France has been doing this in parts of its government functions for years, building expertise and learning what works. What do you imagine the EU institutions would bring to the table?
More countries and/or EU involvement could bring economies of scale: apart from translation, a lot of work on fixing bugs and adding features to the relevant open source projects can be done once and benefit all. So either get the same results faster, more cheaply per country, or both. Sure, that adds some bureaucracy and coordination cost too, but should be worth it overall.
It would be the Cathedral if it made a 5 year plan to build the perfect solution (even more so if from quasi-scratch). But the EU is also known to offer (sometimes small scale) grants in specific domains. That's much more compatible with the Bazaar.
The EU is not even a legitimate government in that it’s quite literally a con job (just shows up, moves in and declares “I’m your government now” and the people are like “yes, daddy!”. It’s weird, Europeans, it’s weird), but now you want to just have this fake government that is literally controlled by an unelected commission, unilaterally impose operating systems on all formerly sovereign nations too?
People like you amaze me, it’s the cattle advocating for the slaughter house because it has fancy neon lights and lasers.
Could you please stop posting personal attacks and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Comments like these, and you've unfortunately posted many others like them, are not ok here:
What exactly is a flamebait and what was a personal attack?
It seems more like you are rationalizing your personal dislike into justification to use control over others speech in this forum for which you are clearly not qualified. And that is true regardless of what you do or I say.
You were given the power to abuse, I merely have the ability to speak and I will not refrain from speaking, even in jocular and challenging ways, regardless of what you are wont to do.
Do you know what “patronizing” means? You should look it up. It’s really a rather pathetic and vile quality no one should have. Yet here we are.
"People like you amaze me, it’s the cattle" was obviously a personal attack.
I don't do exact definitions, but flamebait basically means tossing inflammatory language into inflammatory threads in order to vent aggression and indignation. That's the opposite of the curious conversation we want on this site, and your account has unfortunately been doing a lot of it.
e.g. "Sorry to piss in your corrupt government/military contract punch bowl" (personal insult), "I see the Germans are very upset and cannot believe that the marketing and propaganda people may be bullshitters" (nationalistic insult), "You mindless drones really love that peasant slop" (personal insult) - it just goes on and on. If you keep doing this, we will end up banning you, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for.
These are not borderline calls - you've been obviously violating the site guidelines quite frequently.
You forgot the part where the countries voluntarily join the organisation. By the way, the commission is subject to a vote of confidence by the parliament, which is directly elected. I'm pretty sure you don't get to directly vote for your cabinet members either, wherever you are.
> You forgot the part where the countries voluntarily join the organisation.
It might be worth examining the word “countries” there.
Both France and the Netherlands rejected the proposed EU Constitution by referendum in 2005. It was then regurgitated as the Lisbon Treaty (with only superficial changes) in 2007, which was ratified with no public vote.
The Irish people initially rejected both the EU-empowering treaties of Nice and Lisbon, and a followup vote was considered necessary. You get two bites of the democratic cherry if you have enough power.
A majority of the British people voted to leave in 2016, and in the three years that followed everything possible was done to reverse the decision.
You might be spotting here a difference in desires and power between the governors and the governed.
That's one interpretation of the irish refs. I think the more obvious one is that the first result was very close and needed to be clarified. That also fits with the second one being emphatic.
You're allowed to think that Lisbon warranted referenda in the member states, but it's a minority opinion.
On Brexit, you should question your sources:
> in the three years that followed everything possible was done to reverse the decision.
This is a disingenuous use of the passive voice. Lots of _Remain voters_ did everything possible - i.e. tweets and marches. The government didn't take a blind bit of notice.
The government triggered Article 50 and then called a snap election - a damming order of events. They rammed it through.
> A majority of the British people voted to leave
Not by a mile, lol. The turnout was 37% and the result was 52% leave. Less than 20% of the electorate voted Leave.
Weakest mandate since the hung parliament of 1912, which only lasted a few months.
The electoral reform ref of 2010 got a 60% turnout. For the status quo. On a fringe issue. 37% is pathetic.
> That's one interpretation of the irish refs. I think the more obvious one is that the first result was very close and needed to be clarified.
Ah yes… and if the result was close but happened to be the one the Establishment wanted, do you think they would have called for a confirmatory vote just to be sure? Of course not.
> That also fits with the second one being emphatic.
The Playbook says spend more on comms, emphasise Project Fear, and call for another vote. Repeat until you get what you want.
> You're allowed to think that Lisbon warranted referenda in the member states
How very gracious of you…
> The government didn't take a blind bit of notice.
I think you’ll find that Parliamentary votes were required for the action to take place, and there were three years of deadlock during which the majority of MPs supported remain (an inverse of the popular vote) and certain MPs like Benn and Grieve led to legislation that made it very difficult to negotiate in the UK interests (no deal off the table, so a weak bargaining position).
Article 50 may have been triggered the year after the referendum, but the UK didn’t actually leave until 2020.
> Not by a mile, lol.
LOL indeed. 33.5 million people cast a vote, which was 72% of all people registered to vote. That doesn’t sound “pathetic” to me, unlike your comment in general. It reeks of someone who loses interest in democracy when it doesn’t align with what they want.
I was completely wrong about the turnout and I'm not sure how. Point conceded.
But ysk your reasoning is circular. They wouldn't have held a second ref because they're bad, they're bad because they wouldn't have held a second ref.
The existence of Remain MPs is immaterial because the governing party purged all the seniors and whipped the rest.
