Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe needs to escape providerism

loeber.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 136 posts

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#91

Post by trgn »

FredPret wrote: post #43
askonomm wrote: post #4

And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...

Having been to both, this is… false. I hope you’re not basing this on news reports, because that’s never going to give you an accurate picture. In the US, I was blown away by the amount of wealth even “poor” Americans have, and how friendly, optimistic, and happy everyone is. In Europe, I only saw this in the richest few countries, and even there most people seemed to be stuck in some sort of constrained, nice-but-mi…

> how friendly, optimistic, and happy everyone is.

True. But this is just cultural. Europeans complain more, it's what they do.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#92

Post by missedthecue »

Detrytus wrote: post #60
missedthecue wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 41% of Germans have a passport. I don't see your point. We can adjust for population and the data is still clear. EU citizens would rather be in the US than the other way around. And the EU is only about 30% larger not 100%.

Well, Germans without a passport can still travel all around the Europe. Passport is only needed if you plan to go outside EU - that should be a factor in this comparison.

And a US passport is only needed if you travel outside of the 50 states that comprise the union.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#93

Post by [deleted] »

dm319 wrote: post #35

So someone who reaped all the benefits of living in a social system where education is of a certain standard for all then moves to a deregulated country with huge wealth, education and health inequalities, but has ended up on the rewarding side of that, is now wondering why things are so different.

[deleted]

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#94

Post by rossdavidh »

Good points about poorly structured regulation vs. good, unfortunately obscured by a silly take on who is productive. Where does all the most advanced lithography in the world come from? A Dutch company. The U.S. has nothing to compare, and the Chinese even less so, and without this Dutch company's equipment you cannot make the advanced chips in that iPad, or any modern computer.

The points about poorly structured regulation being the worst of both worlds (all the costs with none of the benefits) is solid, though.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#95

Post by Racing0461 »

atoav wrote: post #61
Racing0461 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most quality of life metrics This is what we refer to as "europoor". Sure they have taxpayer funded "healthcare", council "housing", public "transportation" but it's not really what i would want for myself. Those things only exist because the middle class in europe is foced to give up a lifestyle of freedom/autonomy to average it out so the folks below them can get (1 + 0)/2. It won't stand on its own otherwise. Th…

So you'd rather live in a villa next to a slum than in a decent house next to a decent house?

That's not the tradeoff.

It's a decent house out in the suburbs vs some dense urban inner city apartment or something attached to other people with people of varying crazyness for lack of a better word living around you. And if you do want to own a house, it's going to be crazy expensive and cars you can't drive unless it's tuesday and you have an odd numbered license plate.

The people living in the villas are the actual wealthy who gets to bypass the system (ie billionaire flying a private jet to a climate change conference to try to get the government to ban cars to force you to use a packed train). I'm advocating for freedom/autonomy for the middle class instead of grouping everyone who isn't a billionaire together. I'm just saying we add one more partition.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#96

Post by thefz »

> I had never in my life met people who make stuff. In Europe, my parents worked for non-profits. The parents of my friends were mostly middle managers, financiers, or professional service providers. Living in Silicon Valley is profoundly different, because the people you meet are working on building things that you use.

Your milieu is not a whole continent.

I know lots of people who actually make stuff.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#97

Post by thefz »

missedthecue wrote: post #11
askonomm wrote: post #4

And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...

Yet 3x more Europeans immigrate to the US than Americans going the other direction. People vote with their feet and I feel like the EU vs US online discource is mainly based on vibes rather than facts.

It's easier for an European to already know English, rather than the opposite.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#98

Post by trgn »

FredPret wrote: post #54
boringg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly have vastly greater smugness about their current situation warranted or not.

There’s a certain pompous attitude that’s left over from when they ran the world but badly in need of an update.

> certain pompous attitude

It's not pompous. When you attribute others of being pompous or smug, that's just your gut being triggered, and your defense mechanism kicking in. No need to be triggered.

> they ran the world but badly in need of an update

None of the comments here refer to any sort of longing for a colonial past.

Here's the thing about that article, and the invariable discussion that follow it.

Americans are modernists. We point at numbers. This number is bigger than that number, and therefore it is better.

There are differences in quality that can't be expressed in numbers. Cultural variety is much vaster in Europe than in America. e.g. How do you value knowing multiple languages. We can double down out of spite, seeing it as a triumph that you can get by with just english, but the joy of conversing day2day in multiple languages is a qualitative experience most of us do not comprehend. Yet it is a form of wealth, it accumulates in the mind, but wealth nonetheless.

How about having rich traditions (even watered down after centuries), having a terroir or countryside, the subjective experience of not always being surrounded by flimsy, disposable crap, ... It's all things americans have difficulties comprehending because it cannot be measured.

fwiw - there's subjective things in America a European cannot comprehend. e.g. the frictionless quality of uniformity, the respite from having unassuming neighbors, ...

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#99

Post by nvm0n2 »

jahalai wrote: post #13

The statements about providerism and europe not producing anything of value purely focusses on computer technology and not on any other type of technology. Take the agriculture sector; europe's not only produces tons of vegatables/fruits and meat, but it also has strong R&D programs such as seed enrichment, dna modification, etc. There are many other sectors out there

> strong R&D programs such as seed enrichment, dna modification

Europe is famous for banning DNA-modified crops under the precautionary principle.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

You might be able to research them there, but you can't actually make them, and the article is about production not theoretical R&D.

Re: Europe needs to escape providerism

#100

Post by nvm0n2 »

lordnacho wrote: post #31
missedthecue wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet 3x more Europeans immigrate to the US than Americans going the other direction. People vote with their feet and I feel like the EU vs US online discource is mainly based on vibes rather than facts.

Not sure this means anything. Almost every European country has a huge number of English speakers. Few Americans speak one of the local languages of Europe well enough to live there. Plus, we'd have to assume people were well informed in general about living conditions in various places.

It's irrelevant, you can get by with English for the basics in most parts of Europe unless you move to small villages. If that weren't true then the EU's obsession with freedom of movement would be pointless, because English is the only language that is universally taught in Europe.
Post reply on HN