Europeans were perfectly happy to buy American tech und military exports, thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S. - it really was perfect for the U.S. But the US decided that it was actually a BAD DEAL and they wanted to extort even more money and dependence from EU. So now EU is investing in their own tech and military, thus reducing the amount of money US is getting and also reducing EU's dependency on the US, thus forcing EU to invest in their own tech & military, thus becoming a competitor to the US products. Your boy trump did do deliver, is the US now GREAT enough for you yet?
dachworker · 37d ago
There is a weird attitude among European elites where on the one hand, they point out how European countries have always been in a subservient position within the American sphere of influence, but then, instead of cheering that this era is ending, they seem to be all upset about it and want their collar to be put back on.
Help me understand this. To me it seems that maybe the interests of EU elites differ from the interests of the EU common classes. The EU elites seem to have considered themselves as basically equivalent to American citizens in all but name, and were quite happy selling out their native countries in return for access to America.
isoprophlex · 37d ago
I don't recognize this attitude at all. But I'm no elite anywhere.
Thinking about it, it's not so weird? We beat the nazis together, we've generally enjoyed world peace, freedom, and the joys of neocolonialism. Things were sailing along just fine.
Now things are all weird and fucked up and we have to worry about fucking russia, defense spending in general, the fate of greenland, cloud computing and all that shit?
Putting it like that, I'd like things to go back to the way they were too...
huijzer · 36d ago
> We beat the nazis together
If you by "we" mean Britain, the United States, and Russia. And by "we" mean the people living 2 generations earlier, then I agree with your statement.
As a side note, people who were 18 in 1940, would be 103 today. So most people who fought in the second world war have unfortunately passed away.
I personally would never say "We beat the nazis together". The only thing I did was benefit from the war that generations before me have won.
hansworst · 36d ago
You’re forgetting Canada. You’re also glossing over the fact that despite losing to the nazis, the occupied countries didn’t exactly just roll over when they got attacked. And during occupation there were resistance movements in those countries too. So there’s definitely a “we” here.
And while of course most of those people are dead now, they were all part of cultures that still hold many of the same norms and values as they do today.
illiac786 · 35d ago
This comment is either bad taste trolling or simply insulting to anyone outside these theee countries that gave their lives to fight sgainst nazis… in Germany too there were people fighting the nazis, just as an example.
redrip · 27d ago
I'm from Brazil. My grandfather, along with 25 THOUSAND other Brazilians, went to fight in WW2. He saw a best friend die gruesomely next to him, and came back to traumas that affected him, my father and even me to some extent. Go learn some history before spewing nonsense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
username135 · 36d ago
Can't say I disagree.
jjevanoorschot · 37d ago
An important distinction is that US and EU interests aligned on many important areas up until recently. So it was less of a subservient relationship, and more of a mutually beneficial one. Now that the US wants to turn it into a subservient relationship, the EU is naturally looking for other options.
tored · 37d ago
No, Europe is a de facto vassal state to US since WW2.
What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has. But now they start to wake up facing this reality.
fransje26 · 37d ago
> What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has.
France would disagree with the "didn't understand" part. They have been continuously ridiculed for holding that view, until very, very recently.
tored · 37d ago
Agree, France is somewhat of an exception.
I remember during the Chirac presidency how viciously France was attacked by the other European countries, especially my own Sweden, for doing nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.
Jump forward today and France is seen as a protector of Europe, especially in Sweden, because of its nuclear arsenal.
fransje26 · 36d ago
> doing nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.
That was not the most glorious moment of Chirac's presidency, no..
However, as someone involved in numerical simulations, the argument that it was needed to calibrate their numerical models does hold (some..) water..
But Chirac did partly redeem himself by refusing to invade Iraq on bogus US claims of WMDs..
elproxy · 36d ago
In fairness, he did so in part because this was going to go against Total's interests (see Oil, Power and War for that part of the story), but yeah, it was still the right stance to have and history proved him right.
fransje26 · 36d ago
As opposed to invading in order to support the interests of Halliburton? Tough choice..
Let's also not forget the absolutely absurd intervention of Colin Powell at the UN Security Council, holding up a vial containing the ultimate "proof" of WMD.
Good thing he didn't drop it.. /s
leokennis · 36d ago
I think Europe was of the understanding that the "ongoing deal" was mutually beneficial.
The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world, and the peace (at least in the Western world) that US defense brought made sure both the US and the EU could freely trade and benefit financially.
What now changed is that apparently the US thinks it does not need this hegemony anymore (by forcing the EU to become a competing military power), or that they can replace the role the EU played with some other combination of countries. Or alternatively, the US is just looking for some "splendid isolation".
To European spectators, the above seems ridiculous. But who knows, maybe Trump is correct... Either way, the US had a good thing going and is now abandoning that. Not strange that Europe is surprised by that move.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world
That's the thing, Americans have become very skeptical of our own influence and power, for good reason. Look what we did to the Middle East. Look at the shenanigans we were funding with USAID. There isn't actually a constituency for this imperialism stuff in the US. US voters don't like it.
In any case -- if we had so much influence, why were previous presidents like Bush and Obama unsuccessful in influencing the EU to fund its own defense?
>forcing the EU to become a competing military power
It's not about competition, it's about Europe taking responsibility for itself.
You want a global cop? How about you do it yourself for a bit? It's a terrible job. Maybe you should take a turn at it.
ojl · 36d ago
> unsuccessful in influencing the EU to fund its own defense
We did cut down too much on our defence, especially after the Cold war (not all European countries though, like Finland). But, many European countries have bought plenty of expensive US military equipment like fighter aircraft, helicopters, anti aircraft systems, etc. It’s not like those were a gift.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
Yes, I agree the US should service those contracts. But Europeans shouldn't feel obligated to buy from the US over any other vendor.
ace_of_spades · 35d ago
Ok, let’s hope you are right on the anti-imperialism front and that the US citizens will not tolerate all that saber rattling against Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal…
or maybe you are just misunderstanding and rationalizing what’s going on to tell yourself that everything is going fine on the US politics side of things while the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that you voted a narcissistic authoritarian into office.
Let’s hope you are right!
tim333 · 36d ago
>A "vassal state" is a state that has a mutual obligation to a superior state or empire, similar to a vassal in the feudal system, often involving tribute payments
Europe is not like that - we don't pay taxes to the US to defend us. The US kindly did so free of charge for many years which is a different thing, more of an alliance I guess.
Now the US is kind of switching allegiances we are having to recalculate.
rimeice · 36d ago
The “tax” is enabling total American dominance economically and politically, not to mention huge leverage over all of Europe's military with vendor lock in.
seec · 35d ago
Yeah, I don't understand how those people use reason (or maybe they don't).
If you look at the biggest/richest companies, it's all about US tech industry and associated, even though we have fronted a lot of the research and education.
And we ask them to pay taxes fairly they complain, and they don't want to open their stuff, they even work hard on malicious compliance.
It's a pretty bad deal.
oytis · 36d ago
What's a "de facto vassal state"? That's a pretty vague notion, one could fill it with any meaning. What Trump has shown is that Europe is not as dependent as to follow US politics whatever it is.
tored · 36d ago
Germany is still occupied by US without a formal peace treaty, hence de facto.
dragonwriter · 36d ago
The occupation of Germany ended with the two plus four treaty coming into force in 1991. It is not occupied, and there is a formal treaty.
tored · 36d ago
That is the unification treaty. If you accept that as a peace treaty then you need to at least accept that Germany, and as a consequence Europe, was vassal state until 1991. Thus the idea that Europe were equal partners with US is false.
dragonwriter · 36d ago
> That is the unification treaty.
Yes, among other things. It is the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany", and thing it finally settles is WW2 and the subsequent temporary arrangements.
> If you accept that as a peace treaty
The ~1955 treaties between the respective occupying powers and West and East Germany separately, which ended most of the powers of occupation but could not formally end the Potsdam arrangement because the Western allies weren't going to formalize the situation with East Germany and the USSR wasn't going to do the same for West Germany, effectively (but not completely formally) ended the occupation and were essentially peace treaties (but obviously neither addressed the whole of Germany or the whole of the belligerents against Germany in WW2.) Between 1955 and reunification, each of the Germanies was technically occupied as a consequence of the Cold War. But West Germany was generally treated as as much of an equal partner as other major Western nations with the US.
I only pointed to the 1991 treaty because it is simple and irrefutable and the most straightforward, uncomplicated way to rebut your originally clearly-wrong claim that Germany was currently occupied without any peace treaty.
tored · 36d ago
How can you be an equal partner if you are occupied?
dragonwriter · 36d ago
West Germany wasn't, practically, occupied post-1955. It was formally occupied because the Cold War meant the USSR had no interest in signing off on the Western settlement with West Germany, just as the Western powers didn't with East Germany, and given the Potsdam Arrangement actually formally ending the occupation required that.
tored · 36d ago
You have to be either naive or a shill if you believe the US didn't leverage any political control over (West) Germany with that kind of large occupational force.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
See, this gets to the point others have made in this thread. Your reasoning implies that you should be happy if the US pulls out of NATO and leaves Europe, since Europe would no longer be "occupied" and would thus be an "equal partner".
Europeans are just impossible to satisfy, from my perspective. They will complain no matter what the US does.
No comments yet
JumpCrisscross · 36d ago
> Europe is a de facto vassal state to US since WW2
OP's point is this nonsense rhetoric doesn't make sense with European frustration with American retrenchment.
bad_user · 36d ago
I'm the “European elite” you're thinking of. Well, not “elite” in the sense of being rich, I'm not rich, but I'm also not stupid.
It's simple: global trade is good, isolationism is bad. It's as simple as that.
The “EU common classes” don't want higher prices or poorer services. This is a fact that the US's elites in power will soon discover. And it's easy to see why this trend is a train wreck in progress: unemployment, in both the US and EU, is at an all-time low, and if you significantly lower imports via tariffs and economic wars, who do you think will work on those local products and services? Never mind that US's investments and exports are also crashing as a direct result of this administration's policies, so I'm guessing they rely on future software developers that end up unemployed to become lumberjacks.
But yes, now that the US is no longer a trustworthy ally, I want the EU to cut its tech dependencies from it for as much as possible, while strengthening ties with all of our other allies, such as Canada, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India. There's no conflict in this reasoning.
seec · 34d ago
Employment stats in the EU are a complete joke and don't reflect at all real work/value creation. It's all about moving numbers from one box to another.
Just because you made one more bureaucrat bullshit job does not mean you are creating any value, quite the contrary.
You seem to conveniently forget that all of this was "possible" only with heavy borrowing, and it looks like many countries won't be able to even pay the principal soon enough.
When you take this into account, the "growth" has been negative for over 10 years, and it was barely stagnant for quite a while before.
We exported the growth and manipulated money, now the truth appear. You can only pretend for so long.
The reality is that the value creating has been quite low in most of the EU and now that the economic engine that was Germany has stalled, everything is grinding to a halt.
Germany had heavy reliance on cheap Russian gas for its chemical industry and premium car market, both are getting disrupted massively. It's actually a perfect example on why we should avoid too much reliance on other countries. The hilarious part is that in the meantime, Germany was giving "ecology" lessons to all their neighbors and the world at large. In typical arrogant German fashion, they had everything figured out, until they didn't, that is. They actually hold a lot of responsibility for their terrible leadership on the EU.
watwut · 37d ago
What is weird about not liking that former powerful ally is becoming a hostile entity actively trying to harm you? They are not cheering, because what is happening is loose loose situation and they dont like the loose part. Also, buying American tech und military exports in the past was not exactly something shameful. The way you write about it, as if trade was "being slave with a humiliating collar" is weird thinking.
> To me it seems that maybe the interests of EU elites differ from the interests of the EU common classes.
Common classes in EU are not benefiting from trade war, they are not benefiting from USA annexation threats and they are not benefiting from Russia expanding.
> The EU elites seem to have considered themselves as basically equivalent to American citizens in all but name, and were quite happy selling out their native countries in return for access to America.
This is nonsensical. You are making stuff up, big time. How is buying American arms a symbol of "considering themselves to be Americans"? I cant recall any call or push to be more America.
usrnm · 37d ago
Relying on the US for military protection allowed many European countries to save billions of their own money for years. Undoing this going to be very, very expensive and there is no good understanding where all this money is supposed come from, the main idea right now seems to be massive amounts of debt, which can get very ugly in the long run. It absolutely needs to happen, but I can clearly see why many politicians are not thrilled about the whole thing
codingbot3000 · 36d ago
Looking at defense spending, I do not think it saved so much money. It mostly ensured that the US would be the only major nuclear power in the West - so the "military protection" was more something like a moat for the nuclear monopoly.
And monopolies are something the US loves (think of big tech, Comcast, etc.) and the EU dislikes ;-)
With the US stepping away from its monopoly, it is only a matter of time until more European states will enter the nuclear protection market.
nosianu · 37d ago
> the main idea right now seems to be massive amounts of debt, which can get very ugly in the long run
The economy, unlike one's personal finances, is a circle. Unless the Europeans buy abroad, all that money is going to stay in Europe, circulating and stimulating the economy.
Even if it's "only" arms, spending it to maintain industry is way better than many alternatives. Manufacturing infrastructure and lots of skilled jobs and workers, sounds good to me to have.
"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".
Finance/money is supposed to be the virtual control system, and the real world thing it is supposed to help to steer is everything real and what we actually care about. In all other areas we would never accept that the control system becomes the target!! The target is always the real thing, and we will adjust the control system to achieve the desired outcomes.
Not so with finance! It has taken on a life of its own, and the vast majority of people will gladly and unthinkingly subordinate the real world to its whims. Something that makes at least a little bit of sense for the individual makes no sense for the economy though.
We have people in charge who know all and care about the control system first of all, the real world outcomes be damned. If the control system says we need high unemployment and homelessness and less high paying jobs there is nothing we can do, because the purely virtual human-invented finance system is the god. But hey, religion has been on the decline for a long time at least in the modern world, right (/s)?
> which can get very ugly in the long run
Only when the people in charge think like described.
CapricornNoble · 36d ago
>Even if it's "only" arms, spending it to maintain industry is way better than many alternatives. Manufacturing infrastructure and lots of skilled jobs and workers, sounds good to me to have.
As Eisenhower warned, every Euro spent turning steel into an artillery shell is one NOT spent turning steel into high-speed rail. Every worker in a factory building armored vehicles is a worker NOT being re-trained to be an elder caregiver for Europe's aging demographics. There are immense trade-offs that come with dumping capital, both human and material, into making Europe's war machine rise from the grave.
>"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".
Key phrase there is "if you are in a strong enough position"....and Europe isn't. Because it cut itself off from cheap Russian energy imports, the entire industrial sector is no longer cost-competitive. With the exception of highly-specialized difficult-to-copy stuff like ASML or maybe Carl Zeiss optics, etc... the European economy writ large is in a really weak position compared to the cost efficiency of China or compared to the still-large (but diminishing) political-military leverage of the US. Also, Europe looks like it is getting closer and closer to handing over the frozen Russian assets in Euroclear to Ukraine. You can expect a massive capital flight from Chinese, Mid-East, or Global South investors if that ever happens.
usrnm · 36d ago
That's exactly the same reasoning we heard during Covid, injecting massive amounts of money into the economy was supposed to be perfectly safe and even a good thing. Definitely not supposed to lead to any inflation. Guess what happened next.
Macha · 36d ago
The argument during COVID wasn't that it was "perfectly safe", but that it was better than the alternative of leaving all the people living paycheck to paycheck get laid off and starve.
People just have short memories and see the bad outcome we did get (high inflation) and not the bad outcomes we avoided (unmitigated COVID, economic collapse).
acje · 36d ago
There was this "end of history" idea where Europe, elites or not, believed that democracy would follow globalization and free trade. This turned out to be very naive but still common belief. Now Europe will have to fend for it self. In the long run I think this will benefit both US and Europe, but short term it will hurt both. Also I don´t think Europe will pivot away from US, we still understand that at least half of US shares our values, but US can´t be trusted to stand up for these values anymore. Same as Hungary, Turkey. I personally see it as a good opportunity to get some action going in Europe, as I discuss here in the context of building digital infrastructure: https://lnkd.in/dRNSYPWC
amarcheschi · 37d ago
The people i know (except for the tankie ones such as my high school philosphy professor, that guy was goat) would have preferred a less abrupt usa exit and not one that potentially puts europe security at risk. I do not know enough about the elites to talk about it tho
0xDEAFBEAD · 37d ago
I don't support Trump, but you really can't claim that Europe wasn't warned here. Russia first invaded Ukraine back in 2014. And here's Trump back in 2018, warning about German dependence on Russian gas, and stating that Europe needed to step up defense spending "immediately":
This has hardly been "abrupt". Even Obama and Bush were telling Europe to step up defense spending.
tored · 36d ago
Or the Russo-Georgian war of 2008. European leaders have had plenty of time to react.
Just take the President of the EU commission, Ursula von der Leyen. She was Germany's minister of defence from 2013 to 2019.
amarcheschi · 37d ago
Honestly, Trump has said so many things that you can probably find everything and the opposite of everything coming out of his mind.
Yes, I do agree that we had been warned and since the Ukrainian invasion defense budgets of European countries increased. I also think such an abrupt change of mind from the US hurts both sides and nobody earns anything from it. Except Russia.
Even if European cointries increased spending before, the situation is changing in such a way that even nuclear weapons - something that almost no European country would have wanted if they already hadn't had them - are being taken into consideration to be developed as a nuclear umbrella from France towards other European countries.
0xDEAFBEAD · 37d ago
>Honestly, Trump has said so many things that you can probably find everything and the opposite of everything coming out of his mind.
I think he's been pretty consistent on the issue of European defense spending, actually. In any case, if Trump is inconsistent, that itself can be considered a warning -- that sometimes the US elects inconsistent presidents.
>I also think such an abrupt change of mind from the US hurts both sides and nobody earns anything from it.
Nothing short of this "abrupt change" has been successful in getting Europe to take responsibility for its own security. As I said, US presidents have been complaining about this for ages. I hope you finally listen, because my enthusiasm for defending Europe (as an American and a registered Democrat even) is currently quite low: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43459774
>nuclear umbrella from France towards other European countries
We'll see if France actually commits to that, or if it is all talk. If Nation A extends its nuclear umbrella over Nation B, that basically means that Nation A is putting its own cities at risk in case of nuclear retaliation, for the sake of Nation B. As an American, it sort of boggled my mind when I learned that we were putting our own cities at risk for the sake of our allies this way.
And it seems that Europe's way of thanking us is to make fun of our healthcare system, accuse us of the non-crime of "cultural imperialism", etc... See what I'm saying about enthusiasm to defend you guys? Something needs to change in the relationship.
amarcheschi · 36d ago
The issue is not only usa getting far from europe - which on itself is ok imho -, just the fact that given an existing alliance - for which europeans fought war for the us in middle east and died as well - could have been reshaped with a slower rollout. It is unclear how much and how fast things will change, and unpredictability is worse than expecting a certain outcome (just like the markets don't like trump's unpredictability in economy).
I do not see why usa should be "thanked". We have been allies for decades and now this relations are being reshaped in a way that favors no one, while a slower approach to such sensitive issues might have yielded better results (i don't know how many countries still want to buy us weapons right now in europe, maybe a different approach would have meant stronger collaboration between ue/usa companies or maybe not)
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>It is unclear how much and how fast things will change, and unpredictability is worse than expecting a certain outcome
So you would prefer that the US just withdraws from NATO now, to reduce the unpredictability? That's fine by me. If unpredictability is your issue, Trump should be able to address that by withdrawing tomorrow.
>I do not see why usa should be "thanked".
If you think our involvement in Europe over the past 80 years has been positive, you should acknowledge that. If all you do is complain, it's natural for Americans to think "well, maybe our involvement in the continent isn't positive... perhaps it's time to pull out and see if they stop complaining about everything". You're not complaining about Brazil, Australia, Switzerland, or China the way you complain about the US. I think we need a reset to make the US/Europe relationship more like the Brazil/Europe relationship.
amarcheschi · 36d ago
Unpredictability is the issue when paired with a us alienation from eu, and a us nato exit would make the situation more unpredictable for eu
i'm not complaining about the us just like i'm not thanking germany for being one of our commercial and sometimes political partners. Perhaps it's something more present in us discourse but most of the time we're not "thankful" to other countries, even if allied ones. It's something that doesn't really have a meaning here, even if i do agree that the usa have been important partners of europe in the past (and probably will in the future as well, although less than before)
I'm not in principle opposed to this sort of altruism in US foreign policy. I just don't want to have an altruistic foreign policy towards people that resent me. For people who resent me, I want fairness at the very least. Europe gets most of the benefit from NATO, so Europe should pay most of the cost. Currently we are very far from that.
lompad · 36d ago
This is not altruism. This strange american "look how we suffer for you"-thing is just utterly weird.
Why do you think the US has global power projection capabilities? Why do you think they can control world trade? Why is the dollar still the reserve currency?
The military "altruistic" peacekeeping is a major benefit, from better access to trade agreements to bases everywhere and military support from dozens of countries.
Nothing of that would be possible otherwise. Ending the US' protection also means taking away a massive piece of global influence the US had and turning into a "normal" country, not one the world seems to revolve around.
That's the trade-off. You can't keep the soft power without having partners who rely on you and are going to have a much, much harder stand in future negotiations.
Also, US military spending goes directly back into the US economy. This is absolutely not the same as paying other countries, it's a hidden, long-running stimulus for the MIC.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
I don't want to project power globally. I don't want to control world trade. I don't want to have bases everywhere. I don't want to influence everywhere. I'm tired of this empire stuff. We aren't good at being an empire. We suck at it. I want to be a normal country, thanks. I'm tired of foreigners obsessively following our politics, offering their commentary, and resenting us no matter what we do. I want to be normal.
Switzerland is very wealthy without being a global empire. They are well-regarded and have more soft power than the US. Their currency is trusted. No one is telling them they have an obligation to support Ukraine. They have better relations with the EU. Their military is focused on self-defense. We should be more like Switzerland.
>Also, US military spending goes directly back into the US economy. This is absolutely not the same as paying other countries, it's a hidden, long-running stimulus for the MIC.
We could easily spend in a better way which also goes back into the economy -- for example, government healthcare, like Europeans are always bragging they have. Also, I don't want a massive military-industrial complex either. I favor peace.
naijaboiler · 36d ago
Be careful what you wish for. If US exits that role, it doesn't make that role disappear. Something else will step into it. And we will all have to live in that world. Good luck to us all.
0xDEAFBEAD · 35d ago
A unipolar world is not inevitable. We could have a multipolar world with various regional power blocs. If that leads to less war, it's a good thing.
nodoll · 36d ago
>The military "altruistic" peacekeeping is a major benefit
Sure, but I think they are waking up to the fact that they cannot afford it, at least for now.
>much harder stand in future negotiations.
Well, from what Trump is saying, it seems that US didn't get the better end of a lot of deals, so it seems that it is spending resources for this peacekeeping but not getting any of the benefits in return..
piva00 · 36d ago
> Well, from what Trump is saying, it seems that US didn't get the better end of a lot of deals
It's funny how you are believing in a known liar to derive any argument from.
amarcheschi · 36d ago
We call a partner that spends the majority on an alliance, a partner. Just like Germany is a partner to italy, France, Spain and vice versa
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
If it's an equal partnership, each partner respects the right of the other to exit. If it's an equal partnership, both countries are equally sad if it ends, since both got equal benefit.
The US/Europe relationship fails both those criteria.
amarcheschi · 36d ago
Usa have the rights to exit nato just like any other country, I've heard nobody complaining about how the us shouldn't be allowed to
It sure seems like they think the US has an obligation to stay. That's the subtext of a lot of what Europeans are saying online.
amarcheschi · 36d ago
Well, of course by losing the global throne us will lose a lot, the biggest economy in the world can't (like, it won't happen, not like legally can't) literally be like Switzerland that is surrounded by more or less allies and doesn't have to protect much of its global interests.
By the way, your rants make me think you're spending a bit too much time online, online you'll find a lot of people just bashing whatever you say in a rude way
amarcheschi · 36d ago
I'm replying to myself because my last line sounds rude. What i wanted to say is that it looks like you've been influenced a lot by online comments which might push controversial or flame content as well
0xDEAFBEAD · 35d ago
>Well, of course by losing the global throne us will lose a lot, the biggest economy in the world can't (like, it won't happen, not like legally can't) literally be like Switzerland that is surrounded by more or less allies and doesn't have to protect much of its global interests.
The US economy was doing great prior to WW1/WW2, back when we deliberately tried to stay out of European geopolitics.
>By the way, your rants make me think you're spending a bit too much time online, online you'll find a lot of people just bashing whatever you say in a rude way
You didn't argue against tossandthrow. I don't see any Europeans arguing against him, in fact. I think a lot of Europeans think like he does.
modo_mario · 36d ago
>Nothing short of this "abrupt change" has been successful in getting Europe to take responsibility for its own security.
I think Europe always had the capacity for that. Russia is a nuclear armed state but as far as it's proportional spending goes it's worth noting it's economy is smaller than Italy.
What it was lacking was political will and the urge to deal with fragmentation and unanimity. Especially wrt germany being slow to send weapons systems, cutting gas, Shroeder, etc
All that spending on American jets or the like clearly paled in comparison to the bloc's willingness to commit and to deal with economic dependencies and would still matter less if everyone increased spending.
It also lacks the push for a proper foreign policy that benefits the whole. Not letting Russia pull price politics and fighting its influence in important alternative gas routes would be huge.
>And it seems that Europe's way of thanking us is to make fun of our healthcare system, accuse us of the non-crime of "cultural imperialism", etc... See what I'm saying about enthusiasm to defend you guys? Something needs to change in the relationship.
Are your view of it on the comments of people online?
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>Are your view of it on the comments of people online?
Yes, I'm noting that uniquely among US allies, the internet is full of Europeans expressing anti-Americanism. And this has reduced American enthusiasm for the transatlantic alliance. There's no sense in trying to please someone who complains about you no matter what you do.
I don't think it is just online, but the internet made it very clear to the US how Europeans feel about us. Naturally, conservatives are going to react more to that since they are more patriotic. That's why Trump has been driving the reset to the relationship.
modo_mario · 36d ago
I could argue the very same about americans towards Europe. With Europe aiding the US in tradewars against japan, etc. actual wars in iraq, afghanistan, dealing with the fallout of that, etc Going against it's own foreign policy desires to appease the whims of [insert new administration] like a good set of vasals.
But basing your foreign policy on internet commenters is so deeply incredibly inane.
And get this. If you're hegemon you attract more slack no matter what you do. In many ways it involves being the geopolitical schoolyard bully and trump just makes that overtly clear. But it's not like protecting the dollars reserve currency status or any other such thing was something that didn't happen before and is now just being done to spite BRICS internet commenters.
Like what's next? Want to go to war in the middle east again because they dislike you?
0xDEAFBEAD · 35d ago
>I could argue the very same about americans towards Europe. With Europe aiding the US in tradewars against japan, etc. actual wars in iraq, afghanistan, dealing with the fallout of that, etc Going against it's own foreign policy desires to appease the whims of [insert new administration] like a good set of vasals.
If you were such good vassals, why didn't you increase defense spending back when Bush and Obama requested that?
>But basing your foreign policy on internet commenters is so deeply incredibly inane.
I don't see other Europeans arguing against the internet commenters we are talking about. I think these comments are rather representative of European opinion, actually. In any case, I think if Europe wants to repair the relationship, it would be good to know that internet discourse is contributing a lot to the current situation. European users were in the habit of insulting the US long before American users started insulting Europe.
Do you think Trump administration officials like Pete Hegseth and JD Vance aren't reading this stuff? They're part of the younger generation that lives on social media. They read it, and they draw inferences about how their counterparts in Europe regard the transatlantic relationship.
>And get this. If you're hegemon you attract more slack no matter what you do. In many ways it involves being the geopolitical schoolyard bully and trump just makes that overtly clear. But it's not like protecting the dollars reserve currency status or any other such thing was something that didn't happen before and is now just being done to spite BRICS internet commenters.
I'm allowed to want to stop being hegemon. Maybe Europe can be hegemon next. You can see how much fun it is ;-)
>Like what's next? Want to go to war in the middle east again because they dislike you?
No, I don't want to go to war. I just don't believe in voluntarily supporting people who disdain me.
plx211 · 36d ago
Sorry, but I'm must write that:
"the internet is full of Europeans expressing anti-Americanism"
This strongly sound like Russian "the others country is Russophobic".
Internet mems site are not trustworthy, I'm saying this as Polish, basing on this kind of site I've should be the racist, but I'm not.
Poland was strongly pro american (at least in the last 35 year).
Unfortunately, internet in this time must be readed with "grain of salt", there is too many trolls, bots and boring kids.
"I don't think it is just online, but the internet made it very clear to the US how Europeans feel about us."
In my opinion there is somekind of "disinformation attack" to quarrel europe with USA, unfortunately, successfully because I see a lot annoyed people on both site.
Information which comes to us via media (tv, local news, etc.) probably are diffrents that this whats you get, so probably this is why you can feel that we're anti-american, but in my opion Europe and USA was in symbiosis not only economically.
I'm also want to mark that Trump from my perspective starting "false flag" operation on greenland, like Putin did that with Ukraine, what woring me because I just don't want a war :)
Sorry, for my English, but for me it's 2:18
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
I don't think it is internet trolls. It's been going on for a long time. I don't think a disinformation attack would be used on Hacker News. The accounts I'm arguing with have significant karma. And I don't see other Europeans arguing with the ones who express anti-Americanism, or downvoting those comments. That suggests they silently agree.
I don't think the US should be invading other countries. I agree that justifies anti-Americanism, as I stated elsewhere in this thread.
plx211 · 36d ago
Unfortunately, it's a "bobble", politican topics always cause emotions and annoying, a lot of (if not the most) peoples when see this kind of discussion mostly don't read them for peace of mind.
My wife when is bored, usually, reading twitter and after 15min I'm hearing her crying how people are cruel for animals, but she doing that herself everytime.
The best what you can do is temporary cut off yourself from "bubble", but basing on how intesive news was last time it can be hard.
Human under emotions doesn't thing clear.
OrderlyTiamat · 36d ago
Among my friends, the feeling is that the USA used to be seen as a valued ally, and now it has shown itself as a fickle and untrustworthy ally. Yes people are various shades of upset, and yes people now value European countries splitting from the USA. These two views are compatible, and have nothing to do with class.
MrJohz · 37d ago
Can you give some examples of this attitude? I'm not sure I've seen that behaviour anywhere, and it's very difficult to look up examples when your description is so vague.
_zamorano_ · 37d ago
How about the consequences of US proxy wars? Not a word about the reasons mediterranean european countries keep getting floods of displaced refugees.
Maybe if the US stopped bombing their countries, we'd stop getting so many.
But yes, the War On Terror completely destabilized such a large area including Syria that it's been a disaster for Europe.
tored · 36d ago
Correct, and that is why I argue that Europe is an vassal state, i.e. taking actions against its best interest because the overlord tells them to.
ttyprintk · 37d ago
The internal refugees in Syria occurred because of multi-year drought. Burma, 2008, was a cyclone. Leaving out some theories on proxy war is like leaving out any other kind of challenge.
paleotrope · 36d ago
If the US wasn't fighting these "proxy" wars, Euroland would have a lot bigger problems. Refugees are a simple problem to fix. Don't take any.
galfarragem · 37d ago
Lol. Just listen to any ‘opinion maker’ on European media - they whine about it 24/7. They’re ‘not happy’ - to say the least - that the status quo has changed.
_zamorano_ · 37d ago
With Nord Stream, the elites tried to gaslight their population using the media into believeng an stupid made-up story about how Russia blowed up their own pipe.
Very convenient for the US, not so for the EU
ttyprintk · 37d ago
Only if it were Russia can Trump stay quiet about Nord Stream, which he has.
No comments yet
4ndrewl · 37d ago
The driver for this is clear, surely? It's that we're now unsure where the USA stands viz-a-viz Russia.
fransje26 · 37d ago
> instead of cheering that this era is ending, they seem to be all upset about it and want their collar to be put back on.
> Help me understand this
The answer is money.
All the get-rich-quick schemes/scams are coming from the US. For a very current example, look not further than Tesla vs Volkswagen valuation.
That level of dollars valuations that are completely detach from reality, and the capacity of getting real, tangible, value out of the scheme before it collapses as a house of card, is orders of magnitude above what you can get elsewhere in the world.
Hence the elites want to continue having access to that market, domestic market be damned.
rimeice · 36d ago
Deep down the elites know this is the best thing that could possibly happen for Europe long term. Shed the dependency on the US, build your own defence economy and the myriad of parallel non military economic benefits that come from defence investment. Yes a painful transition in the short term so you have to whine about it a bit to try and limit the damage, but this US adminstration is the single best thing that has happened to Europe and the UK. This is where Europe gets reborn. In 20-30 years Europe will be a proper superpower again.
belter · 37d ago
What do you do, if one of your social acquaintances goes full Kanye West?
It's not necessarily about being content to submit to the US, but more an ideology of globalism too good to be true. Most of the leaders in EU have some sort of collectivist mindset (either right or left, just what and the amount differ) and they apply this worldview to everything.
So when they see other countries taking the load/lead on things they don't think it's an "us vs them" situation, they think it will stay us, as in together.
When everything is working ok, when everyone feel like they are getting their fair share, it works fine; but when the world becomes unstable, and they are tensions about resources and power it all breaks down.
This is the mindset that created the biggest providence state that ever was. But the problem is that it was always a lie. The thing was built on power imbalance between countries, and just because they accepted the deal when they were weak doesn't mean it will stay that way forever.
The only reason it worked in the first place is that they sold the newer generation's future, borrowing aggressively to fund a way of life that wasn't sustainable
If they had thought long term, they would never have given so much power to other countries, the USA is one of them, but it's the same for China, and Russia to a lower extent.
Now that those big countries are fighting for domination, they find themselves in the crossfire, just now figuring out that we are too dependent and don't have that much say because we don't have a lot of power.
You cannot solve a problem with the mind that created it, and that's the issue we face. We desperately need to think differently that what got us there, but they cannot erase their "programming", for them, it's the "right" way, it's basically the only way.
The US will fare a bit better for a while, precisely because they control important stuff, like the tech industry, decent army power and are still the de facto reserve currency. But in reality, they will face the same problems down the line if they don't change as well.
The protectionism is because at the rate it's going, we will all be under China's rule before long.
You can trade stuff, but never make yourself completely dependent on another country.
You may be friends, until you are not. Things change, politics are unpredictable, it's a bad idea to hope for mercy when a big power is rising.
thyristan · 36d ago
After WW2, Europe, Germany and especially France, tried to create the precursor of the European Union with a defense component. There should have been a common European army with European nuclear weapons a common command structure and soldiers from all members. When this didn't work out, NATO was intended as a European defensive alliance, without the US at first.
Why didn't those two things happen? Because of US influence: The US actively prevented any kind of military unification e.g. by preventing West Germany from going in that direction (as the occupier they could do so) and by alienating France and bribing and distracting the UK (by sharing plans for weapons such as nukes and submarines). When the NATO idea came up, the US offered their membership, but with a twist: NATO troops would always be under USian command. At every opportunity, the US made themselves indispensible for European defense and prevented any kinds of European political initiatives in that direction. That is why France rejected the NATO command structure for quite some time and was only "half a member".
This "arragement" had a downside of increased dependence and an upside of decreased spending and responsibility for the Europeans, and they got used to it. For the promise of US protection, Europe would give up its independence in that regard. Europe would be dependent on US-controlled military infrastructure such as AWACS, SOSUS, PATRIOT, and satellite coms and surveilance. Europe would be dependent on US-delivered weapons and weapons components. In many suppossedly national/european military hardware, there are some indispensable USian components like radars, engines or GPS, which is a double advantage for the US: they could sell something and have a means to stop any kind of use they dislike, either by withholding spare parts and support or by builtin remote shutdown switches. Europe participated in the occasional war on behalf of the US like Iraq or Afghanistan, and the US cleaned up some European messes like Yugoslavia.
It all seemed like a dependence that was one-sided, but still somewhat beneficial to the Europeans.
Now, the US are walking back on their promises and are actively breaking their side of the deal by e.g. questioning their future adherence to the mutual defense obligation in NATO article 5. This is a much bigger deal than it sounds at first: When you read the game theory of it, promises of mutual defense must be unwavering, there must not be any doubt in the mind of a potential enemy. If the rockets are flying, a red button must be pressed, no questions asked. Any kind of doubt will be exploited by an enemy, as can be seen by current Russian propaganda threatening Europe. In former times, the US would be first to condemn such threats and issue counter-threats. Nowadays: silence.
This means that the US effectively ended NATO. Mutual defense obligations and promises of defense from the US are now worthless. Of course nobody is cheery about that. A European common defense is years and billions (long scale) away. Of course nobody is cheery about that. After the Europeans dutifully obliged the US and accepted their declaration of article 5 after 9/11 (the only occasion where article 5 was ever invoked), the US now declare their ingratitude and unwillingness to ever reciprocate. Of course nobody is cheery about that.
2-3-7-43-1807 · 36d ago
same people who are convinced russia is going to lose the ukraine war and go bankrupt while at the same time endangering europe.
it's all about rhetorics being used to manipulate for personal gains of a small elite. the kind of elite who makes billion dollar contracts via sms and then accidentally loses such sms.
buyucu · 37d ago
Those elites have known nothing but subservience. They simply can't imagine anything else.
tored · 37d ago
What Trump did was to pull out the rug under the European establishment, which have all built their political existence on the transatlantic cooperation.
Who is to blame? European establishment wants of course the citizens of Europe to blame Trump and not them for not preparing for this eventuality.
But the truth is that almost all of them are responsible for neglecting what is the best interest of Europe. Thus they play this game.
tgaj · 37d ago
Hard times are ahead if nations start to care only about their best interest and not about what is the best interest of the whole world.
tored · 37d ago
Globalization died with Covid when it became obvious that the old order no longer functioned in a world with lockdowns and pandemics, it disrupted the entire supply chain.
Then globalization died a second time with the Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the emergence of BRICS and the consequences of sanctions and the breakdown of the global monetary system.
mindslight · 36d ago
Covid was a hiccup for global trade. The just in time supply chains created by the constant whittling/looting of the MBA class were the problem.
Globalization died when the small minded monster Republicans had been farming for decades escaped its talk radio cage and found Trump. Trump (and his loser-mentality enablers) saw systems they didn't understand, and more irritatingly other parties who wouldn't just lap up shit as they were bossed around, and inferred this meant the US must have been getting a poor deal instead of an awesome one. (BuT tHE dEbT!!1!)
tored · 36d ago
I think what your comment proves is that many Americans are stuck in the Democrat vs Republican mindset and thinking that kind of explanation actually works in a global context.
Pax Americana is over, US is no longer capable of dictating globalization to the rest of the world, why? Because many countries has caught up.
mindslight · 36d ago
There's a world of difference between accepting a shift in relationships from 'dictating' to being more equal partners, versus deliberately trashing relationships and doing your best to alienate.
If the US weren't still some kind of world leader, USD would be in the toilet as other countries would have dropped most of their USD holdings. The current regime seems to be doing their best to make that happen, whether for cryptocurrencies, foreign agents, or just simple-minded looting.
I'm an American libertarian. It's not Democrat versus Republican. It's conservative versus neofascist/patrimonialist.
snickerbockers · 36d ago
IDK, contrary to popular belief we don't all work for lockheed martin so i really couldn't care less about the military-industrial complex losing business. I really don't see that as a bad thing; it's pretty obvious at this point that a significant amount of US sabre-rattling is a result of the incestuous relationship between politicians, high-ranking military officers and defense contractors. I suppose this could have down-stream effects for commodities like steel and that's unfortunate but there's no way the military-industrial-complex could possibly be reduced without that happening.
But more to the point, you seem to be under the impression that Americans benefit on a personal level from our country's global empire. We really don't. Like I said above, there are a lot of fat-cats making big money grifitng off government contracts, often with overt conflicts-of-interest involving their connections in the government. Some of that money goes to their employees and ultimately into local economies but largely it's just a circuitous way to enrich assholes.
If you ever visit America, try driving about 150 miles or so out of whatever major metropolis you're staying at and take a look at how depressing this country really is. These people don't look like they're living in the epicenter of the world's most powerful and influential empire. It does not matter to them if Europe buys up the new f-47 or whatever. They could care less if the EU becomes a major military superpower in its own right. That's why when you look at these election maps, it comes down to urban areas backing the democrats and rural areas backing the trumpublicans with surprising uniformity.
FeloniousHam · 36d ago
> But more to the point, you seem to be under the impression that Americans benefit on a personal level from our country's global empire. We really don't.
I am routinely puzzled at the simple ignorance of U.S. citizens decrying the benefits of being the global hegemon:
- global reserve currency: lower borrowing rates, allows us to set economic norms
- massive military and power projections: maintains stability and provides influence wherever it's deployed
- US culture: opens up the world market to US art and culture, all of which redounds to the benefit of industries and consumers inside the US.
These benefits extend to all our allies and generally created an epoch of peace unlike any that existed before (this is including all the wars the US elected to engage in).
You may not like all of the particulars (who would?), but there is no question US citizens are richer for our global power and reach.
>These people don't look like they're living in the epicenter of the world's most powerful and influential empire. It does not matter to them if Europe buys up the new f-47 or whatever.
They may not appreciate how much the military-industrial complex benefits them not, but I think they will experience directly how it had helped when the market is gone.
spopejoy · 35d ago
It's fair to decry US citizens' ignorance of the true extent of US dominance and how it affects the home front ... BUT combined with 40 years of increasing neoliberal austerity, it's not correct to equate the effects with a better way of life.
