The UK has taken a lot of ridicule for Brexit. Sure, Brexit is still going to cause a lot of trouble, and a lot of expense to a lot of people. However, although I am not sure Brexit is a good idea now (the damage has already been done), the truth of the matter is, UK never should have joined the EU in the first place. Why do I say that? When it comes to governments, bigger is never better. Centralisation of power leads to discontent and extremism (hello America). Let me illustrate with a thought experiment.
Take community A. There are 10 people in community A. Six of them like purple, four of them like yellow. They hold a democratic one-person-one-vote election to chose their national colour. The purples win. Six people are happy, four people are sad.
Now take community B. There are 20 people in this community. Eight of them like purple, 12 of them like yellow. They also hold a democratic election. This time, the 12 yellows are happy and the eight purples are sad. Fair enough. That’s democracy.
So, in total, across both communities, there are 18 happy people and 12 sad people.
Now suppose community A is persuaded to join into a union with community B to form community C. Add up the totals and you will find that there are now 14 purple supporters and 16 yellow supporters. When the conjoined community now holds its first colour election, the yellows win, after all, they are the majority. However, now there are only 16 happy people compared to 14 sad people. Democracy is not quite so democratic this time around.
By centralising power, total unhappiness grew from 40% to 47%.
And that’s not even the end of the story. Before the communities became conjoined, the unhappy yellow minority in community A had the option of possibly moving to community B (subject to following community B’s rules, of course). Likewise, the more passionate purples in community B could have taken steps to move to join their likeminded purples in community A, and therefore greatly increased overall happiness.
In conclusion:
Big Governments and Centralised Power = Bad
Open Borders and Open Trade = Good
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