14 ms·

Why Europe Wins

95 points by mpweiher 6y ago

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
> countries with higher income equality and sound expert-based government regulation „I for one am pleased about this top-down expert-based government regulation to which there are no downsides and which always achieve the desired effect, with no second order effects.“ Second order effects: „total market capitalization of U.S. tech stocks reached $9.1 trillion, eclipsing that of the entire European market“.
- blocked_again 6y ago
  As someone who is born outside Europe and America, I would rather be born randomly in EU than in USA because of obvious reasons. US is a great place if you are born to a very affluent family. But not so great otherwise. You have much higher probablity of getting a good education if you are born in Europe than in US. US college education is unaffordable to vast majority of people. And don't even get me started on healthcare, gun violence, etc. The point of money is to have a good quality of life. And EU is doing much better job than US even without having trillion dollar tech companies. Stay like that EU!
  - mettamage 6y ago
    > You have much higher probablity of getting a good education Getting an education for me was easy in The Netherlands. If I look at my family's finances and think about US university prices, I think it would've worked out if we'd be smart about it. But it would definitely not be easy. It'd be about as difficult as it is to do a second bachelor/master in The Netherlands (1st bachelor = 2K. 2nd bachelor = 9 to 12K, outliers on both ends are 2K and 25K, in euro's).
  - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
    > US is a great place if you are born to a very affluent family. But not so great otherwise. This is the common trope, and I used to believe this too. However, data shows otherwise. Comparing swedes in Sweden vs swedes in the US, the latter are doing better. US actually has a higher social mobility! Healthcare is a problem, agreed. I’m not convinced EU style giant-med-bureaucracy is the best solution to this issue, and I hope the US finds a better way. Look at youth unemployment across the EU, this is most certainly not the utopia you think it is.
    - mpweiher 6y ago
      > However, data shows otherwise. Citation needed. > [Sweden] US actually has a higher social mobility! Data says otherwise, Sweden is #4, US is #27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index > EU, this is most certainly not the utopia you think it is. Citation needed. Who has ever claimed it is a utopia?
      - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
        This is comparing apples and oranges, considering the diversity of ethnicities in the US. This study [0] is more precise for this type of argument. "Canada has the most downward mobility while the U.S. has the least, with Sweden in the middle." Interestingly, upward mobility seems to have a much lower variance. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537114000530 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09275... > Who has ever claimed it is a utopia? Everyone who thinks the US is the evil capitalist empire inhabited by armed lunatics, while the EU is a cozy socialist fluffy-zone without drawbacks. The difference in job opportunities, economic dynamics and average income, to those people, is unexplainable. They see no contradiction to think this way while posting on HN, founded by a VC. They think the only reason one could arrive at certain political and economical opinions is to be an uncaring asshole, while the reality is that the difference stems from another view of how certain beneficial goals are accomplished. The problem is that a lot of the things that work well in practise on nation-level scale are counter-intuitive and thus unpopular, while things that sound good often have disastrous side-effects. I have seen the communist eastern europe after the fall of the iron curtain, it was a horrific sight.
    - TrackerFF 6y ago
      > Comparing swedes in Sweden vs swedes in the US I'd wager that this is because the Swedes that leave Sweden for US, are probably more ambitious than many of their peers back in Sweden. And what's more, many have reaped the benefits of socialist programs in Sweden BEFORE arriving the USA. It's like with Norwegians (I'm Norwegian) that make it big in the US, and write about how fantastic the country is. When you do some research, you will of course discover that they left for the states, already with a Master's Degree in their baggage (in probably some industry experience), or studied in the US on next-to-free Norwegian student loans, having endured zero hardships in their comfy middle-class lives over here. And if they screw up, they could always return home. In this day and age, you really don't find any native Scandinavians that can just waltz into the US, without having a very good starting point / foundation.
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    Half of Europe is poorer than almost any state in the US. You can be born in an EU country where the average monthly income before taxes is below $800. 10 years ago it would've been half of that. Chances are that you would have a higher chance of getting a tertiary education in the US too.[0] [0] https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-education.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...
