of the right, nothing more. Their positions today would have made them in Chirac's rightwing government in 1986, not in the FN of the time.
The situation today is more like this: "Why Serge Klarsfeld, the renowned Nazi hunter, says he's ready to vote RN" [1] clearly a little different from your claims...
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/06/23/why-se...
Do you think Lithuania can in any way negotiate on anything approaching equal terms with any of those?
What you're asking for is effectively to become a client state of one of the above.
I notice you didn't address the elephant in the room regarding the National Rally, i.e. its founders being actual Nazis. (like, the Hitler kind, not just random right wing extremists).
Changing their name does not make this any less true - hell, one of their founders was talking about putting a Jewish singer in the oven (!!!) only a few years ago.
> What you're asking for is effectively to become a client state of one of the above.
You optimist! It seems more like one has to be a client state for all of the above simultaneously and be punished whenever contradicting orders are handed down.
>Do you think Lithuania can in any way negotiate on anything approaching equal terms with any of those?
Do you think Lithuania, or other such small countries like Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, etc, can negotiate on equal terms with the EU?
I got news for you, when you're small country bordering large empires, you're gonna get absorbed into one or the other, whether you want to or not, because you don't really have a choice.
Lithuania doesn't need to negotiate with the EU, they are the EU.
The others can't, of course. That's the point! We become one of the predators instead of staying prey like them.
> I got news for you, when you're small country bordering large empires, you're gonna get absorbed into one or the other, whether you want to or not, because you don't really have a choice.
Exactly! That's why we need to build our own empire based on our own rules instead of letting foreign dictators gobble us up.
>Lithuania doesn't need to negotiate with the EU, they are the EU.
Unless the EU gangs up on you and takes away your veto ability "in case of emergency", in which case you have to shut up and take it.
>The others can't, of course. That's the point! We become one of the predators instead of staying prey like them.
Do you not see the irony here?
The EU is us, not national governments. National governments are a relic of old tribal days, we are all Europeans.
I do not feel represented by my national government at all, all they do is get in the way. If we can finally get rid of those impediments, we will be able to project so much more power.
>National governments are a relic of old tribal days, we are all Europeans.
Says who?
Tribalism along with own group preference, is one of the core human instincts, in line with the search for food, shelter and the reproductive instinct. You are free to ignore this instinct because you feel more academically enlightened or something, but you will be in for a rude awakening when you'll find yourself in the minority and eliminated from the gene pool by those who let themselves driven by basic instinct and will vote and reproduce accordingly.
>If we can finally get rid of those impediments, we will be able to project so much more power.
Yes, if we can get rid of local democratic governments with direct accountability and replace them with an unaccountable EU dictatorship, we'll have so much power projection.
> Yes, if we can get rid of local democratic governments with direct accountability and replace them with an unaccountable EU dictatorship, we'll have so much power projection.
I'm glad we agree! I think a Titoist approach would work best, though I also like some elements of Xi Jinping thought - namely the technocratism. What would your preferred model be?
Among the populations of all regions of the EU, only the city of Budapest identifies more with Europe than with their country or region. Even that might be just a protest against Orbán.
> What's the point of posting these articles if commenters are only allowed to agree, or disagree, depending on what is the expected correct reaction?
As we say in the EU: to avoid fake news. You either agree with us, or we cancel you. /s
EU was supposed to be an economic union, but it morphed into a politicaly cancerous union.
Now it's evocing emergency acts to bypass union member states when it sees fit.
On using Russian frozen assets:
>> The vote put forward by von der Leyen reframed the issue of frozen Russian assets as an economic emergency rather than a sanctions policy. This allowed the Commission to invoke Article 122 of the EU treaties, an emergency clause that permits decisions to be adopted by a qualified majority vote instead of unanimity, effectively bypassing veto threats from countries opposed to the move.
>EU was supposed to be an economic union, but it morphed into a politicaly cancerous union.
The EU started with noble goals, but given enough time, the purpose of any large bureaucracy shifts to growing even larger and only existing to justify its own existence, rather than serving its original intended purpose.
Remember the "What would you say...you do here?" Bobs from Office Space where workers in useless jobs couldn't explain why their job is needed but they insisted they were needed.
