EU membership referendum debate thread

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 20 Feb 2016, 18:48

There are essentially two potential routes post EU if we leave.

a) Being in the EEA which gives the same rules for freedom of movement.

b) Some other arrangement.

If we go for b) then the position of EU residents here and UK nationals abroad becomes insecure. No-one is I think proposing that the Eastern Europeans who are here are forced to leave (Nigel Farage has specifically said no to this).

Hence I don't really see anything which results in EEA nationals who are not Cypriots, Maltese, Irish or UK citizens (who have a separate right to be here) having to leave.

What winds me up is public funds being used to encourage (economic) migration. There is no sense in this at all.

The EU itself has a big problem with various forms of migration from outside the EU anyway.

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 20 Feb 2016, 18:50

oobers wrote:Perhaps this is all idealistic dreaming since the dominant narrative in government and society is still around growth but I cannot see how remaining in the EU gets us any nearer to such ideals.

The EU parliament is much more balanced than the UK parliament. It is more capable of looking at subtle issues. (That is the electoral system).

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 20 Feb 2016, 20:20

clv101 wrote:Ah indeed, I see your specific interest. I generally tend to think votes like this should be based on the big picture rather than personal interest though. For example, I would be quite happy to vote for something that personally impacted me negatively if I thought there would be macroscopic benefit.

Oh absolutely. Voting is far too serious a business to let personal interests sway one's judgement. That must always put the common good to the fore. Anything less is selfish and unethical.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 20 Feb 2016, 20:31

biffvernon wrote:
clv101 wrote:Ah indeed, I see your specific interest. I generally tend to think votes like this should be based on the big picture rather than personal interest though. For example, I would be quite happy to vote for something that personally impacted me negatively if I thought there would be macroscopic benefit.
Oh absolutely. Voting is far too serious a business to let personal interests sway one's judgement. That must always put the common good to the fore. Anything less is selfish and unethical.

Sorry Biff, but you're back in fantasyville, moralisingland.

Nobody completely and always puts the common good before personal interests. It's impossible. Literally impossible.

It's just some of us are honest/realistic about such things, and others live in a self-created mirage of moral superiority, based on an unrealistic fantasy.

By the way - you said in the other thread that you go to a great effort not to personally abuse and insult other people. And to the extent that you don't just call them names, this is true. But you have just effectively accused me of being selfish and unethical, and you're doing it based on a lack of realism about both the world and your own abilities.

I know you honestly believe that all the "grief" is caused by other people being abusive, but this is not true. If you go around accusing other people of being selfish and unethical, you'd better have a damned good case for doing so. And the problem is you don't, because your argument is based on an abject lack of realism. It is a morality based on fantasy, and given the context of this forum, that's just not good enough.

fuzzy · Post by **fuzzy** » 20 Feb 2016, 20:36

It's June 23rd in case no-one is going to mention it.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 20 Feb 2016, 21:21

One, probably last, try. Voting is far too serious a business to let personal interests sway one's judgement. That must always put the common good to the fore. Anything less is selfish and unethical.
Yes, that's moralising. I think it good to work out what is moral before acting. Of course most of us, much of the time, act selfishly and unethically. We are, as the religious folk say, all sinners. I won't be the first, by a long way, to say we are all sinners. But if one knows in which direction the moral compass points then one has a direction to travel. The religious person is only unrealistic if he declares that sin will be abolished any time soon.

In the present context, it is certainly possible to vote in a way that puts the common good ahead of personal interest. High earners voting Labour when they know that a Labour government will raise their taxes is a common example.

Taken as a whole, the environment is certainly in safer hands in the EU than left to the Tories in an outed UK. The fungi issue is an important one to be addressed. Nobody ever claimed the EU was perfect.

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 20 Feb 2016, 21:24

Which raises the question as to whether it is the fungus issue or the fungi issue.

However, there is always a wider issue balancing between self interest and the common good.

I don't think you (biff) would vote for a party who clearly intended to do serious damage to you and your family.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 20 Feb 2016, 21:34

johnhemming2 wrote: I don't think you (biff) would vote for a party who clearly intended to do serious damage to you and your family.

That's an interesting thought and much depends on what one means by 'serious damage'.

Let us take a hypothetical political party whose manifesto was to make all people of the world fairly (within, say, a factor of 5) equally wealthy in terms of resource use and that the global mean resource use was low enough to be properly sustainable. That would mean some serious austerity measures in my household, maybe swapping the car for an electric bike or even some walking boots. Would I vote for them? You bet; I'd be standing for election!

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 20 Feb 2016, 21:44

I would think putting a member of the family up against the wall and shooting them counts as serious damage.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 20 Feb 2016, 21:57

That would certainly count as serious damage and since it would not be part of a policy workng for the common good I would not vote for them. (To state the bleedin' obvious.)

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 20 Feb 2016, 22:03

biffvernon wrote:One, probably last, try. Voting is far too serious a business to let personal interests sway one's judgement. That must always put the common good to the fore. Anything less is selfish and unethical.

Yes, that's moralising. I think it good to work out what is moral before acting.

Yes, it is. But working out a set of moral ideals is only part of the process. The reason ethics is the most difficult part of philosophy is not because "working out what is moral" is difficult. No. That part is piss easy. What is hard is working out a moral philosophy - a consistent ethical position - which you, yourself, can live up to. Because if you go around moralising about an ethical standard to which you yourself do not live up to, then you come across as a unbelievably nauseating hypocrite. It is a guaranteed way to make people hate you, and for very good reason.