Instead I would say that US corporate interests and the wealthy undoubtedly benefit from US hegemony, and there is a more or less relentless effort to deny those benefits to the poor and middle class. The cost of living, especially rent or mortgage servicing, has drastically outpaced wage increases. Health care is in terrible shape with medical bankruptcy increasingly common, and outcomes way worse.
The MI complex is again something that Americans don't credit enough for economic stimulation, but if anything it just shows that a command economy works way better than neoliberal capitalists would have us believe.
Even "peace" is poorly distributed internally. A "volunteer army" in effect is one where those with means don't have to risk their lives supporting the latest US adventure.
csomar · 37d ago
> hus forcing EU to invest in their own tech & military, thus becoming a competitor to the US products.
Not sure how you made the jump here. EU is signalling increased military spending but there isn't really much talk about tech (beyond reddit-like enthusiasm which leads nowhere); which is funny because the top referrals for this site are .. american companies themselves.
That being said, increased spending doesn't necessarily guarantee results.
OvbiousError · 37d ago
Signalling? Talks about investing 800 billion in the military industry across the EU would have been unthinkable 4 months ago. Now they're proceeding at a speed that is staggering when you see how long these talks/processes normally take.
EU cloud is certainly much discussed, and more than that. Holland for instance voted and accepted a resolution last week for more digital sovereignty. This doesn't mean we'll have an AWS competitor overnight, but we're also only 3 months in.
627467 · 37d ago
The problem is precisely that most things have been (and continue to be) "unthinkable" "impossible" "unreal" in Europe for a long time. The unthinkable has the tendency to hit the many walls that exist in the corrupt and disfunctional European institutions. Lots of virtue signaling, lots of talk, lots of discussion, lots of failure, little action, little results. Put me in the skeptical bucket that European leader (and population) have the will power to sustain the unthinkable beyond an American election cycle.
whiplash451 · 37d ago
It's unclear how this EU momentum will stand the test of time, even if the war in Ukraine were to stop quickly.
Where do these 800 bn really come from, how fast they will transform into R&D and products, how much the industrial status quo is going to change? These are hard questions that remain unanswered.
moooo99 · 37d ago
> It's unclear how this EU momentum will stand the test of time, even if the war in Ukraine were to stop quickly.
I don’t think it really is unclear. The war in Ukraine served as an initial trigger that did spark some notesble changes. But the trump administration even more so. Ask the former UdSSR and Warsaw pact states. They were sounding the alarm bells for a long time and don’t appear to be willing to take any chances going forward.
> Where do these 800 bn really come from,
Government deficit.
> how fast they will transform into R&D and products
R&D is not really the issue. While there are some notable exceptions, the European defense industry has lots of very capable system that match or exceed the capabilities of US counterparts. The problem is primarily production capacity.
And production capacity is a problem that is relatively easily solved by throwing money at it and committing to long term purchases.
The main risk is that states want to ensure that if they want to spend more, they also get proportionally more. With production capacity being a bottleneck, increased spending could lead to inflationary pricing.
BlackFly · 37d ago
> Ask the former UdSSR and Warsaw pact states.
With the inexplicable exception of Hungary.
nodoll · 37d ago
>Government deficit.
And where does that come from? Obviously, it should come from the people of the country or its natural resources.
But we don't like to say that, do we?
dmurray · 37d ago
It comes from the future production of the countries, the exact thing the spending is meant to boost.
If the 800bn creates more than 800bn in (time-adjusted) future productivity, it pays for itself. If not, it was a bad investment.
nodoll · 36d ago
>the exact thing the spending is meant to boost.
Sure, but that is 800bn that could have been spent on more meaningful things. People would be more happy to redeem that by their work..
moooo99 · 36d ago
> But we don't like to say that, do we?
Because it not true. The only body emitting currency is a government
nodoll · 36d ago
a currency is backed by value generated by the people and the natural resources of a country.
thyristan · 36d ago
I think the momentum doesn't come from the Ukraine war. It comes from the US going back on NATO article 5, declaring any promise of mutual defense dubious at best. And it comes from the US threatening NATO allies such as Canada and Denmark (to which Greenland belongs) with invasion.
When you treat your closest allies like that, you instantly become untrustworthy. And you will remain untrustworthy far longer than Trump can stay in office, be it with the current terms or some Putin-like term extensions.
Also, the 800bn are a huge bunch of money that politicians would have never gotten otherwise. Now they have it an can spend it on their military-industrial-cronies. They won't let that opportunity go to waste, even if the reason were gone.
_zamorano_ · 37d ago
What do europeans have to show for the money spent in the "Next Generation" plans?
Allocating the money and printing feel good stories on regulations is the EASY part.
Now, delivering on the cut-throat tech competition on a reasonable time frame seems not part of the european ethos.
snickerbockers · 37d ago
>Talks about investing 800 billion in the military industry across the EU would have been unthinkable 4 months ago.
Okay, but if that's true then what does that say about the relationship between Europe and the United States when they could have done this the whole time and chose not to? Especially when the last 4 or so presidents have all complained about European nations neglecting to meet their NATO defense spending targets only to be politely ignored or in some cases laughed at in public by European counterparts?
swat535 · 37d ago
Obviously, this comes at a cost.
I assume Europeans are willing to forgo some, maybe even most of their social benefits in exchange for increased military spending? I understand many currently enjoy fairly generous government support.
If not, then will there be an even bigger increase in taxes? How does EU plan to roll this out?
pjc50 · 36d ago
Germany has altered its constitution to go into debt for this purpose.
borntoolate · 37d ago
A bunch of markets trying to recreate products is going to eventually work out for some of them on the same basis that disruptive startups that just brought things into freemium succeeded.. Many things would benefit from a rewrite and succeed to capture a larger market at a lower cost than where they ended up over the years.
flowerthoughts · 37d ago
The EU started Deep Tech funding programs 2-3 years ago.
They're supposedly spending €1.4B this year, up by 17% from last.
There's a significant amount of EU-based companies being created in the defence space. Helsing was visionary in that sense, but also paved the way for many startups to follow suite.
lupusreal · 37d ago
Europe has cutting edge domestic military tech in almost all relevant categories but don't build enough of it to matter because until recently their people and governments haven't taken defense seriously.
Europe doing so now is good for America because it reduces the risk of Americans once again dying in yet another European war.
tossandthrow · 37d ago
Last time Nato's article 5 was invoked it lead to Europeans dying in US wars.
We need to go back to WW2 for you comment to have any value.
I think Americans can thank themselves and nobody else for their people dying in wars.
messe · 37d ago
The only time Article 5 has been invoked.
lupusreal · 36d ago
The fewer wars America and Europe are involved with together, the better. Europe has the economic and industrial capacity to defend itself, and America certainly doesn't need Europe's help with whatever new retarded military adventurism our politicians are plotting. The reason America invoked Article 5 was to give an air of international legitimacy to the invasion of Afghanistan, and if doing something like that again isn't on the table then maybe American politicians will be slightly less likely to think that a new war will pay off politically.
We're both better off if Europe can comfortably cut America loose. Europe building up their domestic defense capabilities is essential for this and will bring about a greater chance for long term peace.
snickerbockers · 36d ago
>I think Americans can thank themselves and nobody else for their people dying in wars.
Okay that's a fair point, but if we've learned our lesson from Iraq, Vietnam, etc then why would we want a war in Ukraine? Ukraine's not a NATO member and we have no obligations towards them. If Ukraine is so important to the Europeans that they want to risk escalating a regional border squabble into an apocalyptic nuclear confrontation with Russia, then they need to raise an army for it.
I don't particularly like the way that trump has been overtly signaling his desire to end NATO, but the NATO treaty never obligated America to defend non-members and the people who seem to think it does are as perplexing as trump himself.
0xDEAFBEAD · 37d ago
>Last time Nato's article 5 was invoked it lead to Europeans dying in US wars.
US service members represented about 68% of the coalition deaths in Afghanistan and about 93% in Iraq:
The expectation for a European war should be similar. Europe should supply about 80% of the effort, since they're the ones directly affected. Even now, the US has supplied almost half the aid to Ukraine:
So the US pulling out of Europe could be considered a necessary correction to reach parity with the Iraq/Afghanistan situation.
>We need to go back to WW2 for you comment to have any value.
The point of having a strong military is to deter your enemies, not fight them. The US has deterred the USSR/Russia in Europe for 80 years. What did that get us? HN comments about how we've supposedly "extorted" Europe.
It's really striking the amount of anti-Americanism that comes out of Europe relative to other US allies. This has been going on for years and years before Trump. There seems to be something uniquely dysfunctional about the Atlantic relationship, relative to other ally relationships the US has.
>I think Americans can thank themselves and nobody else for their people dying in wars.
> The point of having a strong military is to deter your enemies, not fight them.
That breaks the premise for this thread which was people lost in war.
> It's really striking the amount of anti-Americanism that comes out of Europe relative to other US allies.
You broaden up the premise from lost casualties in war to the entire relationsship - I think that is multiple PhDs to figure out whether this is anti american or reasonable push back.
I can further open this up an include obvious anti trust malpractice, cultural imperialism, etc., etc. that the US in constantly pushing on the EU (and the rest of the world).
But please enlighten me on how the entire world in against the US, and how badly you are being treated - the country with the absolute biggest economic power and military power.
Cry me a river.
0xDEAFBEAD · 37d ago
>That breaks the premise for this thread which was people lost in war.
lupusreal talked about the "risk of Americans once again dying in yet another European war" (emphasis mine). By making Europe part of its security umbrella, and deterring the USSR/Russia, the US shouldered that risk.
It's simple. I don't want to shoulder risk for people who despise me. Every time Europeans downvote my comments in this thread, it makes me want to shoulder risk for them less and less. And I'm a registered Democrat.
>You broaden up the premise from lost casualties in war to the entire relationsship - I think that is multiple PhDs to figure out whether this is anti american or reasonable push back.
I'm trying to tell you, as a European, why Americans like me aren't enthusiastic about the alliance. What you do with that information is your business.
I think some pushback on the issue of Greenland is perfectly justified. That represents actual aggressive behavior on the part of the US. And I think it's fair to complain about the US voting with Russia at the United Nations. We could at least abstain from voting, like China.
What I don't like is the notion that the US has a special obligation to protect Ukraine.
* Everywhere on the internet, you'll see the "fact" that the US promised to protect Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. That "fact" is false. All we promised was to seek UN Security Council action. Read the memorandum for yourself if you don't believe me: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
* There are ongoing armed conflicts all over the world. The US can't police everywhere. And it's psychologically unsustainable to do volunteer police work when people despise you for it. Given our limited resources, we need to prioritize. We might as well de-prioritize the interests of relatively wealthy countries, such as Europe, since those countries should be better able to provide for themselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...
>obvious anti trust malpractice
You're saying that you don't like how antitrust is practiced in the US? Why is that any of your business? The US is a sovereign country. If you're going to complain about Elon Musk commenting on German elections, why is it your place to complain about how antitrust law works in the US?
For many years, Europeans have had absolutely no inhibitions in expressing their contempt for US policies in guns, healthcare, etc. Yet somehow when Americans do the same, and comment on European policies regarding e.g. immigration, Europeans flip out.
>cultural imperialism
So Europeans, of their own free will, like American music and movies. This is supposed to represent the US oppressing Europe somehow?
I think these two complaints of yours actually underscore my point about European anti-Americanism. I can't imagine a Japanese person complaining that they are oppressed due to the way antitrust is practiced in the US, or that they are oppressed because so many Japanese like to watch American movies. Out of all our "allies", it's only Europeans who are in the habit of complaining about stuff like this.
>the country with the absolute biggest economic power and military power.
I think life is generally pretty good for Americans, and we don't have a lot to complain about. But we do have limited resources, and we can't help everyone. And it's very annoying to read all of the anti-Americanism online, even for situations where we tried to do our best, and even when we're arguably one of the most benevolent superpowers in world history. At a certain point I just don't want to be involved anymore.
tossandthrow · 36d ago
I don't think we will ever reach a conclusion, and it will take the next 4 years to learn whether the approach you represent is more productive than the approach I represent.
But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given.
I don't care about the US being a powerful country. I'm tired of being the world's police. I'm against so-called "American imperialism". I want to be Switzerland. Ally with no one, trade with everyone. Switzerland has a much healthier relationship with the rest of Europe, without toxic dependency.
That's my metric regarding whether an approach is "productive" or not. Give it 10 years until the US/Europe relationship resets to the Switzerland/Europe relationship. That's the goal.
I'd say Trump has already succeeded by this metric in terms of Europe taking responsibility for itself. That's the first step. You need to stop depending on us so you'll stop resenting us.
xorcist · 36d ago
The comparison with Switzerland is stretching things a bit thin.
Switzerland never threatened Germany to become the 27th canton. They didn't threaten military allies with military intervention. They also do not keep permanent military bases in other countries, in practice autonomous zones where there are intermittent scandals where Swiss law protects rapists. No other counties dutifully joined any Swiss invasions in the Middle East.
Europe did not have to shoulder orders of magnitude (look it up) more refugees from these wars than the instigator of the wars. The Swiss do not regularly use their economic power to force other countries to share passenger data for all transit, they do not force far reaching intellectual property legislation of all sorts on other countries.
The Swiss, however, do a lot of other strange things. They are basically a bank with national sovereignity which economically has kept up a very strong industrial appendix with a very strong, primarily industrially focused, engineering sector. The post-WW2 history contains a lot of stones largely left unturned, and there is zero chance another coutry could occupy this particular nation state evolution niche.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>Switzerland never threatened Germany to become the 27th canton. They didn't threaten military allies with military intervention. They also do not keep permanent military bases in other countries, in practice autonomous zones where there are intermittent scandals where Swiss law protects rapists. No other counties dutifully joined any Swiss invasions in the Middle East.
>Europe did not have to shoulder orders of magnitude (look it up) more refugees from these wars than the instigator of the wars. The Swiss do not regularly use their economic power to force other countries to share passenger data for all transit, they do not force far reaching intellectual property legislation of all sorts on other countries.
Exactly. We are in violent agreement. You're doing an excellent job of explaining why the US should be more Swiss, as I've been saying.
>there is zero chance another coutry could occupy this particular nation state evolution niche.
Of course we won't do exactly what the Swiss have done, e.g. we will continue to have a major software industry. My point is we should have a more Swiss approach to foreign policy.
surgical_fire · 36d ago
> I want to be Switzerland. Ally with no one, trade with everyone.
Imposing tariffs and threatening annexation of former allies is not a great start.
But you will get a lot more of the "anti-americanism" you were crying about some comments ago. Better get used to it, it has merely started.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>Imposing tariffs and threatening annexation of former allies is not a great start.
The US, as a sovereign country, has just as much right to levy taxes on imports as any other country.
surgical_fire · 35d ago
> I'm against annexation of Greenland
You, personally, being against it means little, when your president openly threatens it.
> The US, as a sovereign country, has just as much right to levy taxes on imports
And other countries, in their own sovereignty, have just as much right to retaliate with tarriffs of their own, and do trade deals amongst themselves.
0xDEAFBEAD · 35d ago
>You, personally, being against it means little, when your president openly threatens it.
You can discount all of my opinions due to me not being president then :-)
>And other countries, in their own sovereignty, have just as much right to retaliate with tarriffs of their own, and do trade deals amongst themselves.
Agreed.
surgical_fire · 35d ago
> Agreed
And that, friend, is called a trade war.
Good that we made some progress here.
lupusreal · 36d ago
I think you have a great point about the merit of America defending the defense of Europe against Russia in light of European attitudes towards America becoming clear on the internet. This wasn't really a problem during the Cold War when casual communication across the Atlantic wasn't a thing most Americans had access to, but times have changed and the general American public now perceives a lot of contempt for America coming from Europeans. Clearly they're capable of paying for their own defense, since they love to gloat about their expensive social policies so much, so let them shoulder the responsibility they have for their own defense.
tossandthrow · 36d ago
Do you think us defence will become cheaper if the EU steps up more?
And do you think the US will start setting up more social policies if such happens?
You should look up social policies in the US under the cold War. I think you'd find that the US was much more aligned.
Also,it is easy to diminish the attitudes the US has against all other countries - which is not quite heartwarming either.
I would love to return to these conversations when the is influence has shrunk to the influence of Switzerland. I am not so sure the points will stand as strong anymore.
lupusreal · 36d ago
"US Defense" is a euphemism for waging foreign wars. America would be better off if Europe kicked America out of all the military bases in Europe, thereby making it more difficult for America to wage such wars.
messe · 37d ago
> I don't want to shoulder risk for people who despise me
They don't despise you. They dislike your government.
> What I don't like is the notion that the US has a special obligation to protect Ukraine.
Sure, it doesn't. But you don't think that appeasing an expansionist Russia might run contrary to America's interests?
> You're saying that you don't like how antitrust is practiced in the US? Why is that any of your business?
Because how antitrust is practiced in the US has global effects. Why wouldn't it be our business?
> If you're going to complain about Elon Musk commenting on German elections, why is it your place to complain about how antitrust law works in the US?
Yeah, the influence of a random commenter on HN is comparable to the owner of one of the worlds largest social networks. Come on.
> Yet somehow when Americans do the same, and comment on European policies regarding e.g. immigration, Europeans flip out.
Generally, we tend to be better informed about American issues than vice versa, due to the global reach of US media. I'm not saying Europeans are perfectly informed, I've seen some dumb as fuck takes, but on average it certainly skews one way.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>They don't despise you. They dislike your government.
Then why are my comments in this thread being downvoted? I'm trying to share my perspective, and I get sarcastic replies like "Cry me a river."
All of my most acrimonious arguments on HN have been with Europeans talking about transatlantic relations. There just seems to be something uniquely dysfunctional about the US/Europe relationship. From my perspective, I'm sorry to say that internet Europeans come across as incredibly obnoxious and entitled.
Put it another way, I see way more "Americans are fat and stupid" comments from Europeans than other US allies. That's not about our government. That's about us as Americans.
This fact-checking tells me that anti-Americanism (again: regarding citizens, not the government) may be driven by resentment rather than data.
There seems to be some sort of tall poppy syndrome coming out of Europe which I don't want to be a part of. I interpret it as a sort of toxic collectivism. America is an individualist country which believes in celebration of success and free association. Europe wants to resent American success, while also obliging the US to help it when it needs help. I just don't want to be allied with you guys anymore, sorry. I'm happy that you're now starting to figure out things on your own, and I wish you the best.
>you don't think that appeasing an expansionist Russia might run contrary to America's interests?
For one, I don't buy this appeasement talking point. I haven't seen much hard evidence that Russia has ambitions beyond Ukraine. This seems to be another European collectivism thing again, where if you question this you get excluded from the collective.
For another thing, from a realist perspective, I actually don't see why Russian expansionism is so vital to US interests. From a realist perspective, we could just be neutral and trade with whoever wins. Peace with major powers like Russia and China is very much in the US interest.
Even before Trump, Europeans would always say that the US is a selfish imperialist country. Maybe the point of Trump is to show just a bit about how the US would actually behave, if the US was the sort of country that Europe has always said it was.
>Yeah, the influence of a random commenter on HN is comparable to the owner of one of the worlds largest social networks. Come on.
Is there a principle that you're not supposed to interfere in another country's elections, or not?
Sure, you're just one commenter, but a lot of random European commenters add up.
I'm happy for you to constructively critique why you think a different antitrust policy would be better, or even say Europe should make antitrust an item in trade negotations. But it comes across as obnoxious when you act like US antitrust policies are oppressing you and we're obligated to change them for you, and this negates 80 years of NATO protection.
The US is a sovereign nation that's allowed to have its own antitrust policies, its own foreign policy, its own approach to alliances. That understanding needs to be foundational for an improved US/Europe relationship. So far I just don't think Europeans get it.
tossandthrow · 36d ago
From your link
> Do European countries appear to perform worse than White Americans in standardized tests because of low-performing immigrants?
You are literally citing material that compares as race segregated US to other countries as wholes.
I have a lot of very smart American friends, from all across the political spectre.
I have mostly worked for us companies.
And luckily you are not representative of the average American.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>You are literally citing material that compares as race segregated US to other countries as wholes.
Yes, the claim is that apparently low US scores have more to do with US racial composition than a problem with the US educational system. That's the point?
I hedged with "seems to have pretty good education outcomes" because I'm not sure about the racial composition of Europe for 3rd+ generation immigrations. My expectation is that mass migration to Europe is mostly just in the past couple of generations (accounted for in that thread), but I haven't looked into it.
>And luckily you are not representative of the average American.
I didn't vote for Trump. I actually think he's a terrible president. But many Americans did. If Europe wants to get along with the US, it would be useful to understand how Trump supporters think. Since I do sympathize with them in some respects, I've been trying to explain that perspective, as I understand it, to users in this thread. If you want to understand the "average American", you can't just write off a huge fraction of the American population and refer to Trump as "Agent Orange", as was done elsewhere in this thread.
You claim to have American friends from all across the political spectrum. What have you learned from your Trump-supporting friends which helped you understand their perspective? It looks to me like you had me pegged as a Trump supporter previously (ascribing views to me I did not hold), and immediately became sarcastic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43459849
tossandthrow · 36d ago
I don't have you pecked as a Trump supporter.
Also, the US only has two parties - so a lot of people are voting because of a lack of better alternatives. This is wildly different than the EU where most countries have a much more nuanced political landscape. Eg. Germany that has 7 parties.
As such I also know that politics in US is more akin to a sports match than what I consider politics in - and this is congruent to what I hear from my US friends with the sentiment: Either you are with us or against us.
What I do have you pecked on is a complete ignorance of the US's political position globally. You seem completely oblivious to the fact that more than half listed stock globally is US - and that this is a marketplace. Ie. not only US capital.
I appreciate you don't want to be in that position. That you want to be a part of an underdog country. But you are not.
When I write "Cry me a river" that is a way to say: Deal with it. Go and understand where the US stands on the global scene.
Hopefully you can get to appreciate the benefits (English is not my first language) and manage the down sides of such an arrangement.
And hopefully you can develop some humility to the fact.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>English is not my first language
Try using Google Translate or a European equivalent? You can write in your native language and translate into English. Using a translator could help you understand my points better, as well.
>You seem completely oblivious to the fact that more than half listed stock globally is US - and that this is a marketplace. Ie. not only US capital.
Yes, I'm aware that US stocks are overvalued. I don't see the relevance to our discussion. A correction was inevitable in my opinion.
>I appreciate you don't want to be in that position. That you want to be a part of an underdog country. But you are not.
First, it's not about being an underdog. It's about having free and equal relations, free association between nations that respect each others' sovereignty.
In any case -- If you respected US sovereignty, you would respect my opinion, as a US citizen, that we need a more Swiss foreign policy.
We have no obligation to stand in our current place in the global scene. Our current place was the decision of a previous generation of politicians. We're a democracy. We're allowed to vote, and change our policy. You can't coerce us into being an empire with your words. That's absurd.
If you wish to persuade me that the pre-2016 arrangement was good for the US, you're welcome to respectfully make your case for that. You're not doing that.
Your condescending attitude is exactly the thing I'm arguing against, and exactly why I think the idea of "US-Europe shared values" is overrated.
>And hopefully you can develop some humility to the fact.
You are a foreigner commenting on US politics telling me that I, as a US citizen, need to be humble in my views of US policy. It's wild to me that Europeans will talk this way, then turn around and complain that Elon Musk is "influencing European elections".
Imagine if Elon said Europeans "need to be humble, appreciate their position, and keep buying Teslas". How would you feel?
The difference between you and I is: I recognize that Europeans have free association, and they are free to buy whatever products they want. I think it is silly to boycott the US over Ukraine, when the US has been one of Ukraine's biggest supporters. I'd say you should start by boycotting countries such as Brazil which have provided almost no support at all. The vast majority of countries have provided no support: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
But, I recognize that you're a free individual making free choices for yourself -- same as us Americans are. So, buy what you like. Boycott what you like. I may think it is silly. But it's your decision, and I respect that.
This needs to be foundational for our discussion. If we say the partnership isn't working for us, you need to respect that instead of give us a lecture on our ignorance and our need for humility. Simple.
tossandthrow · 36d ago
Is think there is plenty of evidence in both mine and other commenter's on why you comments are being downnvoted (which I can not do, as you answer to my comments).
You way of debating is defensive and dismissive. So that is a hard stop from me here
0xDEAFBEAD · 35d ago
You said to me: "cry me a river" and "you can develop some humility" and you're accusing me of being dismissive? I was more polite to you than you were to me. You were rude to me before I said anything even slightly mean to you. You repeatedly insulted me while I spoke respectfully to you.
I'm getting downvoted because Europeans have taken America for granted. They struggle with a relationship based on mutual respect and fairness.
necovek · 34d ago
I, for one, would very much like to see US be more neutral.
But as an outsider (in Europe, but in one of those countries that has been "policed" by largely US-led initiative), I think you are seen as discounting the net economic benefits US has enjoyed from taking on that role in the past.
If you acknowledged that more openly, I think people would take more gladly to your arguments: yes, it will hurt both US and EU as the countries move away from this mutually beneficial arrangement (which helped keep US a global economic leader, and helped EU focus on society development — greatly simplified summary so obviously flawed), but I do agree with you that hopefully we end up with a nicer state of affairs in 20-30 years. I am not necessarily confident this happens though, which is also what you might be seeing play out (fear of this unknown future).
You are also simplifying things, which does not help: if EU had a defensive force so it needed not depend on NATO/US, what else would have been different?
Note that people do complain about other countries doing the things you see them complain about in the US too (eg. China's state sponsorship of local companies with reduced taxes and oversight), though I understand how you, as an American, feel those towards the US more strongly. And yes, they are even more common against the US because we have more US people engaging in discourse on the same platforms (mostly US ones), so they are unsuspecting "willing" listeners. Not much sense in arguing about China when everybody agrees, and Chinese do not feel the liberty or have any desire to participate.
And that's perhaps the core point: the two cultures value these same human rights, which does mean that you need to hear the shit people dislike a lot more (and there's even the term for it in "vocal minority").
0xDEAFBEAD · 34d ago
>I, for one, would very much like to see US be more neutral.
Cool.
>But as an outsider (in Europe, but in one of those countries that has been "policed" by largely US-led initiative), I think you are seen as discounting the net economic benefits US has enjoyed from taking on that role in the past.
Europeans keep mentioning these supposed benefits in discussions online. But suspiciously, they never get very concrete.
Prior to WW1, the US had a policy of staying out of European geopolitics. Our economy did fantastic during that period.
Switzerland does fantastic by staying relatively neutral.
Currently, the US is sanctioning Russia. This has obvious economic downsides for the US. It makes the dollar less attractive as a global reserve currency.
If European countries were "vassal states" to the US, as I'm always being told, why were they buying oil from Russia rather than the USA prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine? That would be an obvious economic benefit for the US that failed to materialize.
>You are also simplifying things, which does not help: if EU had a defensive force so it needed not depend on NATO/US, what else would have been different?
I don't know. Perhaps you would've had a third world war already? After all, that was the idea with the US staying in Europe -- to prevent a third world war. By all means enlighten me regarding whatever you had in mind.
One point is it would probably be good for the US economy, since you would've bought more American weapons to better defend yourself.
- - -
Part of what I am trying to help Europeans understand is that their anti-American rhetoric is the very thing that undermined the American voter's idealism towards Europe.
Europeans consistently seem to believe that America benefits significantly from the current arrangement. I haven't seen much evidence at all that anyone in the US believes this. American citizens don't believe it. American leadership doesn't believe it either. Look at the recent JD Vance leak.
The last 3-4 presidents have all been asking Europe to step up and fund its own defense.
There is an astonishing mismatch between the cynicism with which the Europeans view the transatlantic relationship, and the idealism with which the Americans previously viewed it (until they realized how little Europeans like them, now that the transatlantic relationship has become the #1 topic on social media). I believe that America's shift away from Europe will become a bipartisan consensus now that the US has woken up. Trump lead the shift, but I think there is a very good chance that the Democrats keep it in place if they come back into power.
More and more Americans are thinking thoughts like: "Those Europeans are making fun of us for our lack of public healthcare. Why should our tax dollars pay to defend them, when we could be spending that money on our health at home?"
I hope you get ready for what may come when the US leaves:
>Zelensky highlighted the disparity in forces between Russia and Europe, saying that Ukraine's army consists of 110 brigades, while Russia fields 220 and plans to expand to 250 this year. In contrast, Europe, including U.S. troops stationed there, has only about 82 combat brigades, he said.
>...
>"Today, an army of 110 brigades is holding back those who have 220-230. But it's one to two," Zelensky added. The president said that while Russia's numeral advantage compared to Ukraine is two to one, in comparison to Europe, it's three to one, which is sufficient for an effective offensive.
You are venturing into what-ifs as if there is any one clear answer, with your implication being that nothing else would have changed (if US did not fund EU defense, US would have saved that money instead).
I can come up with a scenario that's more peaceful: eg. if US did not fund EU's defenses, EU would have developed their own defence industry further, and instead of buying weaponry from US, they would have equally got it from Russia, and more recently, India and China. Perhaps even India and China catch up slower as Russia has richer willing customers in EU.
This would have led to Russia having an even bigger economic interest in playing nice with EU, and would not have feared NATO at all, because it wouldn't have included US.
Ergo, no war in Ukraine.
At the same time, US companies would not have been trusted with projects with highest earning potential (government infrastructure projects, including IT): perhaps MS never gets so deep into EU institutions and companies, Amazon never gets trusted for IT infra, etc.
Now, I think the US is recognizing that this earning potential has moved to other big countries or systems (like BRICS), as these countries have increased their purchasing power — which is all fair and good — but to repeatedly claim that US did not benefit from EU's purchasing power for US products in the last 60 years is insincere.
0xDEAFBEAD · 34d ago
My understanding is that the US and Europe traded quite a bit prior to WW1, including for critical stuff such as food. I don't see NATO as nearly as critical for transatlantic trade as you do.
A basic problem with your story is the US/Europe trade deficit. If the US gains such a critical trade advantage by providing security to Europe, you would expect this would come through in the EU buying lots of US exports. In fact, the US buys more EU exports, despite the EU not funding US defense the way the US funds EU defense.
>I can come up with a scenario that's more peaceful: eg. if US did not fund EU's defenses, EU would have developed their own defence industry further, and instead of buying weaponry from US, they would have equally got it from Russia, and more recently, India and China. Perhaps even India and China catch up slower as Russia has richer willing customers in EU.
So Europe would buy USSR weapons during the Cold War? How does this hypothetical go, exactly? This just sounds like a scenario where the USSR expands to cover all of Europe. The Berlin Wall never would've fallen because instead of a wall, it would be the Atlantic Ocean. And honestly, if that's the world you want to live in, I'm fine with that.
>would not have feared NATO at all, because it wouldn't have included US.
But NATO would have included a rearmed West Germany in this hypothetical? I'll bet the USSR would've feared that...
>US did not benefit from EU's purchasing power for US products in the last 60 years
Trade is always mutually beneficial. I think security benefits both parties approximately equally, in the sense of allowing that trade and prosperity to occur. But the US would've received similar trade and prosperity benefit if it had only invested in Europe's security 10% as much, and asked Europe to cover the rest.
In any case, as I stated in my comment -- whatever Europeans may believe, few in the US appear to agree much. That seems to be a core part of the issue. Europe can tell itself all it wants that "defending Europe is in America's core interest" -- but if America doesn't actually believe that, it doesn't matter, and you guys need to either defend yourselves or (much preferably) find a way to make peace with Russia.
necovek · 33d ago
As I stated already, I don't think "defending Europe is in America's core interest", especially not today — but it definitely was for the bigger part of the post-WW2 period.
Some things will not necessarily show up in the trade numbers: as a random example, a US company like Amazon opening up Amazon EU headquarters in Ireland will not show up as surplus for US economy as long as they reinvest that locally, but most Europeans will see it as a US company and the business contributing to its success — "simple" goes out the window very quickly with global monopolistic companies.
It's funny you focus so much on the "Cold War", when it was mostly a Cold War between... US and USSR. Again, you are making claims as if you know exactly how things would have played out if US did not decide to invest in influencing European politics and economies. Perhaps we would have seen a larger shift to socialism and communism instead (eg. in Spain, socialists have already been on the winning side of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Spanish_general_election).
Even that might not mean strong alignment with USSR, just like Yugoslavia never did even as a socialist, communist country.
I hear you on how Americans perceive the situation differently, but you are similarly not willing to hear out the European viewpoints.
Anyway, I think this has gone long enough — thank you for sharing your perspective, and even if I failed to nudge you towards better understanding the "other side" too, it's always great to hear different viewpoints.
0xDEAFBEAD · 33d ago
>It's funny you focus so much on the "Cold War", when it was mostly a Cold War between... US and USSR.
The common US view is that if that Cold War was not "fought", the USSR would've taken over most or all of Europe. Non-alignment only works if there are 2 rival superpowers to play off of each other. But if you're fine with USSR hegemony in Europe, or you think that's not the outcome that would've happened -- that's a great argument for the US pulling out now. If the US doesn't reliably make things better (which is my view), it's better for us to leave.
>I hear you on how Americans perceive the situation differently, but you are similarly not willing to hear out the European viewpoints.
I think I am willing to hear Europeans out. I previously said stuff in this thread like "I'm happy for you to constructively critique..." and "If you wish to persuade me... you're welcome to respectfully make your case..." and "Of course Europe's contribution to Iraq and Afghanistan should be acknowledged." [Note that Europeans in this thread have largely not acknowledged any sort of positive contribution the US made to Europe -- which reinforces my point that we should go. What frustrates me is Europeans who complain about the US endlessly, and also want us to stay!]
>Anyway, I think this has gone long enough — thank you for sharing your perspective, and even if I failed to nudge you towards better understanding the "other side" too, it's always great to hear different viewpoints.
Appreciate you sharing your perspective as well. To be fair, I think we mostly agree with one another anyways, and my disagreements are deeper with others in this thread.
rat87 · 29d ago
Americans do generally support Ukraine and Europe. Even most Republicans seem to oppose Trumps policy. A policy wbichseems to be based on whims and a personal appreciation for far right dictators who flatter him. But somehow we elected him so until Republicans man up and impeach him we have to suffer from him undermining our alliances and government.
Russia is the one that needs to find a way to make peace. Not only because they started it but because they're the reason there is no peace deal
rat87 · 29d ago
> This would have led to Russia having an even bigger economic interest in playing nice with EU, and would not have feared NATO at all, because it wouldn't have included US.
Ergo, no war in Ukraine.
The Capitalist/free trade peace theory has not worked out well, compared to democratic peace theory. It failed wrt Ukraine where both Ukraine and multiple EU countries had significant trade with Russia but Russia still went to war despite knowing some of the economic damage it would cause.
Also the invasion had nothing to do with NATO.
Bricks isn't actually a thing
Of course both US and EU have benefited from trade relations quite a lot and Trump's nonsense is nonsense
jensgk · 36d ago
> I haven't seen much hard evidence that Russia has ambitions beyond Ukraine.
Hard evidence is too late. Putin (and associates) speeches and writings indicate more than enough. Why do you think that former Soviet countries boardering Russia are the most scared?
pjc50 · 37d ago
> risk of Americans once again dying in yet another European war.
How's the proposed Canada / Greenland wars fit into this? As well as ongoing support for the forever proxy war in the middle east between the US and Iran.
the_duke · 37d ago
That's a very narrow view on the topic.
There have been many cases over the last decades where European interest and opinions have been quite different from US foreign policy pushes, but European countries almost always yielded to US pressure, partly due to the close relationship, but more so due to the de-facto dependence.
If Europe becomes more self-reliant and builds up more notable and integrated military capabilities, it will also mean that the we will persue different goals
and prioritise our own strategic and economic interests, which sometimes might align with the US, but plenty of times will not.
It will bring about a marked decline of how much sway the US has.
grey-area · 37d ago
World War II was not a European war, the clue is in the name.
navigate8310 · 37d ago
I don't think third world even wanted anything to do with it.
mixermachine · 37d ago
Is selling less product good for US defense companies?
radicalbyte · 37d ago
The latter is true only if America take a measured, stepped approach to pulling out of Europe. Something I, as a European, have been wanting to happen since 2003. It's insane that we let the US dictate our foreign and trade policy and they only reason we do is because of German fears of rearming.
Doing so rashly? That vastly increases the chances because it encourages Russia to do something in the 3-5 year timeframe.
CapricornNoble · 37d ago
>> Doing so rashly? That vastly increases the chances because it encourages Russia to do something in the 3-5 year timeframe.
Can you sit down with a map and draw out exactly *WHAT* you think Russia will be capable of doing 5 years from now? Keep in mind that:
1. We watched the best-equipped and trained brigades in Ukraine bounce off well-prepared minefields and trenchworks in summer 2023. Just like in WW1, technology is in a state where defense is easier than offense.
2. Europe has years of prep time, and unmolested industrial capacity available, to build defenses that would make the "Surovikin Line" look like a speedbump.
This is why people joke about "Schrodinger's Russia": where Russia is so weak that people make fun of it for its slow progress in conquering Ukraine, yet is also so powerful that it has 500+ million Europeans shaking in their boots at the idea that Russia is gonna blitzkrieg the whole continent or something.
radicalbyte · 36d ago
They can build up a force capable of annexing the strip of land between Belarus and Kaliningrad. They have a large number of experience troops and a massive number of conscripts, their drone capacity currently dwarfs Europe and is expanding. They also have hundreds of thousands of experienced operators.
They also have one of the most capable psyop machines in the world and a massive network of spies / 5th Column in place. They are especially strong in Eastern Europe and Germany.
So there's very much a risk that they try to hybrid style "grab" there then at a time when they have sown political chaos into Europe.
We can reduce the risk of we have overwhelming force available at hand - like we currently do as allies of the US - which makes any such move literal suicide as we would obliterate them.
Also - now this is my viewpoint - by committing to re-arming now and providing everything we have to help Ukraine kick Russia out of their country - a full rout of the Russians - we vastly reduce the risk of anything like that ever happening again and we set the conditions for the eventual liberation of Belarus and demilitarisation and neutralisation of Kaliningrad.
Basically: we get sharp fangs now so we can push the best time-line.
Also: there is an unlikely but not unthinkable scenario where American, under Emperor Trump (or Musk) switch to using gunboat diplomacy and bully Europe the way the British (and other European nations) bullied others in the past. And like America itself did to its neighbours in the Victorian times. So re-arming such that we have complete independence from the US reduces their leverage.
In a good timeline having both a strong Europe and strong US on the same side puts us in a very good place wrt China / India etc in the future.
CapricornNoble · 36d ago
>They can build up a force capable of annexing the strip of land between Belarus and Kaliningrad.
Ok, I'll take this as a starting point. Let's assume Russia has committed to seizing everything south of Kaunas and Vilnius, and north of Suwalki. The eastern part of this patch of land is ~200km frontage with Belarus (south of the E28 Highway). Because Kaunas and Vilnius combined have populations of ~900k, I'm going to assume the Russians will aim to bypass rather than seize them, so that will involve establishing blocking positions south of both cities in order to isolate them from the desired terrain. It also involves capturing Alytus, about the same size and population as Bakhmut. I would need to dig through some doctrinal publications to figure out how the Russians would template a force package for this op, but I'll spitball it at at least an entire corps/Combined Arms Army of 2-3 divisions and a few separate brigades, maybe 60-80,000 men?
While the focus is on repulsing an attack in this southern sector, let's assume Lithuania fortifies the entire border with Belarus, which is ~350km. Minefields 1km deep with 1 AT or 1 AP mine per 6 square meters would require ~60 million mines and $5 billion USD (about 1 year of Lithuania's military budget). That's an extreme lift but not impossible if amortized over several years, even without help from other EU nations. A defensive belt built behind a minefield like that will take the Russians weeks to penetrate if properly supported by other assets. Those weeks give the rest of the EU decision space for political action as well as time for mobilization/flowing combat power into the Area of Operations.
So the real question is "why"? Why would Russia want to expend the resources to accomplish this? Figure out what Russia wants and then structure a defense that imposes an unpalatable cost on the attacker. My position is that it can be accomplished without American involvement. Finland spent the Cold War a) outside of NATO b) with no independent "security guarantees" c) without getting invaded by the Soviets (again).....because it also made itself expensive enough to invade/annex that the Soviets didn't think the cost of re-absorbing that particular bit of formerly-Russian-Imperial-territory to be worth it. Facing down a massive conventional military assault from a well-equipped and supported adversary is not impossible: the Lebanese have done it twice in the past twenty years against the Israelis. Be like Lebanon.
>by committing to re-arming now and providing everything we have to help Ukraine kick Russia out of their country - a full rout of the Russians
That's not realistic. At all. There is no reality where Ukraine forcibly ejects Russia from the land bridge that it has established with Crimea. Breaching Russia's fortifications requires more combat engineering equipment than exists in all of NATO at this point. The Ukrainian 2023 offensive was supposed to reach Tokmak in 3 days. It took them closer to 90 days to even breach the 2nd of 3 defensive lines north of the city. Let alone actually reach Melitopol and Berdiansk. No army on the planet is trained and equipped to deal with kilometer-deep defensive belts covered by artillery, UAVs, attack helicopters....AND enemy air superiority. You would need to completely collapse the Russian army and economy 1917-style, which is also not looking likely, or at least not likely to occur before Ukraine itself collapses.
At some point Europeans need to come back to reality. Until then.....Americans are no longer interested in getting tangled up in Europe's mess (even though the mess is largely our fault).
> So re-arming such that we have complete independence from the US reduces their leverage.
Which ironically is what Trump wanted Europe to do anyway: pay for your own security with your own money!
> In a good timeline having both a strong Europe and strong US on the same side puts us in a very good place wrt China / India etc in the future.
The US is returning to a Pacific focus, like the one we had 1890-1913 (ish). I think this is the correct posture for us. We don't need to be on the "same side" of Europe, just like we weren't really on any European side until Woodrow Wilson, America's worst President, ruined everything by getting us into WW1. Due to geography we are fundamentally a maritime power, and we should be focused on trans-Pacific trade with the growing economic heart of the planet: the Valerierpieris Circle ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle ).