You see this in the corporate world on a daily basis, but government bureaucracies are no different.
Same can be said about private corporations. We humans still havent figured out how to structure institutions without constructive destruction in the end. Democracies and free markets both have this correctiv destruction built in and both mechanism are under attack.
Lets hope we still get chances to vote out autocrats peacefully and smash oligopols as the sovereign.
>Same can be said about private corporations.
Didn't I say the same thing?
>We humans still havent figured out how to structure institutions without constructive destruction in the end.
And we never will. There's nothing to figure out here, since human greed is constant everywhere. No matter what perfect system you think you create, over time, power hungry greedy sociopaths climb to the top, and steer it to favor them and their cronies until it collapses.
There is something to find out. In small scale tribes, hierarchies were presumably much more flat societies more egalitarian.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4143610/
I guess it's still an unsolved organisational problem around communication and transparency.
Countries are not tribes anymore. They're economic zones made for capital generation and accumulation.
What exactly is this a cancerous "union"?
And the EU was always meant to be political, even the EEC was political since I have no clue how you form economic ties without passing legislation.
If anything the EU was built to respect sovereignty of a member state than a union considering they have to evoke emergency power to avoid violating that sovereignty.
> EU was supposed to be an economic union, but it morphed into a politicaly cancerous union.
That's not true. To quote its founding document:
> lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe
https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1999/1/1/cca6ba28-0b...
This is not what the people asked for, wanted, or were told, though. The issue is the insiduous nature of the "ever closer union" that advances by stealth, deception, manufacturing consent over time, and sometimes by just ignoring what the people have said.
And then, now and then the people suddenly realise, too late, that on an ever growing range of issues their country has become powerless because a change of policy is either no longer within the country's power and is banned under EU law and treaties... and the web is being woven tighter and tigher little by little.
There is no support in member states for leaving the EU or dismantling the EU. "Eurosceptimism" is by and large only wanting to loosen and restrict EU oversight of member states(which again has been the main debate for decades) but even that is anathema and "far right", which should really raise red flags in people's minds even without going full conspirationist.
> "the people"
You are not the people and you do not speak for them. You are one person, just as I am. I want this, and I was told this - clearly, it's in the founding charta!
Right wing populists always pull this parlor trick of framing their views as the views of the people. The people have many different views, you do not speak for us.
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The French aren't "the people" of the EU either.
There was no EU wide vote, so you cannot claim "the people" want or do not want things.
It hasn't just been communicated in the founding charta, but communicated and confirmed over and over and over again. [0]. If you have a problem with what member states do, then I actually agree - that's why we need to get rid of that layer!
I never claimed your opinion didn't exist, I just called you out for trying to frame your opinion as the one of "the people".
[0] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
When you find yourself in a hole...
Well, this is the idea at the heart of it which has been pushed for many decades in some form or another. The EU/EEC etc started like the Zollverein which helped Germany unite.
Personally I wish the EU had modelled itself more around Switzerland than the USA which is fast turning into its primary model.
(By the way, some far rightists have pushed a united Europe for some time. The two ideas are not necessarily contradictory. Oswald Mosley was such a person.)
Personally, I think the SFRJ would be a nicer model - but I'll take what I can get at this point.
I don't think central planning will be genuinely practiced any time soon in Europe unfortunately...
Everyone wants central planning until the appointed central planners do something that disadvantages them specifically. Then they suddenly remember they want national sovereignty to protect their interests from the central planners.
That's how you have massive pro an anti EU splits in the same country. Because central planning tends to produce massive economic gaps between the winners and losers of the planning policies.
That's a problem a much bigger country like China doesn't really face surprisingly, despite having central planners, and despite having plenty of different nationalities! Maybe Euros could learn a bit from them and democratic centralism too
China is only interested in its minorities as a means to promote tourism. Horrible example. Children are put into boarding schools in many places where they are forced to use Mandarin.
It is currently bussing in lots of Mandarin speakers into Hong Kong to undermine Cantonese. It has done a good job of undermining Tibetan as well.
China (whose Maoists control the Nepal government) has mandated Mandarin Chinese to be taught in Nepal's schools as well.
https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/mandarin-made-mandatory-...
https://www.regentschool.edu.np/chinese-language-classes/
China will destroy or subsume all native culture in every nation/land it gains control of. China is following the Colonial model of divide, conquer/conquest and containment, except this is all happening in the modern era.
