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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?

#541

Post by owebmaster »

energy123 wrote: post #493
owebmaster wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The evidence is overwhelming that it has been win-win It's not a win-win when the rich side wins 100 and the poor side 10

It is a win-win even when one side wins more than the other. Also you are operating in dollars space instead of utility space, which is a mistake. Even if a poor person "only" gains an extra $2000/year in annual earnings due to globalization, that can be a life changing amount of additional wealth given that their utility function is highly sensitive to small changes.

You ignored my point. If the rich side gets richer faster than the poorer side, it is not win-win, it just wide the inequality gap.

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

#542

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

leokennis wrote: post #473
tored wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Europe is a de facto vassal state to US since WW2. What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has. But now they start to wake up facing this reality.

I think Europe was of the understanding that the "ongoing deal" was mutually beneficial. The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world, and the peace (at least in the Western world) that US defense brought made sure both the US and the EU could freely trade and benefit financially. What now changed is that apparently the US thinks it does not need this hegemony an…

>The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world

That's the thing, Americans have become very skeptical of our own influence and power, for good reason. Look what we did to the Middle East. Look at the shenanigans we were funding with USAID. There isn't actually a constituency for this imperialism stuff in the US. US voters don't like it.

In any case -- if we had so much influence, why were previous presidents like Bush and Obama unsuccessful in influencing the EU to fund its own defense?

>forcing the EU to become a competing military power

It's not about competition, it's about Europe taking responsibility for itself.

You want a global cop? How about you do it yourself for a bit? It's a terrible job. Maybe you should take a turn at it.

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

#543

Post by surgical_fire »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #425
tossandthrow wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we will ever reach a conclusion, and it will take the next 4 years to learn whether the approach you represent is more productive than the approach I represent. But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given.

>But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given. I don't care about the US being a powerful country. I'm tired of being the world's police. I'm against so-called "American imperialism". I want to be Switzerland. Ally with no one, trade with everyone. Switzerland has a much healthier relationship with the rest of Europe, without toxic dependency. That's my metric regarding whether an approach is "productive" or…

> I want to be Switzerland. Ally with no one, trade with everyone.

Imposing tariffs and threatening annexation of former allies is not a great start.

But you will get a lot more of the "anti-americanism" you were crying about some comments ago. Better get used to it, it has merely started.

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

#544

Post by tored »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #540
tored wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be an equal partner if you are occupied?

See, this gets to the point others have made in this thread. Your reasoning implies that you should be happy if the US pulls out of NATO and leaves Europe, since Europe would no longer be "occupied" and would thus be an "equal partner". Europeans are just impossible to satisfy, from my perspective. They will complain no matter what the US does.

[flagged]

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

#545

Post by adamcharnock »

olieidel wrote: post #327

Help me understand this: European companies have already been interested in choosing for European alternatives instead of AWS, Azure, etc. for years . Sure, this interest has recently gone up significantly, but it already was there, especially in the area I've been working in (hospitals / medical devices). But here's what I can't wrap my head around: Why do the European alternatives suck so much? - Pretty much all cl…

In my experience it is a lot of things, in varying amounts depending on the situation (and each of these is both good in some ways and bad in others):

- The USA is a huge and fairly homogenous fairly wealthy fairly risk-positive market.

- The USA has a bigger = better mindset. "Your restaurant is fantastic, you should open another one!".

- Abysmal work-life-balance. Great for making stuff.

- Minimal language and cultural barriers.

- Because of the USA market, you can grow huge before having to expand to other countries.

- Because you can grow huge in the USA market, that is where the funding goes.

- All the the USA's allies didn't mind too much, because they are(/were?) allies

- All the non-USA-allies developed their own markets (Russia, East Asia, Africa, India, etc).

- And so now, given the messaging coming out of the USA, EU governments/companies/people are giving their USA-entanglement a second look.

Which, being in the EU, is pretty exciting. I feel like there is a lot of opportunity here right now.

Disclaimer: I'm sure there are 1001 reasons, and the above is just one potential view.

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

#546

Post by InsideOutSanta »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #519
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For privacy reasons, I've already started slowly switching away from US providers before all this insanity happened. I've switched my Email to Proton (Swiss), cloud files to Filen (German), most LLM usage to Mistral (French), and search to Ecosia (German). [Edit: I've now switched to Mojeek; see comments below.] But in the past two weeks, I've done the things I've previously put off because they require real work. I'…

> Vaultwarden for passwords Just a note for anyone looking for alternative password managers - 1Password is Canadian!

Also very fairly priced. A family plan for five people is US$60 a year.

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

#547

Post by tim333 »

tored wrote: post #322
jjevanoorschot wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important distinction is that US and EU interests aligned on many important areas up until recently. So it was less of a subservient relationship, and more of a mutually beneficial one. Now that the US wants to turn it into a subservient relationship, the EU is naturally looking for other options.

No, Europe is a de facto vassal state to US since WW2. What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has. But now they start to wake up facing this reality.

>A "vassal state" is a state that has a mutual obligation to a superior state or empire, similar to a vassal in the feudal system, often involving tribute payments

Europe is not like that - we don't pay taxes to the US to defend us. The US kindly did so free of charge for many years which is a different thing, more of an alliance I guess.

Now the US is kind of switching allegiances we are having to recalculate.

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

#548

Post by someNameIG »

ETH_start wrote: post #186
wasmitnetzen wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with the notion that the existence of a few mega-corps is a useful metric. Of course the US is the more free market, and allows those oligopolies to exist. The EU would have split up those companies years ago.

The US economy is now 50% larger than the EU's, as a result of this market freedom and enterprise growth.

Only by nominal, by PPP the difference doesn't seem that different. US is $30 trillion by PPP, the EU is $29 trillion.

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

#549

Post by tim333 »

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…

>[the US] wanted to extort even more money and dependence from EU...

I think it's more they are threatening to attack the EU (Denmark) and aid it's adversaries (Putin). I put that down to a Russian asset president rather than wanting money.

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

#550

Post by amarcheschi »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #539
amarcheschi wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We call a partner that spends the majority on an alliance, a partner. Just like Germany is a partner to italy, France, Spain and vice versa

If it's an equal partnership, each partner respects the right of the other to exit. If it's an equal partnership, both countries are equally sad if it ends, since both got equal benefit. The US/Europe relationship fails both those criteria.

Usa have the rights to exit nato just like any other country, I've heard nobody complaining about how the us shouldn't be allowed to
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