- myUserIsMethos 6y ago
  > „total market capitalization of U.S. tech stocks reached $9.1 trillion, eclipsing that of the entire European market“. Isn't this more the result of a large unified consumer base with a shared language and culture, more so than regulation?
- T-A 6y ago
  Are you sure that's not caused by something else, like having a single language used by more than 300 million people, instead of 24 official languages [1], each used by, at most, tens of millions? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
  - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
    There are huge variations in the number of tech unicorns across Europe, uncorrelated to population size. See Sweden or Netherlands. Not saying it isn’t an advantage, but other factors are much more important. Unicorns per capita[0], top three: Estonia Sweden Denmark [0] https://medium.com/quack-ventures/european-startup-ranking-per-capita-and-per-gdp-be6a3a0ae04c https://medium.com/quack-ventures/european-startup-ranking-p...
  - rbecker 6y ago
    That can't be it. As we all know, diversity is strength, so it follows the US is harmed, not helped, by having a single language.
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  Great, but if it doesn't translate into quality of life metrics for a large portion of the population, you're still not there. US Tech stocks is in large part a matter of highly-international companies with international revenues, international jobs, flowing to international shareholders, who trade their shares on various worldwide exchanges in an international marketplace, shares of a company which happens to have a US headquarter. That doesn't at all mean that only the US benefits from this arrangement, or that these tech stocks make Americans uniquely rich, or created massive employment among Americans, or create tax revenues uniquely in the US etc etc. The reality is much more nuanced. The average American or European isn't directly that much affected by the top tech companies existing in the US or Europe. The public company markets also say nothing about the private markets. Europe is known to have a large SME base, large family companies, old state-owned enterprises which exist as semi public/private. You can't compare it to a country which has optimized for public companies on that single metric.
  - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
    > Great, but if it doesn't translate into quality of life metrics for a large portion of the population, you're still not there. Tech companies aren't a great example for this kind of argument. Employee compensation among FAANG is basically unheard of everywhere else except maybe finance. That a lot of the money goes to landlords is, incidentally, a problem of regulation. If you're looking at manufacturing and the Rust Belt issues, you are correct. You cannot establish free trade, make blue-collar workers compete with China and expect this to have no effect on their quality of life while the profits of lowered costs go to capitalists alone. I believe this to be a major reason why trump got elected.
- barumi 6y ago
  Can you please explain what's great about the market capitalization of US tech stocks vs any of the points mentioned in the article? I mean, I love tech jobs, but FAANGs are already shifting their jobs outside of the US, including into Europe. So exactly what's so great about makers capitalization of US tech stocks in the pov of regular people?
dijit 6y ago
US economy works best at extremes. Extreme poverty, extreme wealth. Europe, as a whole, seems to do better with a wider range of middle class. Personally I lament that we have very little tech industry. No Google’s or Apples- but at the same time the majority of the people living and working here seem better off than their contemporaries in the US. So it’s mostly selfish of me to lament the lack of tech. Eventually though I guess, the tremendous wealth generated by US tech industries will enrich everyone’s lives in the USA, but, that hasn’t happened historically. So I guess we’ll see.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  The dominance of the big tech companies is a mistake, a failure in market regulation - they are allowed to go too far in terms of company mergers and anti-competitive behavior. Of course, Europe can't "compete" in exactly that without loosening the shackles in the same way, but that's not something I, for one, would want.
  - varjag 6y ago
    I think they refer to technology innovation rather than the size. Because there is really no shortage of European monster sized companies.
    - Yetanfou 6y ago
      There is plenty of tech innovation which heralds from Europe but comes to fruition after moving to the USA. It is not a lack of ideas or one of entrepreneurial spirit but more one of a lack of VC capital and a more stringent legal framework which keeps Europe from producing "the next Google".
      - nix23 6y ago
