Quote:
Originally Posted by diebitter
you come across as someone asking 'why is a chicken the size it is?', and when you're told it's obvious, you don't like it, and feel it should be explained.
In that case, it's a biological evolution.
In the case of countries, it's cultural evolution.
"and when you are old that it's obvious"? What exactly have you said, that because in most cases only a minority of people in each country would vote to actually split somehow or else combine with another country we can conclude that the boundaries are optimal? Can you seriously not see that the existing boundaries are a combination of historical factors, many of which can be broadly characterised as pure chance.
What you are saying, I think, is that "chance" has landed with some sort of optimal solution with your argument being that most countries aren't actively trying to change? That's barking mad imo. You are essentially saying that country boundaries are optimal because that's where they are now. This requires a definition of optimal that makes the statement meaningless.
Anyway, it's a redundant debate in itself as the EU is not a single country. If the UK stay then nobody is going to try to make you learn Polish or eat croissants. The desire for a single market comes from pretty simple economics.
If you don't want closer integration then fair enough, but the debate about optimal country size did get silly very quickly.