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European Alternatives

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Re: European Alternatives

#401

Post by pixodaros »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #360
pixodaros wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, Medicare in the USA is forbidden by law from using its big market to drive a hard bargain like most national health services can (Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003). So its like employers paying workers less in jurisdictions where they can't unionize and strike.

That actually changed recently, but The Economist (UK newspaper) whines that Americans will no longer be footing the bill for drug development: https://archive.is/bWwP4 We're done with Europeans treating us as suckers. Doing nice things for Europe leads to nothing but contempt from Europeans.

No, that article has one paragraph which frets that if Medicare drives down drug prices in the USA, pharma companies might cut R&D spending, and might get less new drugs (note the conditional and hypothetical). A colleague in biomedical research says that its just a common misconception that R&D costs drive drug prices eg. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2022-071710

Re: European Alternatives

#402

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

corford wrote: post #400
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll feel very sorry for you and your country's horrible administration when the Russians are invading your country.

[flagged]

Interesting how Europeans react when Americans talk about Europe the exact same way Europe has talked about America for decades. Isn't it interesting?

Re: European Alternatives

#403

Post by _zagj »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #348
hermanzegerman wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so you're mad that your country is too stupid to regulate it's own business? The regulation also forced all merchants to accept Visa/MC without being able to surcharge a fee for it. Both Companies are quite happy with that deal as it boasted the adoption for their cards across Europe

See this illustrates my point. The "soft power" talking point I sometimes see from Europeans is a complete lie. The idea is that giving Europe relatively favorable terms will cause Europe to regard the US well is a fabrication. In reality, giving Europe favorable terms just causes Europeans to view Americans as suckers.

> soft power

Go look at what these people thought of us before Trump: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...

> Sweden: 47% had a favorable opinion of the US.; Germany: 49%; France: 46%; The Netherlands: 48%

And this was after the US committed over $120 billion in aid (all weapons and cash) to Ukraine, and, for some reason, allowed Sweden to join NATO--the same Sweden that pledged neutrality when Finland was invaded by the Soviets, who stole the Karelian Isthmus and other bits of its territory, and similarly did nothing when Norway and Denmark were invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany.

Re: European Alternatives

#404

Post by wolvoleo »

s_dev wrote: post #25
drnick1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that European alternatives are still in English, when no European country (since the departure of the U.K. from Europe) actually uses that language.

Ireland and Malta. You would be shocked at how well certain nationalities like the Dutch and Swedes speak English.

It's because we don't do dubbing but subtitling. Every foreign TV show or movie becomes a mini language class.

The bigger countries do dubbing and it is really noticeable.

Also in Holland we'd pride ourselves on speaking foreign languages much more than being proud of our own.

Re: European Alternatives

#405

Post by golem14 »

viscousviolin wrote: post #232

Something I'd love to see is a Europe-hosted mirror of software repositories like pypi, juliahub, and the like. It feels pretty essential to have these be available no matter what, but I haven't found any such mirrors.

More importantly, perhaps, are some exercises where a A SRE team creates likely problem (US/China/…) does bad things with DNS/BGP/…, submarine cables, starlink, GPS/GALILEO, Kessler effect etc, and SRE team B tries to keep the national infrastructure together. This may be happening already, but I have my doubts

Re: European Alternatives

#406

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

_zagj wrote: post #403
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See this illustrates my point. The "soft power" talking point I sometimes see from Europeans is a complete lie. The idea is that giving Europe relatively favorable terms will cause Europe to regard the US well is a fabrication. In reality, giving Europe favorable terms just causes Europeans to view Americans as suckers.

> soft power Go look at what these people thought of us before Trump : https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u... > Sweden: 47% had a favorable opinion of the US.; Germany: 49%; France: 46%; The Netherlands: 48% And this was after the US committed over $120 billion in aid (all weapons and cash) to Ukraine, and, for some reason, allowed Sweden to join NATO--the same Sweden that pledged neutrality…

Yes, there is no point in trying to make Europeans happy. They are impossible to please. You can see our favorability in Europe was barely net positive then.

By May of last year (before the Greenland drama--I'm against that of course), more Europeans liked China better than the US. Maybe we should start shipping materials for weapons to Russia, like China does, to see if that improves our popularity with Europe.

"Soft power" is an absurd talking point. Doing nice things for Europe has brought us nothing but anger and contempt. Just scroll through this thread, there's plenty of proof. They are a very entitled and condescending people.

Re: European Alternatives

#407

Post by jenadine »

mc32 wrote: post #398
embedding-shape wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About European Product Hunt - very good idea. Older members of HN will remember that Product Hunt probably came to life a lot because of HN and the submissions/comments from rrhoover (founder of Product Hunt). He's still active here, but before/during Product Hunt launch he was very active if I remember correctly. Maybe a grander idea is a European Hacker News, that has the potential to spawn the European Product H…

I can see it now, if you have a European Hacker news, you'll have a bunch of people complaining about how Europe isn't the world and admonish posters to not be so eurocentric on the site --that other people besides Europeans would read it... but anyway, good luck on the endeavour.

I already have this feeling on french-speaking forums where everything is very France-centric despite there are french speaking people from other countries reading it.

Re: European Alternatives

#408

Post by 202508042147 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #319
MrDresden wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many European countries have a single payer system when it comes to the medical system. That gives them a big leverage in negotiations for drug pricing.

When European customers pay American firms, it's "protection money". When American customers pay European firms, it's just capitalism, sorry bro.

For pharma there are, most of the time, alternatives. There is no alternative to Visa/Mastercard in Europe. It's an American duopoly.

Re: European Alternatives

#409

Post by MrDresden »

kpw94 wrote: post #337
MrDresden wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner has had three extensive cancer treatments in the Netherlands. She has had dietary and psychological specialists help her during and after each one. All of this was just on normal health insurance and with normal clinics and hospitals. Never did she have to wait more than perhaps 3 weeks tops for an appointment. The medical system here is world class. However Germany and it's infrastructure can not be compa…

> However Germany and it's infrastructure can not be compared to the Netherlands. I refuse to take trains through that country anymore. In which country are the trains bad? Netherlands or Germany? Do you care elaborating why? is that punctuality? strikes? decaying infrastructure?

Yeah I see now how that was unclear.

I was talking about Germany's infrastructure. Last year I had 3x separate trips turn into chaos due to how broken their system is. Broken trains, broken track infrastructure etc. Think multiple hours on each trip rather than just 10 minutes delay.

The Ditch system is very reliable in contrast.

Re: European Alternatives

#410

Post by 202508042147 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #303
202508042147 wrote: post #174

One obvious thing missing from any of those lists: Visa and Mastercard alternatives. This is the protection money that is never brought up by the US officials when they say that America was paying for our security.

Eh, as an American I have to pay Visa/Mastercard fees too. Why do European drug firms charge so much more for their drugs in the US than in Europe? That is an actual difference between what it is like to be in a consumer in US vs Europe. Even Bernie Sanders thinks it is a problem: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/24/nx-s1-5123689/novo-nordisk-ce...

And the fees you pay go, in part, to fund the American War machine that is now threatening Europe. As a European, I don't want to fund your war machine.
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