        That is so true! If you have a innovation (especial in the IT field) you run out of Europe as fast as possible.
the-dude 6y ago
Situation here in NL currently is worse than it has ever been this year.
- cheph 6y ago
  I guess you lack some context, but if we just assume you are talking about covid, well, yeah, the positive test numbers in NL looks quite bad: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherlands https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherland... But your covid deaths are not really reflecting this rise. Same can be seen in France and Germany. Quite odd actually.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    COVID is what the article starts with. The fact the death rate is not the same as earlier this year is not surprising. I am talking about my own experiences in my home town.
  - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
    It's not really odd at all. For one, we're testing at about 10x the rate that we saw in the first wave, while we're at 3x the number of daily infections as during the first wave. If you test 10x more people in period B as in period A, and in both periods you have the same infection rate, you'd expect 10x as many confirmed cases. The fact we see only 3x as many daily confirmed cases despite 10x more testing, means the population is actually far less infected now than during the first wave. We simply test more. Second, the demographics of the infected has massively changed between the first and current wave: https://datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2020-10/nl-heatd-0210.png https://datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2020-10/nl-heatd-02... As you can see, most confirmed cases consisted of elderly during the first wave. These are now much more insulated. Young people are now mostly infected, and survive. This translates into far lower mortality and hospitalisation figures per infected. Lastly, even though there is no vaccine yet, most people survive and this requires various treatments, we've seen small improvements in these treatments, but this is mostly a matter of increased throughput due to shorter hospital stays. In short, there are actually (currently) fewer infected than during the first wave, and a lower infected to hospitalised/mortality rate. None of this is to argue that things are okay or that the current policy is sufficient. Not at all. But it's entirely not true that the current wave is worse than the first wave, even in terms of the number of infected. And there are very well known and sensible reasons for why the current wave has a lower impact on health or mortality figures.
AndyMcConachie 6y ago
It's interesting watching FP devolve into a white supremacist and orientalist rag for pseudo-intellectuals. Maybe it's always been that. No one is 'winning', which is a stupid way to describe countries anyways, and reeks of Trumpian rhetoric. But if anyone is 'winning' it's China. They're the ones lifting millions out of poverty while the rest of the world becomes less equal. Also the idea that the EU is democratic is not really true. It may be made up of democracies, but its institutions are run by technocrats and many of its processes are anything but democratic. Also, Belarusians have a higher standard of living than Ukranians, something FP will never say. Belarusians know this and it's one of the things that keeps their dictator in power. "Europe’s spectacularly swift and successful response to the migration crisis demonstrates that mass migration can be controlled." More white supremacist neo-colonial nonsense. No one in Europe is happy with how this is being handled, either on the right or left. "Outside of Britain, extreme Euroskepticism enjoys scant support." Absolute bullshit. The EU is full of Euroskepticism. Simply compare the number of countries wanting to join it now compared to 10 years ago. I don't think the EU will break up, but just wait until the next major economic contraction and we'll see who steps up to leave. I live in the EU, and I can't imagine that many people in the EU taking this article all that seriously. It must be written for ignorant Americans.
- rbecker 6y ago
  > "Europe’s spectacularly swift and successful response to the migration crisis demonstrates that mass migration can be controlled." > More white supremacist neo-colonial nonsense. No one [1] in Europe is happy with how this is being handled, either on the right or left. I'm guessing you're calling it "nonsense" because they call it "successful" despite no one in Europe being happy with it. But what makes it "white supremacist neo-colonial"? [1] See my reply regarding no one being happy.
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    > no one in Europe being happy That is the real nonsense here; many people are happy with it. Just people who shout in the tabloids and right-wing and the underbelly (politicians) make it sound like everyone thinks the same way. We do not.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
known 6y ago
To show what the USA can learn from rest of the world, director Michael Moore playfully visits various nations in Europe and Africa https://yts.mx/movies/where-to-invade-next-2015 https://yts.mx/movies/where-to-invade-next-2015
