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Go European: Discover European products and services

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Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#301
post #293
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah protectionism is really important. Globalization introduces dependencies and therefor allows countries to easily exploit others. Globalization is not as good as you describe it.

Does dependency make wars less probable? Genuine question. Logically it should, but I don’t know the numbers.

I'm not sure. On one side, having trade relationships would maybe also contribute to peace between the countries who take part in these agreements. On the other side you have countries that might try and conquer instead of building relationships. There are so many edge cases to this question it's hard to think of a answer that feels right. I am also no expert on the matter. One thing to note though, is that wars are not always grenades and guns, sometimes having more money is enough to get unfair advantages on other countries. It's a big topic.

Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#302
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's to fund re-armament.

The other question is why did Germany/EU disarm in the first place when the US didn't, despite not living next-dorr to Russia?

The US did disarm somewhat after the Cold War, but kept a lot in place for pork-barrel reasons and then the absolutely huge waste of money that was the War On Terror.

People believed the "end of history" narratives about Russia, and even that it would become like the rest of the ex-communist states, a normal part of liberal Europe. That should have changed after 2014, but by then the grip of the financial crisis was preventing any increases in state spending.

Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was that the people that benefitted most from free trade never do the work to ensure that a fair share of the profits went to the working class who were now being displaced. If you can no longer get lifelong middleclass job with a high school diploma, but you need a degree, then the degree should be paid for by the state... or you see what you see, a race to the bottom and then a backlash.

This seems circular, since there are no credible authorities to decide what is “a fair share” or not, other than the political process in the first place. (And then only in the ideal perfectly spherical cow world where single issue voters don’t exist…)

I think fair can be refined to a middle class lifestyle where after working for 30 years you can have your house paid odd and enjoy the final third of your life in retirement having healthcare coverage the whole time.

While nailing down all the particulars can be daunting I think the basic sketch as above is what people mean most of the time pretty uncontroversially.

Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#304

Breakups are painful. A great battle is afoot on the "data sovereignty" ground, for sure. It's over a year since I spoke at Cloud Native Media [0] on the urgent need to extricate sensitive processes and data from US American companies. At the time there were a few angry reactions - mainly from people accepting the risks for the first time and acknowledging how deeply enmeshed/dependent their operations are. Most of t…

> It's March 2025 and the US has gone full-fascism. It's amazing to see people say things like this as if the US was any different before. Trump just put an honest face on fascism and imperialism. Before, they were exercised in a 'polite', polished manner. Even by Obama who stomped down the Occupy Wall Street.

Yes, it was different before. The status quo may have been fascistic and certainly imperialist but still would have been far more preferable to what's coming.

Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be.

Only if they return Constantinople.

"Return" to whom. Byzantium was never "European", it was shunned at its time by entire Europe - by both the Catholic Mediterranean parts and the Germanic parts. The Romaioi (as the Byzantines called themselves) turned into Ottoman Rums as the empire was a multi-cultural, multi-national empire united under the banner of Ottoman-ness. The uncle of the fallen emperor, who was next in line for being the Byzantine emperor after the fall of his nephew was made the "Grand Beg" (akin to viceroy) of the entire Ottoman Balkans after the fall of Constantinople. He governed lands far bigger than what his ancestors governed even ~200 years ago. A lot of Mehmed I's begs were ex-Byzantines who were still Christian, and, well Byzantine. Except they wore Ottoman turbans now - and most of them just didn't and kept wearing Byzantine attire.

So its like what some historians say: The fall of Constantinople was mostly a change of hats.

Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#306

It’s genuinely sad to see the world splintering into waves of nationalistic protectionism. Not long ago, we had something promising, a slow but steady crawl toward a united global community. Progress was gradual, sure, but it was real. Countries could specialize and trade freely: I’d buy your chips, you’d buy my steel, and we’d both come out ahead. It worked. Now, though, it’s all about "national sovereignty" and "in…

Maybe. But, isn't the EU a large collection of countries? Meaning that it isn't about updating the free trade of the West; it's about rejecting the US which turned into a not-a-friend seemingly overnight. As a Canadian and a European, I'm going outside my way to not buy from the US. I used to boycott Nestle but if Canadian Superstore has only Nescafe or something from the US, I'm going for Nestle.

Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#307

Economic nationalism is bad when Trump does it and bad when Europe does it too. We should have unilateral free trade. Ricardo showed this was better over 200 years ago.

> Economic nationalism is bad when Trump does it and bad when Europe does it too.

Now, now. Because Trump is 'hOrRiBLe' for putting an honest face on fascism and imperialism that always existed in the US and its vassals, we have to have outrage and do the very things we criticize him for doing.

Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to Tesla and ask how they are doing in the EU and Canada :).

I suppose a big ticket item like a car is much easier to boycott than 50 small items from the grocery where trying to search through the ownership tree for every conglomerate would use up the rest of my sanity

The good news (at least for the EU, don't know about non-EU European countries) is that groceries are only a blip on the radar when it comes to imports (of course, energy is used for groceries, but that applies both to European and US products) [1]:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

We do 'import' a lot of services from the US:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

[1] Of course, there are US conglomerates that produce in the Europe. But a good chunk (at least here) is Unilever, Nestle, etc., which are all European.

Re: Go European: Discover European products and services

#309
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Switzerland amazon never bothered to enter the market, so local competition filled the gap, and it created much better service while doing it. I speak specifically about galaxus/digitec which often have more and more available stock than actual amazon in EU, any category has 1000s of items, much better organized and findable. Plus it has many great features not seen or usable elsewhere - directly showing evolution…

Why don't they compete outside of Switzerland?

They started recently:

https://www.galaxus.at/

https://www.galaxus.de/

https://www.galaxus.it/

https://www.galaxus.fr/

Digitec is not available outside Switzerland, as it's the old franchise name which would have been dropped in Switzerland as well, if it wasn't so well known. But Galaxus has all items of Digitec anyway.

I can highly recommend it, a very nice interface and I had very good customer support over the last decade.

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