Elon Musk said the EU "should be abolished" after his social network X was fined
https://unn.ua/en/news/elon-musk-said-the-eu-should-be-abolished-after-his-social-network-x-was-finedOpen linkView original on lemmy.world730
Comments189https://unn.ua/en/news/elon-musk-said-the-eu-should-be-abolished-after-his-social-network-x-was-finedOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
This is strong evidence that EU is actually working for the benefit of the general population, and not just for the benefit of the rich.
Not really, just that it doesn't work in favour of this rich guy in particular.
Good enough for me
The problem is that we also have many of these assholes in each of our countries, with the same opinions as Musk (but perhaps a little quieter about it) and with enough resources to also buy politicians and cause damage. It is the citizen's duty to be vigilant. It should be the journalists' duty to expose them, but investigative journalism has been dying, giving way almost exclusively to opinion-shaping commentators.
This rich guy is the richest man in the world thanks also to the business he does in europe. We are talking below a thread about something he said. You are getting fooled hard
Nah, the EU is just "less sellout" than most others. There are terrible things coming from the EU as well. But generally I much prefer living in the EU than pretty much anywhere else.
Or put another way: While there are bad things coming from the EU, there are actually often also pretty good things coming from it. It's all relative of course, but I also can't see another place where I would rather live.
The EU is neo-liberals and neo-conservatives, just like the US. They've recently also stepped up their fear mongering. Guess where this is headed...
Exactly. It's very much a matter of degrees.
I honestly can't imagine where I'd want to go if EU turns further shit than it currently is trying to turn with Chat Control. Many beautiful countries in South America, but they have violent histories and you never know when there's a dictatorship again, either with or without help from the US. South-East Asia maybe? Republic of China seemed nice a decade and a half ago when I was a teenager and didn't know it would be endangered by People's Republic of China. I just watched M13 ride his motorcycle on their roads on YouTube and it was beautiful.
I think currently the best bet for anyone looking to escape from EU if things go bad here (either corporations manage to take hold over too many EU politicians, or Putin attacks my tiny little border country) is Uruguay. I hear they have mostly sensible policies and are good for LGBTQ+ rights (not an issue for me personally, but still a positive because I'd still like my friends to feel safe visiting me if I move to another country and some of them may be affected)
Notice how I very carefully wrote "not JUST for the benefit of the rich"
EU is not one sided, it also has a lot of stuff that makes it possible to run a business well, and so it ALSO benefit the rich, but contrary to more corrupt/greedy societies, EU does a lot to also protect consumers and human rights.
Counterpoint: Chat Control
Which is not a thing, EU does NOT have chat control, it is only a debate, and judging from experience, if they ever make a decision on it, it more likely than not will be quite sensible.
Hate to break it to you, must most member states are supporting chat control by now
https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
Everything can be misrepresented, which is what you are doing. The reason there are talks about this is that it isn't legal within the current framework of EU regulation.
So to make it possible, new regulation is needed!!!
I am very skeptical that any EU country is already doing it, except in ways that are legal within regulation that protect the privacy of EU citizens.
Otherwise it is illegal, and those states are breaking EU regulation, and that is absolutely NOT the responsibility of EU!!
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-10-2025-003250_EN.html
This is an example of the skepticism within EU about breaking the protected privacy.
EU is not perfect, but it is 10 times more perfect than what it is often accused of.
Please state something that is actually wrong, instead of this moronic fearmongering!
I don't think you understand what is being decided here. This isn't about making legal what other countries are already doing, this is creating the framework for countries to introduce this kind of shit legally.
A dismembered chat control version where it is only voluntary.
No chat app is going to voluntarily add it, and even if they did you can easily switch to a chat app that doesn't, which isn't illegal.
Just because there are a bunch of fascists trying to implement it doesn't mean the entire EU is working against the general population. Literally every other instance of the EU doing something has helped the general population. The EU is one of the best things to ever happen to Europe.
To cite bender from futurama:
Hahahahahhahaha.
Oh wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Not sure if you've noticed, but "voluntary" usually results in mandatory after a while. We had this happen so often already. Remember the "Voluntary" Code of Conduct on hate speech in the EU? Yeah that started out as voluntary - then there was the DSA, digital services act, which uses the "voluntary" code of conduct as the baseline of determining if they are compliant. So the thing that started out voluntary is not effectively mandatory.
