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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?

#411

Post by buyucu »

atoav wrote: post #50
Darmody wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that Europe needs its own companies I don't think turning allies into enemies is a good idea.

Frankly us Europeans (similarily: Canadians) have no choice. Trump demonsttated quite clearly that if you're down he will squeeze every last drop out of even his closest allies — just look at how he treated Ukraine. So the choice is to be at the whim of a despotic tyrant from abroad or do your own thing. I guess there aren't many populations out there who'd prefer the former. But I also see it as a chance. Europe is…

it's not just trump. did we forget the US was evesdropping on everyones communications years before trump? trump was just the last straw.

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

#412

Post by usrnm »

nosianu wrote: post #384
usrnm wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 skil…

That's exactly the same reasoning we heard during Covid, injecting massive amounts of money into the economy was supposed to be perfectly safe and even a good thing. Definitely not supposed to lead to any inflation. Guess what happened next.

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

#413

Post by graemep »

phpnode wrote: post #393
watwut wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is TERF as a term bad when it actually matches the ideology? You have to be against trans and otherwise feminist. Which is exactly what that is.

A lot of people who get called TERFs absolutely don't identify as feminists, let alone _radical_ feminists. It's just a meaningless term now

The word feminist is also a hard one to pin down. SOme people define it as just meaning believing in equality - but in a society where that is the consensus view (its not true of every society, but it is where I most frequently come across the word) that has little meaning.

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

#414

Post by HDThoreaun »

epolanski wrote: post #236
dmos62 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked a comment by Sarah C. Paine, about how Communism is a really great system for taking power from within a state (think Mao), and then staying in power, but it's horrible for generating prosperity. When evaluating the choices of certain people, it's clarifying to not think in terms of prosperity, but, rather, power. I think there's a case to be made about Trump seeing advantage in making enemies of his politica…

The same Sarah Paine that speaks about how China lifted 1B+ people out of poverty and created tens of millions of millionaires?

Which happened immediately after they abandoned the planned economy

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

#415

Post by eterps »

mentalgear wrote: post #3

It's one thing to visit the website, but I would be interested what % is actually migrating? For me personally, I had to install the "Go European" browser extension [1] before I actually started switching, due to more frequent reminders, from using mostly chatGPT/claude to LeChat by mistral (which feels at least as good). My Take-away: User stickiness is hard to break due to providers' walled gardens, even for me who…

This obviously will take a while.

On the other hand, I am mostly involved in startups where lots of tech choices need to be made from scratch. The startup I'm currently working for doesn't even consider US based tech solutions at the moment. And I think more startups that pop up nowadays will think twice before choosing non-EU based tech.

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

#416

Post by nodoll »

dmurray wrote: post #381
nodoll wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>the exact thing the spending is meant to boost.

Sure, but that is 800bn that could have been spent on more meaningful things. People would be more happy to redeem that by their work..

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

#417

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

messe wrote: post #389
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>They don't despise you. They dislike your government.

Then why are my comments in this thread being downvoted? I'm trying to share my perspective, and I get sarcastic replies like "Cry me a river."

All of my most acrimonious arguments on HN have been with Europeans talking about transatlantic relations. There just seems to be something uniquely dysfunctional about the US/Europe relationship. From my perspective, I'm sorry to say that internet Europeans come across as incredibly obnoxious and entitled.

Put it another way, I see way more "Americans are fat and stupid" comments from Europeans than other US allies. That's not about our government. That's about us as Americans.

I find that anti-American stereotypes are frequently false when you fact check. For example, the US actually seems to have pretty good education outcomes. We're not stupid: https://xcancel.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/17322446879293604...

This fact-checking tells me that anti-Americanism (again: regarding citizens, not the government) may be driven by resentment rather than data.

There seems to be some sort of tall poppy syndrome coming out of Europe which I don't want to be a part of. I interpret it as a sort of toxic collectivism. America is an individualist country which believes in celebration of success and free association. Europe wants to resent American success, while also obliging the US to help it when it needs help. I just don't want to be allied with you guys anymore, sorry. I'm happy that you're now starting to figure out things on your own, and I wish you the best.

>you don't think that appeasing an expansionist Russia might run contrary to America's interests?

