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Stop Generalizing About Europe

jonasbentzen.com

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Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#111

Post by saraid216 »

rmc wrote: post #83
kmfrk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like "America" is a synecdoche for "The United States". :) It depends on how the words are used; "Africa" to describe an area larger than a lot of continents combined, when you only mean a few countries - or just one! - is borderline offensive, though.

Using "America" to refer to the USA is muuuuuch less controversional and much less inaccurate than using "Europe" for all the countries in Europe, or "Africa" for all the countries in Africa. For example, various US organisations have "America" or "American" in their names, and openly only deal with the USA (e.g. RIAA, MPAA, etc.). Organisations in EU that have "European" in their name are not focussed on just that c…

That's roughly for the same reason that if you say Obama, you're not referring to one of his kids.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#112

Post by erebrus »

klapinat0r wrote: post #91
pretoriusB wrote: post #67

Well, I'm a European myself, but the corrections sounds a little on the pedantic side: > "Most of Europe has the euro as a common currency" -- Only 17 of Europe's 50 countries use the Euro. Yes. Only some of the LARGEST countries, for a total of 332 million people. Not to mention that he did say "most". > "Europe is great for an American tech entrepreneur because wealth is better distributed" The difference between t…

> It's as if someone talked about investing in the US, and someone felt obliged to blog about the differences between Illinois and New York and rural Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota. This, exactly, seems to be the point OP is missing.

It's all about scale. That is the point that almost everyone else is missing! The differences between New York and rural Idaho, in all, are smaller than the differences between Greece and Norway. They are however comparable to the differences between North and Southern Italy.

Scale

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#113

Post by saraid216 »

pretoriusB wrote: post #67

Well, I'm a European myself, but the corrections sounds a little on the pedantic side: > "Most of Europe has the euro as a common currency" -- Only 17 of Europe's 50 countries use the Euro. Yes. Only some of the LARGEST countries, for a total of 332 million people. Not to mention that he did say "most". > "Europe is great for an American tech entrepreneur because wealth is better distributed" The difference between t…

> It's as if someone talked about investing in the US, and someone felt obliged to blog about the differences between Illinois and New York and rural Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota.

Someone should do this. Like... actually write this post.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#114

Post by robotresearcher »

gyardley wrote: post #96
loxs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we are going deep down the rabbit hole now :). Please excuse me if I say lots of stupid things. How far apart are Louisiana and California? How far apart are Romania and Bulgaria? Yet, the two USA states share the same language (at least on official level), the same currency and the same "american" culture. Neither of these is true for BG and RO. And we are neighbours, mind that. As an added "benefit", we have…

Your ignorance of the respective areas is showing. It's hard to talk about a common culture between California and Louisiana when neither California nor Louisiana has a common internal culture. In Louisiana, spend some time in Houma, and then some time in Shreveport. Louisiana has a Cajun-dominated region and a region that's very much part of the Old South, and they're not much alike. In California, spend some time i…

Easy, tiger. European countries have diversity like this too. In many places going one valley over will give you different dialects or languages, ethnic heritage, cultural oddities, etc.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#115

Post by sbmassey »

lispm wrote: post #75
PoliticsJunkie wrote: post #53

Created an account just to state this: tech people please don't go into discussing politics / economics. Brits want to exit EU because of wars in the past? This is ridiculous! What about the real reasons: 1. Britain has 70% of its laws created by the EU by burocrats who were never voted into the office and can't be voted out of the office: Barroso (President of the European Commission) and Von Rumpoy (whatever his na…

> Germany has always been goods producer. UK has always been a trading nation Yeah, why has the UK then stopped trading? Btw., I live in a German Hansestadt, which for centuries has been trading with all the known world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League The UK can't trade with the US? Haha, what a joke. Let's face it: the UK has focused on its financial 'industry' and has sold products of questionable qu…

The Hanseatic league stretched from England to Novgorod, and highlights the strong need for small independent sovereign city states, rather than top-heavy bureaucracies like the EU.

The EU is an attempt by the European political classes to copy all the worst parts of the US political system, while ignoring the traditions of political liberty that (used to) make the US actually work.

Having said that, I am hopeful that once the EU finally collapses, Europe will be blessed with a lot of small independent competing nation states, so there will be some hope for liberty if the US continues along the path of becoming a modern Byzantium.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#116

Post by erebrus »

adventured wrote: post #98

The comedy to this is the extreme generalizing that goes on globally when talking about America / Americans. We're all cowboy surfer rednecks that love our guns and religion, are all broke with maxed out credit cards and overweight with a nasty case of diabetes.

Yes, that's a silly generalization, but it's not comparable to the one mentioned in the OP. If you want to compare thinking of all Americans as rednecks, you can compare it to thinking of of all french as sweet talking wine lovers, spaniards as lazy and always sleeping the siesta, or germans as rigid uptight and rude; and so on an so forth.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#117

Post by erebrus »

carbocation wrote: post #106
jballanc wrote: post #102

I'd wager $100 that 99% of HN readers can't even name the fastest growing economy in Europe...

I'd wager that they also can't name the fastest growing economy in the United States. What of it?

I can name the fastest growing national economy in the USA. It's easy...there is only one nation. In Europe, there are 50... how hard to get can this be?

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#119

Post by xradionut »

jacquesm wrote: post #87
Vivtek wrote: post #4

Hmm. Perhaps you could stop generalizing about people generalizing about Europe. Varsavsky has lived and built businesses in Madrid since 1995, so I think that his contrasts between the European market and the American market from the entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy. Your points about European diversity are quite valid, although I think they're beside the point. But your ad hominem "Oh my,…

> his contrasts between the European market and the American market from the entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy. They're not. And I've run businesses in lots of different countries as well. Martin is on the ball when it comes to comparing Spain the US, but his contrasts between the European and the American market from the entrepreneurs point of view are way off the mark. He should have simply…

"- in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees"

Yes, but you can be a dick to the employees of your US subsidiaries. (Personal experience with a few German corporations led to this observation...)

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#120

Post by gyardley »

robotresearcher wrote: post #114
gyardley wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ignorance of the respective areas is showing. It's hard to talk about a common culture between California and Louisiana when neither California nor Louisiana has a common internal culture. In Louisiana, spend some time in Houma, and then some time in Shreveport. Louisiana has a Cajun-dominated region and a region that's very much part of the Old South, and they're not much alike. In California, spend some time i…

Easy, tiger. European countries have diversity like this too. In many places going one valley over will give you different dialects or languages, ethnic heritage, cultural oddities, etc.

Of course they do. I wasn't suggesting the contrary.
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