Or, in the US, there was the REAL ID system which was a voluntary system aswell - well, until it wasn't because it is now required to board flights or you'll be denied entry into certain federal facilities if you don't have it.
So no - voluntary isn't voluntary for long. There is usually mission creep which, at some point, makes it mandatory.
Very weak argument, as messaging apps are only popular if people use them - and we know exactly how hard that is for most people. Whatsapp has been shitting on people for years and still it's the most popular messaging app.
That is not the point. The problem isn’t whether people pushing it are "fascists", it’s that the policy is structurally dangerous because it can be used by fascists in the future. Once the framework is in place, changing the rules becomes a matter of weeks.
Of course "the entire EU" isn't acting in bad faith. But harmful laws don’t require bad intent or unanimous malice. They only require a majority that underestimates long-term consequences. And please remember that this would not be the first badly thought out law they had passed.
In germany, there is a saying which roughly translates to: "The opposite of well done is well meant".
This is strong evidence that you are getting all fooled like idiots. You are talking below a thread about something elon musk said
All those upvotes really need to get their heads out of the sand and read the room, the EU is on its way to becoming the US of E and fast.
Pretty stupid comment to make, since this fine to X is clearly evidence of the exact opposite.
Also you vary conveniently omit to qualify your claim in any way. It's just an opinion stated as a fact, but with no evidence.
EU still stands for democracy, international law and human rights. All points where EU is the exact opposite of USA that is abandoning all those ideals, that they used to claim to stand for.
Chat Control and flimsy sactiobs to Russia or Israel say otherwise.
Binary thinking does that to you.
EU has the most heavy sanctions against Russia ever instated in the existence of EU. Some of those sanctions even introduced at great cost.
And many EU countries have sanctions on exporting weapons to Israel. And EU has definitely been critical of Israel for years, also before the current crisis.
And for fucks sake there is no chat control in EU!! You are speculating on an unknown outcome of ongoing negotiations.
You are being unreasonable and irrational. What country or union is acting more fairly respecting democracy, human rights and international law more than EU?
There may be a couple that are better, and then there are 300 that are worse, how the fuck do you imagine EU to do much better than it's already doing?
You are living in lala land.
There is no chat control... yet (that was a very closed call), but worry not, the digital omnibus is on ts way. If that gets rejected, something else will come along to destroy your privacy.. sorry, I mean to save the children.
If your measure is "oh but the others are worse" I guess that says it all.
By all means keep trying to attack me, it's enteirtaining, but you'll be talking to the void.
A democracy among hundreds of millions of people always require compromises.
You are naive, and believe some glossy image matching you personal ideals, and apparently being better than basically everybody else is far from good enough for you.
You are letting perfection stand in the way of progress, your type is outright dangerous, because your thinking is borderline fanatic, because you won't compromise on the reasonably balanced to avoid pure evil.
EU is a work in progress, and has made many improvements since it conception. EU is not going back like USA and Russia, but is standing firm on humanitarian values.
Oh look, a tantrum. How unbecoming of the richest pedophile on the planet.
I mean they could do what he asks and each individual county could hit him with the exact same fine
It works because the EU nations are stronger together, and musk can't rebel against this fine without risking a big chunk of his profits.
True. While my comment is based mostly on drunken self amusement based on my own country's dumbest decision to bail on the EU. The rules dont change overnight and this would result in fines based on those rules would transfer to each former member
Also its fucking twitter one of the things that my country is looking to hamfistedlely regulate I can't imagine the rest bending the knee
You and I then share our disgust at our country committing an incomprehensible act of self-harm leaving the EU. At least you have the consolation of Scotland voting remain; England has no such insight. I would like to apologise on behalf of English and Wales for the barbaric stupidity that has been forced upon us all. And Scotland rarely supports rightwing UK governments, having a heart in the right place and a head firmly screwed on, voting left more than not. I can understand Scots wanting to quit the UK, but I'm very very grateful indeed that you all haven't. If Nicola Sturgeon had been Prime Minister of all of the UK, tens of thousands of dead English folk would still be alive today post covid.
He may be a lot of things, but he isn't a pedophile.
Man, I know so many rich-ass dragons sitting on their hoards that fuck children that if he’s never stuck his claws in children, I’ll be surprised.