What's bad about Mandarin being mandatory in schools? English is mandatory in most European schools, is that colonialism as well or just pragmatism?
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In both cases, they still learn their respective language in parallel to Mandarin, which is the national language. So I don't understand how this is evil or smth.
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Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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>Personally I wish the EU had modelled itself more around Switzerland than the USA which is fast turning into its primary model.
The EU has not modeled itself around the USA, what are you on about?
>(By the way, some far rightists have pushed a united Europe for some time. The two ideas are not necessarily contradictory. Oswald Mosley was such a person.)
Had no idea who Oswald Mosley even was, but looking him up, he's been dead for 30+ years now. It's disingenuous to paint such long deceased people as still representative for their original cause today.
People change, organisations change and countries change over the decades. What was a democratic/left-wing point 30 years ago (strict immigration controls) is now considered far right extremism.
The EU, in its form back then from 30 years ago is different than the EU beast of today which swallowed the previously separate EU, EEC and EC post 2009. The US of 30 years ago is different than the US of today because society has changed a lot since then both demographically and economically.
You can't dig up people from 70 years ago as representative for the same ideologies because both the ideologies and the people are different now. That's like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror.
Right wing people have and will be Eurosceptics (Euro here meaning the EU org in Brussels, not Europe the continent) since they don't want to be led by a foreign org that's not directly accountable to them.
>The EU has not modeled itself around the USA, what are you on about?
He explicitly said what they mean: "which is fast turning into its primary model".
What it WAS (emphasis in past tense) modeled itself around is not the point here.
I think you missed my point. The idea is not new at all. Winston Churchill supported the idea of a United States of Europe, and so did certain figures way back in the EEC days. If an idea is promoted over the course of decades, of course some kids will promote it later.
I heard ideas being promoted in the early to mid nineties that are only coming about now. In fact the 1980s, "Star Trek the Next Generation" does that in several instances (such as AI assistants and tracking everyone's location electronically.)
"Had no idea who Oswald Mosley even was, but looking him up, he's been dead for 30+ years now."
Erm, that was my point. It's not a new idea and has long been promoted across the political spectrum including the far right.
"The EU, in its form back then from 30 years ago is different than the EU beast of today which swallowed the previously separate EU, EEC and EC post 2009. The US of 30 years ago is different than the US of today because society has changed a lot since then both demographically and economically."
I see it largely developing to plan. It started as a kind of customs union in Benelux and has been on that road ever since.
The absorption of the Iron Curtain countries has been its biggest challenge, and if it expands outside Europe that won't be some great shock either. There has been talk of adding Turkey and even Morocco to the EU for decades.
"You can't dig up people from 70 years ago as representative for the same ideologies because both the ideologies and the people are different now. That's like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror."
Yes, you can. It's historical progression. There was a roadmap for EU development that was being discussed as far back as the seventies and even the fifties.
"Right wing people have and will be Eurosceptics (Euro here meaning the EU org in Brussels, not Europe the continent) since they don't want to be led by a foreign org that's not directly accountable to them."
That isn't true. Plenty of right wing people have been Europhiles, even the far right.
On the flipside, there have also been plenty of left and far left Eurosceptics. Left wing Brexiteers in the UK are/were a thing. They called their movement "Lexit" but have been mostly written out of accounts, which tend to focus more on Farage and the right wing ones. Their arguments are not usually based around migration, but local democracy and also their notion that the EU was capitalist and neoliberal, and revolved around trade and money.
>It's not a new idea and has long been promoted across the political spectrum including the far right.
Did those far right people wish for the current version of the EU, or the 1970's ideal of the EU?
Because without accounting for the massive societal changes since then, it's disingenuous to say those people were having the same ideas of today back then.
Pretty sure back then the far right's ideal of the EU was one when you could leave your bike unlocked without it getting stolen, christmas markets didn't need to have anti-terrorist attack barriers, and Sweden and Germany didn't top the charts of sexual assaults per capita.
>That isn't true. Plenty of right wing people have been Europhiles, even the far right.
Like who? Give me someone living and active today.