Britain and the European Union

[Karl]

The pro-EU camp argues that leaving the EU will cost Britain dearly in terms of economic prosperity, financial stability, and domestic security. In fact, people are being told that exiting the EU will bring dismal times to Britain.

 

The anti-EU camp argues that leaving the EU will be good, as it gives Britain freedom to determine its own fate: to decide about taxes, fishing, immigration, and other issues which are of the utmost importance for the economic and political well-being of the British people.

 

From insights into why an exit from the European Union will be good for Britain, we can consult the work Ludwig von Mises. Essentially, a Brexit will remove another layer of government intervention from the lives of Brits, and in his A Critique of Interventionism, originally published in 1929, Mises argues that whenever the state meddles with the free market, it reduces the standard of living that had prevailed prior to any state intervention (ceteris paribus).

 

The Evolution of the EU

The EU is a case par excellence illustrating the failure of interventionism. To be fair, in its early stages there was something like the European idea of creating a truly free trade area: a free cross border flow of goods, labor, and capital.

 

This was basically achieved in the early 1990s. It brought indeed positive effects for growth and employment in basically all European nation states. But the EU’s politics didn’t stop there. It wanted to become more powerful.

 

In all those years the EU has been working hard to end the system of European federalism in the sense of productively competing sovereign nation states, trying to replace it by a centralized political, economic, and financial superpower in Brussels.

 

However, the EU’s interventionist approach has brought about a rather dismal situation as far as economic and financial matters in many EU countries are concerned: mass unemployment, public finances in disarray, and miserable growth perspectives.

 

The height of the EU’s fateful megalomania was the introduction of the euro in 1999: the currencies of nation states entering the European Monetary Union were replaced by a single currency, the euro, issued by a single central bank, the European Central Bank (ECB).

 

Right from the start, the ECB let loose a colossal debt binge, which has left broken states, banks, and consumers. To cover up the mess, the ECB has lowered rates to below zero and keeps printing money — the only options left for preventing the euro from coming crashing down.

 

The ECB’s policy doesn't do any good apart from covering up the problems for a while. The truth is that it causes a shortage of savings and investment, overconsumption and malinvestments on the grandest scale, thereby destroying the very pillars on which prosperity rests.

 

Despite the dysfunctionality of its centralization path, however, the EU is determined to pursue its current course even more radically: Its advocates a push for “Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union,” basically through “closer coordination of economic policies.”

 

Small States Are Better

That said, Mises’s interventionism critique may suffice to debunk the EU approach as an economic failure through and through. However, there is another argument that deserves attention in this context. It was formulated by Leopold Kohr.

 

In The Breakdown of Nations (1957), Kohr points out that small states are more productive and peaceful than large states, and that virtually all political and social problems could be greatly reduced by dissolving large states into a great many small states.

 

Viewed against Mises’s interventionism critique, and Kohr’s insight that a super-state is the root cause of all economic and political evil, there are strong reasons for Britain to exit the EU, to steer free from an ideology that will not, that cannot, turn out to be successful.

 

Two Reasons Why Brexit Is Better

In fact, a Brexit would be good for at least two reasons.

 

First, it might help to put an end to a dead-end policy as more member states may decide to opt out, thereby raisingthe perspective of the EU being returned to a free-market productive competition system among regions.

 

Second, and more fundamental, the mere debate about Brexit highlights the fact that the state (as we know it today: namely as a territorial monopolist of coercion with ultimate decision-making power) is basically always the problem, not the solution.

Today's nation state runs counter to individual freedom. It cannot be reconciled with the idea of individual freedom. The situation becomes much worse once nation states start teaming up, trying to unify their power into a single state-structure — like the EU.

 

In sum, there shouldn’t be any fear of a Brexit on the part of those seeking freedom and economic prosperity. On the contrary. A Brexit may hold the key to make Europe abandon a doomed course, bringing it to its senses and back onto the road of freedom and prosperity.

 

 

Thought this might be of help: Mises has effectively predicted every economic crash and explained why crashes happen.