Let's see. He is a drug user (1), and videogame cheater (2), he bought a social media to post propaganda, is an AI techbro, has married three times in twenty years and had affairs outside his marriages.
500 million people decide to cooperate in relative harmony
"They should be abolished"
Well, they did annoy one self-important asshole.
Yeah, makes sense from his perspective. If they were individual small countries, he could strong arm them and play them against each other. But unified they are a threat to his power
Double the fine.
Double it twice. Also stab him in the balls.
It's in hundreds of millions and dude has like half a trillion. I'd say multiply by arbitrary number between 100 and 1000.
512, let's make it round
we can go higher than 1000, he can afford it. Let's multiple it by 420 and then 69. He'd probably go for it just because of how he is with stupid things like that.
I think I'm no better in this part. I'm implementing online Gliński's chess for a computer networks project and plan on making joining a game with ID 42069 a cheat code for an instant win board.
Oh, and default port is 1337
Musk is not personally going to pay a penny.
The fine is €120 Million. Elon makes $1,000,000 in less than a minute, so he made it back in < 2 hours. It definitely needs to be multiplied several times.
The fact that any public representative from any country in the union maintains a Twitter account should be illegal at this point, as should all institutional accounts, of course.
The fact that they all maintains a twitter account and did till now should make you think.
It is time for the EU to kick out all these too big to fail corporations that are openly hostile to European culture. Megacorporations are a direct threat to all citizens rights.
This. It's crazy to think some dumbass rich american can openly ask for the dissolvement of a progressive, free market just because it tries to protect it's citizen from greed, propaganda and stolen data.
Fuck Elon, and fuck every american oligarch that thinks Europe will just buckle for them.
I don't think that at all. and if anybody asks why I'm even commenting on this when I live in America, its because most of my extended family lives there. I share their pain.
Nothing of value is lost if Twitter access goes. Booting out Microsoft , Google , etc will be harder
They are already working on Microsoft
Are we talking de-bundling teams from office 365 or actual legit replacements to the Microsoft stack?
The Microsoft stack itself is being replaced.
For the OS and Office I know the equivalents, but what about GUI driven MDM, cloud MDM and directory services? Cloud storage and online document editing. I'm sure something exists but I couldn't name those solutions currently.
There are plenty of options for MDM and directory services and cloud storage and online document editing has a million alternatives.
So if you had to build a cloud only equivalent to Microsoft 365 setup based on FOSS / European software alternatives, what would it look like?
I only ask as for companies to adopt this setup over Microsoft or Google work space it's going to have to offer the same feature set and level of integration between components. But also have a path for less experienced IT teams to manage it. Otherwise it's a much harder sell.
Another poster mentioned Next cloud, which I had heard of as an alternative to personal OneDrive via my tinkering with dietpi, it does look pretty fleshed out for enterprise also. But obviously for corporations, they will want tools for enterprise level device management, data protection across devices and cloud, etc so just wondered who is offering those solutions currently.
all for the abolishment of Microsoft word?
please
Microsoft will be easier, at least for public services, in the coming future since Europe currently pushes hard for FOSS instead of US owned companies.
For consumer markets we'll need better alternatives still because it's harder to convert your citizens away from something they grew up to be used to over the last 20 years.
How far along adopton though? I see a few German city councils move across to FOSS but I would guess it's a long way to go before US equivalents are the smaller percentage.
If you wanted to replace Office 365, intune and Azure, what would your foss equivalents be? I guess the OS would Be something like SUSE and Libre Office for documents, but what about cloud storage and online document editing? What is the FOSS equivalent GUI driven MDM of Linux devices or cloud directory services? I ask this as I haven't heard of the equivalents rather than to argue they don't exist.
It's a struggle to get consumers off of Twitter, at this point I don't believe we will get them to drop iPads, Chromebooks etc unless we are actually at war with America, it feels impossible. I'd argue that will be true for a lot of EU based international business also.
@Prior_Industry @bruhssa there are a few hosted Nextcloud instances. For example Hetzner Storage Shares. You can connect them with collabora or onlyoffice for online editing. Another option would be openXchange (offered through Ionos/Strato for example).
They are not too big to fail for Europe. The EU has fined msft, Google, meta and others. Apple even changed their flagship product to comply.
Why ban them when you can tax them and fine them if they don't comply? Sure, we need to be vigilant of lobbying, but there are no current alternatives to most American tech giants.
