The core concept in EU law is subsidiarity. Look it up if you're unfamiliar - by treaty, the EU may only make laws where actions by individual countries are insufficient. I think you're being incredibly one-sided and myopic, if not ignorant.
Collective action problems are real. Nation states are a poor way to deal with many cross-border problems, just like individuals without a government is a poor way to deal with many problems in a community. Pooling sovereignty is a bargain: it's trading away freedom on one axis to gain freedom on another - freedom from certain kinds of problems. Whether it's war vs peace, mercantilism vs trade, security, administration of commons - there are real tradeoffs, and real wins to be had from pooling sovereignty.
The single biggest practical loss, that I feel most for the UK, is how her youth will have their horizons cut much shorter. The EU will be just another country; work visas will dissuade millions.
> The core concept in EU law is subsidiarity. Look it up if you're unfamiliar - by treaty, the EU may only make laws where actions by individual countries are insufficient.
I agree that collective action problems are real and centralized government is one way to address such problems. But selling the E.U. on the idea that it'll only invoke supra-national powers "where actions by individual countries are insufficient" is a bill of goods. The U.S. federal government was supposed to be a narrow one that acted only in specific areas where a national response was necessary (military, trade, foreign policy). But that got obliterated over time because it's much easier to dictate from the national level instead of getting buy-in from dozens of state legislatures.
You can't "pool sovereignty". This is a rhetorical trick designed to make people forget that they are not getting what they want.
When everyone agrees on something, you don't have to coerce them. So sure, their sovereignty is pooled.
As soon as someone disagrees on something, they have to be forced to accept the group's decision. Typically there's some sort of horse trade going on so that nobody gets everything they want, because there's several things on the table.
Yes collective action problems are real, but there's no reason the collective needs to be larger and larger and encompass all issues rather than just a subset. Let decisions be made at the local level by default, and the few things that need regional or global action, have a talk about that. If what you're bringing up is compelling, a lot of other countries will agree.
Collective action problems are real. Nation states are a poor way to deal with many cross-border problems, just like individuals without a government is a poor way to deal with many problems in a community. Pooling sovereignty is a bargain: it's trading away freedom on one axis to gain freedom on another - freedom from certain kinds of problems. Whether it's war vs peace, mercantilism vs trade, security, administration of commons - there are real tradeoffs, and real wins to be had from pooling sovereignty.
The single biggest practical loss, that I feel most for the UK, is how her youth will have their horizons cut much shorter. The EU will be just another country; work visas will dissuade millions.