If they aren't contributing to our community and, on the contrary, only extract wealth which is then used to corrupt and manipulate our cooperation... what exactly is the point of wanting to keep them?

I’m just in favour of decentralisation, every time power has been centralised in Europe it has ended badly.

I want to express my thoughts on this point. I believe that two things are true at the same time:

1. Cooperation beats competition since competition wastes resources by hindering each other when those could have been better invested in reaching the shared goal.
2. Representative systems get less efficient and more prone to corruption the bigger they get.

Concerning European this imho boils down to two contrary tendencies: The bigger the EU and its bureaucracy gets the less efficient it works while at the same time the efficiency of the EU economy is increasing through ever deeper cooperation and standardization.

Following this line of thought, the question of whether the EU benefits or harms its citizens is largely decided by the ratio of additional costs due to bureaucracy to benefits due to cooperation. Since the advantages of cooperation, especially within the single market, are immense (and are becoming increasingly important in a world where the major powers are increasingly hostile to European states), I tend to view the EU positively, even if centralized administration can create new problems. After all, what would be the alternative? European nation states have worked against each other and waged war for centuries. Now that the European colonial empires have collapsed and lost a great deal of influence, I find it highly questionable that this model would be promising in today's world.

Makes sense. If nothing else is available, we have to work with what we have.

And thank you for the clarification. To clarify my point: I am not saying that Brexit was an absolute economic disaster... but that some wealthy Brexit supporters benefited disproportionately compared to the average citizen and therefore pushed forward the populist campaign that ultimately led to the exit.

Yes it's normal and usually makes sense. In this particular case, however, it distorts the data basis, as the UK GDP is valued higher than the two eurozone countries due to the very high reference exchange rate.

And I said 'you' because you could have chosen other normalizations as well... yielding a different picture.

For example you could normalize by annual % growth of GDP.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2024&locations=GB-DE-FR&start=2007

(Side note: Thanks for the source, this database is amazing!)

GDP per capita doesn't contradict the statements of the sources I posted above since it's a mean of economic activity and therefore, it does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about winners and losers among social groups after Brexit. Also interesting you chose 'fixed 2015 US $' when this was an all-time-high exchange rate (US $ - £) compared to the one in your selected time frame.

https://www.cer.eu/insights/brexit-four-years-answers-two-trade-paradoxes

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/lessons-from-brexit-on-the-effects-of-trade-disintegration-20260116.html

https://academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/38/1/82/6514758?login=false

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/slowing-economic-growth-brexit-and-the-productivity-challenge/

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/brexit-lies-and-rich-folk/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/03/observer-view-list-of-brexit-wins-is-in-short-and-feeble

https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/100089116/4_Morgan_Glenn_1976_Brexit_1/_.pdf

Some aspects that come to my mind:

1. Is the safety of Sigapore exclusively liked to strict drug regulation or aren't there many other confunding factors which might have an even bigger influence?
2. Given we see this approach as successful and therefore legitime (assuming that in 1 the policy is the main/only driving factor): Would this be applicable to other countries? Singapore is a verry wealthy city state... comparing it to a country like Britain with more area, less population desity and also lower ecomonic performance per area seems missleading. Prosecution becomes more difficult and costly the bigger the area gets I guess.

All-in-all if the approach is sucessful for Singapore: Excellent! Accunsing other countries with different prerequisites of failing on this basis seems to be nonsense as comparing countries and societies in a single aspect while ignoring the gaszillion other factors at play itself is a pointless approach besides populism.

This user posts exclusively pro-Chinese and anti-European content in very high frequency.

,,You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up."

It's not about the money, it's about sending a message...

I guess the problem are the users (you and me) or better or use of plattforms itself.

On reddit I tended to be lurker. And if most of us are the few which actually POST content are the those with strong (mostly political) views who are willing to commit to their cause by flooding the zone with political fights.

Coclusion: If we want a cozy lemmy we need to join/start non-political, subject specific communities and actually CONTRIBUTE something instead of just consuming. Otherwise this cluster of plattforms will end up like all the other due to the same reasons.

Maybe. But usually the offspring would be getting as big as the mother on their own if they weren't competing with their clos by siblings for nurtientds, water and light.

I don't know wether the 'thrid generation's the sweetest' story is true... we need an expert to confirm this I guess. :D

I could also imagine that the original plant dies off after it fruites but as far as I know they produce a lot of smaller offspring at the base which will continue growth and fruiting. This way both sources would be correct.