[Karl]

And here is a reason why we should leave, that would seem to run counter to common sense, but we know from bitter experience that this empirically true:

 

Professor Henry C. Simons wrote with singular clarity:

 

'War is a collectivizing process, and large-scale collectivism is inherently warlike. If not militarist by national tradition, highly centralized states must become so by the very necessity of sustaining at home an inordinate, "unnatural" power concentration, by the threat of their governmental mobilization as felt by other nations, and by their almost inevitable transformation of commercial intercourse into organized economic warfare among great economic-political blocs. There can be no real peace or solid world order in a world of a few great, centralized powers.

 

 

That's a clear sighted observation considering the EUs increasing need to create an EU army, under pressure from the USA to push its nose into Russia. Here we see why the EU must eventually mean war. Small, independent states are more peaceful and wealthier. That has been true in all time. Larger states are inherently more war like and poorer.

[C T]

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.ie/

[Apech]

I think we should have an amnesty until Friday when we can then discuss the result with plenty of grief and venom - but at least we will know which way this thing is going.

 

Until then we could discuss biscuit recipes or how to grow the best tomatoes.

[Karl]

I think we should have an amnesty until Friday when we can then discuss the result with plenty of grief and venom - but at least we will know which way this thing is going.

 

Until then we could discuss biscuit recipes or how to grow the best tomatoes.

I feel like that Apech. I seek wide open space free of people and opinions. On Friday I'm going to be like Frodo at the end of LOTR. I'm going to dissolve the fellowship of the 'leave campaign', drop my rifle, tin hat and pack, rip off my uniform and chuck away the boots.

 

I'm beginning to see something that I was only dimly aware. That the reason I want us out of the EU is for the same reason I can't wait until Friday. I do not have the violent energy of youth which seeks unity only in and by conflict. I'm too weary for that kind of fighting. I want Britain to elope, to escape the madding crowds and seek a measure of introspective solitude. I do not want us having a seat on an round table of plotters and war mongers. I see why Churchill wanted a USU, because war was what he wanted above all, to him it was noble, it was the only thing that prevented him falling into long bouts of depression.

 

So, on Friday, I'm going to set sail. I've done with fighting, let others do that in their turn, for now I feel the clock Spring has run down to nothing and I have no more left. I didn't want this fight. However it turns out I will not be compelled to join it again. Maybe if we should stay and the world burns, then something will come out of it, but I shall long be powder on the wind and my rifle nought but a tiny red stain on the soil.

[Eques Peregrinus]

Until then we could discuss biscuit recipes or how to grow the best tomatoes.

 

Scones

 

For 4 people

 

Ingredients:

 

225 g of flour

2 t.s. of backing powder

40 g of butter

2 t.s. of sugar

175 ml of milk

a pinch of salt

 

Mix together the flour, the sugar, the salt and the baking powder.

Incorporate the butter to obtain an homogeneous sand.

Incorporate the milk by small portions to obtain a squishy dough.

 

Roll the dough between 2 parchment papers to a thickness of about 1 cm.

Cut rounds with a glass or a round mold (the trick here is to make the rounds just by pressing the mold down and taking it up without turning it, that way the scone will grow well during the backing.)

 

Bake into the oven at 220 °C for about 15 minutes. The scones should remain pale.

 

Eat with butter, cream, marmalade, etc... Ideally at tea time.

Edited June 21, 2016 by Eques Peregrinus

[Apech]

 

Scones

 

For 4 people

 

Ingredients:

 

225 g of flour

2 t.s. of backing powder

40 g of butter

2 t.s. of sugar

175 ml of milk

a pinch of salt

 

Mix together the flour, the sugar, the salt and the backing powder.

Incorporate the butter to obtain an homogeneous sand.

Incorporate the milk by small portions to obtain a squishy dough.

 

Roll the dough between 2 parchment papers to a thickness of about 1 cm.

Cut rounds with a glass or a round mold (the trick here is to make the rounds just by pressing the mold down and taking it up without turning it, that way the scone will grow well during the backing.)

 

Bake into the oven at 220 °C for about 15 minutes. The scones should remain pale.

 

Eat with butter, cream, marmalade, etc... Ideally at tea time.

 

 

Can't wait for tea time

 

PS.  it's baking powder not backing powder.

[Karl]

Can't wait for tea time

 

PS.  it's baking powder not backing powder.

