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French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

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Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#131

Post by dragonwriter »

sangnoir wrote: post #129
petre wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austria Hungary has failed. The Soviet Union has failed even though everybody in it was speaking Russian, which is not the case with the EU. The EU will fail if it continues like this, with massive centralization of power. The difference is that unlike Austria Hungary and the USSR, it does not have a standing army to back its power and member states will leave when economic crisis hits and it's no longer in their bes…

> The EU will fail if it continues like this, with massive centralization of power. I keep hearing this argument, but I've never heard any supporting arguments. What evidence is there that "sovereignty" is optimal at the administrative scale of modern-day nation-states and not EU-sized scales, or going the other direction, at provincial, city or district levels?

The EU, incidentally, is the scale of a large modern day nation-state. It's obviously a bigger scale then it's own constituent nation-states, but then so are China, India, Ruusia, and the USA.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#132

Post by tjalfi »

tobltobs wrote: post #117
AlexeyBrin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try to live for a few years in different European countries like Hungary, Romania and Germany. Most importantly see how each of these people see each other and their neighbours. I bet that people in Switzerland have more in common (economically and culturally) than people from Bulgaria and France have for example.

I guess the difference would be similar to NYC vs. Kentucky or Alabama vs. California. Those differences (economically and culturally) don't seem to be a too big problem for the US. To come back to the example of Switzerland, the economically and culturally differences between a mountain farmer and a Banker in Geneva shouldn't be underrated also.

Regional inequality is pretty bad in the US[0].

The following paragraph is an excerpt from the linked article.

Yet starting in the early 1980s, the long trend toward regional equality abruptly switched. ... In 1980, the per capita income of Washington, D.C., was 29 percent above the average for Americans as a whole; by 2013 it had risen to 68 percent above. In the San Francisco Bay area, the rise was from 50 percent above to 88 percent. Meanwhile, per capita income in New York City soared from 80 percent above the national average in 1980 to 172 percent above in 2013.

[0] http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-...

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#133

Post by petre »

wsc981 wrote: post #31
jjawssd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can one profit off of the collapse of the European Union?

Soros at one time hedged against the British Pound and he made much profit this way. Perhaps the same could be done w.r.t. the Euro? See: http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/george-soros-bank...

Soros hedged against the Pound/De-Mark peg. I have doubts it can be done to the Euro (too strong) but it can be done to another currency of a weaker economy pegged which to the Euro, for instance the Bulgarian Lev (BGN).

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#134

Post by ZeroGravitas »

sangnoir wrote: post #126
tradersam wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has been proven Trump isn't actually anti-establishment, that was just a lie he used during the campaign.

Has it been proven? One of his advisers is on the record stating that the cabinet was chosen to "deconstruct the administrative state"[1], and Trump proceeded to appoint individuals (at least 2 by my reckoning) with beliefs contrary to the missions of the agencies they lead. 1. http://fortune.com/2017/02/25/bannon-trump-cabinet-cpac/

I guess it depends on whether you think the EPA, and public schooling, have traditionally helped or hindered the "establishment".

If you think wars for oil in the mid-east etc. are what the establishment wants, then the scientists at the EPA are a threat to that.

If you think the establishment are Al Gore and his fellow communist hoaxers, then wrecking the EPA is an anti-elitists move.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#136

Post by mozumder »

sparkling wrote: post #68
orf wrote: post #2

As a European this comes as a huge relief, especially given the poorly-timed email leak (with Russian names in the metadata). Here's to hoping that Europe can continue working together and begin to reform itself, and not tear itself apart like some of our American 'allies' on the (alt-)right would like. Lots of challenges ahead, but we wouldn't want it to be too easy now would we?

You seem to assume that without the EU, european countries would no longer cooperate and trade with each other. I don't see that happening. The European Economic Area (EEA) and the Schengen treaty exist independently from the EU. Norway and Switzerland are not members of the EU, yet they trade perfectly fine with others. The EU is simply not necessary for free trade; nor is free trade its main goal. The EU as it is r…

Without the EU, they wouldn't have free labor mobility, limiting business hiring.

If you want your business to succeed, you better have a free and open labor pool.

This is why economies grow with open borders, because it's more labor efficient.

Can you imagine not being able to hire a specialized SQL coder, because the only one available is in Austria, and you're business is in France, and there's no labor mobility?

Or did you think labor was a commodity? And that anyone can do anyone else's job?

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#137

Post by petre »

cperciva wrote: post #18
sparkling wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any 12 year old kiddie can change meta data on files. Faking meta data to place false clues is intelligence service 101 as documented by many NSA/CIA leaks.

Sure, but if documents supposedly belonging to French political actors have Russian names in the metadata, it means they were tampered with. It doesn't matter if the tampering was done by Russia or by the USA; either way, those documents are not authentic, which means the whole "look what we found when we hacked his email" story is a fraud.

The leaked data was released too late to have an imapct on the election. Either who released it was really desperate or they seek to blame Russia.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#138

Post by song »

lindbergh wrote: post #106

HN will likely rejoice. Macron is putting a lot of faith in startups to jumpstart back the french economy. I think it's wise: France has great schools to train great engineers, but there's still this stigma that it's almost impossible to have your own tech company in France unless you're ready to deal with massive paperwork. I have no idea how true it is, but Macron clearly wants to change this mentality. It also goe…

Speaking as someone who has had companies in various countries (Japan, China, Hong Kong and France). The paperwork and complexities in France are by far the worst. Even China with it's love of red tape is at least relatively well organized and not to difficult to navigate.

In France, you get to deal with organizations like the RSI and URSSAF which are incredibly incompetent, frequently make mistake, do not have phone numbers that can be called from abroad (which is extremely inconvenient when traveling for business) and have Bizantine rules.

I would never create a company again in France because the system is completely broken. I really hope that Macron follows through on solving this. I believe that it's a priority.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#139

Post by polotics »

mozumder wrote: post #136
sparkling wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to assume that without the EU, european countries would no longer cooperate and trade with each other. I don't see that happening. The European Economic Area (EEA) and the Schengen treaty exist independently from the EU. Norway and Switzerland are not members of the EU, yet they trade perfectly fine with others. The EU is simply not necessary for free trade; nor is free trade its main goal. The EU as it is r…

Without the EU, they wouldn't have free labor mobility, limiting business hiring. If you want your business to succeed, you better have a free and open labor pool. This is why economies grow with open borders, because it's more labor efficient. Can you imagine not being able to hire a specialized SQL coder, because the only one available is in Austria, and you're business is in France, and there's no labor mobility?…

Replace Austria with Australia in your post, and reconsider the truth value of your EU==Labor Mobility equation ok?

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#140

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Boothroid wrote: post #62

Nothing juicy in the emails it seems - so what possible benefit is there for the leaker? Could it be bragging? Increasing fear of hacking? Implying that Le Pen was in cahoots with the Russians? Clearly if it was supposed to help Le Pen it didn't work.

Wouldn't surprise me if some "fake news" based on the emails was getting pushed via social media while the main media was forced to not cover anything.

If they had anything even vaguely plausible, they'd have released it earlier.

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