You are less powerful if you pool sovereignty

According to supporters of the EU if I pooled my decision making with my neighbours I will be more powerful. Let me show you what nonsense this is.

Let us suppose I joined with 27 of my neighbours to be more powerful. It is true that by combining we would have considerably more income and spending power than I have on my own. If we agreed what we wanted to buy we might qualify for a better discount. The problem is to get the benefit of combined buying I would no longer have a veto on what we bought. I might lose the vote to buy beef for dinner and have to accept the common view of pork. I might want a UK made Honda but have to accept a German made VW to get the benefits of bulk buying.

It would also not be long before the neighbours had a vote on sharing. Anyone with a larger income could be outvoted by those on lower incomes, leading to the few richer neighbours having to pay more in but getting less back. It would be in my interest to earn less than the average to improve my take from the club.

My neighbours might want to extend this to voting. In a low turnout local election 28 votes might matter and would clearly have much more impact than my one vote. To use the power I would have to accept going along with the majority view of 28 and all casting our votes for the same party, even if it was one I did not like.

If a big local planning issue came up 28 people saying the same thing might have more influence than just 1. Again the problem is my view on the plans might be the minority one which got suppressed by the rules of the neighbours club.

Far from being more powerful my neighbours club would soon become a huge nuisance, getting in the way of me spending my money, using my vote and expressing my view as I see fit.