boruto 6y ago
I think covid-19 is not a case of how Europe won but rather how US,India failed at many levels, With high point being the president getting it. What are state of affairs if the greatest country on earth cannot keep their leader safe six months after the pandemic started. They ought to have some control over the spread at-least in their upper ring.
johnchristopher 6y ago
Just yesterday I was listening to a french public radio podcast featuring an econ. professor who stated that the US has been doing better in the last decade because after the subprime crisis they invested money left and right while the EU went into austerity mode. I don't know about the covid consequences in the US at the moment but no one is really happy about what's going on in the EU. Red zones everywhere, closing regions after holidays, event and cultural sectors are ravaged, unemployment is rising up and our government are still all about `investing into the future but cut the spending at the same time`. I am now convinced no one can really read anything into economic and governance. It's all just tea reading and twisted stories so it fits the worldview of the authors. Who is winning what exactly ? The only constant narrative on both sides of the ocean is that wealthy people are still getting wealthier and the 99% are getting worse. And China bad.
tcldr 6y ago
In my mind, the biggest mistake the EU has made is not being more vocal about its achievements. Perhaps this was because it was felt it would stoke some anti-EU nationalists and threaten the project, but now that that cat is well and truly out of the bag it's now actually a great opportunity to finally take more vocal leadership around the EUs values, goals and achievements. Ironically, today, the integrity of the institution only seems to be enhanced by the less than savoury reputations and agendas of many of its detractors.
- dgellow 6y ago
  > the biggest mistake the EU has made is not being more vocal about its achievements Yes, the EU has a lot of work to do to improve their communication. EU communication within country members is almost non-existent. People in France have often zero idea what is being done in Brussels, don't know that their neighborhood new bike lanes and kindergarten have been financed by European funds. You regularly see people complaining in national media about EU lack of support for their own country, even when they just received a major financial support. Look for example at Italy, Poland, Hungary, where the anti-EU sentiment has become quite important while they received some of the highest crisis funds that have even been created.
  - dudul 6y ago
    Where is the money coming from to fund the European funds? It is just the sum of members contributions. Funny that you mention France as an example since France is one of the countries that pay more to the EU than it receives.
    - tcldr 6y ago
      If you look at the inflow/outflow of funds explicitly I can see why you'd arrive at that conclusion. But one of the biggest benefits of being in the EU is being part of the world's largest trading bloc. Particularly for France who have a leading role.
      - 6y ago
jessaustin 6y ago
For a generation, observers have bet against Europe’s future, arguing that it lacks the high growth, centralized political institutions, domestic legitimacy, and hard military tools required to have an effective global presence. Every time I read about USA's "high growth", I think of how hollow that "growth" has been. [0] The latter three things are curses rather than advantages. Anyone who is surprised that military activity leads to suffering, has only the vaguest, most abstract understanding of either of the words "military" or "suffering". FP has published plenty by such people, so TFA may be some kind of breakthrough. [0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
LatteLazy 6y ago
Europe wins because it doesn't play stupid games. Sure, it still has to deal with the down sides of other people's foreign policy mistakes. But it's doesn't also have to deal with its own mistakes. Because it pursues a simple, equitable policy instead of trying to dominate everything.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
It wins because it's not really democratic. No-one votes for the EU president. No-one votes for the membership of the European Commission (which decides all the policies) [0] I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Seeing the mess that democracy has made in the UK and USA at the moment, it's nice having at least one global power that isn't vulnerable to populist theatrics. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...
rektide 6y ago
been on a kick of watching old Bruce Sterling videos recently (they are so very good). i happened across this one from next 2017, where he is proposing we pretend we are in 2027 looking 10 years in the past, back at 2017. https://youtu.be/C2O_fxmrP_Q https://youtu.be/C2O_fxmrP_Q in this view he suggests that Germany right now is the way to act and the people doing it right. some good materials here to consider, a way to look at how the world has been running, and perhaps in line with this article from foreign policy.

