EU? UKExit? What? Why?

So, the UK, in a poorly organized demonstration of letting the "people" choose what they know not, chose to leave the EU.

No surprise.

There are lots of people pretending to be surprised. Lots of people using this as an excuse to sell off stock they didn't want. Lots of people getting excited about a new opportunity to say, "Oh NOOOOO! WHAT WE GONNA DO NOW!" and invent new ways to control what other people do.

Put n people in a room and tell them they have the responsibility to make rules, and they will happily make lots and lots of rules. Something like

number of rules == (2n+2)²ⁿ⁺²(t) 

where n is any number of people greater than 0, and t is time.

The one thing they almost never do is think of a reason to quit making rules.

The EU, for its first five years of existence, was not that poorly behaved.

But they kept realizing they didn't have enough power to do something important. And they kept making new rules to give themselves that power. And suddenly there are a lot of people in the EU legislatures who are not properly elected by the people they represent, making lots and lots of rules.

And those rules effect everyone's day-to-day activities.

And those rules, as they multiply and fill the rule books, make it harder to work and live.

Work? Isn't that what everybody avoids?

It's the work that we avoid
And we're all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day
("Taking Care of Business", Randy Bachman/BTO.)

We all want to work, but we also all seem to want to call what the other guy does for work "nothing". All day.

I'm not going to psychoanalyze the human race today, but you know what I mean.

Because the other guy doesn't do what I want him or her to do, I have to make rules. If there is a new place to make rules, great! Let's go make rules there.

(System engineering is a very seductive line of work in this way, but that's a rant for another day.)

(The seduction in systems engineering lies in the "willingness" of the CPU to try to blindly interpret the rules the engineer makes. Humans are much better behaved, but the CPU is definitely a siren song.)

The EU has been making too many rules. A lot of those rules conflict with the laws and traditions of the UK. The people of the UK feel like they're being shoved between a rock and a hard place.

They want out.

The solution?

Well, one important thing the EU could do is quit following the bad example of the USA lobby/legislation machine.

Slow down. Clean up the laws.

Give ordinary people who don't own huge mansions and big companies and fast cars and jet planes and huge debts room to breathe and work, by removing the rules that constrain them.

If they have to make rules for somebody, make rules to restrict and constrain what the people with the huge mansions and big companies and fast cars and jet planes and huge debts do.

But, no. That's another case of making rules for someone else to follow.

The only rules that have any hope of working are the ones you make for yourself to follow. That should be obvious.

Quit making rules.