The following simulation shows why the Brexit is such a terrible move!
Assume you have several hundred projects across europe and a few experts in each country to deliver them. Assigning these experts to the projects follows complex optimization rules. It is quite interesting to see that adding new political constraints to this model changes the cost function so that the optimizer converges into a new global optimum. In the case of UK leaving the european union my worst case simulation (a 20% cost increase for UK import and export (as a result of increased traveltime, administrative and legal effort) ) shows the following:
Before Brexit:
You can see projects in europe close to the UK made sense to be delivered by experts from the UK to avoid overcapacity. And also experts from outside traveled to London to help out in case of a resource bottleneck:
The green lines show collaboration in projects between experts from different countries.
After Brexit:
In the new optimum UK experts are assigned to UK projects only. For some projects the optimizer can`t even find the required experts anymore due to a lack of skilled resources within the country. On the other hand the increased cost will make working outside UK for British workers unprofitable ultimately leading to higher unemployment. You can see the island really isolated from the rest of the world.
Another interesting aspect is that the majority of people will have to commute longer distances to get to their workplace.
While the impact on europe is negligible it can be said that the United Kingdom is likely to pay a very high price for this decision.
In this worst case simulation (not very likely as the pound gets weaker) they lost 100% of their export/import involvement due to a 20% delivery cost increase.
Here the overlay:
My hope is that this simulation will convince people that the european project is essential for peace and prosperity on this continent and should not be sacrificed to those who promise simple solutions to complex problems.
I will give a talk about this computational model in vienna on Tuesday! Free Registration: http://www.eventbrite.de/e/pass-austria-sql-server-community-meeting-juni-ii-registrierung-24865086142