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I am impressed by whoever in Estonia's government has been doing PR; I've never seen a national government manipulate so much positive free press coverage, betw

by VLM 8y ago

I am impressed by whoever in Estonia's government has been doing PR; I've never seen a national government manipulate so much positive free press coverage, between E-residency in recent years and now the free transport initiative. Note that just like E-residency this "free transport" never has to amount to anything, yet by sheer qty of press coverage you'd think Estonia is the eighth continent. Much like E-Residency the commentary here on and on most tech blogs pretends it'll be implemented to change the world and vast engineering-think discussions of how to implement, whereas in a couple of years it'll be yet another "New Coke/Classic Coke" and Estonia will have moved on to getting massive positive press over... I donno, changing all national laws using grep and tr to have gender neutral pronouns, or free 3-d printing as a constitutional human right, or ban freedom of association to eliminate racism, or legally mandating drone transport corridors in the national building code and planning commission documents, or ...

kristerv 8y ago
I (as an estonian) am amazed this topic is reaching the top of HN or any other outlet. Locally it's a dispute of whether what people need is free bus transport or actually a more frequent schedles (I would vote for the latter). The E-residency thing is way more awesome however and (like the blockchain tech) will take even more time for it to live up to the hype :D
scrollaway 8y ago
I'm used to cynicism on HN, but never have I seen such mindless cynicism. You used two whole paragraphs of noise to basically say "I don't care". Depressing.
- VLM 8y ago
  Oh come on. Every government in the world would like tech startups and has a bus system, but Estonia consistently has the best PR dept I've ever seen, including countries many times larger and better funded. That kind of compliment is hardly a "I don't care".

by VLM 8y ago

kristerv 8y ago

I (as an estonian) am amazed this topic is reaching the top of HN or any other outlet. Locally it's a dispute of whether what people need is free bus transport or actually a more frequent schedles (I would vote for the latter). The E-residency thing is way more awesome however and (like the blockchain tech) will take even more time for it to live up to the hype :D

scrollaway 8y ago

I'm used to cynicism on HN, but never have I seen such mindless cynicism. You used two whole paragraphs of noise to basically say "I don't care". Depressing.

VLM 8y ago
Oh come on. Every government in the world would like tech startups and has a bus system, but Estonia consistently has the best PR dept I've ever seen, including countries many times larger and better funded. That kind of compliment is hardly a "I don't care".