[ExI] Cosmopolitanism, collective epistemology and other issues

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2016-07-10 17:59, spike wrote:
> Hi BillK, well ja. As I understand it, the notion of a unified Europe 
> was about mutual economic advantage. 

No. That is the truly sad and dangerous part of this story. The key 
motivator of unified Europe was a "never again" vision of ensuring that 
there would never be another world war. And economics was the tool for 
it: if you are trading with somebody you do not make war on them, in 
general. But over time people forgot about the peace motivation because 
it was so obvious that it never needed stating, and it all became a 
matter of economics.

Very much like how the success of vaccines have made anti-vaxxers rise: 
most people have no idea of how dangerous many of the nearly gone 
diseases are.

> In all I read on the topic, I saw little strong incentive for Britain to
> stay in.  I don't really see it for Germany or Sweden either, but I see some
> big costs with staying in.
Remember that free trade tends to be good for business. Add barriers and 
you will tend to become poorer.

Similarly, making it easy to move from one place to another means you 
can go where the jobs are. It took me filling out a simple web form to 
legally move from Sweden to the UK. A Swedish friend has spent thousands 
of dollars and months of bureaucracy to get the visa he needs to take up 
his new job in the US.



-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University