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Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

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Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#381

Post by dmurray »

nodoll wrote: post #355
moooo99 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ch…

>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?

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.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#382

Post by urineaut »

TheCipster wrote: post #113

I might mention the dedicated subreddit with lots of useful information (and some noise too). https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/

As an alternative to Reddit, there is also a Lemmy community called "Buy European": https://feddit.uk/c/buyeuropean

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#383

Post by concerndc1tizen »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #316
concerndc1tizen wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#384

Post by nosianu »

usrnm wrote: post #307
dachworker wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

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 politician…

> 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.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#385

Post by mschuster91 »

Intermernet wrote: post #153
apwell23 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 opin…

> 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).

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#386

Post by [deleted] »

csomar wrote: post #185
iammjm wrote: post #118

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 get…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#387

Post by phpnode »

epolanski wrote: post #242
defrost wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. ~ https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fv... ~ https://w…

> and shows that farmers overall voted much as the general UK population did. Against their own interest.

yes, just like almost every other group that voted for it. It's wrong to single out farmers for this.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#388

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

amarcheschi wrote: post #353
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu57D9YcIk0 This has hardly been "abrupt". Even Obama and Bush were telling Europe to step up defense spending…

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 spendi…

>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.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#389

Post by messe »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #362
tossandthrow wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

>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…

> 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.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#390

Post by CapricornNoble »

radicalbyte wrote: post #219
lupusreal wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

>> 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.

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