You make excellent points. I truly believe with open source and some investments that every government can host everything they need internally.
I think this could have been done twenty years ago, but it is never too late to invest in our collective software future instead of letting corporations monopolize everything.
As far as social media, they will have to comply or exit the market. I would be wary of places like Zombie Twitter. They have already been proven to interfere with elections in other countries.
We are obviously facing a lot of policy making in order to reign in our digital future. Unfortunately, the US shows exactly zero appetite to pump the breaks. Let alone pull the ebrake and come to a screeching halt like they need to.
We don't need to be reminded that Meta and Microsoft have contributed server resources to enacting a genocide. Even IBM helped the Nazi with their final solution during WWII. American companies are absolutely not to be trusted.
Use the tax money to fund FOSS.
The EU institutions act like megacorps though and they've been veering right as of late
There are definitely valid criticism about the EU and its many processes. The bureaucracy, undemocratic representation, and issues around sovereignty are just a few to name.
Having said that, they have done far more to reign in our digital future than anyone else. So it is not all bad.
thank you
Fuck this guy. Let's ban Twitter from the EU. Nothing good will be lost.
I support this
LMAO All these right, white men seem to throw a temper tantrum whenever real consequences for being a shitty social network (or a different shitty thing), I think X needs to be abolished instead. After Musk pays the fines, that is!
why not just abolish X from the EU, problem solved, they arnt losing that much.
Twitter's biggest asset is its market dominance. People can't leave Twitter because all their followers are also on Twitter. If Twitter were to be banned in the EU, that would be a big market share where a competitor could emerge. Since said competitor would not be constrained to the EU, once a new market leader of the EU market emerges, it would soon challenge Twitter in the US and internationally.
that makes sense. So it would be a good move ?
For everyone other than Elon Musk, yes.
The issue is you can't have a "Twitter-like" platform in one day. So the next platform could very well be chinese and you will have just as many problems with them.
I'd rather have no equivalent, and people flocking to federated systems (Fediverse, ATproto being the 2 big names right now). If you have enough instances of sufficient size, not one instance, thus not one person and/or company can dictate everything.
I think the number of users is still relevant. They want all that data both for themselves and their "partners". Not to speak of the supplement grift.
But most of all: Xhitter provides a lot of MAGA propaganda worldwide, and supports far-right hucksters in the EU and elsewhere.
So yeah, we need to abolish it.
Nah, that would put us in the same camp as Russia and China. Which surprisingly Elon isn't critizing at all.
Perhaps choose the high road instead.
Man notorious for saying stupid provocative shit every day says stupid provocative shit. Also, man is Nazi.
I think Elon Musk and alike should be abolished. They are ruining society. Seriously, it is that simple, these pieces of shit are probably humanity's enemy number #1.
Let's abolish his business instead. Starting with Tesla.
X should be abolished.
No, seriously. That location feature that unveiled, that 2/3 of MAGA supporting accounts were Russia and Chinese accounts? He disabled the feature. Xitter is a political influencing tool, nothing less.
Makes me wonder why they enabled it. Maybe they were really were stupid enough to think those were legitimate accounts.
Nope, Musk wanted to prove that liberal accounts were bots. Anyone has a source? Was 1 or 2 weeks ago.
Him backing far-right anti-EU parties for ages is probably coincidental.
Anyone he can't outspend or intimidate is bad.
Elon Musk should be abolished.
IMO: the DSA & DMA should hold executives accountable for their company's behaviour. Someone is making those decisions. And all of the corporate law in the world would be abided a whole lot faster and a hell of a lot more diligently if there was the executive's skin at stake for breaking it.
Also: Fuck Musk, as he's a Nazi cunt making a Hitler salute at when being inaugurated as a minister.
Edit: Also, the only thing destroying european culture are the Techno-oligarchs in the USA.
Not the only thing, oligarchs from the east are also doing their part, and to be honest, oligarchs from within too.
at this point, we must all reluctantly use force to stop oligarchs around the world. seriously!
No reluctance required.
Nah you see they are silent responsible for the companies success. But when something goes wrong there is no possible way they could know everything that goes on in the company. And they get big pay because they take all the risk. I have never understood that one what risk golden parachute not big enough.