95 points by mpweiher 6y ago

> countries with higher income equality and sound expert-based government regulation „I for one am pleased about this top-down expert-based government regulation to which there are no downsides and which always achieve the desired effect, with no second order effects.“ Second order effects: „total market capitalization of U.S. tech stocks reached $9.1 trillion, eclipsing that of the entire European market“.

blocked_again 6y ago
As someone who is born outside Europe and America, I would rather be born randomly in EU than in USA because of obvious reasons. US is a great place if you are born to a very affluent family. But not so great otherwise. You have much higher probablity of getting a good education if you are born in Europe than in US. US college education is unaffordable to vast majority of people. And don't even get me started on healthcare, gun violence, etc. The point of money is to have a good quality of life. And EU is doing much better job than US even without having trillion dollar tech companies. Stay like that EU!
- mettamage 6y ago
  > You have much higher probablity of getting a good education Getting an education for me was easy in The Netherlands. If I look at my family's finances and think about US university prices, I think it would've worked out if we'd be smart about it. But it would definitely not be easy. It'd be about as difficult as it is to do a second bachelor/master in The Netherlands (1st bachelor = 2K. 2nd bachelor = 9 to 12K, outliers on both ends are 2K and 25K, in euro's).
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  > US is a great place if you are born to a very affluent family. But not so great otherwise. This is the common trope, and I used to believe this too. However, data shows otherwise. Comparing swedes in Sweden vs swedes in the US, the latter are doing better. US actually has a higher social mobility! Healthcare is a problem, agreed. I’m not convinced EU style giant-med-bureaucracy is the best solution to this issue, and I hope the US finds a better way. Look at youth unemployment across the EU, this is most certainly not the utopia you think it is.
  - mpweiher 6y ago
    > However, data shows otherwise. Citation needed. > [Sweden] US actually has a higher social mobility! Data says otherwise, Sweden is #4, US is #27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index > EU, this is most certainly not the utopia you think it is. Citation needed. Who has ever claimed it is a utopia?
    - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
      This is comparing apples and oranges, considering the diversity of ethnicities in the US. This study [0] is more precise for this type of argument. "Canada has the most downward mobility while the U.S. has the least, with Sweden in the middle." Interestingly, upward mobility seems to have a much lower variance. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537114000530 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09275... > Who has ever claimed it is a utopia? Everyone who thinks the US is the evil capitalist empire inhabited by armed lunatics, while the EU is a cozy socialist fluffy-zone without drawbacks. The difference in job opportunities, economic dynamics and average income, to those people, is unexplainable. They see no contradiction to think this way while posting on HN, founded by a VC. They think the only reason one could arrive at certain political and economical opinions is to be an uncaring asshole, while the reality is that the difference stems from another view of how certain beneficial goals are accomplished. The problem is that a lot of the things that work well in practise on nation-level scale are counter-intuitive and thus unpopular, while things that sound good often have disastrous side-effects. I have seen the communist eastern europe after the fall of the iron curtain, it was a horrific sight.
  - TrackerFF 6y ago
    > Comparing swedes in Sweden vs swedes in the US I'd wager that this is because the Swedes that leave Sweden for US, are probably more ambitious than many of their peers back in Sweden. And what's more, many have reaped the benefits of socialist programs in Sweden BEFORE arriving the USA. It's like with Norwegians (I'm Norwegian) that make it big in the US, and write about how fantastic the country is. When you do some research, you will of course discover that they left for the states, already with a Master's Degree in their baggage (in probably some industry experience), or studied in the US on next-to-free Norwegian student loans, having endured zero hardships in their comfy middle-class lives over here. And if they screw up, they could always return home. In this day and age, you really don't find any native Scandinavians that can just waltz into the US, without having a very good starting point / foundation.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  Half of Europe is poorer than almost any state in the US. You can be born in an EU country where the average monthly income before taxes is below $800. 10 years ago it would've been half of that. Chances are that you would have a higher chance of getting a tertiary education in the US too.[0] [0] https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-education.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...
myUserIsMethos 6y ago
> „total market capitalization of U.S. tech stocks reached $9.1 trillion, eclipsing that of the entire European market“. Isn't this more the result of a large unified consumer base with a shared language and culture, more so than regulation?
T-A 6y ago
Are you sure that's not caused by something else, like having a single language used by more than 300 million people, instead of 24 official languages [1], each used by, at most, tens of millions? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  There are huge variations in the number of tech unicorns across Europe, uncorrelated to population size. See Sweden or Netherlands. Not saying it isn’t an advantage, but other factors are much more important. Unicorns per capita[0], top three: Estonia Sweden Denmark [0] https://medium.com/quack-ventures/european-startup-ranking-per-capita-and-per-gdp-be6a3a0ae04c https://medium.com/quack-ventures/european-startup-ranking-p...
- rbecker 6y ago
  That can't be it. As we all know, diversity is strength, so it follows the US is harmed, not helped, by having a single language.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
Great, but if it doesn't translate into quality of life metrics for a large portion of the population, you're still not there. US Tech stocks is in large part a matter of highly-international companies with international revenues, international jobs, flowing to international shareholders, who trade their shares on various worldwide exchanges in an international marketplace, shares of a company which happens to have a US headquarter. That doesn't at all mean that only the US benefits from this arrangement, or that these tech stocks make Americans uniquely rich, or created massive employment among Americans, or create tax revenues uniquely in the US etc etc. The reality is much more nuanced. The average American or European isn't directly that much affected by the top tech companies existing in the US or Europe. The public company markets also say nothing about the private markets. Europe is known to have a large SME base, large family companies, old state-owned enterprises which exist as semi public/private. You can't compare it to a country which has optimized for public companies on that single metric.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  > Great, but if it doesn't translate into quality of life metrics for a large portion of the population, you're still not there. Tech companies aren't a great example for this kind of argument. Employee compensation among FAANG is basically unheard of everywhere else except maybe finance. That a lot of the money goes to landlords is, incidentally, a problem of regulation. If you're looking at manufacturing and the Rust Belt issues, you are correct. You cannot establish free trade, make blue-collar workers compete with China and expect this to have no effect on their quality of life while the profits of lowered costs go to capitalists alone. I believe this to be a major reason why trump got elected.
barumi 6y ago
Can you please explain what's great about the market capitalization of US tech stocks vs any of the points mentioned in the article? I mean, I love tech jobs, but FAANGs are already shifting their jobs outside of the US, including into Europe. So exactly what's so great about makers capitalization of US tech stocks in the pov of regular people?