Hopefully my post isn't too disjointed and rambly...
ohgr · 37d ago
No we weren't really to start with. What happened was a lot of European business executives worked out the best retirement plan for them was to either sell off our industry or subcontract everything out. I worked for two companies in succession that were sold out to US defence ownership.
Now their successors, who have been hoping that there isn't a tough discussion coming up, are now edging around that it was a terrible idea and backtracking as quickly as possible. Fortunately the US didn't move all the staff out so there are US subsidiaries in Europe which have staff in an uncertain situation who are probably quite easy to hire.
It's a step in the right direction for Europe but only because it was historically a terrible step in the wrong direction.
I think France are probably in a better place than most countries at the moment. That is it.
pjc50 · 37d ago
> US subsidiaries in Europe which have staff in an uncertain situation
Keeping an eye on this myself, as a Brit working in the UK for a US chip company; I'm wondering when the right moment to pull my RSUs from the US brokerage account and back across the Atlantic is.
ohgr · 37d ago
Yeah good idea. UK here working for a US company (different sector). Already pulled out my US investments and rode Rheinmetall, BAE and TSLQ hard.
vladimirralev · 37d ago
Predicating the argument on a unified EU is a mistake. US was a good ally in NATO, certainly better than most EU countries. If this split can occur between US and "EU", it's almost certain a similar split will occur within the "EU" itself, and quite soon. Romania is already leaning this way. But France and Holland also trending this way.
EU politicians right now are trying to use this moment to unify the EU more and to justify more spending, but they way they steer the narrative is very awkward. They want to spend but only some regions will benefit from this spending as it stands and the others will only pay the bill further causing division.
Private companies in EU face a different problem - switching away from industry leading vendors makes them less competitive. We will have to see how this plays out.
criley2 · 37d ago
Both are a good thing? Even from folks in America who strongly dislike the fascist leadership, you'd be hard pressed to find folks who think "Europe should underfund their military and rely on the American tax payer for defense" or "Europe should be uncompetitive in technology and just buy American and Chinese solutions"
I don't understand why Europeans have to blame Trump for "spending a fair minimum on their own defense in the face of existential threats" or "investing domestically in technology".
These are things you always should have been doing.
impossiblefork · 37d ago
For us Europeans it's a good thing. There have been sane people here in Europe who never wanted to be reliant on US subscription software etc., but who had no chance of getting their view through.
For the US though, this European reliance on what is in effect rubbish is great. Rubbish in return for cars and all sorts of sophisticated technology.
I don't like calling ad firms etc. 'tech'. Technology for me is things like new chemical processes, whatever TSMC is doing, etc. and the US does have that, but firms like Meta are not a big player outside of machine learning research.
whiplash451 · 37d ago
> rely on the American tax payer for defense
Not sure how much that's true. EU spends billions buying US military hardware such as the Reaper. It's unclear how the story will end up for US taxpayers here.
mschuster91 · 37d ago
> Not sure how much that's true. EU spends billions buying US military hardware such as the Reaper.
The thing is, West Germany alone had about 3000 tanks at the end of the Cold War, and reunified Germany nowadays has 300. Navies and air forces have been run to the ground across Europe, even the nuclear forces of UK/FR are nowhere near what they had once been.
The expectation over the last decades, especially after the pacification of the Balkans, was that open war would not return to Europe any time soon - on the one side because almost all European countries were either members of the EU, EEA or Schengen and thus were likely to more integrate instead of going back to 19th century fiefdom wars, and on the other side because the only realistic opponent was Russia... which we thought we could handle by "peace by trade".
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
By "relying on the American tax payer" they mean trusting the US military to deter Russia.
EasyMark · 36d ago
This is an odd take when one considers we (the US) have a large trade deficit with the EU. I personally prefer that we have open and free trade with the EU with no protectionism at all. It's only our adversaries like China and Russia that I worry about trading with, and hence tariffs and restrictions be much more appropriate, the clown in charge in Washington seems to want the opposite.
dcow · 37d ago
The situation laid out in the article doesn’t really indicate in any way that people are just mad at Trump and fleeing to EU alternatives. Yeah that’s obviously part of the acute response in 2025, but everything indicated by the data and the points made in the article seems to say that, whether Trump made people newly aware or motivated aside, people are looking for privacy-focused software products. Mind you, a spirited interpretation of recent EU regulations and law almost requires data to live in the EU.
The US has done a terrible job regulating digital privacy irrespective of which party has held the office of president. The whole world absolutely should be challenging America to do a better job being the custodian of so much sensitive data. Competition in that market is very welcome and does not represent the death of American tech infrastructure. As an American citizen and alternative search user I love to see pressure on the Google and FB scale giants to compete at providing better privacy in their products. And I think that the only way to solve the data privacy issues rampant in our industry is through legal requirement and market pressure.
Finally, please try not to cheaply patronize Americans and Trump’s foreign policy. We can talk about this issue without the political zingers insinuating that Trump and his supporters are a bunch of reckless ye-haw cowboys-idiots.
ttyprintk · 36d ago
Great comment. Would this have happened without the tariff whiplash? As in, Trump always brings unaccountability. But he placed a venal children’s book author and a podcaster at the head of FBI. Since the USA has no codified privacy rights, we can expect abuses.
Also, these people don’t come from cowboys; they’re unrestrained salesman-on-TV personalities humiliated by poor competitiveness. I think that slightly matters; never seen it in a cowboy.
logicchains · 37d ago
> thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S.
This came with a responsibility to provide military protection to the US via NATO. Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values, that's why they called the movement "America first". Historically speaking being an empire generally turns out to be a terrible deal in the long term, with maintaining the empire eventually becoming too expensive and leading to collapse and reduced living standards back home, like happened to the Roman empire, and the British empire after WW2.
iammjm · 37d ago
>responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values
You mean Europe? There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe. Unless the very definition of these values suddenly changed for the US with Agent Orange.
As far as "far-away places go", it might take a similar amount of time to get from east to west coast of USA as to fly from one of the US coasts to somewhere in Europe...
Europe has been aligned with US culturally and politically for decades and it helped to promote US interests worldwide and to fight US wars. And when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us. I feel personally betrayed, and I imagine there are many, many more like me. Your decisions will ultimately be bad for us all.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe.
I just don't think that's true. Europeans seem much more collectivist, whereas the US is more individualist. That's why Europeans express disdain for US policies around healthcare, guns, etc. Europeans express a tremendous amount of disdain for the US online, calling Americans fat, dumb, neo-imperialist, etc.
That's been going on for ages before Trump. It's done a lot to undermine the transatlantic relationship, in my view. People-to-people connections matter for diplomacy.
How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it.
>when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us.
From my perspective, we deterred Russia for 80 years following WW2, and provided almost 50% of the support for Ukraine to date. That's more than enough to account for European support in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US provided 80% of the muscle for Iraq and Afghanistan. For a fair relationship, Europe should expect to provide 80% of the muscle to deter Russia. A reset to fairness should not feel like betrayal. Europe gets most of the benefit from NATO, therefore Europe should do most of the spending in NATO. Fix this pie chart: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...
Timon3 · 36d ago
> How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it.
This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans.
Maybe your views are colored by your subjective experiences, without being truly representative of the objective facts? Because I have no idea how else you could have the idea that what you described doesn't happen the other way around.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans.
So how does it make you feel? Does it make you want to send troops to America's next Iraq?
Timon3 · 36d ago
It honestly doesn't have a bearing on my political leanings regarding America, especially since there are also many nice and wonderful Americans I interact with. My political opinions are instead based on the political positions, trend, instability & recently insanity of America.
If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves. Just look at something like Reddit - I'm guessing at least half the comments are AI generated these days, if not more.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>It honestly doesn't have a bearing on my political leanings regarding America, especially since there are also many nice and wonderful Americans I interact with.
OK, well, can you understand if some of your countrymen didn't wish to send troops to America's next Iraq, due to the xenophobia they experienced?
That's just human nature regardless of what country you're from. That's what I've been trying to explain.
You know that in the US, conservatives are over-represented in the military. If the US does fight Russia, they will be the ones dying for you. Driven by a sense of American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle. It just doesn't make any sense.
>If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves.
I don't believe it's manipulation. Europeans have been anti-American for as long as I can remember. I don't think it is just an internet thing. But yes, it is ironic that lots of Europeans (in this thread even) post, and vote on comments, in more or less the way they would post if they were being paid by Russia.
In any case, if we're going to disregard the internet, why not disregard my comments too? Maybe I'm an AI bot. Or maybe you'd find me to be nice and wonderful if we were interacting in person :-)
Timon3 · 36d ago
> OK, well, can you understand if some of your countrymen didn't wish to send troops to America's next Iraq, due to the xenophobia they experienced?
Sure! But has this ever not been the case? I think it's reasonable to assume that some level of xenophobia has always existed. So why are you suddenly so hurt about it? Could it be that platforms are deliberately showing you more and more of that, while not showing you positive interactions?
> You know that in the US, conservatives are over-represented in the military. If the US does fight Russia, they will be the ones dying for you. Driven by a sense of American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle. It just doesn't make any sense.
Right now it seems more likely that these same Americans will be fighting with Russia against us, so I hope you can accept that I have very little love left for American "patriotism" right now. Maybe try not threatening allies and dividing the spoils with our shared enemies, that would certainly help.
> I don't believe it's manipulation. Europeans have been anti-American for as long as I can remember. I don't think it is just an internet thing. But yes, it is ironic that lots of Europeans (in this thread even) post, and vote on comments, in more or less the way they would post if they were being paid by Russia.
Okay, but why is this suddenly such a big deal? You're apparently not perturbed by American xenophobia against us, why did you suddenly become so sensitive?
0xDEAFBEAD · 35d ago
>Could it be that platforms are deliberately showing you more and more of that, while not showing you positive interactions?
Doubtful. The platforms I'm talking about are mostly HN and /r/worldnews. There's no recommendation engine for either of those. And I don't see other Europeans arguing against this stuff, either.
>Right now it seems more likely that these same Americans will be fighting with Russia against us, so I hope you can accept that I have very little love left for American "patriotism" right now. Maybe try not threatening allies and dividing the spoils with our shared enemies, that would certainly help.
I certainly wouldn't want the US fight with Russia against Europe. I highly doubt that will happen. But if you like, you can view my "American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle" comment as an explanation of how we got to this situation.
>Okay, but why is this suddenly such a big deal? You're apparently not perturbed by American xenophobia against us, why did you suddenly become so sensitive?
I am perturbed. But to be honest, I'm skeptical that you received much American xenophobia, especially compared to the oceans of anti-Americanism that have been washing across the internet for ages. If you want to show me an example, maybe that will help me understand.
In any case, it's not the anti-Americanism that gets to me so much as the ingratitude. The US has been one of Ukraine's biggest supporters. Yet even when Biden was president, there was a lot of anti-US sentiment in Ukraine discussions, because they wanted even more. They never mentioned countries such as Brazil which gave hardly anything. The US was probably their #2 most hated country after Russia.
I'm arguing for the principle that people who do good things should be appreciated rather than disdained. I see that as a prerequisite for any sort of prosocial society, or a prosocial world order. That's much more important to me than anti-Americanism. In cases where I believe anti-Americanism is justified, it doesn't bother me nearly as much.
So many of these US policies like supporting NATO were justified on the basis of gaining "soft power". The reality is that soft power isn't worth very much, and in the modern world, trying to do good things actually reduces American soft power, not increases it.
Timon3 · 35d ago
> The platforms I'm talking about are mostly HN and /r/worldnews. There's no recommendation engine for either of those.
Sorry, if you really think there's no "recommendation engine" behind Reddit, I can't help you.
0xDEAFBEAD · 35d ago
I go directly to /r/worldnews and look at the top posts. Oftentimes I'm not even logged in.
BTW, if you disagree with other Europeans in this thread, why are you arguing with me instead of them?
You mostly don't seem to be stating points of disagreement with them, or points of agreement with me. I can infer a lot from that :-)
Anyways, if you truly think there is a serious risk that the US sides with Russia, then hopefully we at least agree that the US should pull all its troops out of Europe. That should reduce the risk to you guys.
Aloisius · 36d ago
> Europeans seem much more collectivist, whereas the US is more individualist. That's why Europeans express disdain for US policies around healthcare, guns, etc.
The US is plenty collectivist. Patriots who put country first and would die for it? That's collectivism. Someone who puts their family ahead of themselves? Also collectivism.
One should disdain the US healthcare system not because it isn't "collectivist" (there's nothing particularly individualistic about insurance), but because it's horrifically inefficient. The US government spends more money on healthcare per capita than anywhere in Europe (or Canada or any developed country), yet only manages to cover half the population leaving the other half to spend even more money for private insurance.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>The US is plenty collectivist. Patriots who put country first and would die for it? That's collectivism. Someone who puts their family ahead of themselves? Also collectivism.
Our discussion is on the topic of whether the US and Europe have common values. You can call this stuff "collectivism" if you want. But ironically I think it still indicates some deep US/Europe value differences.
No one in the US believes people should be obligated to serve in the military. It's considered an honor which receives societal support and recognition. This feels more like voluntary altruism. The US has a similar approach with charitable giving -- last I checked its charitable donations are among the highest in the world. In Europe, by contrast, things are organized along obligations. Europeans don't give to charity as much; rather, they're forced to pay taxes so the government can hand out money. And they take that same mentality to the transatlantic alliance, implying that the US should be obligated to defend them. It's quite jarring to me when here in the US we celebrate the voluntary sacrifices of our service members, whereas Europeans take our service members as a given, and complain when we discuss withdrawal. You should celebrate more when another country chooses to defend you, not less.
Jensson · 36d ago
> No one in the US believes people should be obligated to serve in the military
USA still has legal support for conscription, so that is wrong. Plenty of people feel exactly that.
0xDEAFBEAD · 35d ago
The opinion polls I see show a large majority are against conscription.
rfrey · 37d ago
> Thumps voters don't want America to be an empire
Why the leadup (complete with de-humanization of citizens!) to annexation of Canada, then? Why normalization of invading parts of Europe (Greenland)? Why talk about taking over Panama?
Trump is 100% pro-empire, he's just too thick to understand that America already had empire without having Google Maps have everything the same colour.
xorcist · 36d ago
> Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away
Then why did they elect an imperialist? The current president has already announced the possibility of military interventions against Canada and Denmark in order to expand US territory.
That's a kind of imperalism not seen since the middle of last century, when most empires started to proritize soft power over territory as the military and economic powers started to unite. It was easier to secure cheap natural resources than to secure the resources themselves.
> that's why they called the movement "America first"
We should always listen to action, not words. Rhetoric is cheap.
The actions tells us that the US deficit will continue to grow. It is not clear yet how much, but everything points to an increase in military spending. Other parts of the state will have to be cut back.
tim333 · 36d ago
>[the US] wanted to extort even more money and dependence from EU...
I think it's more they are threatening to attack the EU (Denmark) and aid it's adversaries (Putin). I put that down to a Russian asset president rather than wanting money.
dmos62 · 37d ago
I liked a comment by Sarah C. Paine, about how Communism is a really great system for taking power from within a state (think Mao), and then staying in power, but it's horrible for generating prosperity. When evaluating the choices of certain people, it's clarifying to not think in terms of prosperity, but, rather, power. I think there's a case to be made about Trump seeing advantage in making enemies of his political rivals' allies, and then there's that whole weird situation about making Russia-favoring decisions, who knows why.
epolanski · 37d ago
The same Sarah Paine that speaks about how China lifted 1B+ people out of poverty and created tens of millions of millionaires?
ttyprintk · 36d ago
Isnt it objectively true that China is the only country to lift 500m people from poverty? The debate is whether the power to do that needs to come from a single party so powerful it can starve 50m without repercussion.
dmos62 · 37d ago
Sarah C. Paine, the professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College. I'm not aware of what you're talking about.
epolanski · 36d ago
That was who I was referring to as well.
dmos62 · 36d ago
I'm not sure what your point was. Are you contesting the numbers she cites?
bufferoverflow · 37d ago
Largely after abandoning damaging communist ideas and allowing private business to exist.
China is no longer communist, it's this weird hybrid of capitalism with heavy government controls and heavy censorship.
croissants · 37d ago
Yeah, The Economist regularly writes these articles that spend half the time praising the intense competition in certain sectors of the economy and half the time bemoaning the influence of state-owned enterprises (or other CCP instruments) in others. It seems to vary a lot by specific industry.
flohofwoe · 37d ago
> China is no longer communist, it's this weird hybrid of capitalism with heavy government controls and heavy censorship.
I think the established term is 'state capitalism'.
navigate8310 · 37d ago
Which is owned by the Government
dmos62 · 36d ago
In my mind, Communism as exhibited by modern China is more defined by the dictatorship style, than the economy style, not that economy is independent of it. So, I'd consider the chinese communism vs western democracy a more enlightnening contrast.
GardenLetter27 · 37d ago
In some areas China is even becoming more liberal than the EU.
Look at DeepSeek.
HDThoreaun · 36d ago
Which happened immediately after they abandoned the planned economy
martin82 · 36d ago
Are you living in a parallel universe? There is no conceivable path forward where Europe will somehow be able to compete on the world stage against US and China.
Europe is more than two decades behind and in a death grip of the woke left, basically hell-bent on self destruction.
All talent has left to US and Asia. Endless stupid regulations and crippling taxation make startups impossible. There is no way Europe will ever be able to compete.
frm88 · 36d ago
Do you have a source for that last sentence? All I can find is the opposite:
<<Universities around the world have reported seeing an uptick in applications from U.S.-based researchers, who face an increasingly uncertain climate under President Donald Trump’s administration. And some countries and their institutions are already looking to use the opportunity to attract new talent and reverse the steady migration of scientists to the U.S. in recent decades.>>
> and they wanted to extort even more money and dependence from EU
Trump wants countries to lower tariffs and not steal US jobs. So he hits them with reciprocal tariffs and dis-incentives for making stuff out of US.
Trump does not want other countries to think US will defend them. So he makes it clear to them.
What is this deal about extortion and increase dependence?
2-3-7-43-1807 · 36d ago
well, eu still has to deliver. given the social and economic status quo, i am not sure they will be able to.
TacticalCoder · 37d ago
You're giving a lot of credit to the EU. I'm european, I live in the EU. I talk with many other europeans and they all have the same point of view: the EU is fading into irrelevancy and most EU capital cities are quickly becoming complete, total and utter shitholes.
> So now EU is investing in their own tech and military ...
It's amazing that we're supposed to believe there's going to be a EU renaissance now that, for the third time, the EU wants to begin a world war. There's talks of gigantic investments in the EU war machine, talks of making the military service mandatory again in the EU, talks about how "wonderful" it is that so many young europeans are willing to go to war to save "democracy", etc.
It's really nothing short of amazing that the warmongers are happy that the EU is planning gigantic investment in its military apparatus and that that is supposed to be where the EU's renaissance shall be coming from.
What a future for the EU! Military investments!
If I had 5 million USD to spare, I'd buy the US golden visa that Trump created and I'd GTFO of the EU in a hurry.
I do believe things are going to turn from worse to shit in the EU and it's not the tens of millions of uneducated, unemployable, unwilling to adapt to western civilization armies of religious fanatics that the EU imported and keeps importing that are going to solve anything. The only outcome is that it'll accelerate the descend into shitholeness.
The EU has its own problems and there's a reason so many countries started seeing the far-right gain lots and lots of votes and this started way before and has nothing to do with Trump.
> ... is the US now GREAT enough for you yet?
It's great enough for me. Way greater than the EU.
jensgk · 36d ago
> It's great enough for me. Way greater than the EU.
Why are you still here?
7bit · 37d ago
I believe most users here are not in favor of Trump, and these snarky and confrontative remarks are generally a bad tone.
0xDEAFBEAD · 37d ago
>Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead.
There's a whole pipeline designed to capture young men (Tate for the dummies, Moscow-Lex for those who aren't) who are also a key demographic here.
I understand it too having seen the fallout and overstep of the "social justice left" with the reading comprehension of sewer rats - almost all American - who themselves attack white men for the crime of being white men (I've been on the receiving end a few times and I was supporting them; if my profile was a black woman or a trans-woman then I would not have been attacked).
Actually the average reading comprehension problem is really a thing, and Americans seem - anecdotally at least - to have the worst level in the English-speaking world. That or they outnumber the Brits by 100-1. This isn't just hyperbole - the numbers on reading comprehension have been dropping for years. We had to pay extra special attention to our kids to get them up to scratch.
spiderfarmer · 37d ago
My son has seen it happen on his high school. The victims proudly proclaim to be weaponized autists. They have an outlook on life that funnels them into an incel lifestyle. If you’ve seen the Netflix series “Adolescence“ you’ll recognize that it’s downright frightening.
Talk to your kids, people.
radicalbyte · 36d ago
I've had that recommended to me before and it's not surprising. I was in that group myself at that age but the internet was a much nicer space. I'd break into computer systems (including USG) for the lulz. I'd get weirdos attempt grooming and hit them either with deletion scripts (deleting autoexec.bat and some key Windows files) or go full Back Orafice on them). I would take down the porn sites which kept spamming my gaming / book newsgroups.
Now those groups have been weaponised. It started on 4chan / SomethingAwful - at that time Americans were so obnoxious that we simple banned them from our gaming servers - where the ARGs were tested out and perfected. Then it was pivoted to Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and the other socials and perfected.
We should have saw this coming. I even thought to myself back then: "it's just as well that the internet was just a nerds thing because this could change society if it was used to control the great unwashed".
It looks like the evil people were also paying attention.
concerndc1tizen · 37d ago
My comment being downvoted is interesting. Is it pro-Trump users disagreeing that they are pro-Trump? Or democrats disagreeing that there are pro-Trump users?
I've had numerous encounters with people in the comments who were pro-Trump, who basically seemed to support corporate slavery.
spiderfarmer · 37d ago
The pro-Trump people here all seem to mindlessly repeat stuff they heard on the cringy “All-in” podcast after they read a summary of Atlas Shrugged.
concerndc1tizen · 37d ago
On the topic of Ayn Rand, I read the Fountainhead, and as I remember it, it was rebelling against tyranny and groupthink, and the recurring themes were how powerful elites and mass media villified free thinkers, by promoting obviously bad architecture, while ridiculing the work of the protagonist. They pretended to defend the common man, while actively working against him.
Ultimately, the owner of a news paper tried to be sincere and support the protagnist, but was destroyed by the masses, thus suggesting that a frenzied crowd can be hard to turn around.
In other words, the book is relevant even today.
I.e. it might be very hard for Democrats to start a revolution, because their voter base is as complicit as they are, in the corrupt scheme to enrich themselves.
I tried reading Atlas Shrugged but failed to finish it and can't remember a word of it. Perhaps the two works are in different categories.
If you read both works, I'd be happy to hear your comments.
giardini · 36d ago
A series of "just-so" sentences revealing more about the convoluted manner in which iammjm thinks than anything about the world. Sad.
flowerlad · 37d ago
> Your boy trump did do deliver, is the US now GREAT enough for you yet?
Not our boy. Trump was elected by uneducated farmers, not by HN crowd.
I grew up on a farm. Farmers as a class are not stupid, at least no more so than any other group of people I've dealt with. They do have different interests and priorities than city dwelling people which tend to be better represented by traditionally conservative parties, but that is not an absolute. In Canada, historically, farmers were also responsible for the social credit movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit). It's not a question of being educated/uneducated. It is a question of who is doing a better job of talking to them. "Urban elites" are just as ignorant when dealing with rural issues as farmers are when dealing with urban issues. It would be nice if more people were able to bridge the gap.
Ragnarork · 37d ago
Thank you for saying that.
I see this divide all the time, and I can't bear seeing this used time and time again to make the rural vs. the urban populations angry at each other, which in the end only detracts from trying to see how to make everything work together.
I wish we'd be smarter and stopped just being condescending towards the other group. The only ones actively benefitting from this divide are not well-intentioned people in my mind.
DFHippie · 37d ago
One elaboration on your point: the rural and urban populations aren't mirrors of each other. The urban population generally ignores the rural population. The rural population pays attention to (a select subset of) what is happening in the city.
I think this is an inevitable consequence of population size and density. People are interested in people. The people who generate new culture -- who attract the interest of other people -- thrive in the cities. They have a bigger audience and a bigger community of fellow creatives. They find more variety. They have more to work with. So in both the city and the country people pay attention to what's happening in the city and ignore what's happening in the country. More is happening in the city and it is more interesting.
This isn't everything that makes cities tend to differ in their values and politics from the country, but it's the hotbed malign demagogues exploit to empower themselves. They tell the country, "Hey, the city people don't respect you. They have contempt for your values. Their politics are the reason for your suffering. You are the real people. They are parasites. Be mad!"
The country is primed to rise up. The city isn't. So the demagogues make the country hurt the city. Then the city is mad as well, at people who have genuinely hurt them, whereas the country was fooled into being mad at the city and striking the first blow.
It isn't necessarily the case that the people in the country are dumber. They're just the ones primed for a fight. But the con artists are working over the country people, so from the city's perspective the country people are fools.
dcow · 37d ago
I appreciate your insight but this explanation seems overly simplified (or needlessly complicated). It’s very possible that the demagogues are seen for what they are irrespective of city vs country and people across the board don’t like having demagogues in power. You also can’t wash the city people clean for all the frankly hate and vitriol they spew at country folks. It’s not just demagogues.
mschuster91 · 37d ago
> I see this divide all the time, and I can't bear seeing this used time and time again to make the rural vs. the urban populations angry at each other, which in the end only detracts from trying to see how to make everything work together.
Personally, I'd love to see more investment into rural and semi-rural areas to stop rural flight (because letting run that one unchecked is the cause for the housing prices in urban areas skyrocketing).
The problem is, it's getting increasingly hard to justify spending money on these areas morally. In Germany, even over ten years ago when I worked in construction primarily in rural areas, outright nazism (like entering a bar and witnessing the bar shout the heil-salute including raising the arm) was already a thing, listening to the "Stammtisch" idiocy outright painful, and today it's even worse because this kind of opinion isn't just utter fringe any more, it's gotten political mainstream.
When we're deciding to send money to rural areas, we're effectively rewarding "going fascist". Just behave deranged enough and you'll get everyone bending over.
epolanski · 37d ago
> Farmers as a class are not stupid
Yet in my lifetime I have seen them consistently go or vote against their own interests (see Brexit which absolutely gutted British farmers which overwhelmingly voted against
"evil EU rules").
defrost · 37d ago
The difference between UK farmers voting numbers for Brexit and the general UK population voting numbers for Brexit was ~ 1% .. within the margin of error and shows that farmers overall voted much as the general UK population did.
Given the smaller absolute number of farmers, their vote carried less significant weight than many other blocs.
Face it, the UK population as a whole voted against their own interests, there's no justification to single out UK farmers as being somehow different to the UK population and more deserving of blame.
tsimionescu · 37d ago
That only matters if Brexit was about as bad for the direct personal interests of farmers as it was for the average Brit. If farmers had it far worse after Brexit than the average Brit, then it means farmers were especially dumb for voting against their own interests.
defrost · 37d ago
My comment above was written in response to an earlier version of the comment above it.
That original version was phrased as to blame farmers for the plight of Brexit, as if a small group who voted more or less in line with with the nation made any kind of difference.
Did farmers have it far worse after Brexit than the average Brit?
My understanding is the nation as a whole suffered, with the exception of well off Brits with significant off shore assests.
mike_hearn · 36d ago
Your understanding is incorrect, but understandable if you read the wrong sources. There was so far no measurable negative impact of Brexit. Go look at graphs of trade balances, economic performance, etc. You can't see Brexit in them.
The only metric I can think of that was impacted was currency value on the day of the vote, but that dump was driven by predictions of economic problems that never happened so arguably those traders just took a bath due to believing the wrong people. It is anyway not necessarily bad for a country like the UK to have a lower valued currency; economists had for years been arguing it was overvalued and would be better if the currency was cheaper, so this is a bit of a wash.
All the comments being made here about people voting against their own interests start by assuming that voter's interests are exclusively trade-related, and that constitutional issues don't matter to people at all. This is clearly wrong but a required assumption for the whole against-their-own-interests claim to work. And then it goes on to conflate predictions with reality, by assuming that because the NGO-academic class predicted economic doom it must have actually happened when it didn't.
Both of these are fatal flaws to the argument.
The only way I can see to argue there was negative impact is via very indirect paths, e.g. the voters wanted less immigration and Johnson set the thresholds in the new immigration system so low that immigration increased. But that's more accurately blamed on the Conservatives and the general ideological hangover of EU membership on the party itself, not leaving. Voters can at least do something about it now, and the rise of Reform (Britain's new top-polling party) is evidence of that effect in action.
Ragnarork · 35d ago
> There was so far no measurable negative impact of Brexit
Uh... Disagree.
> On January 11, 2024, the London Mayor's Office released the "Mayor highlights Brexit damage to London economy". The release cites the independent report by Cambridge Econometrics that London has almost 300,000 fewer jobs, and nationwide two million fewer jobs as a direct consequence of Brexit. Brexit is recognized as a key contributor to the 2023 cost-of-living crisis with the average citizen being nearly £2,000 worse off, and the average Londoner nearly £3,400 worse off, in 2023 as a result of Brexit. In addition, UK real Gross Value Added was approximately £140bn less in 2023 than it would have been had the UK remained in the Single Market.[0]
The whole page paints a picture which is far from "no measurable negative impact". While it's contrasted with some areas suffering and others benefiting, it's hard to have an overall picture that looks either good or bad, but it's far from being overly positive. And this is just on the economic topic, there's another whole hoist of topics which have negative outlooks such as security, politics (i.e. with the Ireland controversy and how difficult this situation is), etc.
This reply is a perfect demonstration of my complaint:
"[Remainers] conflate predictions with reality, by assuming that because the NGO-academic class predicted economic doom it must have actually happened"
The report you cite it isn't showing a measurable negative impact of Brexit, although you brought it up as a rebuttal to that point. It's a modeling exercise in which the authors imagine a hypothetical world up to 2035, and then pick a long series of unvalidated assumptions which causes the UK's performance to diverge massively from that of the wider EU and prior trends. None of these assumptions are plausible:
• They admit that they did a similar exercise in 2018 which was wrong.
• On page 14 they even admit that they are being deliberately pessimistic.
• They assume an annual GDP growth rate of 4.3% suddenly starting in 2026. That's US levels of growth. Both the UK and the EU only grew at 1.4% last year.
Arguments of the form "I told Excel it will be bad and therefore it's bad" are invalid, but were exactly the strategy the Remain campaign used during the referendum. In the years that followed their predictions were all falsified. Anyone can pay some consultants to write a Word document about the future that imagines whatever the customer wants. Go ahead and imagine 4.3% GDP growth appearing out of nowhere, why not? Such reports aren't independent by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly don't show that anything bad has already happened.
Unfortunately, Sadiq Khan is a manipulator who understands the psychological weaknesses of his supporters very well. So this set of imaginings about the future gets presented in the present tense, with sentences like "London’s economy alone has shrunk by more than £30 billion". It hasn't. Go look at the actual data. It has "shrunk" vs the imaginary numbers in his report, which means nothing.
Predictions are not reality. Reality is reality. And in reality, there has been no measurable negative impact of Brexit, which is why people like Sadiq Khan are forced to make numbers up.
epolanski · 37d ago
> and shows that farmers overall voted much as the general UK population did.
Against their own interest.
rfrey · 37d ago
Sure, but your parent's point is that they did so no more or less than the general population. This is in response to the assertion that farmers are especially stupid.
phpnode · 37d ago
yes, just like almost every other group that voted for it. It's wrong to single out farmers for this.
afpx · 37d ago
Maybe their actual interests are different from what others think they should be.
breadwinner · 36d ago
Sure, if their actual interests are to suffer devastating economic consequences.
fifilura · 37d ago
Yeah, I see farmers here in Europe as one of the most educated groups.
They need to be educated in politics and economy in order to navigate all regulations and subsidies.
fuzzy_biscuit · 37d ago
I know I'm being pedantic, but the parent comment said 'uneducated', not stupid, and while it's certainly true that some use those interchangeably, I do not see them as such.
dcow · 37d ago
In any event, the GP’s comment still holds. The narrative that Trump is just a populist for the uneducated masses is really really… toxic.
flowerlad · 35d ago
Toxic? Let’s review:
US withdrawal from Climate Agreement, vaccine sceptic being made secretary of health, US alienating Europe, proposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza, lying about who started the Ukraine war. Cutting funds to USAID. Threatening to take Greenland by force. Threatening to annex Canada. Proclaiming himself to be King. Constantly "joking" about third term.
Does any of this seem toxic to you? Would educated people support these actions?
concerndc1tizen · 37d ago
Europeans had to fight for our rights and freedom. In this sense, it is your civic duty to ensure order in your own country.
The critique is that too many Americans have become complacent and allowed the political system and media landscape to evolve as it has. The Democrats are also corrupt and need to be replaced, but it requires a sacrifice of wealth that people aren't willing to give, for selfish reasons.
But you will experience the consequences.
radicalbyte · 37d ago
They have also been the main target of Soviet/Russian/CCP information operations designed to cause the current mess and live in a democratic system where the (ultra)wealthy have had far too much power.
concerndc1tizen · 37d ago
You could argue that it goes back to when Bush became president despite losing the election to Al Gore, by suppressing recounts that later proved that he lost.
The Democrats have been allowing this for too long and are equally complacent. Nancy Pelosi doing insider trading is just the tip of the iceberg, quite literally speaking as the house speaker.
Americans should join Serbia and Turkey in their revolutions.
radicalbyte · 36d ago
> You could argue that it goes back to when Bush
> became president despite losing the election
> to Al Gore, by suppressing recounts that later
> proved that he lost.
That was the day that I lost all respect for America and I fully agree that it was the day when the Republicans saw that you didn't need to win an election you needed to game the system.
From that point onwards is when the Red states went ham on targeted voter suppression and made a number of extremely anti-democratic moves. The current situation is at least 25 years in the making.
gherkinnn · 37d ago
> not by HN crowd
Maybe not the HN crowd (though that is debatable, there is no homogenous group here) but a seizable amount of the SV rulers have endorsed him.
flowerlad · 37d ago
SV billionaires did vote for him yes, but not HN crowd.
dcow · 37d ago
There are more Trump supporters here than you probably realize. They just aren’t ones to wear their political affiliation as a badge for approval, and aren’t as loud, generally.
krapp · 37d ago
HN has a large Trumpist contingent, plenty of people here voted for him, if only to vote against "wokism."
flowerlad · 35d ago
And this is what they got:
NIH cuts, US withdrawal from Climate Agreement, vaccine sceptic being made secretary of health, US alienating Europe, proposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza, lying about who started the Ukraine war. Cutting funds to USAID. Threatening to take Greenland by force. Threatening to annex Canada. Proclaiming himself to be King. Constantly "joking" about third term.
In retrospect is this what you voted for?
jemmyw · 37d ago
> Almost 78% of farmers endorsed his most recent presidential run
Which is surprising because they were bitten by his tariffs last time round. What made them think he'd do better for them this time?
pjc50 · 37d ago
> What made them think he'd do better for them this time?
Same answer as for everyone else: Fox News.
speed_spread · 37d ago
"Think" is a big word here.
dmos62 · 37d ago
That's 78% of farming-dependent counties, not farmers. >78% of any demographic voting at all would be a phenomenal step for democracy.
Teever · 37d ago
You misunderstand.
While America is internally divided between rural and urban, or red and blue, or Woke and MAGA, the rest of the world is becoming united in seeing it all as just those damn Americans, and a growing threat.
The world at large has stopped caring about the petty squabbling that goes on in America, the boorishness and the melodrama.
America is the house down the street that always has shouting and screaming coming from it, someone throwing someone elses crap on the front lawn and the cops getting called to it every other week.
It is embarrassing and no one cares who started it anymore. We just want peace and quiet.
nelblu · 37d ago
THIS. Nobody gives a fuck if half the Americans don't support their dear leader, it's all the same to the rest of us.
chgs · 36d ago
I certainly care - they are human being - and I support asylum claims just like support them from other oppressive areas of the world.
graemep · 37d ago
I do not agree. The same division is spreading throughout the west, if not the world.
From the very woke education system in the US to the electoral success of the AfD in Germany we seem to be following the US.
Woke has not spread into Asia, but nationalism and racism were there already.
pjc50 · 37d ago
Trying to parse a comment where someone implies that nationalism and racism are bad but also that ""woke"" (diluted into meaninglessness by over use) is .. also bad?
sfn42 · 37d ago
It's two extremes. As with most things it's a spectrum, too far to either side isn't great. On the one hand you have racists and bigots, on the other you have people insisting that we should be asking everyone their preferred pronouns before addressing them and men who decide that they are now women should be allowed to compete in women's sports leagues, oh and actually gender is just a social construct because some women don't have uteruses or something like that, and so on and so forth.
To me, that's what woke means. Lots of making demands about how people should think/see things, and calling people names like TERF if they dare question the woke "truth".
watwut · 37d ago
Why is TERF as a term bad when it actually matches the ideology? You have to be against trans and otherwise feminist. Which is exactly what that is.
phpnode · 37d ago
A lot of people who get called TERFs absolutely don't identify as feminists, let alone _radical_ feminists. It's just a meaningless term now
graemep · 36d ago
The word feminist is also a hard one to pin down. SOme people define it as just meaning believing in equality - but in a society where that is the consensus view (its not true of every society, but it is where I most frequently come across the word) that has little meaning.
Symbiote · 36d ago
In addition to the other replies, plenty of words are descriptive until they get used offensively. Another example is "retard".
sfn42 · 37d ago
I dont know, I've just seen it used in a seemingly derogatory way. I don't know what it means and I don't care. Nobody in my real life uses that term anyway, it's just weirdos on Twitter and such.
graemep · 37d ago
Close to my view.
Gender IS a social construct though - but sex is not and people conflate the two. The other problem is that if something is a social construct you cannot claim it is also an absolute truth.
Race is also a social construct, which a lot of people who are woke seem to have trouble dealing with - a lot of people who accept gender self-identify seem to be unwilling to accept race self-identify.
graemep · 37d ago
Yes, exactly my view. I am not signed up to a side and feel no need to follow a particular set of views because they belong to a group I identity with.
Moomoomoo309 · 37d ago
I'll bite: What is "woke" to you? The term's history has basically no bearing on what it means now. Preferably a definition, not examples, because often the examples, when you list enough of them, contradict.
LightBug1 · 37d ago
I always say ... there are obviously many, many great people in the USA. You're likely one of them.
But your democracy has spoken now. The first time can be waived off as an aberration. The second time you have to own it.
Now, either you're commenting reactively on HN about it, or you're doing something about it and not taking it personally.
Macha · 37d ago
Not only that but the "system" has failed to stop his actions, even those it has branded illegal. If the system is deciding that presidents are kings, then America is only as reliable to the rest of us as those it elects as president.
gadders · 37d ago
Always a surprise to see the contempt people in blue collar jobs are held in by Democrats.
niek_pas · 37d ago
Genuine question: is farming a blue collar job? My (possibly incorrect) image of farming is management of heavily industrialized processes, not of rolling up your sleeves.
pjc50 · 37d ago
Careful study of farming often reveals that it's a mix of landowners (rich on paper, possible cashflow problems) and workers (usually immigrant, often undocumented, in which case they're not voting at all).
gadders · 37d ago
Fair point. I guess it is more like managing, say, a building or plumbing firm.
I guess what I should have said is "contempt for people outside of the laptop class" (and yes farmers may use laptops but you get what I mean).
Jensson · 36d ago
Have you see any farmers with white collars? I haven't, they tend to wear working clothes even if they have lots of money.
pjc50 · 37d ago
Prisoner's dilemma, innit. If people are going to use "I'm working class" as an excuse for holding other people in contempt, they shouldn't be surprised to see it reflected back at them.
And contempt is one of the defining features of Trumpism/Muskism, far more than "blue collar".
nkmnz · 37d ago
There are like… 2% farmers in the US?
JdeBP · 37d ago
Bear in mind that the President of the United States is not directly elected by a popular vote. The mathematics of who gets the largest voice are distorted, intentionally so by the Framers. They did not want low-population agrarian states to be permanently in effect disenfranchised.
It is ironic after all of these decades of originalism being seen as a reactionary thing against minorities that the Framers put positive discrimination for (economic and geographic) minorities into the Constitution explicitly to prevent "tyranny of the majority".
The U.S.A. is full of such ironies at the moment.
hypeatei · 37d ago
> explicitly to prevent "tyranny of the majority"
Yep, as if tyranny of the minority is better. Of course Republicans think it's good because it gets them elected but this country is regressing because of the status quo.
chgs · 36d ago
When the framers were setting out their ideas the rural states had large populations. However the framers declared great swathes of them to be worth 60% of others.
Jean-Papoulos · 37d ago
A lot of these 2% live in states whose influence on the outcome of the presidential election is disproportionately high due to the electoral system. So you have a high influence of farmers on states that have a high influence on the election outcome and those 2% end up looking more like 4% in terms of practical influence.
It is disingenuous to lay the results at their feet only like the comment you're responding to suggests ; Trump did win the popular vote. The dems fumbled this one, plain and simple.
krapp · 37d ago
You're correct that this election was more lost by the Democrats than won by the Republicans, but Trump didn't actually get the popular vote. That meme took off well before the final vote count was completed.
It was close, and American politics being what it is, it doesn't actually matter. Hillary Clinton did get a majority in 2016 after all, but the narrative was still that she was the worst and losing-est candidate in American political history. Every Democrat is a liar, a cheat and a communist, every Republican has a mandate from God to sweep the leftists into the sea. That's just how it works, regardless of what the numbers say.
tsimionescu · 37d ago
> You're correct that this election was more lost by the Democrats than won by the Republicans, but Trump didn't actually get the popular vote.