Billionaires VS the word "Union"
Damn, and here I thought I didn't already have great reasons to be fiercely pro-EU.
Thanks, Elon!
Also note that Dimitry Medvedev, the great Russian clown / mouth of Sauron, replied "Exactly" to this.
Also Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, replied with similar sentiments.
Hungary is free to leave the EU if they want to and Medvedev gets exactly zero say in anything, tf he even opening his mouth for?
As far as I'm concerned, they can all go pound finely grained mineral particles.
Guess he didn't catch the part where any country is free to leave if they feel like the EU infringes on their sovereignty. UK recently provided a great example of how that's done... and how it turned out.
(Never mind that the implication is daft to begin with)
How it turned out is the UK version of it. IMO leaving the euro would be great – but they never adopted it to begin with.
"I got caught and punished for breaking the law. Those laws shouldn't exist though by the way 😢, for unrelated reasons of course"
Ban it. Block it. Fine it. Lock it.
Harder, better, faster, stronger.
Who the hell cares what some illegal american immigrant thinks, honestly? The guy is a proven dumbass who just brainfarts words without any meaning.
I used to block any comments/posts related to "Elon" and in hindsight it seems it was a good idea.
I wish we could treat him like the jackass he is. But being buddies with a manchild wannabe dictator and basically almost a trillionaire make him hard to ignore.
He’s not American.
I am happy some things are still working correctly in the EU but I'm not too optimistic for the future. The adult toddlers seem to be corroding our very foundations little by little.
The fact that something is making Elon Musk hurt tells me its good for the general population of the world.
ban this shit already please. STOP catering to the US!
Power corrupts.
Money is power.
This is how a spoiled little prick acts when he doesn’t get his way. Dude needs a nap.
A long nap.
Eternal nap
Just proves that his political views are based in what it's best for his company.
"The US should be liquidated and sovereignty returned to individual states so that governments can better represent their people,"
Fixed that for
youhim.He can always fuck off.
Elon Musk should be abolished.
In a typically European fashion too!
Just fine him one billion trillion dollars already and then let Trump negotiate it down to a billion dollars. That way Musk will be forced to pay.
Can this dirtbag hurry up and OD already and croak?
He's such a pissbaby.
Abolish musk. Seriously, that much financial impetus should never be concentrated in a single point.
or a single oblate spheroid
Will someone please put musk on a rocket and crash it into mars. We'll call it an industrial accident and move on hapilly.
Odd that he didn't harbor such feelings when the EU wasn't fining his company
He has too much power for someone so unbelievably stupid and corrupt, to hold. He needs to be declawed.
Just ban X in the EU already. Nothing of value will be lost.
I wouldn’t ban. I would make it liable for anything that gets written on it unless it can positively identitfy the user writing it. The supply it with the identify framework that allows it to anonymously identify the users and require it to only show identified users. I guarantee it that 99% of the bullshit, bots, AI slop disappears overnight and real people might actually be able to interact with each other again.
That's so funny. He literally bought a shitty social media site that no sane person cares about and now he pretends to be hot shit.
Every rich twats say this when their firms are fined. Why else would American right want to dismantle the EU? And why else would libertarians want to dismantle governments so that their companies can put saw dust in bread and keep feeding us with chlorinated chicken?
The EU is like the last bastion of fucking common decency for humankind. The USA is going in the shitter. Britain is doing the same but 5 years behind. China and Russia are self explanatory. Most African countries still haven't sorted themselves out (Yes i know about imperial history, them being dealt a shit hand doesnt make the countries great for the average person). The middle east... well we all know how thats going. Japan elected Shinzo Abe 2.0: The Abeist.
The EU seems to be the only bloc not going batshit insane.
Latin America is the unsung hero IMO. They have a "pink tide" since their leaders are mostly moderate leftists. There are exceptions of course such as El Salvador and Argentina (although to my knowledge, Javier Milei is nowhere near in trying to curtail civil liberties and human rights). Latin America had been off US' radar since the Cold War and they can use that time to build closer relationships amongst each other by strengthening MERCOSUR and military ties.
There is Africa. Again, while there are exceptions, by and large many African nations are doing their best to uphold democratic values. The West African bloc, ECOWAS, had been great in the past ten years to oust African leaders who don't want to step down. When Brexit happened, the African Union allowed freedom of movement among AU citizens at the same time. I can see AU becoming more united, although it will take more time than we would hope for.
