What Is The Point Of The Eu?

[Steppenpig]

What crock.

The EU is Communism incarnate.

Communism is the ownership of the means of production by the state. One of the main thrusts of the EU, is free competition between the nations, making state ownership virtually impossible (presumably incidentally, including any attempt to renationalise the british rail network).

Admittedly there are other aspects of the EU that are certainly not thatcherite, but I did say "economically". These include the original French derived "bureaucracyism", "progressivism", and "mustbeseentobedoingsomethingism"

This results in things like the laws limiting the hours employees can work, but, like the laws on bent bananas, I imagine they will be equally happy to legislate exactly the opposite, should it turn out to be more convenient. In particular, presumably the TTIP agreement will result in employment needing to be more efficient. One day, they will probably legislate for a compulsory 40 hour week

[Big Orange]

Some states and political organizations are more enduring than others for various reasons. China has often descended into anarchy but has a long history of re-merging as a coherent political unit. The problem for the EU is that for all the Charlemagne prizes etc dished out by Brussels the only successful long term pan-European government was the Roman Empire which was actually based around the Mediterranean and did not include half the continental territories that make up the modern EU.

And the Roman Empire imposed its homogeneity through blunt military force and imposing Latin culture/written language on pre-existing cultures first (with enfranchisement helping to the counter balance the mass murder and torture, and smooth things over with military recruits and quislings from subjugated societies).

In fact the EU has much more in common with that medieval concept the Holy Roman Empire which like it's modern counterpart looked much better on paper than it did in reality. Trying to create a superstates out of nation states with divergent languages, cultures, political histories, economies and even alphabets etc was always a tough ask.

Well over 200 million out of 500 million Europeans have a Ok grasp of English (with many Nordics having a frighteningly better grasp on English than many a council house dweller). But this has led to a more smugger, dynamic multi-lingual European workforce quickly freezing out the more mono-lingual Brits from the workplace and you also notice the old historical grudges on online talk forums/social media now.

Anyway the most obvious and probably truest answer to the question - why was the EU created ? - is because the French wanted to bind the Germans to them in such a way that German armies would not cross the Rhine as they did in 1870,1914 and 1940. This is the only European war it was designed to stop. All the rest of the prattle about preventing wider conflict is probably meaningless post fact justification.

The EU and its militarily timid members were unable to reign in France and Britain jumping the gun (and dependent on American military superiority) when Libya blew up, were too dependent on the shady, unstable Gaddafi regime to control migrant flow, and this led to a surge of peoples who compounded the migrant problem growing for decades.

The EU is either going to become a dictatorship of sorts to survive or it will slowly fade as Europe evolves into a patchwork of more xenophobic enclaves and city states.

Edited August 13, 2015 by Big Orange

[Executive Sadman]

The EU is either going to become a dictatorship of sorts to survive or it will slowly fade as Europe evolves into a patchwork of more xenophobic enclaves and city states.

And I thought I was a cynic. Dictatorship or warring states.

It'll be irrelevant by 2050 anyway...we'll be another caliphate by then and the crescent moon will have replaced the yellow stars.

[Executive Sadman]

Communism is the ownership of the means of production by the state. One of the main thrusts of the EU, is free competition between the nations, making state ownership virtually impossible (presumably incidentally, including any attempt to renationalise the british rail network).

Admittedly there are other aspects of the EU that are certainly not thatcherite, but I did say "economically". These include the original French derived "bureaucracyism", "progressivism", and "mustbeseentobedoingsomethingism"

This results in things like the laws limiting the hours employees can work, but, like the laws on bent bananas, I imagine they will be equally happy to legislate exactly the opposite, should it turn out to be more convenient. In particular, presumably the TTIP agreement will result in employment needing to be more efficient. One day, they will probably legislate for a compulsory 40 hour week

Can't you have 'de facto' communism?

ie corporatism, economic fascism?

If the government issue's regulations (you will hire a diversity co-ordinator, you will hire a health and safety officer, you will hire an environmental assessor, and so on) doesn't show up as government spending or government ownership, but their effect on distorting the operation of a truly free market can be great.

Prof Walter Block has IIRC even surmised that due to the litigation culture among other things, there is no more a free market in the 'low tax' US than there is in the 'socialist' nordic states.

[Lewis Gordon Pugh]

The question in the OP is meaningless. Organisations are like living creatures, they don't exist because they have a 'point', they exist because they are able to perpetuate themselves.

What is the point of the UK?

Belief that humans have no point is exactly the reason that the communists in charge of the EU feel justified in their behaviour. I would suggest that if you go along with this belief then you deserve the stick they beat you with as you are weak and they are strong, tough. Survival of the fittest innit?