What do you mean? In 2024, Trump indisputably won the popular vote - as in, he had more total popular votes than any other candidate (77.3 million votes compared to 75 million votes to Kamala, and nowhere remotely close for anyone else), which is what "winning a vote" means. In 2016 you're right that Hillary won the popular vote but still lost the presidency, but that's a different matter. And you're also right that he could have lost the popular vote again and still won the presidency, but that's irrelevant to the question of whether he did win or not.
light_hue_1 · 37d ago
Huh?
Trump won 49% of the vote in 2024, compared to Hillary's 48% in 2016.
The numbers go with the story perfectly. He didn't win a majority of the popular vote, but neither did Hilary. Trump did win a bigger share than she did though.
krapp · 37d ago
You're confusing the popular vote with electoral votes.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by a margin of almost 3 million[0].
But because states vote for President in the US through the electoral college, rather than people, Trump won the election with a slight majority of electoral votes. Hillary Clinton lost not because she was unpopular (she was, even in the most conservative estimate, about as popular as Trump,) but because she didn't campaign in the correct states.
They're not confusing popular and electoral votes. Trump won a majority of electoral votes, and a plurality of the popular vote, as they claimed; that is from the official count, not preliminary counts. He did not win a majority of the popular vote, but that is also the case both for Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton (twice, though one of those was a rare three candidate race where a majority would have been unlikely).
You cannot say that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 and say that Trump did not in 2024 unless you are disputing the official count. He had a margin of around 2.3m.
No one claimed he won the majority of the vote though. The claim was just that he "won the popular vote" (this time, in 2024, not in previous elections). And winning a plurality is winning the vote, in almost all electoral systems (of course, the popular vote is ultimately meaningless in the USA, but that doesn't mean we should apply some other arbitrary threshold for what it means to win it).
light_hue_1 · 36d ago
> And winning a plurality is winning the vote, in almost all electoral systems
Presidential systems with runoffs are very popular. A plurality is useless there, you win with a majority.
tsimionescu · 36d ago
Even then, both the candidate who wins the plurality and the runner-up make it to the next step of the election, so in some sense they (both) still won the (first step) of the election. Regardless, the USA has no such runoffs at any level in the electoral process, so it doesn't seem like this standard should be applied here.
cge · 36d ago
We're in agreement on that point. I'm just trying to understand the rationale of the commenter who seems to be claiming that Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 and Trump lost the popular vote in 2024. Setting a threshold of a majority would at least be consistent, but I don't see any way to hold both of those positions while accepting the results as correct.
>And winning a plurality is winning the vote, in almost all electoral systems
I'd argue that there are many electoral systems that realize the potential problems this causes, and either use runoffs, or IRV/STV, to avoid it. The US (and UK...) just have very antiquated electoral processes that, especially in the US, have not benefited from the last two centuries of research on voting systems.
krapp · 36d ago
Clinton did win the popular vote in 2016. That much has been well documented and well established.
I was incorrect about Trump not winning the popular vote. I thought that the final vote tally had him losing by a slight margin but apparently not, so mea culpa on that.
zwnow · 37d ago
Its always the farmers fault... Like it was in Germany back in the day.
Keep people uneducated, dont support the poor and then act like you will solve these issues, its conservative 101
Yeul · 37d ago
Seems to me America is a pretty shitty country to live in if you're not rich so I am not too mad that they protest vote for Trump.
Ofcourse in Europe we learned that socialism improves the lives of the proletariat not national socialism.
zwnow · 37d ago
So protest vote people that'll make your own situation 100x worse? This is logic that never checked out for me.
malka1986 · 37d ago
These people feel that they are in the losing side of a win/lose situation.
So they are going for a lose/lose situation out of spiteness.
The solution is to always go for the win/win situation, even if it leads to smaller wins. It avoid building up resentment, that will always lead to a lose/lose situation.
flohofwoe · 37d ago
There isn't a single socialist country in Europe since around 1990 (and good riddance). I think the term you're looking for is social-democracies (for the political system) or social-market-economy (for the economic system).
tsimionescu · 36d ago
"Socialist" is such a loaded term it's kind of best to avoid it in any discussion where you aim for clarity.
The original definition, which is where it got its lasting popularity, comes from the popular workers' movements of the 1910s and 20s: workers owning the means of production. That is basically describing an economic system in which enterprises, particularly factories, are democratically controlled by the people working in them, who would have a say in how the enterprise is run.
This notion of socialism was corrupted by Lenin and his ilk when they essentially seized the worker's revolution that tore down the Tsars of Russia and founded the USSR. However, instead of decentralized workers' councils actually owning, profiting from, and controlling the factories (and farms and other enterprises) that they worked for, the state was put in charge of all of these. Ostensibly the state represented the will of the people, so that is how this leap was justified, but of course in reality it was one of the most heinous dictatorships that the world had seen in a long time. But because worker's rights were a popular idea at thrle time, the new absolutist monarchs of the "Soviet" empire kept claiming they are "socialists", just as they claimed they are "democratic", and no one bothered to contradict them.
In the meantime, in the West of Europe, particularly Germany, the same basic workers' movements were co-opted by Hitler, here claiming that he represents the people of Germany in their interests against the bogey-men they hated, the Jewish people (and Armenians and a few others), identified as evil Capitalists that had to be combatted. So they also named their movement "socialist", while in reality having an iron grip and military-like complete top-down control of the means of production.
Finally, more actually democratic forces that were nevertheless interested in keeping the capitalist status quo came up with a series of more minor reforms that would give some more resources, better lives, and rights to workers without actually putting them in full control of the enterprise they worked for. This movement ended up calling itself social-democrat or democratic socialism. Being very much similar to the previous status quo, and keeping the wealthy in power and in control of enterprises, while also not egregiusly oppressing workers to the point of revolt, this proved to be the most enduring form of "socialism" that persisted.
This doesn't quite match the rhetoric of the current US government though, does it?
Listening to them one could think the US is on the brink of collapse unless some 'strong leader' steps in and 'makes America great again'.
01jonny01 · 37d ago
Cherry picking a 2 small demographics to validate your point is intellectually dishonest.
thrance · 37d ago
Farmers are not stupid. Read up on petty bourgeoisie and why they tend to support reactionary movements. Hitler too famously found a lot of support in farmers and small businesses. There are very good material reasons to this.
watwut · 37d ago
Material reason that they were more blood thirsty and hateful. More wanting to expand German, annex other countries and happy to turn other nations into slaves. They have seen empathy as a weakness, the same some current politicians do.
Also, they gained about nothing and seem themselves as the victims by the end of WWII. (Yes, literally they have seen themsevelves as primary victims of what happened.)
apexalpha · 37d ago
At my (enterprise) job there has been a noticable shift in attitude.
We've just decided to use Mistral for OCR, even though everything we currently use is embedded in Azure / IntelDocs or something.
Usually any push for EU products would be dismissed because of the initial friction compared to SV products. This seems to have shifted significantly all the way to the top. Everyone seems on board to just accept more friction to use EU products.
We are now even moving to a non-AWS/Azure K8s cluster. This was unheard of even a few months ago.
brettermeier · 37d ago
Getting away from AWS is a big step! I hope the company I work for will think about it too. But maybe the time has come. A few months ago, people thought you were crazy if you talked about moving to another cloud service, but I hope the mood has changed with big impact for the future and which services we trust.
apexalpha · 37d ago
We have a looooong way to go. Even this cluster is just one product we consume from AWS.
And don't get me started on O365...
But the fact that there's money available for this is a big shift.
brettermeier · 37d ago
Oh yeah, replacing AWS may be easier than replacing O365... or otherway around? My company also went all in for O365. It's about replacing Mail, Teams, Teamwebsites, OneNotes and for sure so much more... We also ship our patches via Teamwebsite, it sounds stupid but well, it works... And talking to costumers when they still have Teams but your company ditched it, how would that work and so on...
You have to have a lot of hope to think that all this will or can be replaced in the near future.
Mossy9 · 37d ago
My wish for this christmas is for some large-ish organization to pull this off and then release a series of blogs discussing the tradeoffs. It's such a steep hill to climb, I think many believe it impossible unless there is a success story to refer to
bakuninsbart · 37d ago
I think STACKIT is worth watching. They are owned by Schwarz Group, the largest european retailer, and seem to be on a significant growth path with major investment and commitment from the parent company.
apexalpha · 37d ago
Do they offer managed services?
Their website suggests so but I'm not familiar with them.
monospaced · 37d ago
They offer managed PaaS services such as databases, logging, secrets management.
They also offer quite some managed SaaS services like ServiceNow or soon SAP Rise. These are not (yet) advertised on their website.
MaKey · 36d ago
Another example of their managed services is Kubernetes.
If someone is interested in getting to know STACKIT, feel free to contact me. I'm working for a STACKIT partner.
pjc50 · 37d ago
Interesting to see this in B2B, which is normally unemotional about choice of supplier. But the business risk is now real, especially when you consider GDPR safe harbour.
apexalpha · 37d ago
I've seen this once before a few years ago with Huawei stuff.
Shouting to the Board of Directors at any company about security risks and geopol implications usually meant screaming into a void.
"But their HQ is here." "We have a solid security annex in the contract!" "Their sales person was here and he promised me." Classic lawyer C-suite talk.
But when the attitude started shifting billions were thrown around to move back to Ericsson.
C-suite people will constantly get these questions and start to feel like they 'have to' go European just like how they all thought we 'had to use Agile' and 'had to do something with blockchain'.
Few forces in economics are stronger than C-suite FOMO.
pjc50 · 37d ago
Herd behavior in CEOs is a very strong problem. It's one thing to make a mistake, but if you make a different unorthodox choice and something goes wrong then it looks especially bad.
apexalpha · 37d ago
One man's problem is another man's opportunity, I suppose.
There is a reason every product page usually has a reel showing what other well known companies 'trust' their solution. It works.
chgs · 36d ago
If everyone’s email is down then the ceo might grumble at the golf course and have a nice dinner to apologise from the sales reps next month.
If only your company is down then you’re made and fire the cto
If only your company is up then nobody notices as “the internet is down”.
o_m · 37d ago
The fear is trade war (rising prices to extortion levels), blockades of network traffic (holding data hostage) and war (which leads to sabotage, manipulation and destruction of data).
JdeBP · 37d ago
It seems to me that this is still unemotional (where really I'd rather say mercenary, as I've seen so many business decisions driven by ego, which is definitely emotion).
Businesspeople have seen the U.S.A. do things like the Citibank account freezes, which is explicitly welching on paying money owed on a contract to companies in its own country, turning off and on supplies to a country at the personal whim of its leader, putting air traffic safety at risk as a means of privatization (using the OCP playbook straight out of RoboCop), and arresting foreigners at its borders.
If they've been paying close attention they've seen civil suit court orders ignored, lawyers having executive writs of attainder proclaimed against them, and rulings handed down about blanket and extensive executive privilege and immunity that take things back to the centuries past when banks could go out of business by lending to monarchs who then just decreed that they weren't going to pay.
Even the dumbest CEO would by now be thinking of the business risks of things like flying in personnel to a business conference or to visit a satellite office; let alone of supply chain reliability, whether U.S.A. courts are still capable of enforcing any civil decisions or U.S.A. lawyers capable of doing their jobs on behalf of foreign businesses, and what this means for loan risks and banking stability.
highwaylights · 37d ago
IMHO this is the big story here.
Large companies aren’t driven by opinion/ethics/politics except where there’s a branding incentive, so the motivation here is cost/risk.
That these same companies are actively trying to nope right out of the US tech market where they can shows that they’ve priced in very real costs to both Trump’s unpredictability and the very predictable response to tariffs in their domestic markets.
Trump’s second term may end up being a great thing for tech markets outside of the US, as it drives investment into those regions and actively away from the status quo of SV hegemony.
pbhjpbhj · 37d ago
>Large companies aren’t driven by opinion/ethics/politics except where there’s a branding incentive
The USA tech corps are falling in with Trump, presumably so as to get favourable tax situations and such. That makes them subject to his vagaries.
Surely, Trump might rug pull your IT services if you're competing with someone who gave him a bribe is a massive reason to move.
Companies need to operate under the rule of law which is now vacant in USA.
With threats, no matter how stupid, to invade allies. What are European companies going to do when Trump has their compute switched off? Or trade embargoes are put in place because Trump tried to takeover Greenland?
These seem to be real risks to business continuation that arise out of Trump's politics.
chgs · 36d ago
Companies operate in these sorts of conditions all the time - always have done.
Buy off the junta that runs the place and you can do what you want. Oil companies, mining companies, clothing companies, all the same.
Normally the company is bigger than the people you’re bribing though, and that makes the USA unique, and more akin to working in North Korea rather than Nigeria.
apwell23 · 37d ago
> IMHO this is the big story here.
Its not until we actually see numbers. This guy could be making up/exaggerating ( "everyone" really?) these stories, because thats what ppl do on the internet.
These type of protests usually die down because human beings always choose convenience and lower price.
Also see blm, dei and other "movements" that died down as soon as news cycle changed.
monsieurbanana · 37d ago
It's not just a consumer movement, it's Europe itself moving to get away from an unreliable schizophrenic ally. You can't make long-term plans when every 4 years you're playing russian (eh) roulette with your partner.
The movement might slow down, but it's fundamentally different from a social movement limited to the US.
apwell23 · 36d ago
> Europe itself moving to get away from an unreliable schizophrenic ally
Are your referring to greenland gaining independence from denmark? good for them .
Why is denmark so hesitant to give up control of greenland if thats what ppl of greenland want. Colonial mindset ? They have king thats changing flags. nothing says allies than "boiling viking blood" OG colonizers still living in middle ages.
pbhjpbhj · 37d ago
>You can't make long-term plans when every 4 years
Well, Trump did promise to make it so people would never have to vote again.
Intermernet · 37d ago
BLM, DEI etc are things that people care about, and will continue to care about. The news cycle promotes or rejects such concerns because they're driven by advertising and political favour. If you know about these things because of the news cycle, and your opinions are shaped by the news cycle, then the vested interests of advertising and political favour are cheering.
The news cycle should be orthogonal to your opinions on such matters. It shouldn't form them. A good acid test is to ask yourself if you had an opinion on something before it appeared in the news. If not, be very wary of the opinion that you adopt.
mschuster91 · 37d ago
> The news cycle should be orthogonal to your opinions on such matters. It shouldn't form them. A good acid test is to ask yourself if you had an opinion on something before it appeared in the news. If not, be very wary of the opinion that you adopt.
The thing is - a lot of actually very important topics got swept under the rug for a loooong time. Let's just take gay people for example. Up until the late 90s, gays got routinely beaten up by police, called "pedophiles"... hell it took until 2011 until open gays could serve in the military. That all only changed due to widespread outrage (and a few constitutional courts reinterpreting constitutional wording).
darkhorn · 37d ago
I hope also devolopers get rid of Nginx becaouse it is Russian/American software.
cvalka · 37d ago
Caddy/Envoy all the way
chgs · 36d ago
Nginx is open source.
dinga · 37d ago
It is not only about a US-boycott for me, but also about an increase in consciousness about how our choices _do_ have influence. It _does_ matter, which products I buy and I use.
I hope this gains more momentum!
afpx · 37d ago
I'm looking forward to some awesome products coming out of the EU. Could you guys start with a really good, privacy preserving search engine?
The article is literally about ecosia and qwant building an independent index…
rsanek · 36d ago
which isn't currently available, and will only be for French + German sources when it is released
i hope they succeed but this is not currently a usable alternative
mixedbit · 37d ago
The incoming Q1 earning reports will show if these actions are mainstream enough to make a visible dent in companies quarterly earnings. For now, the already reported Tesla sales numbers in Europe are substantially down, but Tesla is the strongest target of the boycott. It will be interesting to see if consumer companies such as Coca Cola, Nike, Amazon also report a substantial drop in EU sales.
pjc50 · 37d ago
It feels like there's always somebody campaigning for a boycott of some megacorp or other, but this time there's likely to be a breakout from the narrow activist circles (who already weren't buying Coca Cola, Nike, Amazon) into the mainstream public.
Tesla in particular are so easily targeted for "secondary picketing": people making it embarrasing to own a Tesla or just straight up targeting them for vandalism.
Which... I never realised, I didn't think soda was still so popular, let alone coca-cola and co.
I do find it hillarious that Red Bull outsells Heineken nowadays. And I'm happy to see Hertog Jan sells much better, it tastes much better than Heineken.
buyucu · 37d ago
Q1 is waay too early for any of these things to manifest. it's easy not to buy a tesla. it's much harder to move your company from one supplier to another.
mixedbit · 37d ago
But for consumer products, like Nike shoes, it is easy not to buy and there are many alternatives.
rsynnott · 37d ago
Q1 may start to show some effects, especially for the likes of Tesla who rely ~entirely on sales of big-ticket items to consumers (though I think Tesla's a special case here in any case; Musk's recent misbehaviour would be hurting it even outside the context of an incipient trade war). There aren't actually many US companies in that space with a big European market, though. Apple, maybe, but even then a lot of their sales would be non-consumer.
As you say, big effects for most companies, if they come, will come later.
pjmlp · 37d ago
Not sure how much it gets consumed, but many places in Germany rather sell Fritz-Kola only.
thyristan · 37d ago
The German soda market is very very regionalized, along the same lines as the beer market (20 to 50km around the brewery, further away you won't get it anymore. Very big brands are exceptions of course). Practically every brewery (there are over a thousand) has its own line of sodas, usually white (lemon or lime) lemonade, yellow (orange) lemonade (both carbonated around here), spezi (cola plus orange), cola (some coca cola copy) and apfelschorle (apple juice plus carbonated water).
Additionally there are a few that cater to certain groups with special products like mate soda (Loscher invented it with Club Mate I guess, but nowadays there are 10 big brands and a few small ones) and special kinds of cola like AfriCola or Mate Cola. Fritz-Kola is one of those products, you can get it in every city in well-stocked supermarkets, but it is a product that only caters to a certain kind of people and establishments (think "Berlin-like club-going techno-mad party-crowd" maybe). So many places will carry something else that caters to their group, and their region.
That is also why the Coca-Cola marketshare that the sister comment mentioned will go down, but it will not be replaced by another big producer, just maybe a handful of nationwide brands plus tons of regional ones.
tyteen4a03 · 37d ago
Even before everything happened I prefer to get Fritz Cola in German supermarkets because I can get Coca Cola literally anywhere else in the world. If only they would sell 0.5L glass bottles with screwtops more / start selling 0.33l Aluminium cans, I would switch over entirely.
moooo99 · 37d ago
Fritz Cola is cool, but it is unreasonably expensive. Their biggest bottle size is 0.5L and regularly costs like 1,60€.
Recently got back to drinking Afri cola. Tastes great (particularly their zero product) and is line 1,50€/L which is relatively reasonable.
tyteen4a03 · 32d ago
I like them too! Hate Bluma though.
brettermeier · 37d ago
But in big supermarket chains you overwhelmingly find Coca Cola or the cheap house brand of the chain, at least when it is about big bottles or sixpacks. Sure, supermarkets like Edeka may also have alternatives like Afri Cola or what those are called, but big masses are Coca Cola.
pjmlp · 37d ago
As mentioned, not sure how much it gets consumed currently, lets see if we start going the Canada way.
bratwurst3000 · 37d ago
yes but coca cola lost in the western market. they sell mostly in the poorer countries. dont forget its cheap as shit water with sugar. The premium feeling comes because of marketing
pjc50 · 37d ago
No it's still absolutely dominant in the western market - partly because they own a whole load of other brands, and they have absolutely unbeatable distribution. There's a few countries where Pepsi is more dominant. But the only place where a non-Coke/Pepsi soft drink is dominant is Scotland (AG Barr's Irn-Bru and other drinks). I think they even bought out the last other holdout (Peru's Inca-Cola)
thyristan · 37d ago
Well, if you accept Irn-Bru as a Cola replacement then Germany already isn't a Cola country anymore. The vast majority of sodas consumed is rather of the Cola-Mix kind (there are two very common products named "Spezi" and a ton of smaller brands) and Apfelschorle. CocaCola dominates the Cola market only, the sum of all the other sodas is far greater.
bratwurst3000 · 36d ago
I am from germany and this is true. I can remember the 90s and 2000s where coca cola was totally dominant and the only thing you can get in bistros restaurants etc. but now only cheap places like döners serve coca cola. what I meant is that they are still one of the most sold brands in western europe but not as dominant as it was with a steady decline. While in other parts of the world they can sell their sugarwater without regulation and thats where they make money. the rest of the world wants a taste of the free world drink.
That's a really good source (albeit from 2017), but while it does support your argument that sales by other companies dwarf those by Coca-Cola, the latter is still firmly in first place, with 3.3 billion liters sold -- as much as the companies placed 2 to 4 combined.
thyristan · 36d ago
I guess Coca-Cola will not be replaced in the top position in any short to medium timeframe. While they will dwindle, I don't think one big competitor will gather their market share, rather a lot of small ones.
morsch · 37d ago
Coca-Cola completely dominates retail in Germany. The most recent numbers I could find[1] are from 2018, but I have no reason to believe the situation, you know, flipped on its head -- the top 3 lemonades were Coke, Coke Zero and Coke light, making up about 75% of the market. In 2022[2] Fritz had 2.9% market share. Maybe the market share is higher in restaurants, though I'd be shocked if it Fritz was even at 25%.
Thanks for the overview, naturally tarifs might change that, see Canada, no US products any longer on big chains.
mixermachine · 37d ago
Coca-Cola is mostly produced locally.
Atleast the mixing of Sirup and bottling is.
I personally don't know if they ship their sirup around the world.
pjmlp · 37d ago
Company origin is what matters, people boycoyting US products don't care where the companies source them from.
See the US companies trying the "built in Canada" marketing.
chgs · 36d ago
MAGA hats made in China are probably the definitive example
pbhjpbhj · 37d ago
But, AIUI, usually the profits get exported via IP payments to the parent companies host nation.
Jolter · 36d ago
And tariffs on intellectual property licenses are not on the table right now, as far as I’m aware. Right?
rvba · 37d ago
Coca cola is bottled locally. It does not make any sense to move water, sugar, nor the syroup.
Probably they move a bit of their secret sauce, but rest is probably sourced locally.
So impact of tariffs on coke in Germany is mininal.
During WW2 german bottlers missed some ingredients so they've started making Fanta.
pbhjpbhj · 37d ago
Surely they ship [components of] the syrup because otherwise they have to ship the raw coca leaves? Is the global supply of coca extract processed by the Stepan company in USA?
Profits move the other way through IP payments.
We can cut off the bleeding of profits by buying products with locally owned IP.
rvba · 34d ago
The Wikipedia article on Stepan company says that they use 100 tons of leaves per year.
If we assume that the processed leaves sold for coca cola weight the same as unprocessed (what is very doubtful), then how much would Europe get allocated? Probably less than half. But let's say it's half.
50 tons of this special extract isnt much. That's just two shipping containers.
Also with their scale every bottle probably onlu getd some trace amount, so I wonder if cola would taste any different if it didnt include this.
pbhjpbhj · 36d ago
Surely they ship [components of] the syrup because otherwise they have to ship the raw coca leaves? Is the global supply of coca extract processed by the Stepan company in USA?
Profits move the other way through IP payments at least.
pjmlp · 37d ago
The problem is not the source, rather the company origin.
flohofwoe · 37d ago
...I've only ever seen Fritz-Kola as a Berlin phenomenon tbh. There are some other regional brands though (e.g. in the Eastern German parts you're likely to see Vita Cola next to Coca Cola - completely different taste though).
brettermeier · 36d ago
Hamburg is also full of Fritz Kola. As this article[1] claims, Fritz Kola is the third largest cola brand in Germany. And it is exported in over 20 countries. They also search for bottling plants in Spain to produce drinks over there.
It's quite common in bars all over the Netherlands in my experience.
bryanrasmussen · 37d ago
I used to see it in Irma in Denmark.
One of the Colas that tastes good enough to replace Coke in my experience.
Symbiote · 36d ago
I've seen it for sale in at least a couple of bars in Copenhagen.
A bar owner I know here says selling these more-premium sodas is a good way to make a bit of extra money on people who aren't buying alcohol — you can charge more for Fritz-Kola than for Coca-Cola.
A different bar owner I know chose Jolly Cola, avoiding an American product but keeping a low price.
drcongo · 37d ago
I've seen a lot of Fritz-Kola in the St Pauli area of Hamburg. I prefer it to coke too.
Symbiote · 36d ago
Fritz Cola is the western Germany equivalent. The company is from Hamburg.
jwarden · 37d ago
When politicians pick fights with leaders of other nations, the people don't have to go along with them.
flohofwoe · 37d ago
This time the US government picked a fight with the people though, those are the ones who need to bear the brunt of those pointless tarrifs.
briandear · 37d ago
Did Europe not have tariffs before Trump?
No comments yet
brettermeier · 37d ago
But in this case the fight got picked by "the US", as europeans it's about "self defence", so the will to join the boycott may be greater.
pjc50 · 37d ago
Social media makes it possible for leaders of nations to pick fights with random individuals on Twitter. Or entire subcultures, nations, or groups of people.
pbhjpbhj · 37d ago
I've not seen large companies advertising "from Europe" despite this now being something a lot of people seem to be looking for (hard to tell with social media). Perhaps they fear losing USA sales?
It's going to take time.
Media services (films, video games, social media) is pretty tricky to move on.
baxtr · 37d ago
I don’t think that it will be visible so quickly. These things will take more time.
Will my company switch away from azure today? Probably not. Will my company include more European alternatives in the next vendor selection. Definitely yes.
mentalgear · 37d ago
It's one thing to visit the website, but I would be interested what % is actually migrating?
For me personally, I had to install the "Go European" browser extension [1] before I actually started switching, due to more frequent reminders, from using mostly chatGPT/claude to LeChat by mistral (which feels at least as good).
My Take-away: User stickiness is hard to break due to providers' walled gardens, even for me who is aware and willing to change.
For privacy reasons, I've already started slowly switching away from US providers before all this insanity happened. I've switched my Email to Proton (Swiss), cloud files to Filen (German), most LLM usage to Mistral (French), and search to Ecosia (German). [Edit: I've now switched to Mojeek; see comments below.]
But in the past two weeks, I've done the things I've previously put off because they require real work. I've set up a NAS and switched all of the remaining things. I'm now using Immich for photo hosting, Vaultwarden for passwords, Hoarder for bookmarking, and a self-hosted Standard Notes instance for note-taking, to-do lists, and saving articles for later reading.
I'm super happy with this setup. Immich, in particular, is absolutely fantastic; its default face recognition model works better than Google Photos, at least for me. Once you've set it up, you can log your family into the same NAS and have them use it, too.
gkbrk · 37d ago
Ecosia is just Bing and Google though [1], so basically American and not German.
It looks like they're planning to build a European index with Qwant [2], but their help pages still say they're on Bing and Google so I guess nothing materialized yet.
I don't believe any Western European search companies have their own search index, and Ecosia seems to currently have the best chance of growing into a real vertically integrated search provider, so I'm using them.
mrweasel · 37d ago
Mojeek (UK-based) does apparently have their own index.
The results are interesting, they aren't bad, just different. Localized search isn't great, but it might be perfectly fine if you're in the UK.
InsideOutSanta · 37d ago
That's awesome. How have I never heard of them? After a few tests, the search results seem good, so I'm provisionally switching to them now.
Maken · 37d ago
Why Proton mail? I'm currently looking to switch away from GMail but I lack good/bad references about the different EU providers.
InsideOutSanta · 37d ago
They're located in a country with relatively good privacy laws, they're big enough that I trust them to remain alive for the foreseeable future, they have relatively good uptime compared to other email providers, they're popular enough that they don't tend to land in spam filters, and their corporate structure makes them more immune to enshittification than other companies.
On the minus side, the way their email is set up means you can't easily use third-party email clients without using an intermediary tool (Proton Mail Bridge), and because email is encrypted at rest, their own email search is abysmal.
tailspin2019 · 36d ago
> Vaultwarden for passwords
Just a note for anyone looking for alternative password managers - 1Password is Canadian!
InsideOutSanta · 36d ago
Also very fairly priced. A family plan for five people is US$60 a year.
verzali · 37d ago
I started switching. Email was pretty easy to set up a new account with a different provider and to change on the main websites I use. Good way to "unsubscribe" to a load of spam as well. Switching apps or uninstalling where possible on the phone helped. No more google maps for example, and removing or switching things like gmail or chrome from the home screen also helped break the habit of checking them.
5- · 37d ago
having your own domain is worth it for email portability.
no matter who is hosting your email (megacorp, a hn darling, your hosting provider, yourself) you get to keep your email addresses. this also means one of the primary means of authenticating you online is not kept hostage by any business.
even for free email services that don't support custom domains, you can likely set up mail forwarding for free or very cheap with your domain hoster, and set up 'send as' alias in your inbox.
c16 · 37d ago
This is absolutely true. I've added x/twitter to my hosts file in an attempt to break the muscle memory and instead use bsky.
4 months on, I'm still type twitter[.]com and finding myself on localhost.
fundatus · 36d ago
Btw: The "Twitter to Nitter" browser extension is amazing if you occasionally still want to view a tweet, but don't want to connect to Twitter servers.
dinga · 37d ago
Changed default search-engine on my laptop and cellphone. I still use google but rather as a fallback and I have to actively type in google into the address-bar.
mentalgear · 37d ago
I switched from Google to DuckDuckGo as my standard search engine and I'm super happy with it. I found it quality-wise indistinguishable from Google, and even better since no sponsored spam.
LightBug1 · 37d ago
Thanks for nudging me that way again. I'd tried DDG before and was slowly moving towards, but had still been relying on !bangs.
However, I just replicated the most obscure search request that I can remember, an extremely obscure automotive request for help - and, in one go, the DDG result actually got to exactly the end result it had taken me ages to Google.
I'll give DDG another shot.
LightBug1 · 37d ago
It will take time - but I absolutely will ensure the migration of our firm away from US related products (where possible).
eterps · 36d ago
This obviously will take a while.
On the other hand, I am mostly involved in startups where lots of tech choices need to be made from scratch. The startup I'm currently working for doesn't even consider US based tech solutions at the moment. And I think more startups that pop up nowadays will think twice before choosing non-EU based tech.
oulipo · 37d ago
This is why the European Union is trying to break walled-gardens of US tech (Apple, Google, etc)
So that in the long term, we preserve viable alternatives, exactly for times like these where we cannot trust the US govt
adamcharnock · 37d ago
We're[1] seeing a huge influx of new clients right now, and not just any clients, but excited and enthusiastic ones. These are from EU, UK, Canada, SE Asia, Australia. Typically they are growing startups or SMEs who are no longer see investing further in AWS/GCloud/Azure as a good idea. It isn't solely because of politics, but politics is generally the catalyst.
There is a lot more in this vein from India during 2020 to 2021.
someNameIG · 37d ago
There's bankrupttrump.org, which seems to give local then global alternatives to US products and services. Though it does seem to have issues, for example I search for alternatives to iPhone and it gives me local Australian ISPs and retailers that sell phones.
hyruo · 37d ago
The United States promoted globalization, and the United States ended the process of globalization.
pjc50 · 37d ago
Pax Americana and Team America World Police only works so long as the cop is willing to play by their own rules.
In some ways the critical event was the BLM protests. Faced with the question of "are police subject to the rule of law", the country comprehensively chose "no". Combined with the decades-long process of stacking the Supreme Court with partisan judges to overturn Roe v. Wade, this eroded rule of law really badly to the point that all this was able to happen. And now they're trying to export gunpoint extortion as an international norm.
mentalgear · 37d ago
Globalisation in itself wouldn't be as bad, if the profits were equally distributed. But most often globalisation just means taking away worker and consumers protections so mega corporations can outsource manufacturing/labour/services to cheaper countries with low or no environmental / social protections.
Before Globalisation of markets there must be a globalization of citizen rights to the highest standards.
energy123 · 37d ago
The flawed premise here is that globalization has not already been a win-win endeavour, both for people in wealthy countries and people in poorer countries.
The evidence is overwhelming that it has been win-win, albeit with some negative side effects that need to be managed better.
We can always do better but that should not involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater based on a faulty understanding of where we currently are.
owebmaster · 36d ago
> The evidence is overwhelming that it has been win-win
It's not a win-win when the rich side wins 100 and the poor side 10
energy123 · 36d ago
It is a win-win even when one side wins more than the other.
Also you are operating in dollars space instead of utility space, which is a mistake. Even if a poor person "only" gains an extra $2000/year in annual earnings due to globalization, that can be a life changing amount of additional wealth given that their utility function is highly sensitive to small changes.
owebmaster · 36d ago
You ignored my point. If the rich side gets richer faster than the poorer side, it is not win-win, it just wide the inequality gap.
rstuart4133 · 36d ago
> it just wide the inequality gap.
It didn't. Yes, the gap certainly has widened with countries that didn't partake in globalisation. Here I'm thinking countries in Africa, North Korea and Afghanistan.
But if you look at poorer countries that did invite the richer ones so that could provide labour at a lower cost, countries like Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, and yes China - the gap has gone from peasant farmers who starved in lean years to industrial nations that are starting to rival the incumbents. Places like Singapore and Japan are in fact now wealthier than most of the incumbents.
energy123 · 36d ago
That is still a win-win.
spwa4 · 37d ago
Yes ... that's how every empire has worked since the dawn of time. You make countries join an empire, first voluntarily, mostly because at that point, the tiny militaries just aren't strong enough to force the issue, then through military force and this provides economic benefits through scale and sharing of know-how. This is then used to make the empire grow in a feedback loop. Economics and technology, and in turn the military, all greatly benefit from scale.
Then the disadvantage of scale slowly becomes clear: this concentrates wealth and power in less and less, and eventually one, location. This is how Rome, Paris, London and, outside of the US, Teheran and Beijing are not just a bit bigger than the cities around them but completely outclass them on every metric. Even within those cities it's not exactly equally divided. The amount of wealth in the City of London is more than all the rest of London combined.
Of course, as Ireland and Scotland can explain, by then the exit is closed.
"Wealth" is nothing but debt, mostly from people living in the further away parts of the empire. That's why a poor person from middle America is tending the golf course in Florida. One problem with that, is that debt is a fiction. Someone strikes a few lines in a law book, and debt is gone. For people living far away from the power centers that sounds better and better.
The US hasn't had enough time yet, and on top of that, it is the hub of the world in many ways. Mostly because in WW2 the rest of the world decided to destroy itself, leaving the US as the only intact industrial power, and thus lots of debt is being created in the world and brought to the US to build stuff. Technology, internet, military, financial, ... plus the power centers in the US haven't (fully) merged yet. It will come.
The bigger the empire, the less equal it is for the people living inside it.
Empires collapse because large parts of the empire are plundered of all economic value they can generate, in trade for wealth in the power centers, after which most of the empire becomes a resource sink ... and that is not something the military can fix. But by then the power centers have depended on wealth being brought in to them for decades, sometimes centuries ... and more and more they have to care for themselves. A lot more work, done by the locals, must be done for less in return. For one thing, the power centers must militarily defend the heartland ... and at this point, must do so while getting nothing in return.
Here's a funny (but meant very seriously) illustration of the end and if you think about it, terrible, article about China's southern border asking the questions: WHY would China defend this border? HOW would China defend this border? WITH WHAT would China defend this border? Illustrating the problem. Read it now because this will become crisis #1223, at which point this subject will become yet another target of CCP censorship. And it's not like the US or Russia, or India, or Europe don't have the same problem.
> Of course, as Ireland and Scotland can explain, by then the exit is closed.
I mean, the exit was always closed to Ireland, from the initial invasion onwards. That wasn't a case of choosing to be in until you're trapped, Ireland was conquered (and subject to periodic ethnic cleansing in the plantations, reprisals etc.)
flohofwoe · 37d ago
I'm not so sure, the US dropping out of the race doesn't mean the whole race is over.
Barrin92 · 37d ago
globalization is going to continue, even among unlikely partners, see for example[1]. The US putting itself behind an Iron Curtain, is of course not going to change the reality that the rest of the world needs, and benefits from trade just as much as it has until now. It was true in the time of Adam Smith, it will be true in a hundred years. All it does is effectively end America's influence in the world out of a bizarre ideological isolationism, genuinely like a sort of funhouse mirror USSR.
My understanding is that most of the government in the states has realized how they’ve lost the game they’ve created themselves. Unless some black swan event happens, I don’t think anything can stop the new juggernaut in the field (China). Surely they have a lot of problems, but with 1.4B population and proven track record, it’ll be hard to compete with them in scale.
This is basically an attempt to create a new game, with the hopes that they can govern the rules again. Nobody wants to give up the power, obviously. But yeah, good luck to all of my American friends, I really hope (genuinely!) it turns out well in the end for you all!
GaggiX · 37d ago
Youtube is the real tough one to replace, BiliBili is probably the only one that comes close to it and it's Chinese.
JdeBP · 37d ago
In addition to the others elsethread, there's also Nebula; which goes for being creator-owned, not suppressive of minority content (which has seen it banned by LG as a consequence), and subscription model rather than advertisement model.
Nebula might be an alternative to YouTube in general, depending on your use of YouTube, but for the purposes of this discussion, it's still American owned.
JdeBP · 36d ago
For the purposes of this discussion one of its creator-owners is Devin Stone, one of the people in the vanguard of publicizing and opposing what is happening in the U.S.A. right now.
I think several of the other cofounders (e.g. Wendell, also the guy from real engineering) seem likely to be decent people too.
But also, for the purposes of this discussion, we're talking about the ability of a capricious US president to make access difficult, and a bunch of YouTubers and a documentary maker are not going to have the resources to stand up to the US federal government.
sznio · 37d ago
>banned by LG
LG? you mean the tv company?
npteljes · 37d ago
Yes. They run their own OS and app store, Nebula had an app there, and this ban relates to that.
Yes, truth is, networks have no replacement. At the end of the day, social sites live and die by the circles of people that are there.
One way out of this would be if content creators would en masse upload to multiple sites. Even with preferential treatment for YouTube, this would enable consumers to follow their favorite creators outside of YouTube, and get the same content. Of course, this onus is now on the creators, and I imagine they have enough to manage as it is. So what they would need is a good incentive. But that is people, and as long as they have enough people on YouTube, there is no incentive to diversify. So we're back at the network effect.
fundatus · 36d ago
Agree! But it's not impossible. I signed up for Bluesky in late 2023 and it was... like a tumbleweed tumbling across my screen. But now? It really feels like they've crossed some kind of threshold and it very much feels like Twitter back in the day™. I think they just crossed 30m users, maybe that is the magic number?
npteljes · 36d ago
I'm happy for Bluesky's success. To me, it feels like that platforms began to figure out how to balance the hostile features vs the user retention. Major platforms were abusive left and right in the last couple of years, and people predicted their demise, as they always do, but nothing major happened, that is comparable to the MySpace or Digg or Slashdot demise back in the day. This is why I'm not holding my breath wrt/ YouTube as well. For better or worse, they do a damned good job with keeping the platform alive. I'm a premium subscriber even.
I've just got a self hosted piped.video instance running this weekend. But sadly YouTube seems to be brutal nowadays with blocking these alternative interfaces and the experience was pretty bad. I'll watch how this develops and maybe also give Invidious a try.
I love the idea of peertube, the technology works, but getting it to gain traction is impossible. There's this catch 22 of no view => no content => no view which is really hard to break. And where VC funded platform can buy content to kick start the process, this one doesn't have any mean of kick starting it.
Maybe we should raise money to pay popular creators to publish on these peertube instances.
GaggiX · 37d ago
Compare to YouTube it has almost no content, like what if I want to see a gameplay of Balatro.
TheCipster · 37d ago
I might mention the dedicated subreddit with lots of useful information (and some noise too).
Every comment here revolves around the question of whether of European
customers may choose to relocate services in the EU as an alternative
to dominant US ones. The background is that the US is now an
"unreliable ally".
I see something else. If Europe has anything to offer (and because we
are technically behind it is neither price nor quality), it must be
based on political values.
The USA is an "ally in distress". What I am wondering about is those
US customers who will now relocate to Europe where democratic values
are better defended. If Europe can demonstrably uphold those values,
given the true democratic spirit of the US people, then I see more
than a "local first" movement for Europe. We can also anticipate an
exodus of US principals in exile taking refuge in EU.
tremon · 34d ago
given the true democratic spirit of the US people
This is begging the question. I would say the US spirit most prevalent on this site is neofeudalist, not democratic. The discourse here has always tended to defend or excuse monopolist behaviour ("it's their app store/OS/device, they should have 100% control over what happens with it") and discourage small or local initiatives ("this will not scale and therefore you shouldn't waste effort on making things better for only these 100,000 people").
nonrandomstring · 34d ago
Tbh I've never felt the SV culture (or the HN ethos around here) is
representative of the USA generally. They do say "rugged
individualism leads to ragged individuals". My experience of the many
USians I know personally is positively humane albeit they are all too
easily led and prone to go along to get along in a way that is
detrimental to their own interests. I think if they genuinely behaved
as frontier rebels (rather than played at it) they wouldn't tolerate
Trump, Musk, Vance an the like for even a few seconds.
bryanrasmussen · 37d ago
I was just thinking if Firefox made an effort to relocate to EU, where as I understand it they have a lot of devs, they could become the default EU browser.
oulipo · 37d ago
Honestly I had long not wanted to do it, but now I started to get a server on Hetzner ($4/mo) and install Dokploy (https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy)
and then you have tens of templates for alternative self-hosted websites that you can use (Hoarder for bookmarks, ownCloud to replace Dropbox, etc)
I'm not going to keep putting all my notes and personal data in the hands of American companies which might be pressured by the fascist US govt to hand them over personal infos and passwords...
bad_user · 37d ago
Self-hosting hundreds of GBs of data isn't feasible, you also need backups and it's a terrible idea for most people. Hetzner does provide managed Nextcloud instances.