India will become authoritarian I would say in the next couple of generations. The neoliberal policies and flirting with fascism by Modi have sown the seed for full blown far right movement in decades to come as far as I can tell.
For the Far East, they are too insular and have their own stupid, age old inter-racism against each to be more united, and the fragmented geography of Far East Asian countries, that is not China, makes cultural exchange and understanding difficult to create kinship necessary for a more political union. But I think they may stay democratic for the foreseeable future (now, Japan has a little surge of far right, but they are not a threat in the immediate future). Unless there is Asian NATO, the Far Eastern democracies won't hold against the threat of China. Although again, Asians are too insular and geographically fragmented for closer cooperation.
Boy do I have some bad news. Far right is on the rise everywhere. People suck.
Haha, it'd be funny if NATO perceived that as a threat and just blew up Tesla's European offices.
that'd be nice.
Fine him harder!
I'd really prefer to just put them in the compost bins, like football pitch sized ones hundreds of feet deep. We can use the fertilizer after a couple of decades.
Metalism
We still have more Nobel Peace prizes than Trump
X should be expriorpiated, renamed back to Twitter, and made into a public non-profit service that runs on his taxes.
Twitter was garbage long before Elon. This world does not need social media.
coff coff says the person who has hawk tuah in their user coff coff coff
The Tuah Hawk is a majestic bird.
Twitter peaked around 2014 and it was pure shit since as all the right wing thugs and Nazis overtook it.
Humans can't be humans.
what...?
Forbid anyone with political influence from using Twitter. Only allow funny remarks and shower thoughts.
And cats.
Or, we could just ban it and let the user-base migrate to decentralized alternatives. If govs want to fund instances run by non-profit, good for them and their citizens.
Even without the EU he would be fined.
What I'd give to live somewhere willing to punish the worst amongst us.
No, instead I live in a country which is deep into its villain arc.
What a greedy little piggy.
No matter who your girlfriend is, she won't ever be softer than this cunt. Elon musk is a child throwing a tantrum.
I can't decide who is more blatant about their ulterior reasons
I said the same thing about cops after getting a speeding ticket. Maybe Elon is just like the rest of us after all. /s
stop.
The feeling is just so mutual about Nazi Twitter for people living in the EU.
In the US they just seized TikTok because they didn’t like it, being under Chinese control.
Why don’t we just do the same to X in the EU? It must make sense in their minds… orrrr??
Nah, just make them pay the taxes in EU without any loophole to avoid them. And it could be done simply even without they collaboration.
How is anything these billionaires "said" considered news today?
United States of America should be abolished and that twitter clown should be banished back to where he came from.
Fine him again!
Don't get fooled about what politicians say and don't give these idiots any visibility.
I thought conservatives didn't like cancel culture...now he's trying to cancel Europe?
Conservatives are the KINGS of cancel culture
"Anything that calls me out on my bullshit should be abolished". - Elon Musk
And X was fined for being untrustworthy and untransparent.
So much for truth-seeking, huh, Emerald Megalomaniac?
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/grok-doxxing
Maybe he's had another kid
🧠✂️🕊️✂️🐦🐾👎🗣️🧩
vivian wilson (elon's daughter) should start her own social media site just to watch her father squirm, and people will go it a lot more than twixter.
if this were a socialist country, elon musk would've been in jail. seriously!
I'm not particularly fond of my country being a member of EU, but I can't help but to be pro-EU when he's against it.
Yeah, just look at Brexit. This really has improved life in the UK.
So if one country fails with something, it means that it should never be attempted? This sounds like "you like communism? look at Venezuela".
It's different because here the Britons got exactly what they wanted in the way they wanted it and now they are sad about the monumental consequences of their choice. Calling Venezuela communist is like calling China a democracy, because there's "voting".
You're choosing to ignore other countries which has left the EU and focusing on one example. Interesting. Wonder why that could be?
The other countries?
UK is the only full country that's actually left the Eu.
The only other entities to leave the EU were:
Algeria (Once they gained independence from France they automatically lost membership)
Greenland (they wanted more fishing rights once Denmark gave them home rule)
Two islands with a combined population of 15000.
And the later 3 are still part of the OCT so they're still semi members.
Only Britain left the EU. No other country left the EU ever.