dijit 6y ago

US economy works best at extremes. Extreme poverty, extreme wealth. Europe, as a whole, seems to do better with a wider range of middle class. Personally I lament that we have very little tech industry. No Google’s or Apples- but at the same time the majority of the people living and working here seem better off than their contemporaries in the US. So it’s mostly selfish of me to lament the lack of tech. Eventually though I guess, the tremendous wealth generated by US tech industries will enrich everyone’s lives in the USA, but, that hasn’t happened historically. So I guess we’ll see.

kzrdude 6y ago
The dominance of the big tech companies is a mistake, a failure in market regulation - they are allowed to go too far in terms of company mergers and anti-competitive behavior. Of course, Europe can't "compete" in exactly that without loosening the shackles in the same way, but that's not something I, for one, would want.
- varjag 6y ago
  I think they refer to technology innovation rather than the size. Because there is really no shortage of European monster sized companies.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    There is plenty of tech innovation which heralds from Europe but comes to fruition after moving to the USA. It is not a lack of ideas or one of entrepreneurial spirit but more one of a lack of VC capital and a more stringent legal framework which keeps Europe from producing "the next Google".
    - nix23 6y ago
      That is so true! If you have a innovation (especial in the IT field) you run out of Europe as fast as possible.

the-dude 6y ago

Situation here in NL currently is worse than it has ever been this year.