> Self-hosting hundreds of GBs of data isn't feasible
Why wouldn't it be feasible? Storage is cheap, backups are cheap. It's not for everyone, obviously, but for 20 EUR/month you can get a VM with a couple hundred GB of storage and 1TB of backups on a storagebox in hetzner.
Or have a raspberry pi with a 1TB SSD in your home, or both!
No comments yet
ffsm8 · 37d ago
The amount of storage isn't the issue unless you're taking about 10++ terabytes.
The things that's interesting is how you're accessing and writing to it - depending on that, it might indeed be infeasible to do everything yourself as an individual.
A "cloud" storage like next cloud with only 1-3 users? That's not gonna become a problem, while the base configuration with backups will likely take you a weekend, it's not that hard.
mentalgear · 37d ago
Or you could just setup a backup with the cloud provider. Even better, a different cloud provider and follow the 3-2-1 rule for backups.
moffkalast · 37d ago
> Mistral AI
> Hosted in: Sweden
Well that's interesting, I'd have thought they would work with Scaleway for "the cat", is there some Swedish company offering cheap GPU instances?
The interesting part is when he deplores the lack of support between local actors, where instead of pulling each other up, everyone plays in their corner.
i think relocating to france is a work in progress.
exiguus · 36d ago
Avoiding Big Tech:
Many people who have been avoiding big tech companies now have stronger arguments for doing so. It has become easier to avoid services like Instagram, Google, Gmail, WhatsApp, ChatGPT, Amazon, and X. Convincing friends and family to use alternative communication platforms such as Signal, Telegram, Mastodon, Posteo, or Proton is more feasible. However, moving away from Amazon remains challenging for some. Nonetheless, every small step towards this goal is valuable.
Professional Perspective:
From a professional standpoint, some of my clients are transitioning away from AWS and/or Vercel due to political risks and ethical concerns. Others are moving from AWS to Vercel for financial reasons. Personally, I emphasize ethical considerations and political risks beyond just vendor lock-in. When project requirements and team structure allow, we prefer to build on self-managed Kubernetes (K8s) clusters.
German "Mittelstand":
Generally, the German "Mittelstand" (mid-sized companies) tend to avoid vendor lock-in. They often implement solutions that combine private and public cloud services, enabling them to switch cloud providers quickly.
olieidel · 37d ago
Help me understand this: European companies have already been interested in choosing for European alternatives instead of AWS, Azure, etc. for years.
Sure, this interest has recently gone up significantly, but it already was there, especially in the area I've been working in (hospitals / medical devices).
But here's what I can't wrap my head around: Why do the European alternatives suck so much?
- Pretty much all cloud providers seem (very) subpar to AWS. Some are better in a very isolated way, e.g. Hetzner offers better prices for cloud instances, bare metal servers and object storage. But they don't offer anything else. OVHcloud's web interface is terrible. Telekom Cloud runs Huawei hardware and software (!) and the dev experience is really bad.
- There's no real Cloudflare alternative.
- There's no real Google Workspace / Microsoft Teams competitor (Mail + Calendar + Drive).
- No search engine / Google alternative.
Or, let me rephrase this from another angle: In the US, startups regularly build serious competitor products to some of the incumbents mentioned above. Look at what fly.io and render.com did to Heroku, I think that's very impressive. Or hey.com slowly building a Gmail alternative, very cool.
So it's possible, technically.
But why not in Europe?
I can't get a satisfactory explanation for this observation. We certainly have smart people and good universities. Is it about funding? Or about the culture of not promoting entrepreneurship? Bureaucracy? GDPR?
I genuinely don't know. What do you think?
adamcharnock · 36d ago
In my experience it is a lot of things, in varying amounts depending on the situation (and each of these is both good in some ways and bad in others):
- The USA is a huge and fairly homogenous fairly wealthy fairly risk-positive market.
- The USA has a bigger = better mindset. "Your restaurant is fantastic, you should open another one!".
- Abysmal work-life-balance. Great for making stuff.
- Minimal language and cultural barriers.
- Because of the USA market, you can grow huge before having to expand to other countries.
- Because you can grow huge in the USA market, that is where the funding goes.
- All the the USA's allies didn't mind too much, because they are(/were?) allies
- All the non-USA-allies developed their own markets (Russia, East Asia, Africa, India, etc).
- And so now, given the messaging coming out of the USA, EU governments/companies/people are giving their USA-entanglement a second look.
Which, being in the EU, is pretty exciting. I feel like there is a lot of opportunity here right now.
Disclaimer: I'm sure there are 1001 reasons, and the above is just one potential view.
disqard · 36d ago
I think you've made some good points.
However:
> All the non-USA-allies developed their own markets
I have friends and family in India, and I'm not aware of homegrown alternatives to any of the following:
* gmail
* amazon
* google search
* whatsapp
* linkedin
* spotify
* facebook
* yt shorts
On that last one, when India banned TikTok overnight, it was a golden opportunity for a different homegrown alternative to step in, but it looks like YT/IG captured most of that market.
Happy to be corrected, though. If you have concrete examples, that'd be good to know!
eriklaco · 37d ago
We’re building seenode, a European alternative to Render and Fly.io. When you’re fundraising, you’re always compared to global competitors, not just European ones. Which usually have better access to capital, they get to the traction and revenues faster as there is one big market with huge purchase power.
I’ve spoken with other DevTools founders, and many of them see 60–80% of their revenue coming from the US. When you’re building a PLG model targeting software developers, you really have to think globally from day one.
Even though demand for EU-based server providers has increased recently. It wasn’t always like that.
Being EU based and trying to target only EU customers is more complicated, from fundraising to customer acquisition, especially when you factor in language localization and legal bureaucracy. It’s even harder if you’re building a B2C startup where regional differences are more pronounced.
mmarian · 37d ago
Because people don't care that much about where their software comes from. They just want the best product available, and more often than not it comes from the States.
This is a global phenomenon - Americans didn't care about TikTok being a Chinese company either.
whiplash451 · 37d ago
This alone does not explain why new leaders do not emerge from Europe.
deeringc · 36d ago
Whenever they have, they have been bought by larger and richer (mostloy US) tech companies. Look at Deepmind, Skype, Nokia, Tandberg, etc... Arm is another (although Japanese rather than US-owned). There are also many cases where European founders base their companies out the States for access to higher funding (eg Stripe, Spotify). Another factor is that US multinationals have a large presence across Europe in terms of employment - if a large component of the top tech talent of Europe is employed by US companies then they are less likely to build large European companies.
omnimus · 36d ago
The alternatives part is not right. Lot of them are Swiss but i don't think that matters.
Cloudflare - BunnyCDN, KeyCDN and quite a few others with not so complete offer.
Google Workspace / MS Teams - Infomaniak, Mailbox.org, Proton.me
Search engine - Qwant, Ecosia, Startpage
Search engine is the one where best alternative is Kagi which is US. But rest of the categories has been viable for years. Many of the companies are older than Google. Yes, UX/polish might be not same but unlike the Googles/Microsoft of the world which have been going down these companies are getting a lot better.
whiplash451 · 37d ago
It's the trillion dollar question that get discussed on HN a lot. My intuition:
- Private $ market: EU is decades behind the US in private capital management and the appetite for risk. In the US, it is not uncommon to raise $20M on an idea. In the EU (at least until recently), you'd raise literally 10X less.
- Piling effect: companies grow quickly by selling their product to the previous generation of growing companies: internet -> mobile -> cloud -> AI. Each wave feeds the next one, all currently centered in the US.
0xDEAFBEAD · 36d ago
>I can't get a satisfactory explanation for this observation. We certainly have smart people and good universities. Is it about funding? Or about the culture of not promoting entrepreneurship? Bureaucracy? GDPR?
You're not going to like this answer, but I think there is a lot more tall-poppy syndrome in Europe. Success isn't celebrated the way it is in the US. This also drives European resentment of the US in general. (And that resentment has undermined the transatlantic relationship.)
immibis · 37d ago
I wish I was for the life of me any good as a businessperson right now. No, developers are not good at business. There seems to be a huge opportunity here, since everything in the cloud computing category are plain old server hosts, nothing like "real clouds".
Sayrus · 37d ago
> There seems to be a huge opportunity here, since everything in the cloud computing category are plain old server hosts, nothing like "real clouds".
I don't know for all options in the category but Scaleway offers a viable alternative to EC2, EBS, Lambda, S3, EKS, ECR, CloudFront and many more (although IAM is still lacking depth). OVHCloud also has a Public Cloud offer than differ from their baremetal offer (the plain old server one) but IMO it's lacking compared to Scaleway. I've heard good about UpCloud and Exoscale but never tried them myself.
I do think integration with compliance vendors and marketplace offers are two things where these providers are lacking but I'd be curious what you find is lacking to qualify them as "real clouds".
Propelloni · 37d ago
The large ITC providers also have offerings, e.g. Open Telekom Cloud, but they are targeting large industrial enterprises, not your plucky webapp.
apples_oranges · 37d ago
Y Combinator alumni might beg to differ?
niemandhier · 37d ago
So what is an European alternative to hacker news ?
It predates HN and always has always been the place the best technical people in Australia butt heads. Their problem is they aren't up to the same standard as here - where you have the best technical people in the world butting heads.
thyristan · 37d ago
For Germany, Heise online maybe, www.heise.de
But that would be a very big "maybe", because it is very different in all aspects.
flanked-evergl · 36d ago
That is the German alternative, not the European alternative.
fransje26 · 37d ago
If you can understand German, that is.
spiderfarmer · 37d ago
For the Netherlands probably Tweakers.net.
phtrivier · 37d ago
The very interesting question will then be : how many people _do_ switch ?
For the personnal tools, people have lots of leeway (change mail provider, search engine, ai chatbot, etc...)
For the enterprise, I really wonder how you defend a "let's migrate our infra from AWS to X" in general, even for technological reason or business reason ; I don't even know how you start a conversation like "aws works fine for us, but let's switch for political reasons" (whether the political reason is good or bad is out of topic.)
Normally, if "infra as code" works as well as advertised, this would be a "convert yaml to json" exercise ; so we should see someone write "what we learned switching from AWS to EU-based X". I'll be on the lookout for that - but to be completely honest, I'm not holding my breath...
rsynnott · 37d ago
> I don't even know how you start a conversation like "aws works fine for us, but let's switch for political reasons"
Some companies may see it as "let's switch for continuity-of-business reasons", not political reasons as such. Things may get worse over the next few years. Amazon is not spending billions on https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/europe-digital-sovereignty... for _fun_; even before ol' minihands's return, some highly risk-conscious companies, particularly those in sensitive fields, would not use AWS out of caution (the US-EU data protection treaties keep collapsing, for instance see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU–US_Privacy_Shield ).
I'd say AWS is less at risk from this than most, actually, in that, as above, they have a plan, though just how watertight it is remains to be seen.
phtrivier · 37d ago
To be clear, I don't mean that there is no good reason to have such a conversation. I'm just really curious how you can't start it ; in the middle of the millions of things that your average company has to do, how do you knock on your bosses's door and tell them:
"hey, you know that "cloud" thing that you have no idea how it works, but our whole business depend on ?
We're using the same as everyone else; but we're not sure we can trust US cloud anymore, so we want to try an unknown company from country-you-can't-place-on-a-map-either.
We'll have to spend several months of engineering and incurr tens of thousands of dollars of extra licenses to try and migrate our infra.
We have no way to be sure it will work.
And it will make no discernable difference to our customers.
We have to start on Monday, so that we can be ready in time for next US presidential blunder.
Which project do we cancel ?"
rsynnott · 37d ago
I mean, sure, it'd be disruptive. That is, unfortunately, the nature of current geopolitics. There are a lot of companies who'll currently be having serious unexpected conversations about tariffs, say (if you have a profit margin of 3% and your main input has just had a 25% tariff slapped on it, then you'll be looking at big changes, more or less immediately, or else going out of business).
If the wheels come off the current arrangements that let European businesses operate on US-owned cloud services, then a lot of companies will be having similar conversations. Those companies who've investigated this _before_ the wheels come off will be in better shape. Some companies have been investigating and/or actively doing this for _years_.
palata · 37d ago
> For the enterprise, I really wonder how you defend a "let's migrate our infra from AWS to X"
The current US president favours bribery by the US to foreign officials. Doesn't seem completely insane to assume that he also favours spying on non-US competitors.
If you are a big company and use US services (e.g. Microsoft Teams or Slack or GMail or the countless others), then you have to assume that the US can see all the conversations you have on those services.
Sounds like a good enough reason to consider migrating.
Tenoke · 37d ago
>"let's migrate our infra from AWS to X"
We migrated to Scaleway pretty easily and the main argument was that it's easier to conform to EU regulations if all your servers and data are on an European cloud.
phtrivier · 36d ago
Good to hear that ! Do you have any experience to share ?
Were you using "boring" AWS services (EC3 / S3) or where you depending on more things ?
Are there an AWS service that you feel is missing in Scaleway, and could be a deadlbreaker for other people ?
(By the way, is it ok if I start abbreviating Scaleway as SWA, just for fun ?)
Symbiote · 36d ago
> I don't even know how you start a conversation like "aws works fine for us, but let's switch for political reasons" (whether the political reason is good or bad is out of topic.)
Someone relatively senior sees an article, blog, whitepaper etc and mentions it. Staff at any level who agree with the politics can then push a little to make it happen — even just by keeping it as a lunchtime discussion topic.
My employer moved away from American-hosted products due to privacy concerns, except for Office 365. The relatively senior people read about legal risks, asked a local lawyer, and made it a moderate priority to get done. For Office 365 we have the standard assurance from Microsoft that our data is in Ireland, but I could see that being reviewed.
jensgk · 37d ago
It is not about politics any more. It is about trust.
irjustin · 37d ago
mmmm these two things are very deeply linked in that politics creates trust and bad policy very easily removes global trust just like personal relationships (literally what we're seeing in the US).
i live in asia - indonesian vs vietnam foreign policy (despite problems in domestic policy) has shown how vast the difference in policy can generate foreign trust which lead to manufacturing which lead to a lot more money being brought to VN overall.
pjc50 · 37d ago
I'd be very interested in hearing about that difference - Indonesia is a country of 281 million people (!) that's almost invisible on the world stage, while Vietnam is a manufacturing success despite being nominally Communist still.
irjustin · 37d ago
I'm far from an expert, but you can look at Sembcorp which was a joint effort by Singapore back in '96 with Vietnam to boost foreign manufacturing[0].
What's not really shown in the Wiki is that the VN government really protected and ensured smooth efforts for these projects. You can tell it worked because of how many follow on projects they did.
The counter is Sembcorp's Indo project[1] which is in the same wiki. At a conference I was lucky enough to listen to a Bain consultant who directly advised on these policies with the VN and ID government in the early 2000's, so a bit after they got going. The Indo government setup quite similar projects with Sembcorp as VN. The problems start because the project was setup with the "federal" government (country level), but local state government wanted their piece too and started "taxing" the raw materials coming in through their ports. Obviously this new tax wasn't part of the original program. Things like this, bribes, permits (more bribes), material blocking at ports (even more bribes), etc kept creating small but material roadblocks. Complaints to the central government were heard but not enough was done. Overtime, the foreign manufacturers got fed up dealing with local politics.
Bintan today is a shell of what it was expected to be in terms of its manufacturing powerhouse. It's mostly a resort town now for Singaporeans who want a weekend away.
VN has quite a bit of domestic problems in policy and corruption (they're rightfully working on it overall), but despite all that, it shows that you really can create foreign trust via policy that benefits the country greatly. Politics and trust very much go hand in hand.
Trade is the best way to maintain peace. I don't like situation one bit. International relations are souring. It's hard to imagine that this is unintentional.
spiderfarmer · 37d ago
It could also be that the US have a person in power who is clearly out of his element.
elric · 36d ago
I find that hard to believe. There have been incompetent US presidents before. This isn't incompetence, this is strategy. Malicious strategy perhaps, but it seems very unlikely to be non-deliberate.
spiderfarmer · 36d ago
I literally don’t know anyone who thinks your President is smart. He never said anything that’s insightful and worth discussing.
The press in your country is worthless for taking anything he says seriously. They’re either too afraid or too partisan to do their job on a level that’s acceptable in other western countries.
It’s very clear he’s a puppet that is being used to execute the plans of the Heritage Foundation. He gets carte blanche to take action on a few of his grudges and he’s free to line his own pockets. He’s basically a toddler that’s cooperating because of an ice cream.
Even his fake tan reminds of the cliché toddler photo. Minus the pasta.
elric · 36d ago
Not my president and not my country.
I find it hard to imagine that Trump is as stupid as his public image would suggest.
spiderfarmer · 35d ago
Don’t imagine. Just look at the evidence. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
rstuart4133 · 36d ago
> There have been incompetent US presidents before.
Depends on what you call "incompetent" I guess. I strongly suspect Biden wasn't as competent as his younger peers in most areas. But that's nothing unusual - most leaders are older men. What is clear is Biden was happy to take other peoples advice on most things.
In fact I'd say a core competence of a president is to be able to seek advice, weigh it and chose the best path forward among the alternatives offered. It has to be that way, because the reality is on just about any topic you care to name, the president will be about as knowledgeable as your average Joe six pack compared to the experts that can be found in a country of 300 million.
But if you are like Trump and are recommending ingesting chlorine on public television to cure COVID, seeking advice before opening your mouth clearly isn't your strong point.
pavlov · 37d ago
I think Americans underestimate the double effect of Trump’s saber-rattling towards neighboring countries and his simultaneous full-throated support of Putin.
Europeans feel under threat from two directions now. His military threats against Greenland are an extremely serious matter.
Imagine if the USA had an ally who sold you much of your military equipment and maintained bases on your territory. One day that ally would suddenly start saying that they’re going to take over Puerto Rico, and also that they support China if they wanted to invade Hawaii “because quick peace in the Pacific is so important to everyone.”
That’s where EU finds itself now.
gargan · 36d ago
That's such a good analogy!
betaby · 36d ago
There is a good interview with Quentin Adam, Clever Cloud, explaining what and why is not working with EU and French cloud in particular.
https://youtu.be/z9y5eiNYhD8 ( in French )
My main takeaways: governments sabotage Fr cloud by giving huge contacts to US companies + lack of understanding of the software development by EU and Fr decision makers.
We are seeing uptick off traffic on Wide Angle Analytics. Not just from the aforementioned directory.
ernirulez · 35d ago
Contrary to some of opinions here where the easiest thing is to criticize Trump and his administration, I will give a different point of view:
Many of us European citizens love the Trump administration and we envy Americans for the big step you've given against the globalist tyranny.
The EU is totally controlled by them and we are literally living in a dictatorship (in Spain with the dictator Pedro Sánchez is one of the worst). The EU is implementing laws for full control of its citizens, censoring all the contrary opinions. Freedom is almost non-existent anymore. And the worst part is the forced Islamization of Europe they're creating. This with the sole purpose of riding us of our culture and identity. People without identity are people with nothing to fight for, people easily enslaved.
You Americans wake up! Trump is the best thing that's ever happened to you.
MaxGripe · 37d ago
For me personally, it’s completely irrelevant. As a European, I feel exactly the same kind of “connection” to Europe as I do to the USA. It’s a different story when it comes to the country I live in. If a local (national) product is comparable to a foreign one, I’ll usually choose the local one. But all this EU vs USA fuss means nothing to me. I often choose American products simply because they’re the best.
notTooFarGone · 37d ago
It's often also not about the ethical, "vibe-based" decision.
There are serious consequences that can happen in a trade war.
Digital Services are how the U.S. makes billions of profits from the EU.
In a trade war it is possible that digital services are hit with tariffs as it would hurt the most.
This will not happen with EU products.
MaxGripe · 36d ago
So maybe let’s wait until prices actually go up, and then we can start worrying? I don’t see the problem.
pjc50 · 37d ago
Also the now non-zero possibility of an actual conflict if the threats to invade Canada and Greenland aren't complete bullshit. (Which is the only defence Trump supporters have for those statements, of course)
MaxGripe · 36d ago
I don’t really understand why I, as a European (from a country other than Denmark), should care about the affairs of the USA, Canada, or Greenland. And vice versa - why should those countries be concerned with the issues of my country? As a consumer, their internal conflicts have no relevance to me at all.
tremon · 34d ago
Some of us think of ourselves as democratic citizens, not just solipsistic consumers. I guess that's where the difference comes from.
flanked-evergl · 37d ago
As a European, I would like nothing more than for our ruling elites to stop acting like petulant teenagers that are upset that their parents voted Republican and instead move out and start supporting themselves.
For decades here in Norway we have had talks about how we need to denuclearize, stop all industry, stop all energy production, stop all mining. This, if not directly a result of Russian interference, is at least something Russia and China are entirely behind. They would love nothing more than to see their rivals self-destruct.
European alternatives are not great. That is just a fact. I want them to be great. As Donald Tusk said, it's insane that Europe is expecting the much smaller US to defend it against the even smaller Russia. The time has come to stop acting like petulant teenagers rebelling and start acting like adults.
All of this also ignores the fact that Europe jails people for thought crime at a much higher rate than US or even Russia. And European countries are much more draconian with trying to restrict privacy and encryption. Right now, my data is more private in US than in most of Europe.
fransje26 · 37d ago
> that Europe jails people for thought crime at a much higher rate than US or even Russia
> Right now, my data is more private in US than in most of Europe.
Could follow the train of thought until it catastrophically derailed in the last three sentences..
flanked-evergl · 37d ago
Both facts. EU is pushing for an end-to-end to end encryption and there is no freedom of expression in Europe. Norway tried to jail a lesbian for believing that men can't become women. You may disagree with her, but it's ridiculous that she should be in jail for her view. Scotland makes it illegal to pray silently in your own home in some cases. UK already makes it illegal to pray silently in your own head. How much more draconian can you get?
fransje26 · 36d ago
> Both facts. EU is pushing for an end-to-end to end encryption
No. Some actors are pushing for an end of end-to-end encryption, which doesn't mean it's an EU fact. In fact, it just got rejected in the French parliament.
> Norway tried to jail a lesbian
No. A person got investigate for hate-speech, which is perfectly within the bounds of "freedom of speech". The fact that she did not go to prison shows the system works as intended.
> Scotland makes it illegal to pray silently in your own home
> UK already makes it illegal to pray in your own home.
No. Debunked as nonsense.
flanked-evergl · 36d ago
European Threat To End-To-End Encryption Would Invade Phones
you went from "in your own home" to "near abortion clinic" real quick. And abortion clinics IIRC are an area protected from protests or something along those lines.
The man knew. He was told multiple times. He didn't have to pray there. Pretty sure big man upstairs wouldn't mind if he went a few meters down the street.
further edit: i see said "in your own head", yes, it is in your own head, but the intention is intimidating to those who want healthcare. Pretty sure prayer is not localized.
flanked-evergl · 36d ago
it's not happening, and it's good that it is happening
dxuh · 37d ago
> All of this also ignores the fact that Europe jails people for thought crime at a much higher rate than US or even Russia.
This sounds crazy to me and I have trouble believing it. I tried to find sources, but could not. As you were mentioning rates i.e. numbers, I am sure you have some source for this? The fact alone that hate-speech and holocaust-denial laws exist is not sufficient.
ETH_start · 37d ago
This reminds me of Soviet ersatz products.
Like the Soviet Union, the European Union operates at a scale where it can feasibly create a nearly full suite of goods/services in parallel to the market alternative.
jensgk · 37d ago
There are many other countries in the world. The world will go on, even with reduced trade with the US. We will just increase trade with Canada, Australia, Japan, etc. and even China.
femtozer · 37d ago
Many of these tools could be seen as better than the American alternatives in certain respects (e.g., being more privacy-focused). If any country could be boldly compared to the Soviet Union in terms of protectionism, it’s more likely the United States these days.
hnbad · 37d ago
> the market alternative
It's interesting that you imply the European Union is communist or state capitalist in a similar way to the Soviet Union or that European Alternatives are not part of the market, analogous to state-produced consumer goods in the Soviet Union. It's especially interesting (which is a nice way of saying preposterous) considering the primary function of the European Union has always been a European single market (the EEA includes the EU and EFTA) to ease trade between countries in Europe, with most other concerns logically following downstream from that (e.g. moving towards a United States of Europe is a logical consequence of the need for a state to back the Euro which was a logical consequence of the desire to avoid currency exchange when trading goods within the EEA).
Considering the only thing the Soviet Union and the EU have in common is part of their names in English and there's literally no similarity between Soviet consumer products and European Alternatives other than that they're foreign to the US, I struggle to understand what the point of your comment is supposed to be as good faith demands I assume the nonsensical implication is unintentional.
ETH_start · 37d ago
The EU is of course much more market-based than the Soviet Union, but the analogy is not totally without merit.
Legislation like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the Forestry Regulation, as well as heavy tax burdens and expansive restrictions on contracting freedom in the labor sector, have resulted in a situation where no EU company founded from scratch in the last 50 years has a market capitalization exceeding €100 billion, while the US has six such companies valued over €1 trillion. Also, the EU has only 14 publicly traded companies, founded from scratch within the last 50 years, worth at least $10 billion, with a combined market cap of $430 billion. In contrast, the US has 241 such companies (data here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e3MnYQ044U1gzi_8bDMo...), and they're collectively worth nearly $30 trillion — almost 70 times the EU total.
I don't agree with the notion that the existence of a few mega-corps is a useful metric. Of course the US is the more free market, and allows those oligopolies to exist. The EU would have split up those companies years ago.
ETH_start · 37d ago
The US economy is now 50% larger than the EU's, as a result of this market freedom and enterprise growth.
someNameIG · 36d ago
Only by nominal, by PPP the difference doesn't seem that different. US is $30 trillion by PPP, the EU is $29 trillion.
ETH_start · 36d ago
PPP statistics don't account for the lower value of ersatz products/services. They artificially equate the value of product/service suites across countries, instead of relying on market price signals to gauge value.
halper · 37d ago
That is definitely one measure, but it is also an economy where someone working at the restaurant in a hotel in Miami earns about one bottle of water per hour. If the bottled water is expensive or if the salary is low is a matter of perspective.
ETH_start · 36d ago
The purchasing power of the average American is much higher than the average European.
rvba · 37d ago
USA was not impacted by WW2 (by this I mean it wasnt bombed to nothing) and 50 years of communism.
ETH_start · 36d ago
They were neck-and-neck in 2008. The gradual accumulation of regulatory restrictions limiting contract freedom, and taxes, turned the tide.
rvba · 34d ago
Year 2008 was like world war 2?
That's an interesting take...
sofixa · 37d ago
How is any of that even remotely relevant to a comparison with the Soviet Union?
EU companies aren't as overvalued/massive as US ones... and what does that have to do with the USSR?
ETH_start · 37d ago
It's not just about market valuations. That's just a proxy of overall productivity, where the US now has a 50% advantage over the EU.
And most "productivity" stats use GDP as a proxy for the productiveness of output, which is of course biased with the aforementioned overvaluation - the fact that in the US a burger costs $25 with tax and tips included, but 15 euros in France doesn't mean that a US server and cook are more productive.
And in any case, that is relevant in an EU to Soviet Union comparison how exactly?
ETH_start · 36d ago
The Soviet Union analogy is not a direct comparison. My point was narrower: excessive centralized control, even in a market system, can stifle economic dynamism, much like the Soviet model did in an extreme way. The EU’s heavy regulations (GDPR, DMA, labor laws) aren’t command economics, but they lean toward a similar logic of prioritizing control over freedom, with measurable results.
US stocks may be inflated but the gap — 241 US companies worth $30 trillion vs. 14 EU ones at $430 billion — reflects more than hype. It shows the US consistently produces globally dominant firms, a sign of higher productivity and innovation. The EU’s regulatory burden likely plays a role in why its startups rarely scale that big.
For productivity, I cited the US economy being 50% larger (nominal GDP: ~$28T vs. ~$18T for the EU). Your ECB source doesn't contradict my point. It used a baseline of 2019 for both regions, to measure productivity growth, but the regions started at different baselines in 2019.
Anyway, getting back to my point: the US does a better job of creating new industries in large part because it avoids the EU’s regulatory morass and therefore has a more market-based economy.
p_l · 37d ago
There was this little thing called World Wars that decimated a lot of capital of all kinds (demographic, financial, materiel, infrastructure) which USA exited in completely different position - one of oversupply of all the above to the point that Marshall Plan helped USA as much as it helped Europe by providing an extension of demand for USA industry.
The entire Silicon Valley exists because that windfall was allowed for the most ridiculous defense spending in the world which went on to create the baseline that private investment could continue (though there was considerable dip when the defense spending got cut in 1990s, private demand by then could continue).
In comparison, wider common market in EU is mostly, well, a thing from 1993 - the EEC had partial one, but it's only since 1993 that you could reasonably treat EU market similarly as USA one, which heavily impacted just how big you could grow as company (you need people to buy your products/services after all). And you still have to deal with things like multiple languages whereas for USA it's viable to have just limited english support.
Combine this with huge impact of retirement funds looking for investment opportunities and zero interest rates for long time, you have conditions where in USA you could get multi million investment for a juice company with overengineered juicer. It's essentially law of large numbers there, lots of churn will get you more even if actual successful companies are lower percentage - the scale does it.
And let's be honest, a lot of US investment capital (including Y-Combinator!) did a lot to ensure that prospective founders from Europe founded the company at least partially in USA (in case of YC, even focusing on SFBA).
Also, you mention GDPR, when it's one of the easiest regulations to deal with in my experience (it actually cleared up stuff that existed before). The DSA and DMA only become really strict once you have MAU bigger than adult population of many of EU countries (more than 10% of total EU population).
Honestly, for startup, a lot of it is easy checklist of "don't do that" - the most you might have to do is to look at what goes through the brains of your marketing dept once you have one and prevent them from going crazy with tag manager... something that your users would be happy about too.
If anything is missing, it's the large VC industry that was incubated through decades of defense and government spending in USA (guaranteeing demand and customers).
hnbad · 36d ago
Got it, so you're using arbitrary metrics of economic success and a number of protectionist policies and other regulations to justify your comparison of the European Union to a state capitalist, planned economy with secret police, authoritarian and dictatorial rule, extremely rigid top-down hierarchical governance and tight travel restrictions that is widely known for its massive domestic surveillance apparatus, extreme use of forced labor camps, forced resettlements, violent military suppression of leftist opposition, waves of purges of political sects, and the literal genocide in Ukraine?
That seems like a completely reasonable analogy one would use with no ulterior motives. Assuming, of course, one were completely ignorant of most world history events of the 20th century.
---
But you're literally begging the question so let's look at your list. Here's the top 10 biggest companies in the US:
1. Apple
2. Nvidia
3. Microsoft
4. Amazon
5. Google
6. Meta
7. Tesla
8. UnitedHealth
9. Oracle
10. Costco
Right off the bat the odd one out is UnitedHealth. They're a megacorp resulting from the fusion of multiple private health insurance companies - with some of the mergers clearly being considered so concerning for market competition that there were attempts to prevent them, which - as is common in the US - of course failed. This is a company leeching billions of American citizens to act as a middleman for healthcare while Americans still have to pay most of their medical expenses out of pocket. Not to mention the blatant corruption between health insurance companies and medical service providers resulting in completely arbitrary costs with fictional discounts. An inefficiency that has made American healthcare orders of magnitude more expensive than in other developed nations while still providing worse health outcomes for the average citizen and fueling the uniquely American opioid epidemic thanks to decades of prioritizing prescription medications over actually useful diagnostic procedures and treatments.
Let's single out NVidia because its stock price ballooned over the past three years and as the dip following the Deepseek announcement demonstrated has more to do with the general AGI hype train than actual value produced - unless you believe the announcement literally destroyed "$600bn in value" rather than just correcting the clearly absurd valuation of the company.
Amazon has almost single-handedly wiped out most of the retail industry in the US and elsewhere. They have massive control over the cloud infrastructure market. Their in-house brands have a documented history of cloning successful products sold on Amazon and then outcompeting them the same way Amazon initially outcompeted retail with unsustainable price dumping, only to hike up prices once the competition is out of business. This has allowed Jeff Bezos to become one of the richest people on Earth and Amazon to use its market dominance as leverage against individual US states to get sweetheart deals waiving regulations and labor protection laws and securing tax exemptions.
Microsoft and Oracle are deeply entrenched in the enterprise market, especially public service and bureaucracy. Microsoft literally has a public history of an anti-competitive strategy called "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" that was used to harm industry standards and interoperability in order to tighten vendor lock-in. Oracle's problems are less blatant but it also pretty much grew to its size through deliberate vendor lock-in, shady licensing, and malicious and at times illegitimate lawsuits, often using lawfare against open source projects especially. Bill Gates is now using his wealth to open new markets to US pharmaceutical companies under the guise of humanitarianism. Larry Ellison seems to keep more out of the public light while using his billions to influence political campaigns.
Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta literally made their billions through the exploitation of the personal information of their users while deliberately misleading them about what data was collected and how it is used. They then used their de-facto monopoly positions in search and social media respectively to sell ads and analytics - and are well-documented to have actively misled customers by fudging their metrics (e.g. Facebook pushed video content in an effort to move news sites to publishing on their platform directly although the success metrics of the videos were deliberately engineered to grossly exaggerate their reach and engagement, harming those sites to the point some went out of business). Meta's prioritization of "engagement" at any cost and insufficient content moderation have directly contributed to multiple genocides and the platform has been used to organize child sexual abuse and live stream spree killings. Google meanwhile dominates the search and browser markets (even most alternative browsers are built on Chromium).
Apple is probably the least actively damaging company of the bunch but its success also is based entirely on the infamous "walled garden" approach of vendor lock-in ranging from software to hardware, in the past literally preventing its software from being used on third party hardware and closely controlling the ability of other manufacturers to interface with its hardware. It has since begun opening up to third parties and using interoperable industry standards - thanks to legal pressure from the EU for selling its products within the EU. It's also pretty much the perfect example for "vertical integration" taken to the extreme.
Tesla's initial value was mostly driven by being in the right spot at the right time (especially thanks to Elon Musk's antics resulting in popular media comparing him to Tony Stark because the Iron Man movies were normalizing comic book characters in wider pop culture and techno-optimism and space-futurism were at their zenith), as well as using the first-mover advantage to build out proprietary charging infrastructure. But its biggest competitive advantage were government subisides in the form of carbon emission credits, which it sold for profit to other manufacturers, raking in literally billions of dollars ($9 billion between 2009 and 2024 alone) at zero cost to Tesla itself. Tesla's present valuation however is largely the consequence of its stock price massively ballooning in 2020 - the most likely reasons for which are 1) its ability to remain profitable with literally zero production due to the sale of said credits and 2) its "vertical integration" (read: use of proprietary parts rather than relying on suppliers), i.e. again vendor lock-in.
The reason Tesla's stock price remains mostly stable (the recent drop thanks to its association with Elon Musk's current antics notwithstanding) - despite the company's constant failings with the Cybertruck, quality issues and the yearly promises of FSD being imminent - seems to be mostly tied to its inclusion in various funds and derivatives because of its meteoric rise. Either way this success has allowed Elon Musk to literally buy his way into one of the arguably most influential positions of power via the Trump government, directly controlling a legion of unelected interns dismantling US government services from within.
SpaceX (not publicly traded, so not in your list) meanwhile has a number of lucrative government contracts (mostly with US agencies but also internationally), especially because of its increasingly dominant position in satellite broadband which as demonstrated in Ukraine does not only provide them (and Elon Musk) with an economic advantage but also the ability to exert direct political influence over geopolitical events.
The massively influential prison industrial complex (maintaining the US's leader in number of incarcerated citizens both relative to its population and in absolute numbers) and military industrial complex (which are uniquely influential in the US federal government, rivaled only by Elon Musk himself now) of course also aren't something I'd expect anyone to brag about.
I can't really say anything bad about Costco though. Their failings mostly seem to be the result of the poor state of consumer protection, health and safety, and animal cruelty laws in the US and they genuinely seem to seek to improve those issues when they become public. Sinegal, Brotman and James all seem to be genuinely decent people and the company policy has fairly explicitly been shaped by the idea of putting customers and employees over shareholders - quite unlike the general consensus in the US following Milton Friedman.
In the EU, most of these companies couldn't have existed because they'd have run afoul of antitrust legislation, consumer protection laws, labor laws, health and safety laws, etc - either at the EU level or at a member state level (which would likely have fueled EU legislation to standardize the laws across member states). The DMA and DSA were literally created because of the anti-competitive behavior of some of these companies and their outsized influence across multiple markets. The GDPR was literally created because of the massive violations of privacy and the demonstrable harm caused by them.
The EU is not without its flaws. As I said, it's literally a Free Trade Agreement at its heart and the poor cooperation during COVID hopefully dispelled its loftier claims. But if you think the existence of practical monopolies in the US is a demonstration of the US's superior "free market", your "freedom" looks a lot more like feudalism with extra steps.
fedeb95 · 37d ago
the difference being that the EU is in the market. The US is easing its debt by boosting profits, but this will only work temporarily. Otherwise, the US will gradually slip out of the market. Of course no one has a crystal ball, or if someone has one it doesn't really predict the future... we'll see!
rsynnott · 37d ago
> The US is easing its debt by boosting profits, but this will only work temporarily.
I mean, it's hard to see how it would work at all! Their tariff take is simply not going to be sufficient to move the needle very much, and it's not implausible that the revenue loss on income and corporate tax due to lost economic growth will be larger.
bad_user · 37d ago
Mercantilism doesn't work, there's plenty of evidence that the current policies are really bad for the US and the global economy, there's no silver lining to them, not even the temporary "boosting profits", which won't happen.
If the future can't be predicted that's because one can't predict when Trump and his imbeciles will be stripped of power.
fedeb95 · 37d ago
I was definitely too hopeful with my "will". My personal prediction aligns with your own, but again I'm not that sure of my predictions
Thinking about it, it's not so weird? We beat the nazis together, we've generally enjoyed world peace, freedom, and the joys of neocolonialism. Things were sailing along just fine.
Now things are all weird and fucked up and we have to worry about fucking russia, defense spending in general, the fate of greenland, cloud computing and all that shit?
Putting it like that, I'd like things to go back to the way they were too...
If you by "we" mean Britain, the United States, and Russia. And by "we" mean the people living 2 generations earlier, then I agree with your statement.
As a side note, people who were 18 in 1940, would be 103 today. So most people who fought in the second world war have unfortunately passed away.
I personally would never say "We beat the nazis together". The only thing I did was benefit from the war that generations before me have won.
And while of course most of those people are dead now, they were all part of cultures that still hold many of the same norms and values as they do today.
What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has. But now they start to wake up facing this reality.
France would disagree with the "didn't understand" part. They have been continuously ridiculed for holding that view, until very, very recently.
I remember during the Chirac presidency how viciously France was attacked by the other European countries, especially my own Sweden, for doing nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.
Jump forward today and France is seen as a protector of Europe, especially in Sweden, because of its nuclear arsenal.
That was not the most glorious moment of Chirac's presidency, no..
However, as someone involved in numerical simulations, the argument that it was needed to calibrate their numerical models does hold (some..) water..
But Chirac did partly redeem himself by refusing to invade Iraq on bogus US claims of WMDs..
Let's also not forget the absolutely absurd intervention of Colin Powell at the UN Security Council, holding up a vial containing the ultimate "proof" of WMD.
Good thing he didn't drop it.. /s
The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world, and the peace (at least in the Western world) that US defense brought made sure both the US and the EU could freely trade and benefit financially.
What now changed is that apparently the US thinks it does not need this hegemony anymore (by forcing the EU to become a competing military power), or that they can replace the role the EU played with some other combination of countries. Or alternatively, the US is just looking for some "splendid isolation".
To European spectators, the above seems ridiculous. But who knows, maybe Trump is correct... Either way, the US had a good thing going and is now abandoning that. Not strange that Europe is surprised by that move.
That's the thing, Americans have become very skeptical of our own influence and power, for good reason. Look what we did to the Middle East. Look at the shenanigans we were funding with USAID. There isn't actually a constituency for this imperialism stuff in the US. US voters don't like it.
In any case -- if we had so much influence, why were previous presidents like Bush and Obama unsuccessful in influencing the EU to fund its own defense?
>forcing the EU to become a competing military power
It's not about competition, it's about Europe taking responsibility for itself.
You want a global cop? How about you do it yourself for a bit? It's a terrible job. Maybe you should take a turn at it.
We did cut down too much on our defence, especially after the Cold war (not all European countries though, like Finland). But, many European countries have bought plenty of expensive US military equipment like fighter aircraft, helicopters, anti aircraft systems, etc. It’s not like those were a gift.
or maybe you are just misunderstanding and rationalizing what’s going on to tell yourself that everything is going fine on the US politics side of things while the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that you voted a narcissistic authoritarian into office.
Let’s hope you are right!
Europe is not like that - we don't pay taxes to the US to defend us. The US kindly did so free of charge for many years which is a different thing, more of an alliance I guess.
Now the US is kind of switching allegiances we are having to recalculate.
And we ask them to pay taxes fairly they complain, and they don't want to open their stuff, they even work hard on malicious compliance. It's a pretty bad deal.
Yes, among other things. It is the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany", and thing it finally settles is WW2 and the subsequent temporary arrangements.
> If you accept that as a peace treaty
The ~1955 treaties between the respective occupying powers and West and East Germany separately, which ended most of the powers of occupation but could not formally end the Potsdam arrangement because the Western allies weren't going to formalize the situation with East Germany and the USSR wasn't going to do the same for West Germany, effectively (but not completely formally) ended the occupation and were essentially peace treaties (but obviously neither addressed the whole of Germany or the whole of the belligerents against Germany in WW2.) Between 1955 and reunification, each of the Germanies was technically occupied as a consequence of the Cold War. But West Germany was generally treated as as much of an equal partner as other major Western nations with the US.