For one, I don't buy this appeasement talking point. I haven't seen much hard evidence that Russia has ambitions beyond Ukraine. This seems to be another European collectivism thing again, where if you question this you get excluded from the collective.

For another thing, from a realist perspective, I actually don't see why Russian expansionism is so vital to US interests. From a realist perspective, we could just be neutral and trade with whoever wins. Peace with major powers like Russia and China is very much in the US interest.

Even before Trump, Europeans would always say that the US is a selfish imperialist country. Maybe the point of Trump is to show just a bit about how the US would actually behave, if the US was the sort of country that Europe has always said it was.

>Yeah, the influence of a random commenter on HN is comparable to the owner of one of the worlds largest social networks. Come on.

Is there a principle that you're not supposed to interfere in another country's elections, or not?

Sure, you're just one commenter, but a lot of random European commenters add up.

I'm happy for you to constructively critique why you think a different antitrust policy would be better, or even say Europe should make antitrust an item in trade negotations. But it comes across as obnoxious when you act like US antitrust policies are oppressing you and we're obligated to change them for you, and this negates 80 years of NATO protection.

The US is a sovereign nation that's allowed to have its own antitrust policies, its own foreign policy, its own approach to alliances. That understanding needs to be foundational for an improved US/Europe relationship. So far I just don't think Europeans get it.

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

#418

Post by amarcheschi »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #388
amarcheschi wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The issue is not only usa getting far from europe - which on itself is ok imho -, just the fact that given an existing alliance - for which europeans fought war for the us in middle east and died as well - could have been reshaped with a slower rollout. It is unclear how much and how fast things will change, and unpredictability is worse than expecting a certain outcome (just like the markets don't like trump's unpredictability in economy).

I do not see why usa should be "thanked". We have been allies for decades and now this relations are being reshaped in a way that favors no one, while a slower approach to such sensitive issues might have yielded better results (i don't know how many countries still want to buy us weapons right now in europe, maybe a different approach would have meant stronger collaboration between ue/usa companies or maybe not)

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

#419

Post by fransje26 »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #380
fransje26 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that Europe jails people for thought crime at a much higher rate than US or even Russia > Right now, my data is more private in US than in most of Europe. Could follow the train of thought until it catastrophically derailed in the last three sentences..

Both facts. EU is pushing for an end-to-end to end encryption and there is no freedom of expression in Europe. Norway tried to jail a lesbian for believing that men can't become women. You may disagree with her, but it's ridiculous that she should be in jail for her view. Scotland makes it illegal to pray silently in your own home in some cases. UK already makes it illegal to pray silently in your own head. How much…

> Both facts. EU is pushing for an end-to-end to end encryption

No. Some actors are pushing for an end of end-to-end encryption, which doesn't mean it's an EU fact. In fact, it just got rejected in the French parliament.

> Norway tried to jail a lesbian

No. A person got investigate for hate-speech, which is perfectly within the bounds of "freedom of speech". The fact that she did not go to prison shows the system works as intended.

> Scotland makes it illegal to pray silently in your own home

> UK already makes it illegal to pray in your own home.

No. Debunked as nonsense.

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

#420

Post by CapricornNoble »

nosianu wrote: post #384
usrnm wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 skil…

>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.

As Eisenhower warned, every Euro spent turning steel into an artillery shell is one NOT spent turning steel into high-speed rail. Every worker in a factory building armored vehicles is a worker NOT being re-trained to be an elder caregiver for Europe's aging demographics. There are immense trade-offs that come with dumping capital, both human and material, into making Europe's war machine rise from the grave.

>"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".

Key phrase there is "if you are in a strong enough position"....and Europe isn't. Because it cut itself off from cheap Russian energy imports, the entire industrial sector is no longer cost-competitive. With the exception of highly-specialized difficult-to-copy stuff like ASML or maybe Carl Zeiss optics, etc... the European economy writ large is in a really weak position compared to the cost efficiency of China or compared to the still-large (but diminishing) political-military leverage of the US. Also, Europe looks like it is getting closer and closer to handing over the frozen Russian assets in Euroclear to Ukraine. You can expect a massive capital flight from Chinese, Mid-East, or Global South investors if that ever happens.

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