And your problem is that your espoused moral position is ludicrously unrealistic. It is the same moral philosophy that lies at the root of Christianity and several other religions, but which almost nobody in the history of the human race has ever managed to live up to. Those who have managed to have been remembered as saints.

If you behaved consistently to your own espoused ethics, then you would give all your posessions (including your property) away, and spend the rest of your life serving others. Until and unless you are willing to do this, then you have no right to go around accusing other people of being unethical and selfish based on an impossible ethical standard which you yourself do not abide by.

Of course most of us, much of the time, act selfishly and unethically.

Including YOU. Which is the beginning, middle and end of the conflict you are involved in with me and several other people on this forum.

I am not a saint. I'm not a completely self-interested psychopath either. I try to find a realistic balance, where "realistic" applies both to my assessment of what is going on in the world and to my own abilities to act in the interests of the common good. REALISM and HONESTY matter. Without them, all talk of "ethics" is nothing more than a form of public masturbation. Sorry, but that's what it is.

In the present context, it is certainly possible to vote in a way that puts the common good ahead of personal interest. High earners voting Labour when they know that a Labour government will raise their taxes is a common example.

But that is just a decision based on balance. A lot of the people who vote labour also do so because it is in their personal interest and might well vote conservative if they were better off.

Taken as a whole, the environment is certainly in safer hands in the EU than left to the Tories in an outed UK.

I am not so sure that a OUT result will mean permanent tory rule in England. I think it may shake up British politics to such an extent that it is impossible to predict what might happen domestically. This conclusion is also based on the notion that Scotland will leave the UK if the UK leaves the EU. In reality it is not that simple. The Scottish Nationalist campaign failed at the last referendum on two issues: the nationalists could not come up with credible answers about Scottish membership of the EU (they claimed it would be automatic, the EU said they'd have to re-apply, and Spain said they'd veto the application) or the future Scottish currency (they claimed the rump UK would let them keep Sterling, the rump UK told them to forget it). These issues have not only not been resolved, but the situation in both cases looks even worse than it did before. On top of that, the SNP spun a very large lie about its future economic dependence on north ses oil - numbers which didn't add up at the time. Had the nationalists won that referendum, they'd now be looking at the current price of oil and wanting to roast Alex Salmond for being the single biggest liar under the sun. They'd be facing an economic armageddon before they'd left GO.

The fungi issue is an important one to be addressed.

Why the hell should the British people be prohibited from foraging for fungi because just as they got interested in doing so, millions of eastern Europeans came here and stripped OUR countryside of OUR fungi?

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 20 Feb 2016, 22:07

johnhemming2 wrote: However, there is always a wider issue balancing between self interest and the common good.

Yes. The only people who really do refuse to accept this balancing issue are the most extreme and genuine religious people. They are few and far between, and Biff isn't one of them. But there are other people who talk the talk of the saintly person but do not walk the walk.

And something else...that tiny minority of people who do manage to live saintly lives NEVER EVER go around moralising. They set an example instead. They ACT rather than preach.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 20 Feb 2016, 23:35

Biff

I have a suggestion. I have on many occasions tried to delve deeper into these issues with you, but when push comes to shove you stop reading my posts because, you say, they are "too long". You have accused me of being unethical. You are talking to a philosophy graduate who takes ethics very seriously indeed.

What do you think about the possibility of having a thread devoted to a discussion of ethics and morality in the context of Peak Oil. This is Powerswitch. This board is here specifically and explicitly to talk about the things that matter given that we accept that conventional production of oil has peaked. You and I are both very well versed in the wider scientific context - we both know enough about the scientific and engineering realities for that not to be a major reason for us to disagree.

So what do you say? Let us go back to first principles and see if we can come to an agreement on what "ethical" means in the context of Peak Oil.

Are you up for that?

I honesly think it would be in the best interests of this community - and it is a community - if we could make progress on this. If you are in agreement, I will start a new thread. But I do need a commitment from you that you will actually read what I post, and try to answer any question I ask (and vice versa, obviously). What you are not allowed to do, having agreed to it, is make excuses to run away from the discussion.

We can start from your own definition of what "ethical" means in a wider context.

Geoff

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 21 Feb 2016, 08:43

UndercoverElephant wrote:Are you up for that?

Yes.

But it stops at the first instance of impolite, rude, personally abusive or otherwise offensive language. The normal rules of netiquette that apply pretty generally these days must be stuck to.

I have read your last couple of posts. But, quite honestly, I only have a certain amount of time I'm willing to devote to PowerSwitch and I probably read less than 20% of all the posts here from anybody and skim quickly over anything longer than a short paragraph unless it is something that really interests me.

So don't expect too much, please.

If you'd like to start a new thread as you suggest, I'll have something to say about what has been described as the logical fallacy of the hypocrite, as I think it may be fundamental to the issue.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 21 Feb 2016, 10:04

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-e ... m-35624750

A second independence referendum would "almost certainly" be triggered if Scotland votes to stay within the EU but the UK votes to leave, the first minister has said.

These people are just so unbelievably arrogant. A Scottish independence referendum "would be triggered" if the UK votes OUT, will it? Not unless the UK government gives them permission it won't. The language is framed in such a way as to give the impression that Scotland already has the power to take itself out of the union, regardless of what the rest of the UK thinks. It does not. Scotland leaves when England gives it permission to do so, and not before.