I only pointed to the 1991 treaty because it is simple and irrefutable and the most straightforward, uncomplicated way to rebut your originally clearly-wrong claim that Germany was currently occupied without any peace treaty.
Europeans are just impossible to satisfy, from my perspective. They will complain no matter what the US does.
No comments yet
OP's point is this nonsense rhetoric doesn't make sense with European frustration with American retrenchment.
It's simple: global trade is good, isolationism is bad. It's as simple as that.
The “EU common classes” don't want higher prices or poorer services. This is a fact that the US's elites in power will soon discover. And it's easy to see why this trend is a train wreck in progress: unemployment, in both the US and EU, is at an all-time low, and if you significantly lower imports via tariffs and economic wars, who do you think will work on those local products and services? Never mind that US's investments and exports are also crashing as a direct result of this administration's policies, so I'm guessing they rely on future software developers that end up unemployed to become lumberjacks.
But yes, now that the US is no longer a trustworthy ally, I want the EU to cut its tech dependencies from it for as much as possible, while strengthening ties with all of our other allies, such as Canada, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India. There's no conflict in this reasoning.
You seem to conveniently forget that all of this was "possible" only with heavy borrowing, and it looks like many countries won't be able to even pay the principal soon enough. When you take this into account, the "growth" has been negative for over 10 years, and it was barely stagnant for quite a while before. We exported the growth and manipulated money, now the truth appear. You can only pretend for so long.
The reality is that the value creating has been quite low in most of the EU and now that the economic engine that was Germany has stalled, everything is grinding to a halt. Germany had heavy reliance on cheap Russian gas for its chemical industry and premium car market, both are getting disrupted massively. It's actually a perfect example on why we should avoid too much reliance on other countries. The hilarious part is that in the meantime, Germany was giving "ecology" lessons to all their neighbors and the world at large. In typical arrogant German fashion, they had everything figured out, until they didn't, that is. They actually hold a lot of responsibility for their terrible leadership on the EU.
> To me it seems that maybe the interests of EU elites differ from the interests of the EU common classes.
Common classes in EU are not benefiting from trade war, they are not benefiting from USA annexation threats and they are not benefiting from Russia expanding.
> The EU elites seem to have considered themselves as basically equivalent to American citizens in all but name, and were quite happy selling out their native countries in return for access to America.
This is nonsensical. You are making stuff up, big time. How is buying American arms a symbol of "considering themselves to be Americans"? I cant recall any call or push to be more America.
And monopolies are something the US loves (think of big tech, Comcast, etc.) and the EU dislikes ;-)
With the US stepping away from its monopoly, it is only a matter of time until more European states will enter the nuclear protection market.
The economy, unlike one's personal finances, is a circle. Unless the Europeans buy abroad, all that money is going to stay in Europe, circulating and stimulating the economy.
Even if it's "only" arms, spending it to maintain industry is way better than many alternatives. Manufacturing infrastructure and lots of skilled jobs and workers, sounds good to me to have.
"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".
Finance/money is supposed to be the virtual control system, and the real world thing it is supposed to help to steer is everything real and what we actually care about. In all other areas we would never accept that the control system becomes the target!! The target is always the real thing, and we will adjust the control system to achieve the desired outcomes.
Not so with finance! It has taken on a life of its own, and the vast majority of people will gladly and unthinkingly subordinate the real world to its whims. Something that makes at least a little bit of sense for the individual makes no sense for the economy though.
We have people in charge who know all and care about the control system first of all, the real world outcomes be damned. If the control system says we need high unemployment and homelessness and less high paying jobs there is nothing we can do, because the purely virtual human-invented finance system is the god. But hey, religion has been on the decline for a long time at least in the modern world, right (/s)?
> which can get very ugly in the long run
Only when the people in charge think like described.
As Eisenhower warned, every Euro spent turning steel into an artillery shell is one NOT spent turning steel into high-speed rail. Every worker in a factory building armored vehicles is a worker NOT being re-trained to be an elder caregiver for Europe's aging demographics. There are immense trade-offs that come with dumping capital, both human and material, into making Europe's war machine rise from the grave.
>"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".
Key phrase there is "if you are in a strong enough position"....and Europe isn't. Because it cut itself off from cheap Russian energy imports, the entire industrial sector is no longer cost-competitive. With the exception of highly-specialized difficult-to-copy stuff like ASML or maybe Carl Zeiss optics, etc... the European economy writ large is in a really weak position compared to the cost efficiency of China or compared to the still-large (but diminishing) political-military leverage of the US. Also, Europe looks like it is getting closer and closer to handing over the frozen Russian assets in Euroclear to Ukraine. You can expect a massive capital flight from Chinese, Mid-East, or Global South investors if that ever happens.
People just have short memories and see the bad outcome we did get (high inflation) and not the bad outcomes we avoided (unmitigated COVID, economic collapse).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu57D9YcIk0
This has hardly been "abrupt". Even Obama and Bush were telling Europe to step up defense spending.
Just take the President of the EU commission, Ursula von der Leyen. She was Germany's minister of defence from 2013 to 2019.
Yes, I do agree that we had been warned and since the Ukrainian invasion defense budgets of European countries increased. I also think such an abrupt change of mind from the US hurts both sides and nobody earns anything from it. Except Russia.
Even if European cointries increased spending before, the situation is changing in such a way that even nuclear weapons - something that almost no European country would have wanted if they already hadn't had them - are being taken into consideration to be developed as a nuclear umbrella from France towards other European countries.
I think he's been pretty consistent on the issue of European defense spending, actually. In any case, if Trump is inconsistent, that itself can be considered a warning -- that sometimes the US elects inconsistent presidents.
>I also think such an abrupt change of mind from the US hurts both sides and nobody earns anything from it.
Nothing short of this "abrupt change" has been successful in getting Europe to take responsibility for its own security. As I said, US presidents have been complaining about this for ages. I hope you finally listen, because my enthusiasm for defending Europe (as an American and a registered Democrat even) is currently quite low: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43459774
>nuclear umbrella from France towards other European countries
We'll see if France actually commits to that, or if it is all talk. If Nation A extends its nuclear umbrella over Nation B, that basically means that Nation A is putting its own cities at risk in case of nuclear retaliation, for the sake of Nation B. As an American, it sort of boggled my mind when I learned that we were putting our own cities at risk for the sake of our allies this way.
And it seems that Europe's way of thanking us is to make fun of our healthcare system, accuse us of the non-crime of "cultural imperialism", etc... See what I'm saying about enthusiasm to defend you guys? Something needs to change in the relationship.
I do not see why usa should be "thanked". We have been allies for decades and now this relations are being reshaped in a way that favors no one, while a slower approach to such sensitive issues might have yielded better results (i don't know how many countries still want to buy us weapons right now in europe, maybe a different approach would have meant stronger collaboration between ue/usa companies or maybe not)
So you would prefer that the US just withdraws from NATO now, to reduce the unpredictability? That's fine by me. If unpredictability is your issue, Trump should be able to address that by withdrawing tomorrow.
>I do not see why usa should be "thanked".
If you think our involvement in Europe over the past 80 years has been positive, you should acknowledge that. If all you do is complain, it's natural for Americans to think "well, maybe our involvement in the continent isn't positive... perhaps it's time to pull out and see if they stop complaining about everything". You're not complaining about Brazil, Australia, Switzerland, or China the way you complain about the US. I think we need a reset to make the US/Europe relationship more like the Brazil/Europe relationship.
i'm not complaining about the us just like i'm not thanking germany for being one of our commercial and sometimes political partners. Perhaps it's something more present in us discourse but most of the time we're not "thankful" to other countries, even if allied ones. It's something that doesn't really have a meaning here, even if i do agree that the usa have been important partners of europe in the past (and probably will in the future as well, although less than before)
I'm not in principle opposed to this sort of altruism in US foreign policy. I just don't want to have an altruistic foreign policy towards people that resent me. For people who resent me, I want fairness at the very least. Europe gets most of the benefit from NATO, so Europe should pay most of the cost. Currently we are very far from that.
Why do you think the US has global power projection capabilities? Why do you think they can control world trade? Why is the dollar still the reserve currency?
The military "altruistic" peacekeeping is a major benefit, from better access to trade agreements to bases everywhere and military support from dozens of countries.
Nothing of that would be possible otherwise. Ending the US' protection also means taking away a massive piece of global influence the US had and turning into a "normal" country, not one the world seems to revolve around.
That's the trade-off. You can't keep the soft power without having partners who rely on you and are going to have a much, much harder stand in future negotiations.
Also, US military spending goes directly back into the US economy. This is absolutely not the same as paying other countries, it's a hidden, long-running stimulus for the MIC.
Switzerland is very wealthy without being a global empire. They are well-regarded and have more soft power than the US. Their currency is trusted. No one is telling them they have an obligation to support Ukraine. They have better relations with the EU. Their military is focused on self-defense. We should be more like Switzerland.
>Also, US military spending goes directly back into the US economy. This is absolutely not the same as paying other countries, it's a hidden, long-running stimulus for the MIC.
We could easily spend in a better way which also goes back into the economy -- for example, government healthcare, like Europeans are always bragging they have. Also, I don't want a massive military-industrial complex either. I favor peace.
Sure, but I think they are waking up to the fact that they cannot afford it, at least for now.
>much harder stand in future negotiations.
Well, from what Trump is saying, it seems that US didn't get the better end of a lot of deals, so it seems that it is spending resources for this peacekeeping but not getting any of the benefits in return..
It's funny how you are believing in a known liar to derive any argument from.
The US/Europe relationship fails both those criteria.
It sure seems like they think the US has an obligation to stay. That's the subtext of a lot of what Europeans are saying online.
By the way, your rants make me think you're spending a bit too much time online, online you'll find a lot of people just bashing whatever you say in a rude way
The US economy was doing great prior to WW1/WW2, back when we deliberately tried to stay out of European geopolitics.
>By the way, your rants make me think you're spending a bit too much time online, online you'll find a lot of people just bashing whatever you say in a rude way
You didn't argue against tossandthrow. I don't see any Europeans arguing against him, in fact. I think a lot of Europeans think like he does.
I think Europe always had the capacity for that. Russia is a nuclear armed state but as far as it's proportional spending goes it's worth noting it's economy is smaller than Italy. What it was lacking was political will and the urge to deal with fragmentation and unanimity. Especially wrt germany being slow to send weapons systems, cutting gas, Shroeder, etc All that spending on American jets or the like clearly paled in comparison to the bloc's willingness to commit and to deal with economic dependencies and would still matter less if everyone increased spending. It also lacks the push for a proper foreign policy that benefits the whole. Not letting Russia pull price politics and fighting its influence in important alternative gas routes would be huge.
>And it seems that Europe's way of thanking us is to make fun of our healthcare system, accuse us of the non-crime of "cultural imperialism", etc... See what I'm saying about enthusiasm to defend you guys? Something needs to change in the relationship.
Are your view of it on the comments of people online?
Yes, I'm noting that uniquely among US allies, the internet is full of Europeans expressing anti-Americanism. And this has reduced American enthusiasm for the transatlantic alliance. There's no sense in trying to please someone who complains about you no matter what you do.
I don't think it is just online, but the internet made it very clear to the US how Europeans feel about us. Naturally, conservatives are going to react more to that since they are more patriotic. That's why Trump has been driving the reset to the relationship.
But basing your foreign policy on internet commenters is so deeply incredibly inane.
And get this. If you're hegemon you attract more slack no matter what you do. In many ways it involves being the geopolitical schoolyard bully and trump just makes that overtly clear. But it's not like protecting the dollars reserve currency status or any other such thing was something that didn't happen before and is now just being done to spite BRICS internet commenters.
Like what's next? Want to go to war in the middle east again because they dislike you?
If you were such good vassals, why didn't you increase defense spending back when Bush and Obama requested that?
>But basing your foreign policy on internet commenters is so deeply incredibly inane.
I don't see other Europeans arguing against the internet commenters we are talking about. I think these comments are rather representative of European opinion, actually. In any case, I think if Europe wants to repair the relationship, it would be good to know that internet discourse is contributing a lot to the current situation. European users were in the habit of insulting the US long before American users started insulting Europe.
It's not just me who thinks this way. Here's a post I happened to see on Substack just the other day: https://terry264.substack.com/p/europe-youre-on-your-own
Do you think Trump administration officials like Pete Hegseth and JD Vance aren't reading this stuff? They're part of the younger generation that lives on social media. They read it, and they draw inferences about how their counterparts in Europe regard the transatlantic relationship.
>And get this. If you're hegemon you attract more slack no matter what you do. In many ways it involves being the geopolitical schoolyard bully and trump just makes that overtly clear. But it's not like protecting the dollars reserve currency status or any other such thing was something that didn't happen before and is now just being done to spite BRICS internet commenters.
I'm allowed to want to stop being hegemon. Maybe Europe can be hegemon next. You can see how much fun it is ;-)
>Like what's next? Want to go to war in the middle east again because they dislike you?
No, I don't want to go to war. I just don't believe in voluntarily supporting people who disdain me.
Internet mems site are not trustworthy, I'm saying this as Polish, basing on this kind of site I've should be the racist, but I'm not.
Poland was strongly pro american (at least in the last 35 year). Unfortunately, internet in this time must be readed with "grain of salt", there is too many trolls, bots and boring kids.
"I don't think it is just online, but the internet made it very clear to the US how Europeans feel about us." In my opinion there is somekind of "disinformation attack" to quarrel europe with USA, unfortunately, successfully because I see a lot annoyed people on both site.
Information which comes to us via media (tv, local news, etc.) probably are diffrents that this whats you get, so probably this is why you can feel that we're anti-american, but in my opion Europe and USA was in symbiosis not only economically.
I'm also want to mark that Trump from my perspective starting "false flag" operation on greenland, like Putin did that with Ukraine, what woring me because I just don't want a war :)
Sorry, for my English, but for me it's 2:18
I don't think the US should be invading other countries. I agree that justifies anti-Americanism, as I stated elsewhere in this thread.
My wife when is bored, usually, reading twitter and after 15min I'm hearing her crying how people are cruel for animals, but she doing that herself everytime.
The best what you can do is temporary cut off yourself from "bubble", but basing on how intesive news was last time it can be hard.
Human under emotions doesn't thing clear.
Maybe if the US stopped bombing their countries, we'd stop getting so many.
But yes, the War On Terror completely destabilized such a large area including Syria that it's been a disaster for Europe.
Very convenient for the US, not so for the EU
No comments yet
> Help me understand this
The answer is money.
All the get-rich-quick schemes/scams are coming from the US. For a very current example, look not further than Tesla vs Volkswagen valuation.
That level of dollars valuations that are completely detach from reality, and the capacity of getting real, tangible, value out of the scheme before it collapses as a house of card, is orders of magnitude above what you can get elsewhere in the world.
Hence the elites want to continue having access to that market, domestic market be damned.
"Anger in Greenland over visits this week by Usha Vance and Mike Waltz" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/24/greenland-usha...
So when they see other countries taking the load/lead on things they don't think it's an "us vs them" situation, they think it will stay us, as in together. When everything is working ok, when everyone feel like they are getting their fair share, it works fine; but when the world becomes unstable, and they are tensions about resources and power it all breaks down.
This is the mindset that created the biggest providence state that ever was. But the problem is that it was always a lie. The thing was built on power imbalance between countries, and just because they accepted the deal when they were weak doesn't mean it will stay that way forever.
The only reason it worked in the first place is that they sold the newer generation's future, borrowing aggressively to fund a way of life that wasn't sustainable If they had thought long term, they would never have given so much power to other countries, the USA is one of them, but it's the same for China, and Russia to a lower extent. Now that those big countries are fighting for domination, they find themselves in the crossfire, just now figuring out that we are too dependent and don't have that much say because we don't have a lot of power.
You cannot solve a problem with the mind that created it, and that's the issue we face. We desperately need to think differently that what got us there, but they cannot erase their "programming", for them, it's the "right" way, it's basically the only way.
The US will fare a bit better for a while, precisely because they control important stuff, like the tech industry, decent army power and are still the de facto reserve currency. But in reality, they will face the same problems down the line if they don't change as well. The protectionism is because at the rate it's going, we will all be under China's rule before long. You can trade stuff, but never make yourself completely dependent on another country. You may be friends, until you are not. Things change, politics are unpredictable, it's a bad idea to hope for mercy when a big power is rising.
Why didn't those two things happen? Because of US influence: The US actively prevented any kind of military unification e.g. by preventing West Germany from going in that direction (as the occupier they could do so) and by alienating France and bribing and distracting the UK (by sharing plans for weapons such as nukes and submarines). When the NATO idea came up, the US offered their membership, but with a twist: NATO troops would always be under USian command. At every opportunity, the US made themselves indispensible for European defense and prevented any kinds of European political initiatives in that direction. That is why France rejected the NATO command structure for quite some time and was only "half a member".
This "arragement" had a downside of increased dependence and an upside of decreased spending and responsibility for the Europeans, and they got used to it. For the promise of US protection, Europe would give up its independence in that regard. Europe would be dependent on US-controlled military infrastructure such as AWACS, SOSUS, PATRIOT, and satellite coms and surveilance. Europe would be dependent on US-delivered weapons and weapons components. In many suppossedly national/european military hardware, there are some indispensable USian components like radars, engines or GPS, which is a double advantage for the US: they could sell something and have a means to stop any kind of use they dislike, either by withholding spare parts and support or by builtin remote shutdown switches. Europe participated in the occasional war on behalf of the US like Iraq or Afghanistan, and the US cleaned up some European messes like Yugoslavia.
It all seemed like a dependence that was one-sided, but still somewhat beneficial to the Europeans.
Now, the US are walking back on their promises and are actively breaking their side of the deal by e.g. questioning their future adherence to the mutual defense obligation in NATO article 5. This is a much bigger deal than it sounds at first: When you read the game theory of it, promises of mutual defense must be unwavering, there must not be any doubt in the mind of a potential enemy. If the rockets are flying, a red button must be pressed, no questions asked. Any kind of doubt will be exploited by an enemy, as can be seen by current Russian propaganda threatening Europe. In former times, the US would be first to condemn such threats and issue counter-threats. Nowadays: silence.
This means that the US effectively ended NATO. Mutual defense obligations and promises of defense from the US are now worthless. Of course nobody is cheery about that. A European common defense is years and billions (long scale) away. Of course nobody is cheery about that. After the Europeans dutifully obliged the US and accepted their declaration of article 5 after 9/11 (the only occasion where article 5 was ever invoked), the US now declare their ingratitude and unwillingness to ever reciprocate. Of course nobody is cheery about that.
it's all about rhetorics being used to manipulate for personal gains of a small elite. the kind of elite who makes billion dollar contracts via sms and then accidentally loses such sms.
Who is to blame? European establishment wants of course the citizens of Europe to blame Trump and not them for not preparing for this eventuality.
But the truth is that almost all of them are responsible for neglecting what is the best interest of Europe. Thus they play this game.
Then globalization died a second time with the Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the emergence of BRICS and the consequences of sanctions and the breakdown of the global monetary system.
Globalization died when the small minded monster Republicans had been farming for decades escaped its talk radio cage and found Trump. Trump (and his loser-mentality enablers) saw systems they didn't understand, and more irritatingly other parties who wouldn't just lap up shit as they were bossed around, and inferred this meant the US must have been getting a poor deal instead of an awesome one. (BuT tHE dEbT!!1!)
Pax Americana is over, US is no longer capable of dictating globalization to the rest of the world, why? Because many countries has caught up.
If the US weren't still some kind of world leader, USD would be in the toilet as other countries would have dropped most of their USD holdings. The current regime seems to be doing their best to make that happen, whether for cryptocurrencies, foreign agents, or just simple-minded looting.
I'm an American libertarian. It's not Democrat versus Republican. It's conservative versus neofascist/patrimonialist.
But more to the point, you seem to be under the impression that Americans benefit on a personal level from our country's global empire. We really don't. Like I said above, there are a lot of fat-cats making big money grifitng off government contracts, often with overt conflicts-of-interest involving their connections in the government. Some of that money goes to their employees and ultimately into local economies but largely it's just a circuitous way to enrich assholes.
If you ever visit America, try driving about 150 miles or so out of whatever major metropolis you're staying at and take a look at how depressing this country really is. These people don't look like they're living in the epicenter of the world's most powerful and influential empire. It does not matter to them if Europe buys up the new f-47 or whatever. They could care less if the EU becomes a major military superpower in its own right. That's why when you look at these election maps, it comes down to urban areas backing the democrats and rural areas backing the trumpublicans with surprising uniformity.
I am routinely puzzled at the simple ignorance of U.S. citizens decrying the benefits of being the global hegemon:
- global reserve currency: lower borrowing rates, allows us to set economic norms
- massive military and power projections: maintains stability and provides influence wherever it's deployed
- US culture: opens up the world market to US art and culture, all of which redounds to the benefit of industries and consumers inside the US.
These benefits extend to all our allies and generally created an epoch of peace unlike any that existed before (this is including all the wars the US elected to engage in).
You may not like all of the particulars (who would?), but there is no question US citizens are richer for our global power and reach.
>These people don't look like they're living in the epicenter of the world's most powerful and influential empire. It does not matter to them if Europe buys up the new f-47 or whatever.
They may not appreciate how much the military-industrial complex benefits them not, but I think they will experience directly how it had helped when the market is gone.
Instead I would say that US corporate interests and the wealthy undoubtedly benefit from US hegemony, and there is a more or less relentless effort to deny those benefits to the poor and middle class. The cost of living, especially rent or mortgage servicing, has drastically outpaced wage increases. Health care is in terrible shape with medical bankruptcy increasingly common, and outcomes way worse.
The MI complex is again something that Americans don't credit enough for economic stimulation, but if anything it just shows that a command economy works way better than neoliberal capitalists would have us believe.
Even "peace" is poorly distributed internally. A "volunteer army" in effect is one where those with means don't have to risk their lives supporting the latest US adventure.
Not sure how you made the jump here. EU is signalling increased military spending but there isn't really much talk about tech (beyond reddit-like enthusiasm which leads nowhere); which is funny because the top referrals for this site are .. american companies themselves.
That being said, increased spending doesn't necessarily guarantee results.
EU cloud is certainly much discussed, and more than that. Holland for instance voted and accepted a resolution last week for more digital sovereignty. This doesn't mean we'll have an AWS competitor overnight, but we're also only 3 months in.
Where do these 800 bn really come from, how fast they will transform into R&D and products, how much the industrial status quo is going to change? These are hard questions that remain unanswered.
I don’t think it really is unclear. The war in Ukraine served as an initial trigger that did spark some notesble changes. But the trump administration even more so. Ask the former UdSSR and Warsaw pact states. They were sounding the alarm bells for a long time and don’t appear to be willing to take any chances going forward.
> Where do these 800 bn really come from,
Government deficit.
> how fast they will transform into R&D and products
R&D is not really the issue. While there are some notable exceptions, the European defense industry has lots of very capable system that match or exceed the capabilities of US counterparts. The problem is primarily production capacity.
And production capacity is a problem that is relatively easily solved by throwing money at it and committing to long term purchases.
The main risk is that states want to ensure that if they want to spend more, they also get proportionally more. With production capacity being a bottleneck, increased spending could lead to inflationary pricing.
With the inexplicable exception of Hungary.
And where does that come from? Obviously, it should come from the people of the country or its natural resources.
But we don't like to say that, do we?
If the 800bn creates more than 800bn in (time-adjusted) future productivity, it pays for itself. If not, it was a bad investment.
Sure, but that is 800bn that could have been spent on more meaningful things. People would be more happy to redeem that by their work..
Because it not true. The only body emitting currency is a government
When you treat your closest allies like that, you instantly become untrustworthy. And you will remain untrustworthy far longer than Trump can stay in office, be it with the current terms or some Putin-like term extensions.
Also, the 800bn are a huge bunch of money that politicians would have never gotten otherwise. Now they have it an can spend it on their military-industrial-cronies. They won't let that opportunity go to waste, even if the reason were gone.
Allocating the money and printing feel good stories on regulations is the EASY part.
Now, delivering on the cut-throat tech competition on a reasonable time frame seems not part of the european ethos.
Okay, but if that's true then what does that say about the relationship between Europe and the United States when they could have done this the whole time and chose not to? Especially when the last 4 or so presidents have all complained about European nations neglecting to meet their NATO defense spending targets only to be politely ignored or in some cases laughed at in public by European counterparts?
I assume Europeans are willing to forgo some, maybe even most of their social benefits in exchange for increased military spending? I understand many currently enjoy fairly generous government support.
If not, then will there be an even bigger increase in taxes? How does EU plan to roll this out?
They're supposedly spending €1.4B this year, up by 17% from last.
https://eic.ec.europa.eu/news/european-innovation-council-in...
There's a significant amount of EU-based companies being created in the defence space. Helsing was visionary in that sense, but also paved the way for many startups to follow suite.
Europe doing so now is good for America because it reduces the risk of Americans once again dying in yet another European war.
We need to go back to WW2 for you comment to have any value.
I think Americans can thank themselves and nobody else for their people dying in wars.
We're both better off if Europe can comfortably cut America loose. Europe building up their domestic defense capabilities is essential for this and will bring about a greater chance for long term peace.
Okay that's a fair point, but if we've learned our lesson from Iraq, Vietnam, etc then why would we want a war in Ukraine? Ukraine's not a NATO member and we have no obligations towards them. If Ukraine is so important to the Europeans that they want to risk escalating a regional border squabble into an apocalyptic nuclear confrontation with Russia, then they need to raise an army for it.
I don't particularly like the way that trump has been overtly signaling his desire to end NATO, but the NATO treaty never obligated America to defend non-members and the people who seem to think it does are as perplexing as trump himself.
US service members represented about 68% of the coalition deaths in Afghanistan and about 93% in Iraq:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Coa...
The expectation for a European war should be similar. Europe should supply about 80% of the effort, since they're the ones directly affected. Even now, the US has supplied almost half the aid to Ukraine:
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
So the US pulling out of Europe could be considered a necessary correction to reach parity with the Iraq/Afghanistan situation.
>We need to go back to WW2 for you comment to have any value.
The point of having a strong military is to deter your enemies, not fight them. The US has deterred the USSR/Russia in Europe for 80 years. What did that get us? HN comments about how we've supposedly "extorted" Europe.
It's really striking the amount of anti-Americanism that comes out of Europe relative to other US allies. This has been going on for years and years before Trump. There seems to be something uniquely dysfunctional about the Atlantic relationship, relative to other ally relationships the US has.
>I think Americans can thank themselves and nobody else for their people dying in wars.
Of course Europe's contribution to Iraq and Afghanistan should be acknowledged. Here it is on the State Dept website: https://www.state.gov/dipnote-u-s-department-of-state-offici...
That breaks the premise for this thread which was people lost in war.
> It's really striking the amount of anti-Americanism that comes out of Europe relative to other US allies.
You broaden up the premise from lost casualties in war to the entire relationsship - I think that is multiple PhDs to figure out whether this is anti american or reasonable push back.
I can further open this up an include obvious anti trust malpractice, cultural imperialism, etc., etc. that the US in constantly pushing on the EU (and the rest of the world).
But please enlighten me on how the entire world in against the US, and how badly you are being treated - the country with the absolute biggest economic power and military power.
Cry me a river.
lupusreal talked about the "risk of Americans once again dying in yet another European war" (emphasis mine). By making Europe part of its security umbrella, and deterring the USSR/Russia, the US shouldered that risk.
It's simple. I don't want to shoulder risk for people who despise me. Every time Europeans downvote my comments in this thread, it makes me want to shoulder risk for them less and less. And I'm a registered Democrat.
>You broaden up the premise from lost casualties in war to the entire relationsship - I think that is multiple PhDs to figure out whether this is anti american or reasonable push back.
I'm trying to tell you, as a European, why Americans like me aren't enthusiastic about the alliance. What you do with that information is your business.
I think some pushback on the issue of Greenland is perfectly justified. That represents actual aggressive behavior on the part of the US. And I think it's fair to complain about the US voting with Russia at the United Nations. We could at least abstain from voting, like China.
What I don't like is the notion that the US has a special obligation to protect Ukraine.
* Everywhere on the internet, you'll see the "fact" that the US promised to protect Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. That "fact" is false. All we promised was to seek UN Security Council action. Read the memorandum for yourself if you don't believe me: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
* There are ongoing armed conflicts all over the world. The US can't police everywhere. And it's psychologically unsustainable to do volunteer police work when people despise you for it. Given our limited resources, we need to prioritize. We might as well de-prioritize the interests of relatively wealthy countries, such as Europe, since those countries should be better able to provide for themselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...
>obvious anti trust malpractice
You're saying that you don't like how antitrust is practiced in the US? Why is that any of your business? The US is a sovereign country. If you're going to complain about Elon Musk commenting on German elections, why is it your place to complain about how antitrust law works in the US?
For many years, Europeans have had absolutely no inhibitions in expressing their contempt for US policies in guns, healthcare, etc. Yet somehow when Americans do the same, and comment on European policies regarding e.g. immigration, Europeans flip out.
>cultural imperialism
So Europeans, of their own free will, like American music and movies. This is supposed to represent the US oppressing Europe somehow?
I think these two complaints of yours actually underscore my point about European anti-Americanism. I can't imagine a Japanese person complaining that they are oppressed due to the way antitrust is practiced in the US, or that they are oppressed because so many Japanese like to watch American movies. Out of all our "allies", it's only Europeans who are in the habit of complaining about stuff like this.
>the country with the absolute biggest economic power and military power.
I think life is generally pretty good for Americans, and we don't have a lot to complain about. But we do have limited resources, and we can't help everyone. And it's very annoying to read all of the anti-Americanism online, even for situations where we tried to do our best, and even when we're arguably one of the most benevolent superpowers in world history. At a certain point I just don't want to be involved anymore.
But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given.
I don't care about the US being a powerful country. I'm tired of being the world's police. I'm against so-called "American imperialism". I want to be Switzerland. Ally with no one, trade with everyone. Switzerland has a much healthier relationship with the rest of Europe, without toxic dependency.
That's my metric regarding whether an approach is "productive" or not. Give it 10 years until the US/Europe relationship resets to the Switzerland/Europe relationship. That's the goal.
I'd say Trump has already succeeded by this metric in terms of Europe taking responsibility for itself. That's the first step. You need to stop depending on us so you'll stop resenting us.
Switzerland never threatened Germany to become the 27th canton. They didn't threaten military allies with military intervention. They also do not keep permanent military bases in other countries, in practice autonomous zones where there are intermittent scandals where Swiss law protects rapists. No other counties dutifully joined any Swiss invasions in the Middle East.
Europe did not have to shoulder orders of magnitude (look it up) more refugees from these wars than the instigator of the wars. The Swiss do not regularly use their economic power to force other countries to share passenger data for all transit, they do not force far reaching intellectual property legislation of all sorts on other countries.
The Swiss, however, do a lot of other strange things. They are basically a bank with national sovereignity which economically has kept up a very strong industrial appendix with a very strong, primarily industrially focused, engineering sector. The post-WW2 history contains a lot of stones largely left unturned, and there is zero chance another coutry could occupy this particular nation state evolution niche.
>Europe did not have to shoulder orders of magnitude (look it up) more refugees from these wars than the instigator of the wars. The Swiss do not regularly use their economic power to force other countries to share passenger data for all transit, they do not force far reaching intellectual property legislation of all sorts on other countries.
Exactly. We are in violent agreement. You're doing an excellent job of explaining why the US should be more Swiss, as I've been saying.
>there is zero chance another coutry could occupy this particular nation state evolution niche.
Of course we won't do exactly what the Swiss have done, e.g. we will continue to have a major software industry. My point is we should have a more Swiss approach to foreign policy.
Imposing tariffs and threatening annexation of former allies is not a great start.
But you will get a lot more of the "anti-americanism" you were crying about some comments ago. Better get used to it, it has merely started.
I'm against annexation of Greenland as I stated elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43460070
The US, as a sovereign country, has just as much right to levy taxes on imports as any other country.
You, personally, being against it means little, when your president openly threatens it.
> The US, as a sovereign country, has just as much right to levy taxes on imports
And other countries, in their own sovereignty, have just as much right to retaliate with tarriffs of their own, and do trade deals amongst themselves.
You can discount all of my opinions due to me not being president then :-)
>And other countries, in their own sovereignty, have just as much right to retaliate with tarriffs of their own, and do trade deals amongst themselves.
Agreed.
And that, friend, is called a trade war.
Good that we made some progress here.
And do you think the US will start setting up more social policies if such happens?
You should look up social policies in the US under the cold War. I think you'd find that the US was much more aligned.
Also,it is easy to diminish the attitudes the US has against all other countries - which is not quite heartwarming either.
I would love to return to these conversations when the is influence has shrunk to the influence of Switzerland. I am not so sure the points will stand as strong anymore.
They don't despise you. They dislike your government.
> What I don't like is the notion that the US has a special obligation to protect Ukraine.
Sure, it doesn't. But you don't think that appeasing an expansionist Russia might run contrary to America's interests?
> You're saying that you don't like how antitrust is practiced in the US? Why is that any of your business?
Because how antitrust is practiced in the US has global effects. Why wouldn't it be our business?
> If you're going to complain about Elon Musk commenting on German elections, why is it your place to complain about how antitrust law works in the US?
Yeah, the influence of a random commenter on HN is comparable to the owner of one of the worlds largest social networks. Come on.
> Yet somehow when Americans do the same, and comment on European policies regarding e.g. immigration, Europeans flip out.
Generally, we tend to be better informed about American issues than vice versa, due to the global reach of US media. I'm not saying Europeans are perfectly informed, I've seen some dumb as fuck takes, but on average it certainly skews one way.
Then why are my comments in this thread being downvoted? I'm trying to share my perspective, and I get sarcastic replies like "Cry me a river."
All of my most acrimonious arguments on HN have been with Europeans talking about transatlantic relations. There just seems to be something uniquely dysfunctional about the US/Europe relationship. From my perspective, I'm sorry to say that internet Europeans come across as incredibly obnoxious and entitled.
Put it another way, I see way more "Americans are fat and stupid" comments from Europeans than other US allies. That's not about our government. That's about us as Americans.
I find that anti-American stereotypes are frequently false when you fact check. For example, the US actually seems to have pretty good education outcomes. We're not stupid: https://xcancel.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/17322446879293604...
This fact-checking tells me that anti-Americanism (again: regarding citizens, not the government) may be driven by resentment rather than data.
There seems to be some sort of tall poppy syndrome coming out of Europe which I don't want to be a part of. I interpret it as a sort of toxic collectivism. America is an individualist country which believes in celebration of success and free association. Europe wants to resent American success, while also obliging the US to help it when it needs help. I just don't want to be allied with you guys anymore, sorry. I'm happy that you're now starting to figure out things on your own, and I wish you the best.
>you don't think that appeasing an expansionist Russia might run contrary to America's interests?
For one, I don't buy this appeasement talking point. I haven't seen much hard evidence that Russia has ambitions beyond Ukraine. This seems to be another European collectivism thing again, where if you question this you get excluded from the collective.
For another thing, from a realist perspective, I actually don't see why Russian expansionism is so vital to US interests. From a realist perspective, we could just be neutral and trade with whoever wins. Peace with major powers like Russia and China is very much in the US interest.
Even before Trump, Europeans would always say that the US is a selfish imperialist country. Maybe the point of Trump is to show just a bit about how the US would actually behave, if the US was the sort of country that Europe has always said it was.
>Yeah, the influence of a random commenter on HN is comparable to the owner of one of the worlds largest social networks. Come on.
Is there a principle that you're not supposed to interfere in another country's elections, or not?
Sure, you're just one commenter, but a lot of random European commenters add up.
I'm happy for you to constructively critique why you think a different antitrust policy would be better, or even say Europe should make antitrust an item in trade negotations. But it comes across as obnoxious when you act like US antitrust policies are oppressing you and we're obligated to change them for you, and this negates 80 years of NATO protection.
The US is a sovereign nation that's allowed to have its own antitrust policies, its own foreign policy, its own approach to alliances. That understanding needs to be foundational for an improved US/Europe relationship. So far I just don't think Europeans get it.
> Do European countries appear to perform worse than White Americans in standardized tests because of low-performing immigrants?
You are literally citing material that compares as race segregated US to other countries as wholes.
I have a lot of very smart American friends, from all across the political spectre.
I have mostly worked for us companies.
And luckily you are not representative of the average American.
Yes, the claim is that apparently low US scores have more to do with US racial composition than a problem with the US educational system. That's the point?
I hedged with "seems to have pretty good education outcomes" because I'm not sure about the racial composition of Europe for 3rd+ generation immigrations. My expectation is that mass migration to Europe is mostly just in the past couple of generations (accounted for in that thread), but I haven't looked into it.
>And luckily you are not representative of the average American.
I didn't vote for Trump. I actually think he's a terrible president. But many Americans did. If Europe wants to get along with the US, it would be useful to understand how Trump supporters think. Since I do sympathize with them in some respects, I've been trying to explain that perspective, as I understand it, to users in this thread. If you want to understand the "average American", you can't just write off a huge fraction of the American population and refer to Trump as "Agent Orange", as was done elsewhere in this thread.
You claim to have American friends from all across the political spectrum. What have you learned from your Trump-supporting friends which helped you understand their perspective? It looks to me like you had me pegged as a Trump supporter previously (ascribing views to me I did not hold), and immediately became sarcastic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43459849
Also, the US only has two parties - so a lot of people are voting because of a lack of better alternatives. This is wildly different than the EU where most countries have a much more nuanced political landscape. Eg. Germany that has 7 parties.
As such I also know that politics in US is more akin to a sports match than what I consider politics in - and this is congruent to what I hear from my US friends with the sentiment: Either you are with us or against us.
What I do have you pecked on is a complete ignorance of the US's political position globally. You seem completely oblivious to the fact that more than half listed stock globally is US - and that this is a marketplace. Ie. not only US capital.
I appreciate you don't want to be in that position. That you want to be a part of an underdog country. But you are not.
When I write "Cry me a river" that is a way to say: Deal with it. Go and understand where the US stands on the global scene.
Hopefully you can get to appreciate the benefits (English is not my first language) and manage the down sides of such an arrangement.
And hopefully you can develop some humility to the fact.
Try using Google Translate or a European equivalent? You can write in your native language and translate into English. Using a translator could help you understand my points better, as well.
>You seem completely oblivious to the fact that more than half listed stock globally is US - and that this is a marketplace. Ie. not only US capital.
Yes, I'm aware that US stocks are overvalued. I don't see the relevance to our discussion. A correction was inevitable in my opinion.
>I appreciate you don't want to be in that position. That you want to be a part of an underdog country. But you are not.
First, it's not about being an underdog. It's about having free and equal relations, free association between nations that respect each others' sovereignty.
In any case -- If you respected US sovereignty, you would respect my opinion, as a US citizen, that we need a more Swiss foreign policy.
We have no obligation to stand in our current place in the global scene. Our current place was the decision of a previous generation of politicians. We're a democracy. We're allowed to vote, and change our policy. You can't coerce us into being an empire with your words. That's absurd.
If you wish to persuade me that the pre-2016 arrangement was good for the US, you're welcome to respectfully make your case for that. You're not doing that. Your condescending attitude is exactly the thing I'm arguing against, and exactly why I think the idea of "US-Europe shared values" is overrated.
>And hopefully you can develop some humility to the fact.
You are a foreigner commenting on US politics telling me that I, as a US citizen, need to be humble in my views of US policy. It's wild to me that Europeans will talk this way, then turn around and complain that Elon Musk is "influencing European elections".
Imagine if Elon said Europeans "need to be humble, appreciate their position, and keep buying Teslas". How would you feel?
The difference between you and I is: I recognize that Europeans have free association, and they are free to buy whatever products they want. I think it is silly to boycott the US over Ukraine, when the US has been one of Ukraine's biggest supporters. I'd say you should start by boycotting countries such as Brazil which have provided almost no support at all. The vast majority of countries have provided no support: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
But, I recognize that you're a free individual making free choices for yourself -- same as us Americans are. So, buy what you like. Boycott what you like. I may think it is silly. But it's your decision, and I respect that.
This needs to be foundational for our discussion. If we say the partnership isn't working for us, you need to respect that instead of give us a lecture on our ignorance and our need for humility. Simple.
You way of debating is defensive and dismissive. So that is a hard stop from me here
I'm getting downvoted because Europeans have taken America for granted. They struggle with a relationship based on mutual respect and fairness.
But as an outsider (in Europe, but in one of those countries that has been "policed" by largely US-led initiative), I think you are seen as discounting the net economic benefits US has enjoyed from taking on that role in the past.
If you acknowledged that more openly, I think people would take more gladly to your arguments: yes, it will hurt both US and EU as the countries move away from this mutually beneficial arrangement (which helped keep US a global economic leader, and helped EU focus on society development — greatly simplified summary so obviously flawed), but I do agree with you that hopefully we end up with a nicer state of affairs in 20-30 years. I am not necessarily confident this happens though, which is also what you might be seeing play out (fear of this unknown future).
You are also simplifying things, which does not help: if EU had a defensive force so it needed not depend on NATO/US, what else would have been different?
Note that people do complain about other countries doing the things you see them complain about in the US too (eg. China's state sponsorship of local companies with reduced taxes and oversight), though I understand how you, as an American, feel those towards the US more strongly. And yes, they are even more common against the US because we have more US people engaging in discourse on the same platforms (mostly US ones), so they are unsuspecting "willing" listeners. Not much sense in arguing about China when everybody agrees, and Chinese do not feel the liberty or have any desire to participate.
And that's perhaps the core point: the two cultures value these same human rights, which does mean that you need to hear the shit people dislike a lot more (and there's even the term for it in "vocal minority").