It's more like "you like communism? Look at every single time it has been attempted (on a scale bigger than a village)".
Please tell me more about how every country that has withdrawn from EU has failed
What downsides are there to EU membership? Asking as an ignorant American
As a Brit, the benefits of being in were far higher than being out.
Genuinely, every country has profited massively from EU membership. "United in Diversity" is a fitting motto. The EU is greater than just the sum of their parts. The EU has enabled unprecedented economic prosperity throughout the continent. It has enabled free movement of people, wares, money, services. In the thousands of years that European culture has existed, there never was an as peaceful time as we have right now inside the EU.
IMHO: The EU is our last best hope for peace, as one of your previous presidents, Lincoln, put it so aptly. If peace should fail, it will be our last best hope for victory. Because peace by appeasing tyrants is a fool's paradise.
It's about democracy and sovereignty. Let's say a EU member internationally votes 51% in favor of implementing socialism. Because of the EU membership, it would not be possible to implement due to regulations outside of a single country's control, and EU is famously very capitalistic in general.
One non-extreme example in my country Sweden is that EU is threatening to make snus (i.e. oral tobacco product which zyn is based on) illegal, despite it being widely used and arguably a way more healthy nicotine product than cigarettes. Currently, Sweden has an exemption from the snus ban, but that exemption is not guaranteed for the future.
Also, if extreme right-wing forces grow stronger (which they currently are doing), it could result in EU policy regarding limiting lgbt rights or other horrible right-wing policies, despite a given country's elected politicians not being of a right-wing majority.
But that holds true on a national level as well. I never understand how national states are somehow the 'natural order' of the world.
Let's say a city in Sweden wants to do something against Swedish national law. Isn't that the same about "democracy and sovereignity" when it's not allowed for them?
Countries have a veto power for most important decisions, precisely to avoid what you described, and for many other things you need a qualified mayority (something like 80% of countries and 80% of population, 9r something like that).
Not always getting what you want sometimes is democracy though. The alternative is not getting what you want ever, because the government exists to serve the interests of a certain group that most likely doesn't include you.
If it wasn't for the constitution, Texas and Florida would probably hold an election to bring back human slavery, then call it "democratic and sovereign" because they got enough votes from the evil fucks that live there.
Why, out of curiosity?
Honestly, from the outside, most every European problem I read about seems to be rooted in a lack of coordination with neighboring countries.
And for all the tire fire that America is, the federal system saves a whole lot of cross-state bickering and trouble.
It’s about democracy and sovereignty. Let’s say a EU member internationally votes 51% in favor of implementing socialism. Because of the EU membership, it would not be possible to implement due to regulations outside of a single country’s control, and EU is famously very capitalistic in general.
One non-extreme example in my country Sweden is that EU is threatening to make snus (i.e. oral tobacco product which zyn is based on) illegal, despite it being widely used and arguably a way more healthy nicotine product than cigarettes. Currently, Sweden has an exemption from the snus ban, but that exemption is not guaranteed for the future.
Also, if extreme right-wing forces grow stronger (which they currently are doing), it could result in EU policy regarding limiting lgbt rights or other horrible right-wing policies, despite a given country’s elected politicians not being of a right-wing majority.
With all due respect, this sounds like a bunch of the US confederacy bickering I was just seeing in the Ken Burns Revolutionary War documentary.
Of course no country wants to be forced to conform to stuff, but honestly… deal with it. Being able to act as a single body without constant vetoing and infighting and reinventing the wheel is worth it for having to follow a few laws you don’t like.
And if set up well, right wingers shouldn’t be able to deprive your country of rights, as is largely the case in the US. Most violations here are with the state's consent, with a few exceptions where we leaned waaay too far into federal control. Unfortunately (and ironically), the extremists of both parties want less state sovereignty when they’re in power, but I don’t think that applies to EU politics.
Out of curiosity, why would you prefer that your country be outside of the EU, and what would be the benefits you think?
Okay everyone, I'm intensely drunk so keep that caveat in mind.
"They say my life styyyyyle, is bad for my heaaalth
I'm a lost cause...
I'm so damaged beyond repair.
You have shattered my hopes..my dreams"
Apologies if the formatting is fucked. I tried.
I'm a lost cause.
Baby do r waste your time on me
He’s an idiot but that doesn’t make the EU necessarily a good thing.