Comments by "Nigel Johnson" (@nigeljohnson9820) on "Macron to push Eurozone reform" video.

Macron wants a common pot of money for the federal EU super state. German will but money into the fund and France will spend it.
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Paul Aiello but that is the point, for the euro to survive it requires a federal super state, setting taxation rates, evening borrowing, setting interest rates etc, all aspects of a central control of the whole EU economy. It then requires the rich states to finance the poor to produce a uniform level of wealth. This requires a mind set which is still decades away, because it requires the states to lose their individuality, with its them and us view and see the EU as a single country. The US is still trying to do this. The real problem is that the US model shows it does not work. China shows the level of control necessary to make such an economy work.
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Paul Aiello you do not say how the EU solution is any different from the US solution. I agree that China plans strategically, however that was not what I consider their main advantage but also their main disadvantage. China is effectively a dictatorship, this means that it is unnecessary to consider objections raised by the people. It was once said that the only difference between the USSR and the UK, was that in the USSR they shoot dissidents,in the UK the government just ignored them. The EU operates in much the same way to the latter, it notes the objections and promptly ignores them and carries on with the grand project of federalisation. For years the UK government got away with ignoring the people, then it imported a whole load of migrants who come from countries where government's are regularly overthrown and minsters shoot, chopped up or hung. The EU has this problem too. In most western countries democracy is an illusion, either because it has just a few political parties who largely agree and are equally corrupt or because elections are contested on a range of policies, that give the politicians room to manoeuvre. With a single vote it is mpossible for he electorate to express what they do and do not want. This leaves the politicians room to interpret the result any way they want. Unfortunately for politicians in so called democratic countries the idea of referendums has caught on, leaving the politicians no room to massage the result, hence brexit. The EU has the same problem, only if they go against the wishes of the people they will end up on the wrong end of a firing squad. Democracy is an interesting concept, it is easily given away at the ballot box, but it is usually won back with a gun.
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Paul Aiello there is called theory that the collective makes better decision than any individual. While individuals may make bad decisions, the electorate are much smarter than you give them credit. Government would like to say don't worry your little head about that we will make all the difficult decisions. In practice this does not allow for the inherent corruption that goes with power. Politicians often trample over the rights of the individual by claiming the needs of the menu out weight those of the individual. This is how motorways get built through areas of special scientific interest and how big companies get to pollute with impunity. The EU exploits its size to trample over the will of whole nation states. It can justify doing horrible things by citing the greater good. While all member states had a veto the EU was paralysed by indecision. Majority voting freed the leviathan, but introduced the greater good defence. If the EU ever becomes a federal state, decisions for the many will be made by the very few and the greater good defence will see the EU do horrible thing to individual citizens and whole states, it will also see the EU involved in wars. I cannot help seeing the EU turn into the monster predicted by Orwell in 1984. Remember big brother knows best.
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Paul Aiello in the UK, the first past the post election system is rigged to maintain a two party system. In many constituencies, the electorate are deterred from voting because one party has a traditional large majority, meaning voting for any other party results in a wasted vote. On many issues the party manifestos agree, so nothing changes no matter who is elected. By including many issues in the manifesto and only allowing the public to select a candidate who represents the manifesto the elected government is able to cherry pick which parts of the manifesto to emphasise and which to ignore,( kick into the long grass). Similarly the lossing side is free to interpret the result to emphasise their pet policy, usually claiming it was not sufficiently extreme. In general elections, the lossing party will usually claim that local issues affected the vote and in local elections the reverse is true. Thet electorate choice is often made on the least worst option between the two parties. The process is further rigged by the fact that the political candidates do not represent their constituents, but the party that sponsors them. Once elected, the MPs are forced to follow the party line by the aptly named party whips, who see that MPs vote on party lines. He government is lobbied by the rich and powerful and those who represent the interests of big corporations. So government usually only represents the interests of the top 5% of the population. All the above ensure extremely poor turnouts for general elections and even lower for local elections. The only time a government gets a clear unambiguous message from the electorate is during a referendum, when the electorate vote on a single issue, as in the UK brexit referendum. This really taxes government's ability to spin the result using all the tricks in the book. The first is to rely on the electorates poor memory, claiming that the facts were not well explained before the referendum. Then they play with numbers, those against the result pointing out the only 4% margin of the result. Failing to note the extremely high turnout and the huge numbers who voted for the winning result. They also fail to mention that there legitimacy to govern is based on an even smaller margin with fewer voters involved. In the case of the brexit referendum what is particularly galling is that so much intellectual effort has been involved in leaving the EU when practically none was involved in joining. The joining process might as well been conducted in secret, it was certainly done by stealth. So what has been described as an logical decision by the people is in fact them waking to find that their country has already been partly consumed and they have been deceived by those that represent them and the monster that is slowly devouring the country. To quote Walter Scott, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive"
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Paul Aiello proportional representation is often cited as the reason Hitler was able to gain power. So finding an alternative to the existing system is going to be difficult. With regard to the referendum vote you are using the statistical trick of looking at the size of the vote margin rather than the numbers involved on each side. Those on the remain side also like to play on the short term memory of the electorate. Robert fear made it very clear what the possible consequences of a brexit vote would mean, if any one was trying to deceive, it was those who failed to detail the consequences of remaining inside the EU. The fuss about leaving is completely disproportionate to how little discussion was involved in joining. The lies told during the brexit referendum are tiny compared to those told to the British people over the years of joining. Stealth and deception was the name of the game as was clearly shown in the recently declassified foreign office report on the subject. Ref FCO 30/1048.
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