Cool.
>But as an outsider (in Europe, but in one of those countries that has been "policed" by largely US-led initiative), I think you are seen as discounting the net economic benefits US has enjoyed from taking on that role in the past.
Europeans keep mentioning these supposed benefits in discussions online. But suspiciously, they never get very concrete.
Prior to WW1, the US had a policy of staying out of European geopolitics. Our economy did fantastic during that period.
Switzerland does fantastic by staying relatively neutral.
Currently, the US is sanctioning Russia. This has obvious economic downsides for the US. It makes the dollar less attractive as a global reserve currency.
If European countries were "vassal states" to the US, as I'm always being told, why were they buying oil from Russia rather than the USA prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine? That would be an obvious economic benefit for the US that failed to materialize.
>You are also simplifying things, which does not help: if EU had a defensive force so it needed not depend on NATO/US, what else would have been different?
I don't know. Perhaps you would've had a third world war already? After all, that was the idea with the US staying in Europe -- to prevent a third world war. By all means enlighten me regarding whatever you had in mind.
One point is it would probably be good for the US economy, since you would've bought more American weapons to better defend yourself.
- - -
Part of what I am trying to help Europeans understand is that their anti-American rhetoric is the very thing that undermined the American voter's idealism towards Europe.
Europeans consistently seem to believe that America benefits significantly from the current arrangement. I haven't seen much evidence at all that anyone in the US believes this. American citizens don't believe it. American leadership doesn't believe it either. Look at the recent JD Vance leak. The last 3-4 presidents have all been asking Europe to step up and fund its own defense.
There is an astonishing mismatch between the cynicism with which the Europeans view the transatlantic relationship, and the idealism with which the Americans previously viewed it (until they realized how little Europeans like them, now that the transatlantic relationship has become the #1 topic on social media). I believe that America's shift away from Europe will become a bipartisan consensus now that the US has woken up. Trump lead the shift, but I think there is a very good chance that the Democrats keep it in place if they come back into power.
See this post for example, it does a great job of capturing the dynamic I'm trying to point at: https://terry264.substack.com/p/europe-youre-on-your-own
More and more Americans are thinking thoughts like: "Those Europeans are making fun of us for our lack of public healthcare. Why should our tax dollars pay to defend them, when we could be spending that money on our health at home?"
I hope you get ready for what may come when the US leaves:
>Zelensky highlighted the disparity in forces between Russia and Europe, saying that Ukraine's army consists of 110 brigades, while Russia fields 220 and plans to expand to 250 this year. In contrast, Europe, including U.S. troops stationed there, has only about 82 combat brigades, he said.
>...
>"Today, an army of 110 brigades is holding back those who have 220-230. But it's one to two," Zelensky added. The president said that while Russia's numeral advantage compared to Ukraine is two to one, in comparison to Europe, it's three to one, which is sufficient for an effective offensive.
https://kyivindependent.com/europe-could-face-russian-occupa...
I can come up with a scenario that's more peaceful: eg. if US did not fund EU's defenses, EU would have developed their own defence industry further, and instead of buying weaponry from US, they would have equally got it from Russia, and more recently, India and China. Perhaps even India and China catch up slower as Russia has richer willing customers in EU.
This would have led to Russia having an even bigger economic interest in playing nice with EU, and would not have feared NATO at all, because it wouldn't have included US.
Ergo, no war in Ukraine.
At the same time, US companies would not have been trusted with projects with highest earning potential (government infrastructure projects, including IT): perhaps MS never gets so deep into EU institutions and companies, Amazon never gets trusted for IT infra, etc.
Now, I think the US is recognizing that this earning potential has moved to other big countries or systems (like BRICS), as these countries have increased their purchasing power — which is all fair and good — but to repeatedly claim that US did not benefit from EU's purchasing power for US products in the last 60 years is insincere.
A basic problem with your story is the US/Europe trade deficit. If the US gains such a critical trade advantage by providing security to Europe, you would expect this would come through in the EU buying lots of US exports. In fact, the US buys more EU exports, despite the EU not funding US defense the way the US funds EU defense.
>I can come up with a scenario that's more peaceful: eg. if US did not fund EU's defenses, EU would have developed their own defence industry further, and instead of buying weaponry from US, they would have equally got it from Russia, and more recently, India and China. Perhaps even India and China catch up slower as Russia has richer willing customers in EU.
So Europe would buy USSR weapons during the Cold War? How does this hypothetical go, exactly? This just sounds like a scenario where the USSR expands to cover all of Europe. The Berlin Wall never would've fallen because instead of a wall, it would be the Atlantic Ocean. And honestly, if that's the world you want to live in, I'm fine with that.
>would not have feared NATO at all, because it wouldn't have included US.
But NATO would have included a rearmed West Germany in this hypothetical? I'll bet the USSR would've feared that...
>US did not benefit from EU's purchasing power for US products in the last 60 years
Trade is always mutually beneficial. I think security benefits both parties approximately equally, in the sense of allowing that trade and prosperity to occur. But the US would've received similar trade and prosperity benefit if it had only invested in Europe's security 10% as much, and asked Europe to cover the rest.
In any case, as I stated in my comment -- whatever Europeans may believe, few in the US appear to agree much. That seems to be a core part of the issue. Europe can tell itself all it wants that "defending Europe is in America's core interest" -- but if America doesn't actually believe that, it doesn't matter, and you guys need to either defend yourselves or (much preferably) find a way to make peace with Russia.
Some things will not necessarily show up in the trade numbers: as a random example, a US company like Amazon opening up Amazon EU headquarters in Ireland will not show up as surplus for US economy as long as they reinvest that locally, but most Europeans will see it as a US company and the business contributing to its success — "simple" goes out the window very quickly with global monopolistic companies.
It's funny you focus so much on the "Cold War", when it was mostly a Cold War between... US and USSR. Again, you are making claims as if you know exactly how things would have played out if US did not decide to invest in influencing European politics and economies. Perhaps we would have seen a larger shift to socialism and communism instead (eg. in Spain, socialists have already been on the winning side of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Spanish_general_election).
Even that might not mean strong alignment with USSR, just like Yugoslavia never did even as a socialist, communist country.
I hear you on how Americans perceive the situation differently, but you are similarly not willing to hear out the European viewpoints.
Anyway, I think this has gone long enough — thank you for sharing your perspective, and even if I failed to nudge you towards better understanding the "other side" too, it's always great to hear different viewpoints.
The common US view is that if that Cold War was not "fought", the USSR would've taken over most or all of Europe. Non-alignment only works if there are 2 rival superpowers to play off of each other. But if you're fine with USSR hegemony in Europe, or you think that's not the outcome that would've happened -- that's a great argument for the US pulling out now. If the US doesn't reliably make things better (which is my view), it's better for us to leave.
>I hear you on how Americans perceive the situation differently, but you are similarly not willing to hear out the European viewpoints.
I think I am willing to hear Europeans out. I previously said stuff in this thread like "I'm happy for you to constructively critique..." and "If you wish to persuade me... you're welcome to respectfully make your case..." and "Of course Europe's contribution to Iraq and Afghanistan should be acknowledged." [Note that Europeans in this thread have largely not acknowledged any sort of positive contribution the US made to Europe -- which reinforces my point that we should go. What frustrates me is Europeans who complain about the US endlessly, and also want us to stay!]
>Anyway, I think this has gone long enough — thank you for sharing your perspective, and even if I failed to nudge you towards better understanding the "other side" too, it's always great to hear different viewpoints.
Appreciate you sharing your perspective as well. To be fair, I think we mostly agree with one another anyways, and my disagreements are deeper with others in this thread.
Russia is the one that needs to find a way to make peace. Not only because they started it but because they're the reason there is no peace deal
The Capitalist/free trade peace theory has not worked out well, compared to democratic peace theory. It failed wrt Ukraine where both Ukraine and multiple EU countries had significant trade with Russia but Russia still went to war despite knowing some of the economic damage it would cause.
Also the invasion had nothing to do with NATO.
Bricks isn't actually a thing Of course both US and EU have benefited from trade relations quite a lot and Trump's nonsense is nonsense
Hard evidence is too late. Putin (and associates) speeches and writings indicate more than enough. Why do you think that former Soviet countries boardering Russia are the most scared?
How's the proposed Canada / Greenland wars fit into this? As well as ongoing support for the forever proxy war in the middle east between the US and Iran.
There have been many cases over the last decades where European interest and opinions have been quite different from US foreign policy pushes, but European countries almost always yielded to US pressure, partly due to the close relationship, but more so due to the de-facto dependence.
If Europe becomes more self-reliant and builds up more notable and integrated military capabilities, it will also mean that the we will persue different goals and prioritise our own strategic and economic interests, which sometimes might align with the US, but plenty of times will not.
It will bring about a marked decline of how much sway the US has.
Doing so rashly? That vastly increases the chances because it encourages Russia to do something in the 3-5 year timeframe.
Can you sit down with a map and draw out exactly *WHAT* you think Russia will be capable of doing 5 years from now? Keep in mind that:
1. We watched the best-equipped and trained brigades in Ukraine bounce off well-prepared minefields and trenchworks in summer 2023. Just like in WW1, technology is in a state where defense is easier than offense.
2. Europe has years of prep time, and unmolested industrial capacity available, to build defenses that would make the "Surovikin Line" look like a speedbump.
This is why people joke about "Schrodinger's Russia": where Russia is so weak that people make fun of it for its slow progress in conquering Ukraine, yet is also so powerful that it has 500+ million Europeans shaking in their boots at the idea that Russia is gonna blitzkrieg the whole continent or something.
They also have one of the most capable psyop machines in the world and a massive network of spies / 5th Column in place. They are especially strong in Eastern Europe and Germany.
So there's very much a risk that they try to hybrid style "grab" there then at a time when they have sown political chaos into Europe.
We can reduce the risk of we have overwhelming force available at hand - like we currently do as allies of the US - which makes any such move literal suicide as we would obliterate them.
Also - now this is my viewpoint - by committing to re-arming now and providing everything we have to help Ukraine kick Russia out of their country - a full rout of the Russians - we vastly reduce the risk of anything like that ever happening again and we set the conditions for the eventual liberation of Belarus and demilitarisation and neutralisation of Kaliningrad.
Basically: we get sharp fangs now so we can push the best time-line.
Also: there is an unlikely but not unthinkable scenario where American, under Emperor Trump (or Musk) switch to using gunboat diplomacy and bully Europe the way the British (and other European nations) bullied others in the past. And like America itself did to its neighbours in the Victorian times. So re-arming such that we have complete independence from the US reduces their leverage.
In a good timeline having both a strong Europe and strong US on the same side puts us in a very good place wrt China / India etc in the future.
Ok, I'll take this as a starting point. Let's assume Russia has committed to seizing everything south of Kaunas and Vilnius, and north of Suwalki. The eastern part of this patch of land is ~200km frontage with Belarus (south of the E28 Highway). Because Kaunas and Vilnius combined have populations of ~900k, I'm going to assume the Russians will aim to bypass rather than seize them, so that will involve establishing blocking positions south of both cities in order to isolate them from the desired terrain. It also involves capturing Alytus, about the same size and population as Bakhmut. I would need to dig through some doctrinal publications to figure out how the Russians would template a force package for this op, but I'll spitball it at at least an entire corps/Combined Arms Army of 2-3 divisions and a few separate brigades, maybe 60-80,000 men?
While the focus is on repulsing an attack in this southern sector, let's assume Lithuania fortifies the entire border with Belarus, which is ~350km. Minefields 1km deep with 1 AT or 1 AP mine per 6 square meters would require ~60 million mines and $5 billion USD (about 1 year of Lithuania's military budget). That's an extreme lift but not impossible if amortized over several years, even without help from other EU nations. A defensive belt built behind a minefield like that will take the Russians weeks to penetrate if properly supported by other assets. Those weeks give the rest of the EU decision space for political action as well as time for mobilization/flowing combat power into the Area of Operations.
So the real question is "why"? Why would Russia want to expend the resources to accomplish this? Figure out what Russia wants and then structure a defense that imposes an unpalatable cost on the attacker. My position is that it can be accomplished without American involvement. Finland spent the Cold War a) outside of NATO b) with no independent "security guarantees" c) without getting invaded by the Soviets (again).....because it also made itself expensive enough to invade/annex that the Soviets didn't think the cost of re-absorbing that particular bit of formerly-Russian-Imperial-territory to be worth it. Facing down a massive conventional military assault from a well-equipped and supported adversary is not impossible: the Lebanese have done it twice in the past twenty years against the Israelis. Be like Lebanon.
>by committing to re-arming now and providing everything we have to help Ukraine kick Russia out of their country - a full rout of the Russians
That's not realistic. At all. There is no reality where Ukraine forcibly ejects Russia from the land bridge that it has established with Crimea. Breaching Russia's fortifications requires more combat engineering equipment than exists in all of NATO at this point. The Ukrainian 2023 offensive was supposed to reach Tokmak in 3 days. It took them closer to 90 days to even breach the 2nd of 3 defensive lines north of the city. Let alone actually reach Melitopol and Berdiansk. No army on the planet is trained and equipped to deal with kilometer-deep defensive belts covered by artillery, UAVs, attack helicopters....AND enemy air superiority. You would need to completely collapse the Russian army and economy 1917-style, which is also not looking likely, or at least not likely to occur before Ukraine itself collapses.
At some point Europeans need to come back to reality. Until then.....Americans are no longer interested in getting tangled up in Europe's mess (even though the mess is largely our fault).
> So re-arming such that we have complete independence from the US reduces their leverage.
Which ironically is what Trump wanted Europe to do anyway: pay for your own security with your own money!
> In a good timeline having both a strong Europe and strong US on the same side puts us in a very good place wrt China / India etc in the future.
The US is returning to a Pacific focus, like the one we had 1890-1913 (ish). I think this is the correct posture for us. We don't need to be on the "same side" of Europe, just like we weren't really on any European side until Woodrow Wilson, America's worst President, ruined everything by getting us into WW1. Due to geography we are fundamentally a maritime power, and we should be focused on trans-Pacific trade with the growing economic heart of the planet: the Valerierpieris Circle ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle ).
Hopefully my post isn't too disjointed and rambly...
Now their successors, who have been hoping that there isn't a tough discussion coming up, are now edging around that it was a terrible idea and backtracking as quickly as possible. Fortunately the US didn't move all the staff out so there are US subsidiaries in Europe which have staff in an uncertain situation who are probably quite easy to hire.
It's a step in the right direction for Europe but only because it was historically a terrible step in the wrong direction.
I think France are probably in a better place than most countries at the moment. That is it.
Keeping an eye on this myself, as a Brit working in the UK for a US chip company; I'm wondering when the right moment to pull my RSUs from the US brokerage account and back across the Atlantic is.
EU politicians right now are trying to use this moment to unify the EU more and to justify more spending, but they way they steer the narrative is very awkward. They want to spend but only some regions will benefit from this spending as it stands and the others will only pay the bill further causing division.
Private companies in EU face a different problem - switching away from industry leading vendors makes them less competitive. We will have to see how this plays out.
I don't understand why Europeans have to blame Trump for "spending a fair minimum on their own defense in the face of existential threats" or "investing domestically in technology".
These are things you always should have been doing.
For the US though, this European reliance on what is in effect rubbish is great. Rubbish in return for cars and all sorts of sophisticated technology.
I don't like calling ad firms etc. 'tech'. Technology for me is things like new chemical processes, whatever TSMC is doing, etc. and the US does have that, but firms like Meta are not a big player outside of machine learning research.
Not sure how much that's true. EU spends billions buying US military hardware such as the Reaper. It's unclear how the story will end up for US taxpayers here.
The thing is, West Germany alone had about 3000 tanks at the end of the Cold War, and reunified Germany nowadays has 300. Navies and air forces have been run to the ground across Europe, even the nuclear forces of UK/FR are nowhere near what they had once been.
The expectation over the last decades, especially after the pacification of the Balkans, was that open war would not return to Europe any time soon - on the one side because almost all European countries were either members of the EU, EEA or Schengen and thus were likely to more integrate instead of going back to 19th century fiefdom wars, and on the other side because the only realistic opponent was Russia... which we thought we could handle by "peace by trade".
The US has done a terrible job regulating digital privacy irrespective of which party has held the office of president. The whole world absolutely should be challenging America to do a better job being the custodian of so much sensitive data. Competition in that market is very welcome and does not represent the death of American tech infrastructure. As an American citizen and alternative search user I love to see pressure on the Google and FB scale giants to compete at providing better privacy in their products. And I think that the only way to solve the data privacy issues rampant in our industry is through legal requirement and market pressure.
Finally, please try not to cheaply patronize Americans and Trump’s foreign policy. We can talk about this issue without the political zingers insinuating that Trump and his supporters are a bunch of reckless ye-haw cowboys-idiots.
Also, these people don’t come from cowboys; they’re unrestrained salesman-on-TV personalities humiliated by poor competitiveness. I think that slightly matters; never seen it in a cowboy.
This came with a responsibility to provide military protection to the US via NATO. Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values, that's why they called the movement "America first". Historically speaking being an empire generally turns out to be a terrible deal in the long term, with maintaining the empire eventually becoming too expensive and leading to collapse and reduced living standards back home, like happened to the Roman empire, and the British empire after WW2.
You mean Europe? There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe. Unless the very definition of these values suddenly changed for the US with Agent Orange.
As far as "far-away places go", it might take a similar amount of time to get from east to west coast of USA as to fly from one of the US coasts to somewhere in Europe...
Europe has been aligned with US culturally and politically for decades and it helped to promote US interests worldwide and to fight US wars. And when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us. I feel personally betrayed, and I imagine there are many, many more like me. Your decisions will ultimately be bad for us all.
I just don't think that's true. Europeans seem much more collectivist, whereas the US is more individualist. That's why Europeans express disdain for US policies around healthcare, guns, etc. Europeans express a tremendous amount of disdain for the US online, calling Americans fat, dumb, neo-imperialist, etc.
That's been going on for ages before Trump. It's done a lot to undermine the transatlantic relationship, in my view. People-to-people connections matter for diplomacy.
How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it.
>when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us.
From my perspective, we deterred Russia for 80 years following WW2, and provided almost 50% of the support for Ukraine to date. That's more than enough to account for European support in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US provided 80% of the muscle for Iraq and Afghanistan. For a fair relationship, Europe should expect to provide 80% of the muscle to deter Russia. A reset to fairness should not feel like betrayal. Europe gets most of the benefit from NATO, therefore Europe should do most of the spending in NATO. Fix this pie chart: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...
This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans.
Maybe your views are colored by your subjective experiences, without being truly representative of the objective facts? Because I have no idea how else you could have the idea that what you described doesn't happen the other way around.
So how does it make you feel? Does it make you want to send troops to America's next Iraq?
If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves. Just look at something like Reddit - I'm guessing at least half the comments are AI generated these days, if not more.
OK, well, can you understand if some of your countrymen didn't wish to send troops to America's next Iraq, due to the xenophobia they experienced?
That's just human nature regardless of what country you're from. That's what I've been trying to explain.
You know that in the US, conservatives are over-represented in the military. If the US does fight Russia, they will be the ones dying for you. Driven by a sense of American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle. It just doesn't make any sense.
>If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves.
I don't believe it's manipulation. Europeans have been anti-American for as long as I can remember. I don't think it is just an internet thing. But yes, it is ironic that lots of Europeans (in this thread even) post, and vote on comments, in more or less the way they would post if they were being paid by Russia.
In any case, if we're going to disregard the internet, why not disregard my comments too? Maybe I'm an AI bot. Or maybe you'd find me to be nice and wonderful if we were interacting in person :-)
Sure! But has this ever not been the case? I think it's reasonable to assume that some level of xenophobia has always existed. So why are you suddenly so hurt about it? Could it be that platforms are deliberately showing you more and more of that, while not showing you positive interactions?
> You know that in the US, conservatives are over-represented in the military. If the US does fight Russia, they will be the ones dying for you. Driven by a sense of American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle. It just doesn't make any sense.
Right now it seems more likely that these same Americans will be fighting with Russia against us, so I hope you can accept that I have very little love left for American "patriotism" right now. Maybe try not threatening allies and dividing the spoils with our shared enemies, that would certainly help.
> I don't believe it's manipulation. Europeans have been anti-American for as long as I can remember. I don't think it is just an internet thing. But yes, it is ironic that lots of Europeans (in this thread even) post, and vote on comments, in more or less the way they would post if they were being paid by Russia.
Okay, but why is this suddenly such a big deal? You're apparently not perturbed by American xenophobia against us, why did you suddenly become so sensitive?
Doubtful. The platforms I'm talking about are mostly HN and /r/worldnews. There's no recommendation engine for either of those. And I don't see other Europeans arguing against this stuff, either.
I elaborated further here regarding why online discussion matters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43477385
>Right now it seems more likely that these same Americans will be fighting with Russia against us, so I hope you can accept that I have very little love left for American "patriotism" right now. Maybe try not threatening allies and dividing the spoils with our shared enemies, that would certainly help.
I certainly wouldn't want the US fight with Russia against Europe. I highly doubt that will happen. But if you like, you can view my "American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle" comment as an explanation of how we got to this situation.
>Okay, but why is this suddenly such a big deal? You're apparently not perturbed by American xenophobia against us, why did you suddenly become so sensitive?
I am perturbed. But to be honest, I'm skeptical that you received much American xenophobia, especially compared to the oceans of anti-Americanism that have been washing across the internet for ages. If you want to show me an example, maybe that will help me understand.
In any case, it's not the anti-Americanism that gets to me so much as the ingratitude. The US has been one of Ukraine's biggest supporters. Yet even when Biden was president, there was a lot of anti-US sentiment in Ukraine discussions, because they wanted even more. They never mentioned countries such as Brazil which gave hardly anything. The US was probably their #2 most hated country after Russia.
I'm arguing for the principle that people who do good things should be appreciated rather than disdained. I see that as a prerequisite for any sort of prosocial society, or a prosocial world order. That's much more important to me than anti-Americanism. In cases where I believe anti-Americanism is justified, it doesn't bother me nearly as much.
So many of these US policies like supporting NATO were justified on the basis of gaining "soft power". The reality is that soft power isn't worth very much, and in the modern world, trying to do good things actually reduces American soft power, not increases it.
Sorry, if you really think there's no "recommendation engine" behind Reddit, I can't help you.
BTW, if you disagree with other Europeans in this thread, why are you arguing with me instead of them?
You mostly don't seem to be stating points of disagreement with them, or points of agreement with me. I can infer a lot from that :-)
Anyways, if you truly think there is a serious risk that the US sides with Russia, then hopefully we at least agree that the US should pull all its troops out of Europe. That should reduce the risk to you guys.
The US is plenty collectivist. Patriots who put country first and would die for it? That's collectivism. Someone who puts their family ahead of themselves? Also collectivism.
One should disdain the US healthcare system not because it isn't "collectivist" (there's nothing particularly individualistic about insurance), but because it's horrifically inefficient. The US government spends more money on healthcare per capita than anywhere in Europe (or Canada or any developed country), yet only manages to cover half the population leaving the other half to spend even more money for private insurance.
Our discussion is on the topic of whether the US and Europe have common values. You can call this stuff "collectivism" if you want. But ironically I think it still indicates some deep US/Europe value differences.
No one in the US believes people should be obligated to serve in the military. It's considered an honor which receives societal support and recognition. This feels more like voluntary altruism. The US has a similar approach with charitable giving -- last I checked its charitable donations are among the highest in the world. In Europe, by contrast, things are organized along obligations. Europeans don't give to charity as much; rather, they're forced to pay taxes so the government can hand out money. And they take that same mentality to the transatlantic alliance, implying that the US should be obligated to defend them. It's quite jarring to me when here in the US we celebrate the voluntary sacrifices of our service members, whereas Europeans take our service members as a given, and complain when we discuss withdrawal. You should celebrate more when another country chooses to defend you, not less.
USA still has legal support for conscription, so that is wrong. Plenty of people feel exactly that.
Why the leadup (complete with de-humanization of citizens!) to annexation of Canada, then? Why normalization of invading parts of Europe (Greenland)? Why talk about taking over Panama?
Trump is 100% pro-empire, he's just too thick to understand that America already had empire without having Google Maps have everything the same colour.
Then why did they elect an imperialist? The current president has already announced the possibility of military interventions against Canada and Denmark in order to expand US territory.
That's a kind of imperalism not seen since the middle of last century, when most empires started to proritize soft power over territory as the military and economic powers started to unite. It was easier to secure cheap natural resources than to secure the resources themselves.
> that's why they called the movement "America first"
We should always listen to action, not words. Rhetoric is cheap.
The actions tells us that the US deficit will continue to grow. It is not clear yet how much, but everything points to an increase in military spending. Other parts of the state will have to be cut back.
I think it's more they are threatening to attack the EU (Denmark) and aid it's adversaries (Putin). I put that down to a Russian asset president rather than wanting money.
China is no longer communist, it's this weird hybrid of capitalism with heavy government controls and heavy censorship.
I think the established term is 'state capitalism'.
Look at DeepSeek.
Europe is more than two decades behind and in a death grip of the woke left, basically hell-bent on self destruction.
All talent has left to US and Asia. Endless stupid regulations and crippling taxation make startups impossible. There is no way Europe will ever be able to compete.
<<Universities around the world have reported seeing an uptick in applications from U.S.-based researchers, who face an increasingly uncertain climate under President Donald Trump’s administration. And some countries and their institutions are already looking to use the opportunity to attract new talent and reverse the steady migration of scientists to the U.S. in recent decades.>>
https://www.science.org/content/article/overseas-universitie...
Trump wants countries to lower tariffs and not steal US jobs. So he hits them with reciprocal tariffs and dis-incentives for making stuff out of US. Trump does not want other countries to think US will defend them. So he makes it clear to them.
What is this deal about extortion and increase dependence?
> So now EU is investing in their own tech and military ...
It's amazing that we're supposed to believe there's going to be a EU renaissance now that, for the third time, the EU wants to begin a world war. There's talks of gigantic investments in the EU war machine, talks of making the military service mandatory again in the EU, talks about how "wonderful" it is that so many young europeans are willing to go to war to save "democracy", etc.
It's really nothing short of amazing that the warmongers are happy that the EU is planning gigantic investment in its military apparatus and that that is supposed to be where the EU's renaissance shall be coming from.
What a future for the EU! Military investments!
If I had 5 million USD to spare, I'd buy the US golden visa that Trump created and I'd GTFO of the EU in a hurry.
I do believe things are going to turn from worse to shit in the EU and it's not the tens of millions of uneducated, unemployable, unwilling to adapt to western civilization armies of religious fanatics that the EU imported and keeps importing that are going to solve anything. The only outcome is that it'll accelerate the descend into shitholeness.
The EU has its own problems and there's a reason so many countries started seeing the far-right gain lots and lots of votes and this started way before and has nothing to do with Trump.
> ... is the US now GREAT enough for you yet?
It's great enough for me. Way greater than the EU.
Why are you still here?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I understand it too having seen the fallout and overstep of the "social justice left" with the reading comprehension of sewer rats - almost all American - who themselves attack white men for the crime of being white men (I've been on the receiving end a few times and I was supporting them; if my profile was a black woman or a trans-woman then I would not have been attacked).
Actually the average reading comprehension problem is really a thing, and Americans seem - anecdotally at least - to have the worst level in the English-speaking world. That or they outnumber the Brits by 100-1. This isn't just hyperbole - the numbers on reading comprehension have been dropping for years. We had to pay extra special attention to our kids to get them up to scratch.
Talk to your kids, people.
Now those groups have been weaponised. It started on 4chan / SomethingAwful - at that time Americans were so obnoxious that we simple banned them from our gaming servers - where the ARGs were tested out and perfected. Then it was pivoted to Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and the other socials and perfected.
We should have saw this coming. I even thought to myself back then: "it's just as well that the internet was just a nerds thing because this could change society if it was used to control the great unwashed".
It looks like the evil people were also paying attention.
I've had numerous encounters with people in the comments who were pro-Trump, who basically seemed to support corporate slavery.
In other words, the book is relevant even today. I.e. it might be very hard for Democrats to start a revolution, because their voter base is as complicit as they are, in the corrupt scheme to enrich themselves.
I tried reading Atlas Shrugged but failed to finish it and can't remember a word of it. Perhaps the two works are in different categories.
If you read both works, I'd be happy to hear your comments.
Not our boy. Trump was elected by uneducated farmers, not by HN crowd.
Almost 78% of farmers endorsed his most recent presidential run. https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-farmers-voted-trump-feeling-210...
I see this divide all the time, and I can't bear seeing this used time and time again to make the rural vs. the urban populations angry at each other, which in the end only detracts from trying to see how to make everything work together.
I wish we'd be smarter and stopped just being condescending towards the other group. The only ones actively benefitting from this divide are not well-intentioned people in my mind.
I think this is an inevitable consequence of population size and density. People are interested in people. The people who generate new culture -- who attract the interest of other people -- thrive in the cities. They have a bigger audience and a bigger community of fellow creatives. They find more variety. They have more to work with. So in both the city and the country people pay attention to what's happening in the city and ignore what's happening in the country. More is happening in the city and it is more interesting.
This isn't everything that makes cities tend to differ in their values and politics from the country, but it's the hotbed malign demagogues exploit to empower themselves. They tell the country, "Hey, the city people don't respect you. They have contempt for your values. Their politics are the reason for your suffering. You are the real people. They are parasites. Be mad!"
The country is primed to rise up. The city isn't. So the demagogues make the country hurt the city. Then the city is mad as well, at people who have genuinely hurt them, whereas the country was fooled into being mad at the city and striking the first blow.
It isn't necessarily the case that the people in the country are dumber. They're just the ones primed for a fight. But the con artists are working over the country people, so from the city's perspective the country people are fools.
Personally, I'd love to see more investment into rural and semi-rural areas to stop rural flight (because letting run that one unchecked is the cause for the housing prices in urban areas skyrocketing).
The problem is, it's getting increasingly hard to justify spending money on these areas morally. In Germany, even over ten years ago when I worked in construction primarily in rural areas, outright nazism (like entering a bar and witnessing the bar shout the heil-salute including raising the arm) was already a thing, listening to the "Stammtisch" idiocy outright painful, and today it's even worse because this kind of opinion isn't just utter fringe any more, it's gotten political mainstream.
When we're deciding to send money to rural areas, we're effectively rewarding "going fascist". Just behave deranged enough and you'll get everyone bending over.
Yet in my lifetime I have seen them consistently go or vote against their own interests (see Brexit which absolutely gutted British farmers which overwhelmingly voted against "evil EU rules").
Given the smaller absolute number of farmers, their vote carried less significant weight than many other blocs.
~ https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fv...
~ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074301671...
Face it, the UK population as a whole voted against their own interests, there's no justification to single out UK farmers as being somehow different to the UK population and more deserving of blame.
That original version was phrased as to blame farmers for the plight of Brexit, as if a small group who voted more or less in line with with the nation made any kind of difference.
Did farmers have it far worse after Brexit than the average Brit?
My understanding is the nation as a whole suffered, with the exception of well off Brits with significant off shore assests.
The only metric I can think of that was impacted was currency value on the day of the vote, but that dump was driven by predictions of economic problems that never happened so arguably those traders just took a bath due to believing the wrong people. It is anyway not necessarily bad for a country like the UK to have a lower valued currency; economists had for years been arguing it was overvalued and would be better if the currency was cheaper, so this is a bit of a wash.
All the comments being made here about people voting against their own interests start by assuming that voter's interests are exclusively trade-related, and that constitutional issues don't matter to people at all. This is clearly wrong but a required assumption for the whole against-their-own-interests claim to work. And then it goes on to conflate predictions with reality, by assuming that because the NGO-academic class predicted economic doom it must have actually happened when it didn't.
Both of these are fatal flaws to the argument.
The only way I can see to argue there was negative impact is via very indirect paths, e.g. the voters wanted less immigration and Johnson set the thresholds in the new immigration system so low that immigration increased. But that's more accurately blamed on the Conservatives and the general ideological hangover of EU membership on the party itself, not leaving. Voters can at least do something about it now, and the rise of Reform (Britain's new top-polling party) is evidence of that effect in action.
Uh... Disagree.
> On January 11, 2024, the London Mayor's Office released the "Mayor highlights Brexit damage to London economy". The release cites the independent report by Cambridge Econometrics that London has almost 300,000 fewer jobs, and nationwide two million fewer jobs as a direct consequence of Brexit. Brexit is recognized as a key contributor to the 2023 cost-of-living crisis with the average citizen being nearly £2,000 worse off, and the average Londoner nearly £3,400 worse off, in 2023 as a result of Brexit. In addition, UK real Gross Value Added was approximately £140bn less in 2023 than it would have been had the UK remained in the Single Market.[0]
The whole page paints a picture which is far from "no measurable negative impact". While it's contrasted with some areas suffering and others benefiting, it's hard to have an overall picture that looks either good or bad, but it's far from being overly positive. And this is just on the economic topic, there's another whole hoist of topics which have negative outlooks such as security, politics (i.e. with the Ireland controversy and how difficult this situation is), etc.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit#Imm...
"[Remainers] conflate predictions with reality, by assuming that because the NGO-academic class predicted economic doom it must have actually happened"
The report you cite it isn't showing a measurable negative impact of Brexit, although you brought it up as a rebuttal to that point. It's a modeling exercise in which the authors imagine a hypothetical world up to 2035, and then pick a long series of unvalidated assumptions which causes the UK's performance to diverge massively from that of the wider EU and prior trends. None of these assumptions are plausible:
• They admit that they did a similar exercise in 2018 which was wrong.
• On page 14 they even admit that they are being deliberately pessimistic.
• They assume an annual GDP growth rate of 4.3% suddenly starting in 2026. That's US levels of growth. Both the UK and the EU only grew at 1.4% last year.
Arguments of the form "I told Excel it will be bad and therefore it's bad" are invalid, but were exactly the strategy the Remain campaign used during the referendum. In the years that followed their predictions were all falsified. Anyone can pay some consultants to write a Word document about the future that imagines whatever the customer wants. Go ahead and imagine 4.3% GDP growth appearing out of nowhere, why not? Such reports aren't independent by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly don't show that anything bad has already happened.
Unfortunately, Sadiq Khan is a manipulator who understands the psychological weaknesses of his supporters very well. So this set of imaginings about the future gets presented in the present tense, with sentences like "London’s economy alone has shrunk by more than £30 billion". It hasn't. Go look at the actual data. It has "shrunk" vs the imaginary numbers in his report, which means nothing.
Predictions are not reality. Reality is reality. And in reality, there has been no measurable negative impact of Brexit, which is why people like Sadiq Khan are forced to make numbers up.
Against their own interest.
They need to be educated in politics and economy in order to navigate all regulations and subsidies.
US withdrawal from Climate Agreement, vaccine sceptic being made secretary of health, US alienating Europe, proposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza, lying about who started the Ukraine war. Cutting funds to USAID. Threatening to take Greenland by force. Threatening to annex Canada. Proclaiming himself to be King. Constantly "joking" about third term.
Does any of this seem toxic to you? Would educated people support these actions?
The critique is that too many Americans have become complacent and allowed the political system and media landscape to evolve as it has. The Democrats are also corrupt and need to be replaced, but it requires a sacrifice of wealth that people aren't willing to give, for selfish reasons.
But you will experience the consequences.
The Democrats have been allowing this for too long and are equally complacent. Nancy Pelosi doing insider trading is just the tip of the iceberg, quite literally speaking as the house speaker.
Americans should join Serbia and Turkey in their revolutions.
That was the day that I lost all respect for America and I fully agree that it was the day when the Republicans saw that you didn't need to win an election you needed to game the system.
From that point onwards is when the Red states went ham on targeted voter suppression and made a number of extremely anti-democratic moves. The current situation is at least 25 years in the making.
Maybe not the HN crowd (though that is debatable, there is no homogenous group here) but a seizable amount of the SV rulers have endorsed him.
NIH cuts, US withdrawal from Climate Agreement, vaccine sceptic being made secretary of health, US alienating Europe, proposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza, lying about who started the Ukraine war. Cutting funds to USAID. Threatening to take Greenland by force. Threatening to annex Canada. Proclaiming himself to be King. Constantly "joking" about third term.
In retrospect is this what you voted for?
Which is surprising because they were bitten by his tariffs last time round. What made them think he'd do better for them this time?
Same answer as for everyone else: Fox News.
While America is internally divided between rural and urban, or red and blue, or Woke and MAGA, the rest of the world is becoming united in seeing it all as just those damn Americans, and a growing threat.
The world at large has stopped caring about the petty squabbling that goes on in America, the boorishness and the melodrama.
America is the house down the street that always has shouting and screaming coming from it, someone throwing someone elses crap on the front lawn and the cops getting called to it every other week.
It is embarrassing and no one cares who started it anymore. We just want peace and quiet.
From the very woke education system in the US to the electoral success of the AfD in Germany we seem to be following the US.
Woke has not spread into Asia, but nationalism and racism were there already.
To me, that's what woke means. Lots of making demands about how people should think/see things, and calling people names like TERF if they dare question the woke "truth".
Gender IS a social construct though - but sex is not and people conflate the two. The other problem is that if something is a social construct you cannot claim it is also an absolute truth.
Race is also a social construct, which a lot of people who are woke seem to have trouble dealing with - a lot of people who accept gender self-identify seem to be unwilling to accept race self-identify.
But your democracy has spoken now. The first time can be waived off as an aberration. The second time you have to own it.
Now, either you're commenting reactively on HN about it, or you're doing something about it and not taking it personally.
I guess what I should have said is "contempt for people outside of the laptop class" (and yes farmers may use laptops but you get what I mean).
And contempt is one of the defining features of Trumpism/Muskism, far more than "blue collar".
It is ironic after all of these decades of originalism being seen as a reactionary thing against minorities that the Framers put positive discrimination for (economic and geographic) minorities into the Constitution explicitly to prevent "tyranny of the majority".
The U.S.A. is full of such ironies at the moment.
Yep, as if tyranny of the minority is better. Of course Republicans think it's good because it gets them elected but this country is regressing because of the status quo.
It is disingenuous to lay the results at their feet only like the comment you're responding to suggests ; Trump did win the popular vote. The dems fumbled this one, plain and simple.
It was close, and American politics being what it is, it doesn't actually matter. Hillary Clinton did get a majority in 2016 after all, but the narrative was still that she was the worst and losing-est candidate in American political history. Every Democrat is a liar, a cheat and a communist, every Republican has a mandate from God to sweep the leftists into the sea. That's just how it works, regardless of what the numbers say.
What do you mean? In 2024, Trump indisputably won the popular vote - as in, he had more total popular votes than any other candidate (77.3 million votes compared to 75 million votes to Kamala, and nowhere remotely close for anyone else), which is what "winning a vote" means. In 2016 you're right that Hillary won the popular vote but still lost the presidency, but that's a different matter. And you're also right that he could have lost the popular vote again and still won the presidency, but that's irrelevant to the question of whether he did win or not.
Trump won 49% of the vote in 2024, compared to Hillary's 48% in 2016.
The numbers go with the story perfectly. He didn't win a majority of the popular vote, but neither did Hilary. Trump did win a bigger share than she did though.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by a margin of almost 3 million[0].
But because states vote for President in the US through the electoral college, rather than people, Trump won the election with a slight majority of electoral votes. Hillary Clinton lost not because she was unpopular (she was, even in the most conservative estimate, about as popular as Trump,) but because she didn't campaign in the correct states.
[0]https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-officially-w...
You cannot say that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 and say that Trump did not in 2024 unless you are disputing the official count. He had a margin of around 2.3m.
https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024pres...
Presidential systems with runoffs are very popular. A plurality is useless there, you win with a majority.
>And winning a plurality is winning the vote, in almost all electoral systems
I'd argue that there are many electoral systems that realize the potential problems this causes, and either use runoffs, or IRV/STV, to avoid it. The US (and UK...) just have very antiquated electoral processes that, especially in the US, have not benefited from the last two centuries of research on voting systems.
I was incorrect about Trump not winning the popular vote. I thought that the final vote tally had him losing by a slight margin but apparently not, so mea culpa on that.
Keep people uneducated, dont support the poor and then act like you will solve these issues, its conservative 101
Ofcourse in Europe we learned that socialism improves the lives of the proletariat not national socialism.
So they are going for a lose/lose situation out of spiteness.
The solution is to always go for the win/win situation, even if it leads to smaller wins. It avoid building up resentment, that will always lead to a lose/lose situation.
The original definition, which is where it got its lasting popularity, comes from the popular workers' movements of the 1910s and 20s: workers owning the means of production. That is basically describing an economic system in which enterprises, particularly factories, are democratically controlled by the people working in them, who would have a say in how the enterprise is run.
This notion of socialism was corrupted by Lenin and his ilk when they essentially seized the worker's revolution that tore down the Tsars of Russia and founded the USSR. However, instead of decentralized workers' councils actually owning, profiting from, and controlling the factories (and farms and other enterprises) that they worked for, the state was put in charge of all of these. Ostensibly the state represented the will of the people, so that is how this leap was justified, but of course in reality it was one of the most heinous dictatorships that the world had seen in a long time. But because worker's rights were a popular idea at thrle time, the new absolutist monarchs of the "Soviet" empire kept claiming they are "socialists", just as they claimed they are "democratic", and no one bothered to contradict them.
In the meantime, in the West of Europe, particularly Germany, the same basic workers' movements were co-opted by Hitler, here claiming that he represents the people of Germany in their interests against the bogey-men they hated, the Jewish people (and Armenians and a few others), identified as evil Capitalists that had to be combatted. So they also named their movement "socialist", while in reality having an iron grip and military-like complete top-down control of the means of production.
