Brexit or how I'll make a killing in forex

Tear down some castles for more farmland?

 

Ragu, I'm sorry, but you're not a political theorist. How you think the economic system should run has never occurred as long as homo sapiens have been around.

 

The common market is the biggest free-market experiment in history, imposing the least restrictions ever on capital, labor, goods and services over a huge swathe of Europe.

Sure, these subsidies exist but they'd exist if the EU was there or not. To imply it's some sort of socialistic house of cards misses the point.

 

This is absolutely wrong.

 

There has never been and there never will be a normally distributed variable. Doesn't mean the normal distribution isn't somewhat useful ...

 

How? And how aren't the "Four Freedoms" of the European Single Market (the free movement of goods, capitals, services and people) not a capitalist's wet dream?

 

Because the production and pricing of those goods, capital, services, etc. are overseen to a minute degree by planners in Brussels.

 

Eh. The EU has anti-trust regulations but so does pretty much every other country in the world. Yes, you also have an extra layer of regulation but when you're trying to streamline the national markets of 28 different countries (more if you count folks like Norway and Switzerland) into one huge one, there's going to be some paperwork involved.

The huge bulk of the British business community didn't come out for the Remain side because they're all closet-socialists. They did it because the EU gives them a lot more freedom to make money.

 

I'm not talking about "trying to streamline the national markets of 28 different countries" ... I'm talking about a superstate under which anything and everything can be brought to heel in the name of "greater" union. And for rent-seekers, such a climate is a bonanza: If I have to choose between: A) lobbying two dozen governments of varying responsiveness to their constituencies; or B) co-opting an un-elected (and therefore largely unaccountable) regulatory behemoth, I'm going to choose B every time.

The EU may be many things, but an earnest attempt at effecting free trade? No way ...

 

I think the reality on the ground is a bit different than seen from across the ocean. The British automobile industry, the financial sector, the Confederation of British Industry, they all love the European Single Market. Why? Because there are no tariffs and remarkably few barriers to trade.

As far as freedom is concerned, well, I can pick up sticks tomorrow and move to Rome. Or Berlin. The only hurdle for me is the language. No hassles about visas. No worries that I'll be kicked out. I can get a job I want or, if I start a business, I can trade with more than a couple dozen other countries.

But hey, I hear the economy is doing pretty good in Canada right now. When's the move to Toronto?

 

It's a great thought experiment to forecast how the future would play out if Ragu's economic vision were implemented, but having it play out that way is far from being as certain as some libertarian utopianists believe.