Right, I'm off on the bike to the cream tea shop at Muker. Scones with jam and cream please.

[Apech]

Right, I'm off on the bike to the cream tea shop at Muker. Scones with jam and cream please.

Edited June 21, 2016 by Apech

[Karl]

Ahhgggg it was closed. Still it blasted away the cobwebs and took some rubber off the tyre edges.

[Apech]

Ahhgggg it was closed. Still it blasted away the cobwebs and took some rubber off the tyre edges.

 

 

I'll bet it was those damn EU regulations which forced it to close!

[Karl]

I'll bet it was those damn EU regulations which forced it to close!

I did get close to adding that in an edit, but decided not to be so childish ;-)

[Apech]

I did get close to adding that in an edit, but decided not to be so childish ;-)

 

LOL

[Karl]

 

Around 21 minutes in (I think) Heseltine says it 'that we will join the euro'. This is important because later he tried back pedalling it 'not in our lifetime'. I've long said that we will not get another chance at exit and our comittment to stay will bring a full EU superstate into being and we won't use any vetoes we might or might not have.

[joeblast]

Prime Ministers must stop listening so much to their voters and instead act as “full time Europeans”,

according to Jean-Claude Juncker.

 

“Too many politicians are listening exclusively to their national opinion. And if you are listening to your national opinion you are not developing what should be a common European sense and a feeling of the need to put together efforts. We have too many part-time Europeans.”

[Karl]

Prime Ministers must stop listening so much to their voters and instead act as “full time Europeans”, according to Jean-Claude Juncker.

 

“Too many politicians are listening exclusively to their national opinion. And if you are listening to your national opinion you are not developing what should be a common European sense and a feeling of the need to put together efforts. We have too many part-time Europeans.”

 

If anyone is in any doubt where the EU is going they are evading reality. Cameron has agreed to fully 'dock' the UK in the EU. Heseltine has confirmed that the Euro will come to the UK. It takes a few minutes to see that the EU is already in the process of creating its internal police force and an army. It already has its flags and national anthem. Cameron has refused to agree to Veto Turkish membership. All the big banks and the financial institutions are in line pushing the UK into full membership.

[zerostao]

it really is as simple as choosing to further the bankster corporatist globalist agenda, one step closer to war

or not

isn't it ?

 

Edited June 22, 2016 by zerostao

[Karl]

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-21/ecb-balance-sheet-hits-record-high-stocks-18-month-lows

 

 

Better together......really ?

[Karl]

Possibility of EU Tarriffs on the rocks. Leaving will cause no changes because Tarriffs against Britain would destroy the German economy.

 

 

http://order-order.com/2016/06/22/german-business-chief-calls-possibility-post-brexit-barriers-foolish/

 

 

Sent from my iPad

[Karl]

Leave voters remember tomorrow is Independence Day for the people of Great Britain. Let's make sure we get everyone to the polling booths between 7am and 10pm.

[zerostao]

good luck and i hope the votes are counted accurately 

[Apech]

I drove past a poster today which said loosely translated : "Enough, of EU domination and the Eurozone - time to leave."

 

So Karl and Chang - you have allies in Portugal - Yes! - The PCP - the Portuguese Communist Party - ha ha ha!

[Karl]

I drove past a poster today which said loosely translated : "Enough, of EU domination and the Eurozone - time to leave."

 

So Karl and Chang - you have allies in Portugal - Yes! - The PCP - the Portuguese Communist Party - ha ha ha!

We are receiving lots of support from Greek, Dutch and Italians even the USA. The socialists obviously want to leave as its a corporate capitalist system and the free marketeers want to leave because it's a crony corporate capitalist system. The only people it benefits are those running large, established multi-nationals and gravy train bureaucrats. The rest of us swim in their shit.

[Apech]

We are receiving lots of support from Greek, Dutch and Italians even the USA. The socialists obviously want to leave as its a corporate capitalist system and the free marketeers want to leave because it's a crony corporate capitalist system. The only people it benefits are those running large, established multi-nationals and gravy train bureaucrats. The rest of us swim in their shit.

 

It made me laugh though.

[joeblast]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-22/something-strange-emerges-when-looking-behind-brexit-bookie-odds