Finally, more actually democratic forces that were nevertheless interested in keeping the capitalist status quo came up with a series of more minor reforms that would give some more resources, better lives, and rights to workers without actually putting them in full control of the enterprise they worked for. This movement ended up calling itself social-democrat or democratic socialism. Being very much similar to the previous status quo, and keeping the wealthy in power and in control of enterprises, while also not egregiusly oppressing workers to the point of revolt, this proved to be the most enduring form of "socialism" that persisted.
https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric...
Listening to them one could think the US is on the brink of collapse unless some 'strong leader' steps in and 'makes America great again'.
Also, they gained about nothing and seem themselves as the victims by the end of WWII. (Yes, literally they have seen themsevelves as primary victims of what happened.)
We've just decided to use Mistral for OCR, even though everything we currently use is embedded in Azure / IntelDocs or something.
Usually any push for EU products would be dismissed because of the initial friction compared to SV products. This seems to have shifted significantly all the way to the top. Everyone seems on board to just accept more friction to use EU products.
We are now even moving to a non-AWS/Azure K8s cluster. This was unheard of even a few months ago.
And don't get me started on O365...
But the fact that there's money available for this is a big shift.
Their website suggests so but I'm not familiar with them.
If someone is interested in getting to know STACKIT, feel free to contact me. I'm working for a STACKIT partner.
Shouting to the Board of Directors at any company about security risks and geopol implications usually meant screaming into a void.
"But their HQ is here." "We have a solid security annex in the contract!" "Their sales person was here and he promised me." Classic lawyer C-suite talk.
But when the attitude started shifting billions were thrown around to move back to Ericsson.
C-suite people will constantly get these questions and start to feel like they 'have to' go European just like how they all thought we 'had to use Agile' and 'had to do something with blockchain'.
Few forces in economics are stronger than C-suite FOMO.
There is a reason every product page usually has a reel showing what other well known companies 'trust' their solution. It works.
If only your company is down then you’re made and fire the cto
If only your company is up then nobody notices as “the internet is down”.
Businesspeople have seen the U.S.A. do things like the Citibank account freezes, which is explicitly welching on paying money owed on a contract to companies in its own country, turning off and on supplies to a country at the personal whim of its leader, putting air traffic safety at risk as a means of privatization (using the OCP playbook straight out of RoboCop), and arresting foreigners at its borders.
If they've been paying close attention they've seen civil suit court orders ignored, lawyers having executive writs of attainder proclaimed against them, and rulings handed down about blanket and extensive executive privilege and immunity that take things back to the centuries past when banks could go out of business by lending to monarchs who then just decreed that they weren't going to pay.
Even the dumbest CEO would by now be thinking of the business risks of things like flying in personnel to a business conference or to visit a satellite office; let alone of supply chain reliability, whether U.S.A. courts are still capable of enforcing any civil decisions or U.S.A. lawyers capable of doing their jobs on behalf of foreign businesses, and what this means for loan risks and banking stability.
Large companies aren’t driven by opinion/ethics/politics except where there’s a branding incentive, so the motivation here is cost/risk.
That these same companies are actively trying to nope right out of the US tech market where they can shows that they’ve priced in very real costs to both Trump’s unpredictability and the very predictable response to tariffs in their domestic markets.
Trump’s second term may end up being a great thing for tech markets outside of the US, as it drives investment into those regions and actively away from the status quo of SV hegemony.
The USA tech corps are falling in with Trump, presumably so as to get favourable tax situations and such. That makes them subject to his vagaries.
Surely, Trump might rug pull your IT services if you're competing with someone who gave him a bribe is a massive reason to move.
Companies need to operate under the rule of law which is now vacant in USA.
With threats, no matter how stupid, to invade allies. What are European companies going to do when Trump has their compute switched off? Or trade embargoes are put in place because Trump tried to takeover Greenland?
These seem to be real risks to business continuation that arise out of Trump's politics.
Buy off the junta that runs the place and you can do what you want. Oil companies, mining companies, clothing companies, all the same.
Normally the company is bigger than the people you’re bribing though, and that makes the USA unique, and more akin to working in North Korea rather than Nigeria.
Its not until we actually see numbers. This guy could be making up/exaggerating ( "everyone" really?) these stories, because thats what ppl do on the internet.
These type of protests usually die down because human beings always choose convenience and lower price.
Also see blm, dei and other "movements" that died down as soon as news cycle changed.
The movement might slow down, but it's fundamentally different from a social movement limited to the US.
Are your referring to greenland gaining independence from denmark? good for them .
Why is denmark so hesitant to give up control of greenland if thats what ppl of greenland want. Colonial mindset ? They have king thats changing flags. nothing says allies than "boiling viking blood" OG colonizers still living in middle ages.
Well, Trump did promise to make it so people would never have to vote again.
The news cycle should be orthogonal to your opinions on such matters. It shouldn't form them. A good acid test is to ask yourself if you had an opinion on something before it appeared in the news. If not, be very wary of the opinion that you adopt.
The thing is - a lot of actually very important topics got swept under the rug for a loooong time. Let's just take gay people for example. Up until the late 90s, gays got routinely beaten up by police, called "pedophiles"... hell it took until 2011 until open gays could serve in the military. That all only changed due to widespread outrage (and a few constitutional courts reinterpreting constitutional wording).
I hope this gains more momentum!
https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/
i hope they succeed but this is not currently a usable alternative
Tesla in particular are so easily targeted for "secondary picketing": people making it embarrasing to own a Tesla or just straight up targeting them for vandalism.
Which... I never realised, I didn't think soda was still so popular, let alone coca-cola and co.
I do find it hillarious that Red Bull outsells Heineken nowadays. And I'm happy to see Hertog Jan sells much better, it tastes much better than Heineken.
As you say, big effects for most companies, if they come, will come later.
Additionally there are a few that cater to certain groups with special products like mate soda (Loscher invented it with Club Mate I guess, but nowadays there are 10 big brands and a few small ones) and special kinds of cola like AfriCola or Mate Cola. Fritz-Kola is one of those products, you can get it in every city in well-stocked supermarkets, but it is a product that only caters to a certain kind of people and establishments (think "Berlin-like club-going techno-mad party-crowd" maybe). So many places will carry something else that caters to their group, and their region.
That is also why the Coca-Cola marketshare that the sister comment mentioned will go down, but it will not be replaced by another big producer, just maybe a handful of nationwide brands plus tons of regional ones.
Recently got back to drinking Afri cola. Tastes great (particularly their zero product) and is line 1,50€/L which is relatively reasonable.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.de/wirtschaft/es-gibt-ein-deutsc...
[2] https://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/industrie/fritz-kola-der-coc...
I personally don't know if they ship their sirup around the world.
See the US companies trying the "built in Canada" marketing.
Probably they move a bit of their secret sauce, but rest is probably sourced locally.
So impact of tariffs on coke in Germany is mininal.
During WW2 german bottlers missed some ingredients so they've started making Fanta.
Profits move the other way through IP payments.
We can cut off the bleeding of profits by buying products with locally owned IP.
If we assume that the processed leaves sold for coca cola weight the same as unprocessed (what is very doubtful), then how much would Europe get allocated? Probably less than half. But let's say it's half.
50 tons of this special extract isnt much. That's just two shipping containers.
Also with their scale every bottle probably onlu getd some trace amount, so I wonder if cola would taste any different if it didnt include this.
Profits move the other way through IP payments at least.
[1]: https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/handel-konsumgueter...
One of the Colas that tastes good enough to replace Coke in my experience.
A bar owner I know here says selling these more-premium sodas is a good way to make a bit of extra money on people who aren't buying alcohol — you can charge more for Fritz-Kola than for Coca-Cola.
A different bar owner I know chose Jolly Cola, avoiding an American product but keeping a low price.
No comments yet
It's going to take time.
Media services (films, video games, social media) is pretty tricky to move on.
Will my company switch away from azure today? Probably not. Will my company include more European alternatives in the next vendor selection. Definitely yes.
For me personally, I had to install the "Go European" browser extension [1] before I actually started switching, due to more frequent reminders, from using mostly chatGPT/claude to LeChat by mistral (which feels at least as good).
My Take-away: User stickiness is hard to break due to providers' walled gardens, even for me who is aware and willing to change.
[1] https://codeberg.org/K-Robin/GoEuropean
But in the past two weeks, I've done the things I've previously put off because they require real work. I've set up a NAS and switched all of the remaining things. I'm now using Immich for photo hosting, Vaultwarden for passwords, Hoarder for bookmarking, and a self-hosted Standard Notes instance for note-taking, to-do lists, and saving articles for later reading.
I'm super happy with this setup. Immich, in particular, is absolutely fantastic; its default face recognition model works better than Google Photos, at least for me. Once you've set it up, you can log your family into the same NAS and have them use it, too.
It looks like they're planning to build a European index with Qwant [2], but their help pages still say they're on Bing and Google so I guess nothing materialized yet.
[1]: https://ecosia.helpscoutdocs.com/article/579-search-results-...
[2]: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/
The results are interesting, they aren't bad, just different. Localized search isn't great, but it might be perfectly fine if you're in the UK.
On the minus side, the way their email is set up means you can't easily use third-party email clients without using an intermediary tool (Proton Mail Bridge), and because email is encrypted at rest, their own email search is abysmal.
Just a note for anyone looking for alternative password managers - 1Password is Canadian!
no matter who is hosting your email (megacorp, a hn darling, your hosting provider, yourself) you get to keep your email addresses. this also means one of the primary means of authenticating you online is not kept hostage by any business.
even for free email services that don't support custom domains, you can likely set up mail forwarding for free or very cheap with your domain hoster, and set up 'send as' alias in your inbox.
4 months on, I'm still type twitter[.]com and finding myself on localhost.
However, I just replicated the most obscure search request that I can remember, an extremely obscure automotive request for help - and, in one go, the DDG result actually got to exactly the end result it had taken me ages to Google.
I'll give DDG another shot.
On the other hand, I am mostly involved in startups where lots of tech choices need to be made from scratch. The startup I'm currently working for doesn't even consider US based tech solutions at the moment. And I think more startups that pop up nowadays will think twice before choosing non-EU based tech.
So that in the long term, we preserve viable alternatives, exactly for times like these where we cannot trust the US govt
Honestly, it's pretty exciting.
[1] EU Infrastructure with DevOps included - https://lithus.eu
* https://european-alternatives.eu
* https://dataethics.eu/european-tech-alternatives/
* https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/03/19/private-eu...
* https://dev.to/devlinkstudios/top-20-european-alternatives-t...
India has its own, now slightly faltering, Indian alternatives movement that came out of the border conflict with China a few years ago.
* https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/indian-alte...
* https://socinator.com/blog/indian-alternatives-to-chinese-ap...
* https://techbaked.com/best-indian-alternatives-to-china-apps...
* https://www.thenewsminute.com/atom/all-you-need-know-about-t...
* https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/tiktok-is-gone-but...
There is a lot more in this vein from India during 2020 to 2021.
In some ways the critical event was the BLM protests. Faced with the question of "are police subject to the rule of law", the country comprehensively chose "no". Combined with the decades-long process of stacking the Supreme Court with partisan judges to overturn Roe v. Wade, this eroded rule of law really badly to the point that all this was able to happen. And now they're trying to export gunpoint extortion as an international norm.
Before Globalisation of markets there must be a globalization of citizen rights to the highest standards.
The evidence is overwhelming that it has been win-win, albeit with some negative side effects that need to be managed better.
We can always do better but that should not involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater based on a faulty understanding of where we currently are.
It's not a win-win when the rich side wins 100 and the poor side 10
Also you are operating in dollars space instead of utility space, which is a mistake. Even if a poor person "only" gains an extra $2000/year in annual earnings due to globalization, that can be a life changing amount of additional wealth given that their utility function is highly sensitive to small changes.
It didn't. Yes, the gap certainly has widened with countries that didn't partake in globalisation. Here I'm thinking countries in Africa, North Korea and Afghanistan.
But if you look at poorer countries that did invite the richer ones so that could provide labour at a lower cost, countries like Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, and yes China - the gap has gone from peasant farmers who starved in lean years to industrial nations that are starting to rival the incumbents. Places like Singapore and Japan are in fact now wealthier than most of the incumbents.
Then the disadvantage of scale slowly becomes clear: this concentrates wealth and power in less and less, and eventually one, location. This is how Rome, Paris, London and, outside of the US, Teheran and Beijing are not just a bit bigger than the cities around them but completely outclass them on every metric. Even within those cities it's not exactly equally divided. The amount of wealth in the City of London is more than all the rest of London combined.
Of course, as Ireland and Scotland can explain, by then the exit is closed.
"Wealth" is nothing but debt, mostly from people living in the further away parts of the empire. That's why a poor person from middle America is tending the golf course in Florida. One problem with that, is that debt is a fiction. Someone strikes a few lines in a law book, and debt is gone. For people living far away from the power centers that sounds better and better.
The US hasn't had enough time yet, and on top of that, it is the hub of the world in many ways. Mostly because in WW2 the rest of the world decided to destroy itself, leaving the US as the only intact industrial power, and thus lots of debt is being created in the world and brought to the US to build stuff. Technology, internet, military, financial, ... plus the power centers in the US haven't (fully) merged yet. It will come.
The bigger the empire, the less equal it is for the people living inside it.
Empires collapse because large parts of the empire are plundered of all economic value they can generate, in trade for wealth in the power centers, after which most of the empire becomes a resource sink ... and that is not something the military can fix. But by then the power centers have depended on wealth being brought in to them for decades, sometimes centuries ... and more and more they have to care for themselves. A lot more work, done by the locals, must be done for less in return. For one thing, the power centers must militarily defend the heartland ... and at this point, must do so while getting nothing in return.
Here's a funny (but meant very seriously) illustration of the end and if you think about it, terrible, article about China's southern border asking the questions: WHY would China defend this border? HOW would China defend this border? WITH WHAT would China defend this border? Illustrating the problem. Read it now because this will become crisis #1223, at which point this subject will become yet another target of CCP censorship. And it's not like the US or Russia, or India, or Europe don't have the same problem.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3287769/c...
I mean, the exit was always closed to Ireland, from the initial invasion onwards. That wasn't a case of choosing to be in until you're trapped, Ireland was conquered (and subject to periodic ethnic cleansing in the plantations, reprisals etc.)
[1]https://apnews.com/article/japan-china-south-korea-foreign-m...
This is basically an attempt to create a new game, with the hopes that they can govern the rules again. Nobody wants to give up the power, obviously. But yeah, good luck to all of my American friends, I really hope (genuinely!) it turns out well in the end for you all!
* https://nebula.tv/faq
* https://nebula.tv/legaleagle
https://medium.com/@cameron-paul/who-actually-owns-nebula-95...
I think several of the other cofounders (e.g. Wendell, also the guy from real engineering) seem likely to be decent people too.
But also, for the purposes of this discussion, we're talking about the ability of a capricious US president to make access difficult, and a bunch of YouTubers and a documentary maker are not going to have the resources to stand up to the US federal government.
LG? you mean the tv company?
More on the story:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nebula/comments/180yuw0/the_lg_tv_c...
One way out of this would be if content creators would en masse upload to multiple sites. Even with preferential treatment for YouTube, this would enable consumers to follow their favorite creators outside of YouTube, and get the same content. Of course, this onus is now on the creators, and I imagine they have enough to manage as it is. So what they would need is a good incentive. But that is people, and as long as they have enough people on YouTube, there is no incentive to diversify. So we're back at the network effect.
Maybe we should raise money to pay popular creators to publish on these peertube instances.
https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/
I see something else. If Europe has anything to offer (and because we are technically behind it is neither price nor quality), it must be based on political values.
The USA is an "ally in distress". What I am wondering about is those US customers who will now relocate to Europe where democratic values are better defended. If Europe can demonstrably uphold those values, given the true democratic spirit of the US people, then I see more than a "local first" movement for Europe. We can also anticipate an exodus of US principals in exile taking refuge in EU.
This is begging the question. I would say the US spirit most prevalent on this site is neofeudalist, not democratic. The discourse here has always tended to defend or excuse monopolist behaviour ("it's their app store/OS/device, they should have 100% control over what happens with it") and discourage small or local initiatives ("this will not scale and therefore you shouldn't waste effort on making things better for only these 100,000 people").
`curl -sSL https://dokploy.com/install.sh | sh`
and then you have tens of templates for alternative self-hosted websites that you can use (Hoarder for bookmarks, ownCloud to replace Dropbox, etc)
I'm not going to keep putting all my notes and personal data in the hands of American companies which might be pressured by the fascist US govt to hand them over personal infos and passwords...
For bookmarks, I recommend Linkding: https://linkding.link
Why wouldn't it be feasible? Storage is cheap, backups are cheap. It's not for everyone, obviously, but for 20 EUR/month you can get a VM with a couple hundred GB of storage and 1TB of backups on a storagebox in hetzner. Or have a raspberry pi with a 1TB SSD in your home, or both!
No comments yet
The things that's interesting is how you're accessing and writing to it - depending on that, it might indeed be infeasible to do everything yourself as an individual.
A "cloud" storage like next cloud with only 1-3 users? That's not gonna become a problem, while the base configuration with backups will likely take you a weekend, it's not that hard.
> Hosted in: Sweden
Well that's interesting, I'd have thought they would work with Scaleway for "the cat", is there some Swedish company offering cheap GPU instances?
The interesting part is when he deplores the lack of support between local actors, where instead of pulling each other up, everyone plays in their corner.
[1]: https://mistral.ai/terms#privacy-policy
Many people who have been avoiding big tech companies now have stronger arguments for doing so. It has become easier to avoid services like Instagram, Google, Gmail, WhatsApp, ChatGPT, Amazon, and X. Convincing friends and family to use alternative communication platforms such as Signal, Telegram, Mastodon, Posteo, or Proton is more feasible. However, moving away from Amazon remains challenging for some. Nonetheless, every small step towards this goal is valuable.
Professional Perspective:
From a professional standpoint, some of my clients are transitioning away from AWS and/or Vercel due to political risks and ethical concerns. Others are moving from AWS to Vercel for financial reasons. Personally, I emphasize ethical considerations and political risks beyond just vendor lock-in. When project requirements and team structure allow, we prefer to build on self-managed Kubernetes (K8s) clusters.
German "Mittelstand":
Generally, the German "Mittelstand" (mid-sized companies) tend to avoid vendor lock-in. They often implement solutions that combine private and public cloud services, enabling them to switch cloud providers quickly.
Sure, this interest has recently gone up significantly, but it already was there, especially in the area I've been working in (hospitals / medical devices).
But here's what I can't wrap my head around: Why do the European alternatives suck so much?
- Pretty much all cloud providers seem (very) subpar to AWS. Some are better in a very isolated way, e.g. Hetzner offers better prices for cloud instances, bare metal servers and object storage. But they don't offer anything else. OVHcloud's web interface is terrible. Telekom Cloud runs Huawei hardware and software (!) and the dev experience is really bad.
- There's no real Cloudflare alternative.
- There's no real Google Workspace / Microsoft Teams competitor (Mail + Calendar + Drive).
- No search engine / Google alternative.
Or, let me rephrase this from another angle: In the US, startups regularly build serious competitor products to some of the incumbents mentioned above. Look at what fly.io and render.com did to Heroku, I think that's very impressive. Or hey.com slowly building a Gmail alternative, very cool.
So it's possible, technically.
But why not in Europe?
I can't get a satisfactory explanation for this observation. We certainly have smart people and good universities. Is it about funding? Or about the culture of not promoting entrepreneurship? Bureaucracy? GDPR?
I genuinely don't know. What do you think?
- The USA is a huge and fairly homogenous fairly wealthy fairly risk-positive market.
- The USA has a bigger = better mindset. "Your restaurant is fantastic, you should open another one!".
- Abysmal work-life-balance. Great for making stuff.
- Minimal language and cultural barriers.
- Because of the USA market, you can grow huge before having to expand to other countries.
- Because you can grow huge in the USA market, that is where the funding goes.
- All the the USA's allies didn't mind too much, because they are(/were?) allies
- All the non-USA-allies developed their own markets (Russia, East Asia, Africa, India, etc).
- And so now, given the messaging coming out of the USA, EU governments/companies/people are giving their USA-entanglement a second look.
Which, being in the EU, is pretty exciting. I feel like there is a lot of opportunity here right now.
Disclaimer: I'm sure there are 1001 reasons, and the above is just one potential view.
However:
> All the non-USA-allies developed their own markets
I have friends and family in India, and I'm not aware of homegrown alternatives to any of the following:
* gmail
* amazon
* google search
* whatsapp
* linkedin
* spotify
* facebook
* yt shorts
On that last one, when India banned TikTok overnight, it was a golden opportunity for a different homegrown alternative to step in, but it looks like YT/IG captured most of that market.
Happy to be corrected, though. If you have concrete examples, that'd be good to know!
I’ve spoken with other DevTools founders, and many of them see 60–80% of their revenue coming from the US. When you’re building a PLG model targeting software developers, you really have to think globally from day one.
Even though demand for EU-based server providers has increased recently. It wasn’t always like that.
Being EU based and trying to target only EU customers is more complicated, from fundraising to customer acquisition, especially when you factor in language localization and legal bureaucracy. It’s even harder if you’re building a B2C startup where regional differences are more pronounced.
This is a global phenomenon - Americans didn't care about TikTok being a Chinese company either.
Cloudflare - BunnyCDN, KeyCDN and quite a few others with not so complete offer.
Google Workspace / MS Teams - Infomaniak, Mailbox.org, Proton.me
Search engine - Qwant, Ecosia, Startpage
Search engine is the one where best alternative is Kagi which is US. But rest of the categories has been viable for years. Many of the companies are older than Google. Yes, UX/polish might be not same but unlike the Googles/Microsoft of the world which have been going down these companies are getting a lot better.
- Private $ market: EU is decades behind the US in private capital management and the appetite for risk. In the US, it is not uncommon to raise $20M on an idea. In the EU (at least until recently), you'd raise literally 10X less.
- Piling effect: companies grow quickly by selling their product to the previous generation of growing companies: internet -> mobile -> cloud -> AI. Each wave feeds the next one, all currently centered in the US.
You're not going to like this answer, but I think there is a lot more tall-poppy syndrome in Europe. Success isn't celebrated the way it is in the US. This also drives European resentment of the US in general. (And that resentment has undermined the transatlantic relationship.)
I don't know for all options in the category but Scaleway offers a viable alternative to EC2, EBS, Lambda, S3, EKS, ECR, CloudFront and many more (although IAM is still lacking depth). OVHCloud also has a Public Cloud offer than differ from their baremetal offer (the plain old server one) but IMO it's lacking compared to Scaleway. I've heard good about UpCloud and Exoscale but never tried them myself.
I do think integration with compliance vendors and marketplace offers are two things where these providers are lacking but I'd be curious what you find is lacking to qualify them as "real clouds".
It predates HN and always has always been the place the best technical people in Australia butt heads. Their problem is they aren't up to the same standard as here - where you have the best technical people in the world butting heads.
But that would be a very big "maybe", because it is very different in all aspects.
For the personnal tools, people have lots of leeway (change mail provider, search engine, ai chatbot, etc...)
For the enterprise, I really wonder how you defend a "let's migrate our infra from AWS to X" in general, even for technological reason or business reason ; I don't even know how you start a conversation like "aws works fine for us, but let's switch for political reasons" (whether the political reason is good or bad is out of topic.)
Normally, if "infra as code" works as well as advertised, this would be a "convert yaml to json" exercise ; so we should see someone write "what we learned switching from AWS to EU-based X". I'll be on the lookout for that - but to be completely honest, I'm not holding my breath...
Some companies may see it as "let's switch for continuity-of-business reasons", not political reasons as such. Things may get worse over the next few years. Amazon is not spending billions on https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/europe-digital-sovereignty... for _fun_; even before ol' minihands's return, some highly risk-conscious companies, particularly those in sensitive fields, would not use AWS out of caution (the US-EU data protection treaties keep collapsing, for instance see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU–US_Privacy_Shield ).
I'd say AWS is less at risk from this than most, actually, in that, as above, they have a plan, though just how watertight it is remains to be seen.
We're using the same as everyone else; but we're not sure we can trust US cloud anymore, so we want to try an unknown company from country-you-can't-place-on-a-map-either.
We'll have to spend several months of engineering and incurr tens of thousands of dollars of extra licenses to try and migrate our infra.
We have no way to be sure it will work.
And it will make no discernable difference to our customers.
We have to start on Monday, so that we can be ready in time for next US presidential blunder.
Which project do we cancel ?"
If the wheels come off the current arrangements that let European businesses operate on US-owned cloud services, then a lot of companies will be having similar conversations. Those companies who've investigated this _before_ the wheels come off will be in better shape. Some companies have been investigating and/or actively doing this for _years_.
The current US president favours bribery by the US to foreign officials. Doesn't seem completely insane to assume that he also favours spying on non-US competitors.
If you are a big company and use US services (e.g. Microsoft Teams or Slack or GMail or the countless others), then you have to assume that the US can see all the conversations you have on those services.
Sounds like a good enough reason to consider migrating.
We migrated to Scaleway pretty easily and the main argument was that it's easier to conform to EU regulations if all your servers and data are on an European cloud.
Were you using "boring" AWS services (EC3 / S3) or where you depending on more things ?
Are there an AWS service that you feel is missing in Scaleway, and could be a deadlbreaker for other people ?
(By the way, is it ok if I start abbreviating Scaleway as SWA, just for fun ?)
Someone relatively senior sees an article, blog, whitepaper etc and mentions it. Staff at any level who agree with the politics can then push a little to make it happen — even just by keeping it as a lunchtime discussion topic.
My employer moved away from American-hosted products due to privacy concerns, except for Office 365. The relatively senior people read about legal risks, asked a local lawyer, and made it a moderate priority to get done. For Office 365 we have the standard assurance from Microsoft that our data is in Ireland, but I could see that being reviewed.
i live in asia - indonesian vs vietnam foreign policy (despite problems in domestic policy) has shown how vast the difference in policy can generate foreign trust which lead to manufacturing which lead to a lot more money being brought to VN overall.
What's not really shown in the Wiki is that the VN government really protected and ensured smooth efforts for these projects. You can tell it worked because of how many follow on projects they did.
The counter is Sembcorp's Indo project[1] which is in the same wiki. At a conference I was lucky enough to listen to a Bain consultant who directly advised on these policies with the VN and ID government in the early 2000's, so a bit after they got going. The Indo government setup quite similar projects with Sembcorp as VN. The problems start because the project was setup with the "federal" government (country level), but local state government wanted their piece too and started "taxing" the raw materials coming in through their ports. Obviously this new tax wasn't part of the original program. Things like this, bribes, permits (more bribes), material blocking at ports (even more bribes), etc kept creating small but material roadblocks. Complaints to the central government were heard but not enough was done. Overtime, the foreign manufacturers got fed up dealing with local politics.
Bintan today is a shell of what it was expected to be in terms of its manufacturing powerhouse. It's mostly a resort town now for Singaporeans who want a weekend away.
VN has quite a bit of domestic problems in policy and corruption (they're rightfully working on it overall), but despite all that, it shows that you really can create foreign trust via policy that benefits the country greatly. Politics and trust very much go hand in hand.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sembcorp#Vietnam
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sembcorp#Indonesia
The press in your country is worthless for taking anything he says seriously. They’re either too afraid or too partisan to do their job on a level that’s acceptable in other western countries.
It’s very clear he’s a puppet that is being used to execute the plans of the Heritage Foundation. He gets carte blanche to take action on a few of his grudges and he’s free to line his own pockets. He’s basically a toddler that’s cooperating because of an ice cream.
Even his fake tan reminds of the cliché toddler photo. Minus the pasta.
I find it hard to imagine that Trump is as stupid as his public image would suggest.
Depends on what you call "incompetent" I guess. I strongly suspect Biden wasn't as competent as his younger peers in most areas. But that's nothing unusual - most leaders are older men. What is clear is Biden was happy to take other peoples advice on most things.
In fact I'd say a core competence of a president is to be able to seek advice, weigh it and chose the best path forward among the alternatives offered. It has to be that way, because the reality is on just about any topic you care to name, the president will be about as knowledgeable as your average Joe six pack compared to the experts that can be found in a country of 300 million.
But if you are like Trump and are recommending ingesting chlorine on public television to cure COVID, seeking advice before opening your mouth clearly isn't your strong point.
Europeans feel under threat from two directions now. His military threats against Greenland are an extremely serious matter.
Imagine if the USA had an ally who sold you much of your military equipment and maintained bases on your territory. One day that ally would suddenly start saying that they’re going to take over Puerto Rico, and also that they support China if they wanted to invade Hawaii “because quick peace in the Pacific is so important to everyone.”
That’s where EU finds itself now.
My main takeaways: governments sabotage Fr cloud by giving huge contacts to US companies + lack of understanding of the software development by EU and Fr decision makers.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250324104040/https://plausible...
There are serious consequences that can happen in a trade war. Digital Services are how the U.S. makes billions of profits from the EU. In a trade war it is possible that digital services are hit with tariffs as it would hurt the most.
This will not happen with EU products.
For decades here in Norway we have had talks about how we need to denuclearize, stop all industry, stop all energy production, stop all mining. This, if not directly a result of Russian interference, is at least something Russia and China are entirely behind. They would love nothing more than to see their rivals self-destruct.
European alternatives are not great. That is just a fact. I want them to be great. As Donald Tusk said, it's insane that Europe is expecting the much smaller US to defend it against the even smaller Russia. The time has come to stop acting like petulant teenagers rebelling and start acting like adults.
All of this also ignores the fact that Europe jails people for thought crime at a much higher rate than US or even Russia. And European countries are much more draconian with trying to restrict privacy and encryption. Right now, my data is more private in US than in most of Europe.
> Right now, my data is more private in US than in most of Europe.
Could follow the train of thought until it catastrophically derailed in the last three sentences..
No. Some actors are pushing for an end of end-to-end encryption, which doesn't mean it's an EU fact. In fact, it just got rejected in the French parliament.
> Norway tried to jail a lesbian
No. A person got investigate for hate-speech, which is perfectly within the bounds of "freedom of speech". The fact that she did not go to prison shows the system works as intended.
> Scotland makes it illegal to pray silently in your own home
> UK already makes it illegal to pray in your own home.
No. Debunked as nonsense.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/05/07/europ...
European Police Chiefs call for industry and governments to take action against end-to-end encryption roll-out
https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/euro...
Norwegian actress Tonje Gjevjon faces up to 3 years in prison for saying men cannot be lesbians
https://nypost.com/2022/12/15/tonje-gjevjon-faces-up-to-3-ye...
British Man Convicted of Criminal Charges for Praying Silently Near Abortion Clinic
https://reason.com/2024/10/17/british-man-convicted-of-crimi...
The man knew. He was told multiple times. He didn't have to pray there. Pretty sure big man upstairs wouldn't mind if he went a few meters down the street.
edit, source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo
further edit: i see said "in your own head", yes, it is in your own head, but the intention is intimidating to those who want healthcare. Pretty sure prayer is not localized.
This sounds crazy to me and I have trouble believing it. I tried to find sources, but could not. As you were mentioning rates i.e. numbers, I am sure you have some source for this? The fact alone that hate-speech and holocaust-denial laws exist is not sufficient.
Like the Soviet Union, the European Union operates at a scale where it can feasibly create a nearly full suite of goods/services in parallel to the market alternative.
It's interesting that you imply the European Union is communist or state capitalist in a similar way to the Soviet Union or that European Alternatives are not part of the market, analogous to state-produced consumer goods in the Soviet Union. It's especially interesting (which is a nice way of saying preposterous) considering the primary function of the European Union has always been a European single market (the EEA includes the EU and EFTA) to ease trade between countries in Europe, with most other concerns logically following downstream from that (e.g. moving towards a United States of Europe is a logical consequence of the need for a state to back the Euro which was a logical consequence of the desire to avoid currency exchange when trading goods within the EEA).
Considering the only thing the Soviet Union and the EU have in common is part of their names in English and there's literally no similarity between Soviet consumer products and European Alternatives other than that they're foreign to the US, I struggle to understand what the point of your comment is supposed to be as good faith demands I assume the nonsensical implication is unintentional.
Legislation like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the Forestry Regulation, as well as heavy tax burdens and expansive restrictions on contracting freedom in the labor sector, have resulted in a situation where no EU company founded from scratch in the last 50 years has a market capitalization exceeding €100 billion, while the US has six such companies valued over €1 trillion. Also, the EU has only 14 publicly traded companies, founded from scratch within the last 50 years, worth at least $10 billion, with a combined market cap of $430 billion. In contrast, the US has 241 such companies (data here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e3MnYQ044U1gzi_8bDMo...), and they're collectively worth nearly $30 trillion — almost 70 times the EU total.
source: https://geekway.substack.com/p/a-visualization-of-europes-no...
That's an interesting take...
EU companies aren't as overvalued/massive as US ones... and what does that have to do with the USSR?
And most "productivity" stats use GDP as a proxy for the productiveness of output, which is of course biased with the aforementioned overvaluation - the fact that in the US a burger costs $25 with tax and tips included, but 15 euros in France doesn't mean that a US server and cook are more productive.
And in any case, that is relevant in an EU to Soviet Union comparison how exactly?
US stocks may be inflated but the gap — 241 US companies worth $30 trillion vs. 14 EU ones at $430 billion — reflects more than hype. It shows the US consistently produces globally dominant firms, a sign of higher productivity and innovation. The EU’s regulatory burden likely plays a role in why its startups rarely scale that big. For productivity, I cited the US economy being 50% larger (nominal GDP: ~$28T vs. ~$18T for the EU). Your ECB source doesn't contradict my point. It used a baseline of 2019 for both regions, to measure productivity growth, but the regions started at different baselines in 2019.
Anyway, getting back to my point: the US does a better job of creating new industries in large part because it avoids the EU’s regulatory morass and therefore has a more market-based economy.
The entire Silicon Valley exists because that windfall was allowed for the most ridiculous defense spending in the world which went on to create the baseline that private investment could continue (though there was considerable dip when the defense spending got cut in 1990s, private demand by then could continue).
In comparison, wider common market in EU is mostly, well, a thing from 1993 - the EEC had partial one, but it's only since 1993 that you could reasonably treat EU market similarly as USA one, which heavily impacted just how big you could grow as company (you need people to buy your products/services after all). And you still have to deal with things like multiple languages whereas for USA it's viable to have just limited english support.
Combine this with huge impact of retirement funds looking for investment opportunities and zero interest rates for long time, you have conditions where in USA you could get multi million investment for a juice company with overengineered juicer. It's essentially law of large numbers there, lots of churn will get you more even if actual successful companies are lower percentage - the scale does it.
And let's be honest, a lot of US investment capital (including Y-Combinator!) did a lot to ensure that prospective founders from Europe founded the company at least partially in USA (in case of YC, even focusing on SFBA).
Also, you mention GDPR, when it's one of the easiest regulations to deal with in my experience (it actually cleared up stuff that existed before). The DSA and DMA only become really strict once you have MAU bigger than adult population of many of EU countries (more than 10% of total EU population).
Honestly, for startup, a lot of it is easy checklist of "don't do that" - the most you might have to do is to look at what goes through the brains of your marketing dept once you have one and prevent them from going crazy with tag manager... something that your users would be happy about too.
If anything is missing, it's the large VC industry that was incubated through decades of defense and government spending in USA (guaranteeing demand and customers).
That seems like a completely reasonable analogy one would use with no ulterior motives. Assuming, of course, one were completely ignorant of most world history events of the 20th century.
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But you're literally begging the question so let's look at your list. Here's the top 10 biggest companies in the US:
Right off the bat the odd one out is UnitedHealth. They're a megacorp resulting from the fusion of multiple private health insurance companies - with some of the mergers clearly being considered so concerning for market competition that there were attempts to prevent them, which - as is common in the US - of course failed. This is a company leeching billions of American citizens to act as a middleman for healthcare while Americans still have to pay most of their medical expenses out of pocket. Not to mention the blatant corruption between health insurance companies and medical service providers resulting in completely arbitrary costs with fictional discounts. An inefficiency that has made American healthcare orders of magnitude more expensive than in other developed nations while still providing worse health outcomes for the average citizen and fueling the uniquely American opioid epidemic thanks to decades of prioritizing prescription medications over actually useful diagnostic procedures and treatments.Let's single out NVidia because its stock price ballooned over the past three years and as the dip following the Deepseek announcement demonstrated has more to do with the general AGI hype train than actual value produced - unless you believe the announcement literally destroyed "$600bn in value" rather than just correcting the clearly absurd valuation of the company.
Amazon has almost single-handedly wiped out most of the retail industry in the US and elsewhere. They have massive control over the cloud infrastructure market. Their in-house brands have a documented history of cloning successful products sold on Amazon and then outcompeting them the same way Amazon initially outcompeted retail with unsustainable price dumping, only to hike up prices once the competition is out of business. This has allowed Jeff Bezos to become one of the richest people on Earth and Amazon to use its market dominance as leverage against individual US states to get sweetheart deals waiving regulations and labor protection laws and securing tax exemptions.
Microsoft and Oracle are deeply entrenched in the enterprise market, especially public service and bureaucracy. Microsoft literally has a public history of an anti-competitive strategy called "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" that was used to harm industry standards and interoperability in order to tighten vendor lock-in. Oracle's problems are less blatant but it also pretty much grew to its size through deliberate vendor lock-in, shady licensing, and malicious and at times illegitimate lawsuits, often using lawfare against open source projects especially. Bill Gates is now using his wealth to open new markets to US pharmaceutical companies under the guise of humanitarianism. Larry Ellison seems to keep more out of the public light while using his billions to influence political campaigns.
Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta literally made their billions through the exploitation of the personal information of their users while deliberately misleading them about what data was collected and how it is used. They then used their de-facto monopoly positions in search and social media respectively to sell ads and analytics - and are well-documented to have actively misled customers by fudging their metrics (e.g. Facebook pushed video content in an effort to move news sites to publishing on their platform directly although the success metrics of the videos were deliberately engineered to grossly exaggerate their reach and engagement, harming those sites to the point some went out of business). Meta's prioritization of "engagement" at any cost and insufficient content moderation have directly contributed to multiple genocides and the platform has been used to organize child sexual abuse and live stream spree killings. Google meanwhile dominates the search and browser markets (even most alternative browsers are built on Chromium).
Apple is probably the least actively damaging company of the bunch but its success also is based entirely on the infamous "walled garden" approach of vendor lock-in ranging from software to hardware, in the past literally preventing its software from being used on third party hardware and closely controlling the ability of other manufacturers to interface with its hardware. It has since begun opening up to third parties and using interoperable industry standards - thanks to legal pressure from the EU for selling its products within the EU. It's also pretty much the perfect example for "vertical integration" taken to the extreme.
Tesla's initial value was mostly driven by being in the right spot at the right time (especially thanks to Elon Musk's antics resulting in popular media comparing him to Tony Stark because the Iron Man movies were normalizing comic book characters in wider pop culture and techno-optimism and space-futurism were at their zenith), as well as using the first-mover advantage to build out proprietary charging infrastructure. But its biggest competitive advantage were government subisides in the form of carbon emission credits, which it sold for profit to other manufacturers, raking in literally billions of dollars ($9 billion between 2009 and 2024 alone) at zero cost to Tesla itself. Tesla's present valuation however is largely the consequence of its stock price massively ballooning in 2020 - the most likely reasons for which are 1) its ability to remain profitable with literally zero production due to the sale of said credits and 2) its "vertical integration" (read: use of proprietary parts rather than relying on suppliers), i.e. again vendor lock-in.
The reason Tesla's stock price remains mostly stable (the recent drop thanks to its association with Elon Musk's current antics notwithstanding) - despite the company's constant failings with the Cybertruck, quality issues and the yearly promises of FSD being imminent - seems to be mostly tied to its inclusion in various funds and derivatives because of its meteoric rise. Either way this success has allowed Elon Musk to literally buy his way into one of the arguably most influential positions of power via the Trump government, directly controlling a legion of unelected interns dismantling US government services from within.
SpaceX (not publicly traded, so not in your list) meanwhile has a number of lucrative government contracts (mostly with US agencies but also internationally), especially because of its increasingly dominant position in satellite broadband which as demonstrated in Ukraine does not only provide them (and Elon Musk) with an economic advantage but also the ability to exert direct political influence over geopolitical events.
The massively influential prison industrial complex (maintaining the US's leader in number of incarcerated citizens both relative to its population and in absolute numbers) and military industrial complex (which are uniquely influential in the US federal government, rivaled only by Elon Musk himself now) of course also aren't something I'd expect anyone to brag about.
I can't really say anything bad about Costco though. Their failings mostly seem to be the result of the poor state of consumer protection, health and safety, and animal cruelty laws in the US and they genuinely seem to seek to improve those issues when they become public. Sinegal, Brotman and James all seem to be genuinely decent people and the company policy has fairly explicitly been shaped by the idea of putting customers and employees over shareholders - quite unlike the general consensus in the US following Milton Friedman.
In the EU, most of these companies couldn't have existed because they'd have run afoul of antitrust legislation, consumer protection laws, labor laws, health and safety laws, etc - either at the EU level or at a member state level (which would likely have fueled EU legislation to standardize the laws across member states). The DMA and DSA were literally created because of the anti-competitive behavior of some of these companies and their outsized influence across multiple markets. The GDPR was literally created because of the massive violations of privacy and the demonstrable harm caused by them.
The EU is not without its flaws. As I said, it's literally a Free Trade Agreement at its heart and the poor cooperation during COVID hopefully dispelled its loftier claims. But if you think the existence of practical monopolies in the US is a demonstration of the US's superior "free market", your "freedom" looks a lot more like feudalism with extra steps.
I mean, it's hard to see how it would work at all! Their tariff take is simply not going to be sufficient to move the needle very much, and it's not implausible that the revenue loss on income and corporate tax due to lost economic growth will be larger.
If the future can't be predicted that's because one can't predict when Trump and his imbeciles will be stripped of power.