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This is absolutely true. Popular European opinion is that the UK is insane to leave the EU. But a huge part of the EU is just swimming in bullshit. I knew many

This is absolutely true. Popular European opinion is that the UK is insane to leave the EU. But a huge part of the EU is just swimming in bullshit. I knew many middle class Hungarians whose family friends scored them a nice EU grant to start some sort of business. Obviously 99% of those businesses went nowhere. Rinse and repeat. The irony is that is actually deters real investment because why risk €100k of your own money when the business next door will rip-off your idea with €200k of free EU money. And that’s not to count the absolutely incredible mid and high level corruption that this article discusses. Source: lived in Hungary for 5 years

tooop 7y ago
So who is the asshole here? Sounds that it is Hungarians and not EU. It is the same thing as blaming the homeowner for leaving doors open and not the burglar.
izacus 7y ago
"Huge part"? "You knew"? "99%"? Got any citations number on those observed numbers and any basis to claim it was EU that did it? Or is this just you deciding that EU is bad and then fitting things to your view?
- repolfx 7y ago
  Just go read stories from the UK Eurosceptic press over the decades. They've been digging up stories of EU corruption since forever. The only reason the UK is seen as "weird" by people in other EU states is because the press is ideologically loyal to the EU institutions throughout most of the world and doesn't report on or investigate this stuff. But in the UK they do (to some extent). Even look at this story. The NYT really wanted to go digging for dirt on Orban and Hungarian society in general, Orban being famous mostly for resisting EU integration and resettlement efforts, and being notoriously unpopular in Brussels. But they found they couldn't because the EU lacks even very basic levels of openness. You aren't going to read about EU corruption from them, that's for sure - the fact that they only just noticed this says they've been turning a blind eye for years. For instance, go look at the stories in the UK about farmers being paid to not breed pigs. I'd like to get paid to not breed pigs! I think I'd be good at it!
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Just go read stories from the UK Eurosceptic press over the decades. You won't find many facts there.
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/category/euromyths/ https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/category/euromyths/
    - repolfx 7y ago
      See my other comment on this thread about that site. Most of those "myths" are actually cases where the press told the truth and the EC just didn't like it.
  - afjl 7y ago
    I feel like this "pig" example may not be a very good one. It's clear the farmers were paid not to breed pigs for a good reason - overly low prices due to oversupply. The United States has passed similar subsidies to address our agricultural oversupply. Canada's done the same thing, quite infamously with their dairy industry.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
The EU budget is laughably small: about 160 billion Euros. Compare that to the US Federal budget of 4.1 trillion dollars. The overall size of the two economies is similar. Outside of the agricultural sector, the EU budget doesn't play that big a role. The main point of the EU is to facilitate the common market by setting common rules (business regulations, right of movement of people and goods, and so on) for the member states to follow. 1. https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-budget/expenditure_en https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-budget/expendit... 2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/2018_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/2018_Fed...
bjourne 7y ago
As a counterexample, pypy and many other free software projects have gotten EU funding. Pypy has in the past been very helpful to me in making my Python code run faster so I think it was money well spent! http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/index-report.html http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/index-report.html
- nec4b 7y ago
  I think that you and your peers could afford to use your own money to make your code run faster and the EU money could be used to fund more important stuff.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    I get where you're coming from, but I actually think that governments probably should fund some open source software projects. Some of those projects are so fundamentally important that basically everyone relies on them, including governments.
    - nec4b 7y ago
      Governments can buy software which it needs the same way as any one else I don't see a reason why it should pick winners or losers of open source projects.
  - bjourne 7y ago
    If Pypy would have been commercial software it would have costed $3500 USD per year and server or more. Because that is at least how much Azul Zing costs and Pypy is very comparable to that. https://www.azul.com/products/pricing/ https://www.azul.com/products/pricing/ So I wouldn't have been able to afford that.

tooop 7y ago

So who is the asshole here? Sounds that it is Hungarians and not EU. It is the same thing as blaming the homeowner for leaving doors open and not the burglar.

izacus 7y ago

"Huge part"? "You knew"? "99%"? Got any citations number on those observed numbers and any basis to claim it was EU that did it? Or is this just you deciding that EU is bad and then fitting things to your view?

repolfx 7y ago
Just go read stories from the UK Eurosceptic press over the decades. They've been digging up stories of EU corruption since forever. The only reason the UK is seen as "weird" by people in other EU states is because the press is ideologically loyal to the EU institutions throughout most of the world and doesn't report on or investigate this stuff. But in the UK they do (to some extent). Even look at this story. The NYT really wanted to go digging for dirt on Orban and Hungarian society in general, Orban being famous mostly for resisting EU integration and resettlement efforts, and being notoriously unpopular in Brussels. But they found they couldn't because the EU lacks even very basic levels of openness. You aren't going to read about EU corruption from them, that's for sure - the fact that they only just noticed this says they've been turning a blind eye for years. For instance, go look at the stories in the UK about farmers being paid to not breed pigs. I'd like to get paid to not breed pigs! I think I'd be good at it!
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Just go read stories from the UK Eurosceptic press over the decades. You won't find many facts there.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/category/euromyths/ https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/category/euromyths/
  - repolfx 7y ago
    See my other comment on this thread about that site. Most of those "myths" are actually cases where the press told the truth and the EC just didn't like it.
- afjl 7y ago
  I feel like this "pig" example may not be a very good one. It's clear the farmers were paid not to breed pigs for a good reason - overly low prices due to oversupply. The United States has passed similar subsidies to address our agricultural oversupply. Canada's done the same thing, quite infamously with their dairy industry.

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

The EU budget is laughably small: about 160 billion Euros. Compare that to the US Federal budget of 4.1 trillion dollars. The overall size of the two economies is similar. Outside of the agricultural sector, the EU budget doesn't play that big a role. The main point of the EU is to facilitate the common market by setting common rules (business regulations, right of movement of people and goods, and so on) for the member states to follow. 1. https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-budget/expenditure_en https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-budget/expendit... 2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/2018_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/2018_Fed...

bjourne 7y ago

As a counterexample, pypy and many other free software projects have gotten EU funding. Pypy has in the past been very helpful to me in making my Python code run faster so I think it was money well spent! http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/index-report.html http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/index-report.html

nec4b 7y ago
I think that you and your peers could afford to use your own money to make your code run faster and the EU money could be used to fund more important stuff.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I get where you're coming from, but I actually think that governments probably should fund some open source software projects. Some of those projects are so fundamentally important that basically everyone relies on them, including governments.
  - nec4b 7y ago
    Governments can buy software which it needs the same way as any one else I don't see a reason why it should pick winners or losers of open source projects.
- bjourne 7y ago
  If Pypy would have been commercial software it would have costed $3500 USD per year and server or more. Because that is at least how much Azul Zing costs and Pypy is very comparable to that. https://www.azul.com/products/pricing/ https://www.azul.com/products/pricing/ So I wouldn't have been able to afford that.