One point that Palmer makes in the book is that being an atheist during the renaissance was akin of being a conspiracy theorist today. Religion had moderately good explanations for things. Why are animals adapted to their way of living? Because God made them so. Atheism, on the other hand, had no good explanations.

But also check out this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cheese_and_the_Worms

I've been planning to do a Seldon joke, then forgot about it :facepalm:

Not tied to a particular party. "Non-partisan" would have been better wording.

Yet another approach: A dictator surrounds himself with the people he used to know before he became the dictator, i.e. people, trust in whom was built in an environment where there was yet not much point in lying to him.

Yup. Median voter theorem already barely works in a vanilla setup (voters directly electing decisionmakers) because of issue bundling. Add couple of layers of indirection (voters electing local MPs, who elect the local govts, who then choose the Commission) and there's little, if anything, left.

I assume you are against. And you likely have majority of the European population on your side. Now it's interesting to contemplate why median voter theorem does not work in EU.

Fair enough. I am 50, so may anectodes are from several decades ago and are probably badly outdated.

Jut stumbled upon a writeup about the EU's Common Agricultural Policy which gives more details about the current state of affairs: https://elaine.mayoris.com/go/x5u4ooluse0aaauiok2lg063hjgfz7kqjvjwcsgwsoi2/2866

I get your argument. But the same one can be made about anything. French government subsidizing French cinema? Not fair, because it puts German cinema at a disadvantage. Better housing policies in Poland? Shouldn't be allowed, because lower rents mean lower salaries, which means cheaper industrial goods, which, again, puts Germany at a disadvantage. And so on. But in a federal state, the members should compete on at least something. If they don't, if they are forced to behave exactly the same in all regards, what's the point of having a federal state in the first place? A centralized one would do.

broader class of EU-like things might come to be

African Union is modeled on EU, but the centrifugal forces are stronger there so it's not clear whether it will ever amount to anything.