and yet I think that Germany runs a trade surplus and largely does it selling hard-to-make things rather than digging stuff out of the ground.
Go figure.
Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
711–720 of 905 posts
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But "about to be ruled by a fascist"? That was wrong, but just slightly. It wasn't fascism,but nazism. «Evidence in Trump supporter’s trial suggests he espoused Nazi ideals» https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/brendan-hun... > And "getting shot at school/street" is pretty much just a cheap shot. It's an enormous social and political problem, caused by the way people live in US and the incentive system…
> It wasn't fascism,but nazism. That's not really the point, and I'm not sure the semantics matter. I'm also not doubting that Trump would take up any "ideal" that supports his ego and power. Or that, among Trump supporters, there are people who would in fact be ready to go so far as fascism or nazism. I just think that, in a thread about the quality of life in different economic cultures, "about to be ruled by a fas…
> to be ruled by a fascists" is kind of cheap rhetoric
on the contrary
being ruled by a fascist supporter and/or supported by fascist sympathizers has an enormous impact on the quality of life.
That's true everywhere, in Europe as in USA, that's why everybody here in Europe is preoccupied by far right extremists especially in the former eastern Europe.
> you would need to show that it actually is a major concern for a large proportion of Americans that affects their quality of life
It is, having 10 times the chances of dying shot by a stranger makes it 10 times more probable that in US I would be dead instead of alive.
Being dead it's much worse than being alive in my "quality of life" book.
One can argue that Americans don't care, but it is objectively worse as far as the quality of life goes.
Or to put it in another way: for Americans it could be irrelevant, but if we are comparing the two ways of life, it's a data point that can't be easily discarded.
Imagine having the life of a young relative taken by criminals or, worse, by the police.
Would you trade it for a better salary or a larger household, knowing that it's 10 times more probable that it could happen?
In Los Angeles in 2020 there have been 75 murders every million people (a bit more actually, closer to 76), in Rome it was 5 (a bit less, around 4.4 but rounded for easier comparison).
In NY it was 56, Kenya is 50, Egypt 25, Ghana 21, Sierra Leone 17.
Is this a meaningful difference or not?
Would you consider Los Angeles safer than Rome?
Given the choice would you rather raise your kids in Los Angeles or in Rome?
Remember: you're betting on their life or death chances.
> into the trap of stereotypes such as school shootings being everywhere
It's not a stereotype if it's true.
It's the only place were regularly school shootings end up with casaulties.
«There were, on average, 16.4 such shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, compared with an average of 6.4 shootings annually from 2000 to 2006. In the past 13 years, 486 people have been killed in such shootings, with 366 of the deaths in the past seven years. In all, the study looked at 160 shootings since 2000.Sep 24, 2014» (news from 7 years ago!)
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/25shooters.html
Can you name another country with similar stats?
I honestly can't.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#713Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting you should note anti-immigration tendencies. I believe those tendencies are fueled by ridiculously liberal immigration laws that essentially allows far too many asylum seekers into Europe. That's why you now see ghettos and zones where the police don't go in France, Sweden and even UK. I am not against immigration but I think Europe should be seriously reconsidering non-western immigration as it will…
I am not against immigration but I think Europe should be seriously reconsidering non-western immigration as it will simply clash. I don't get why you want to filter them by "non-western"? I have arab, african, indian & east-asian friends here in Berlin that I am sure are net-postives for society. Why not set the filters to something more directly related to what you want to achieve? Such as education level, having a…
I think you are deceiving yourself by restricting your dataset to those in your circles. Of course there are many smart and productive immigrants in Germany from all over the world.
I said I am not against immigration, but shutting it down for a period or restricting heavily might be worth it due to the potential risks that exist long term.
There's no real harm in trying that for Germany's voters, and by doing so you will also keep the far right wingers at bay.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#714Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huge companies concentrate power and distort the market. They can then extract rent from the economy by forcing others to play by their rules. Talking about Apple specifically, they haven't released an innovative phone in years, but are still selling their phones for premium prices. They invest huge amounts of money in marketing to influence consumers to buy their products for prestige rather than any cost/benefit an…
If Huawei or someone else was building a better mobile experience people would be buying that over Apple. What is an innovative phone? The iPhone 12 looks marvellous, runs great, is secure, gets constant updates unlike android and tries to preserve privacy. Apple Pay is awesome, makes me spend more cause of how fluid it is but still is an amazing experience. The software with the hardware makes apple great.
Huawei was starting to make such phones, but got blocked by the power of the US state to help protect Apple, Google and others. Even if they hadn't been, Huawei is another giant, controlled by an even worse regime.
