UK Brexit, questions from an American

[Dystopia]

So, what is the deal with wanting to leave the EU? I get that it has imposed laws and regulations on you that you might not like, and I get that you don't like that the EU forces immigration on you. I mean hell, some of the governors of our states hate the federal government for some of its decisions on things that are similar. Considering that the EU has brought a lot of prosperity and security to Europe where before hand you were all waging war with each other, I just don't get the problem. It'd be like if Texas tried to secede today because of a few taxes, regulations, and civil rights mandates that Obama has made. So, my question is, why oppose a United States of Europe? Great Britain is a small and vulnerable island. Could it survive today's global economy without the EU?

I haven't studied this in any great detail, so I can't give you a full answer but I can give you a perspective.

The reason why people thought the EU was a great idea is because it opened trade, it enabled free passage between EU countries, it helped to build a political environment where member states were less likely to be at each other's throats (e.g. France and Germany). The problem with the EU is that it's a quasi Nation State. To put it into ways you can relate to, imagine a North-American Union - NAU. The member States include: Canada, USA, Greenland, Mexico, Bahamas, Cuba, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, and Nicaragua. There are a few other nation states that decide they don't to join the NAU. NAU laws and regulations can be voted on by all member states, but they are supreme to all Nation State laws. So for example, in the EU there are laws pertaining to migrants that the UK disagrees with. NAU also guarantees free travel throughout its member-states: you can enter or leave any country you want, find work, retire, etc. But there's one asshole country opposed to this claiming their Nation State is special and refusing to give those provisions whilst "vehemently securing their borders". In the EU that State is the UK.

Anyway, without going into excruciating detail, the whole problem with the EU the way that I see it is that it's a quasi Nation State which imposes regulations on its Nation State members - and sometimes those regulations piss off Member States. Let's give a hypothetical example of what might happen in the hypothetical NAU: the NAU passes a regulation limiting patent rights to a consistent standard. This pisses off the USA because they have the largest number of pharmaceutical companies, and they want them to exploit more profit through tougher IP laws that are in their interest, but not NAU interests.

Ultimately, good or bad, the EU is anti-democratic. Some people say this is fine because the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland/(insert country here) was never a proper democracy anyway, and functions more like a democracy under the EU anyway. That is a valid argument in many ways, I'm not saying that it isn't, but doesn't solve the democratic process within Member States, it only makes it worse because policy & law making takes place out of their hands. Yes they still get to vote and have a say, but for many regulations it won't matter because a bloc of other EU States already decided to support a certain idea.

This is probably the best reply here.

The problem with the EU is that it's almost a State, except it isn't, and sometimes when it tries to pass universal laws it doesn't work well.

As mentioned, imagine how a state with countries mentioned by @Aractus would work out.