And of course, the iPhone 12 is a pretty good phone. So we're the iPhone 11, X, 8, 7, 6 etc. In fact, apart from the camera, they are essentially the same great phone, but people keep buying newer ones, mostly because of marketing reasons (sure they have more powerful processors and more memory, but virtually no one really needs the power of those, since they use their phone to browse the web and get directions).
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#715Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the end, one may talk about all the startups (when the BPI pumps billions into it, I sure hope there are some startups and medium companies), but EU has proven unable to build an Apple . It would be dismantled here, and CEO beaten up before reaching any interesting level. DailyMotion (French) was as big as Youtube. Many others like this. We always end up #2, and the Silicon Valley still decides what is ok to say o…
> EU has proven unable to build an Apple and US has proven unable to build a Mercedes
The US has Tesla, with almost 6x the market cap as Mercedes-Daimler.
Mercedes cars also destroy the planet with fossil fuel exhausts.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#716Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For the authorities, “you didn’t give a receipt, so they can’t tax you.” Honest question: is this actually the law, or a tactic of an official seeking a bribe?
In Italy, that’s law because there used to be/is (don’t know which is true) a culture where, some/many cafes and restaurants let some/many visitors pay ‘under the table’, dodging VAT taxes. That law requires shipowners to give a receipt and customers to keep it. Customers can be fined if, a few meters outside the shop, a policeman asks them to show their receipt, and the policeman has evidence they bought something o…
In Poland the tax office clerks just go shopping and if they are not offered a receipt, the store will be heavily fined. The customer is not liable, but the shop is, so pretty much everyone will offer you a receipt immediately.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#717Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting you should note anti-immigration tendencies. I believe those tendencies are fueled by ridiculously liberal immigration laws that essentially allows far too many asylum seekers into Europe. That's why you now see ghettos and zones where the police don't go in France, Sweden and even UK. I am not against immigration but I think Europe should be seriously reconsidering non-western immigration as it will…
> That's why you now see ghettos and zones where the police don't go in France, Sweden and even UK. That's failed policy by the people that are already here, not the fault of the immigrants. > I think Europe should be seriously reconsidering non-western immigration as it will simply clash Yeah ... wait what? That's kinda ... what? Why? What's the problem with that? So you don't seem to know, but it worked out very we…
If you limit immigration heavily, yet allow for immigration from countries that almost never cause problems, you will limit the risks. Lets then expand on Western countries to simply mean developed nations. Anything from US, Canada, Mexico to Australia, Russia and Japan.
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You cannot buy hardware like it anywhere else, at any price. Strange, I bought a PC with 2x the specs at the same price as a maxed out Mac…
I'm no Mac user but the value of a Mac to its users has more to do with its seamless integration with all other Apple products and services rather than a purely utilitarian perspective in raw specs/performance per dollar. This has no value to me as their pricing is out of my budget and I don't like the idea of being locked into a proprietary ecosystem, which is of course down to everyone's personal preference, but ju…
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Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#719Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.) > supposedly more investment in R&D Not supposedly, factually. The article explicitly states this. It’s the Economist; if you…
Imho, what was happening in the Silicon Valley economy looks much more like displacement of value rather than creation of value (1). Google/Facebook have displaced other ad formats, redirecting money to themselves. AWS have displaced IT technicians in other corporations, redirecting money to themselves. Apple is selling overpriced commodity hardware, redirecting money to themselves. Uber is displacing taxis, redirect…
It’s a small fraction but Amazon creates content too, maybe even more now with mgm, and content creation looks less like displacement, though there’s some of that too (not enough IMO)
Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
The previous range of state of the art smartphones did come from Europe. They couldn't compete but not because of structural restrictions on scale - just because of a series of bad decisions that were independent of the continent they were developed on. It's more likely the next generation will come exclusively from China - not because of structural restrictions on scale but because it's deliberately built up its ele…
> previous range of state of the art smartphones did come from Europe Right, but where are they now ? The article says in just its third paragraph that "Europe used to pack a punch." Up to 2000, "nearly a third of the combined value of the world’s 1,000 biggest listed firms was in Europe, and a quarter of their profits." That aligns with the state of the art having a home in Europe around then. But something changed…
>That aligns with the state of the art having a home in Europe around then.
Does it? Bigger doesn't mean more state of the art. Comcast isn't state of the art. Exxon isn't state of the art. Most big companies aren't Apple.
Moreover, the size of American companies is somewhat exaggerated cos of liquidity being pumped into the stock market.