cheph 6y ago
I guess you lack some context, but if we just assume you are talking about covid, well, yeah, the positive test numbers in NL looks quite bad: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherlands https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherland... But your covid deaths are not really reflecting this rise. Same can be seen in France and Germany. Quite odd actually.
- the-dude 6y ago
  COVID is what the article starts with. The fact the death rate is not the same as earlier this year is not surprising. I am talking about my own experiences in my home town.
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  It's not really odd at all. For one, we're testing at about 10x the rate that we saw in the first wave, while we're at 3x the number of daily infections as during the first wave. If you test 10x more people in period B as in period A, and in both periods you have the same infection rate, you'd expect 10x as many confirmed cases. The fact we see only 3x as many daily confirmed cases despite 10x more testing, means the population is actually far less infected now than during the first wave. We simply test more. Second, the demographics of the infected has massively changed between the first and current wave: https://datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2020-10/nl-heatd-0210.png https://datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2020-10/nl-heatd-02... As you can see, most confirmed cases consisted of elderly during the first wave. These are now much more insulated. Young people are now mostly infected, and survive. This translates into far lower mortality and hospitalisation figures per infected. Lastly, even though there is no vaccine yet, most people survive and this requires various treatments, we've seen small improvements in these treatments, but this is mostly a matter of increased throughput due to shorter hospital stays. In short, there are actually (currently) fewer infected than during the first wave, and a lower infected to hospitalised/mortality rate. None of this is to argue that things are okay or that the current policy is sufficient. Not at all. But it's entirely not true that the current wave is worse than the first wave, even in terms of the number of infected. And there are very well known and sensible reasons for why the current wave has a lower impact on health or mortality figures.

AndyMcConachie 6y ago

It's interesting watching FP devolve into a white supremacist and orientalist rag for pseudo-intellectuals. Maybe it's always been that. No one is 'winning', which is a stupid way to describe countries anyways, and reeks of Trumpian rhetoric. But if anyone is 'winning' it's China. They're the ones lifting millions out of poverty while the rest of the world becomes less equal. Also the idea that the EU is democratic is not really true. It may be made up of democracies, but its institutions are run by technocrats and many of its processes are anything but democratic. Also, Belarusians have a higher standard of living than Ukranians, something FP will never say. Belarusians know this and it's one of the things that keeps their dictator in power. "Europe’s spectacularly swift and successful response to the migration crisis demonstrates that mass migration can be controlled." More white supremacist neo-colonial nonsense. No one in Europe is happy with how this is being handled, either on the right or left. "Outside of Britain, extreme Euroskepticism enjoys scant support." Absolute bullshit. The EU is full of Euroskepticism. Simply compare the number of countries wanting to join it now compared to 10 years ago. I don't think the EU will break up, but just wait until the next major economic contraction and we'll see who steps up to leave. I live in the EU, and I can't imagine that many people in the EU taking this article all that seriously. It must be written for ignorant Americans.

rbecker 6y ago
> "Europe’s spectacularly swift and successful response to the migration crisis demonstrates that mass migration can be controlled." > More white supremacist neo-colonial nonsense. No one [1] in Europe is happy with how this is being handled, either on the right or left. I'm guessing you're calling it "nonsense" because they call it "successful" despite no one in Europe being happy with it. But what makes it "white supremacist neo-colonial"? [1] See my reply regarding no one being happy.
- tluyben2 6y ago
  > no one in Europe being happy That is the real nonsense here; many people are happy with it. Just people who shout in the tabloids and right-wing and the underbelly (politicians) make it sound like everyone thinks the same way. We do not.

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known 6y ago

To show what the USA can learn from rest of the world, director Michael Moore playfully visits various nations in Europe and Africa https://yts.mx/movies/where-to-invade-next-2015 https://yts.mx/movies/where-to-invade-next-2015

boruto 6y ago

I think covid-19 is not a case of how Europe won but rather how US,India failed at many levels, With high point being the president getting it. What are state of affairs if the greatest country on earth cannot keep their leader safe six months after the pandemic started. They ought to have some control over the spread at-least in their upper ring.

johnchristopher 6y ago

Just yesterday I was listening to a french public radio podcast featuring an econ. professor who stated that the US has been doing better in the last decade because after the subprime crisis they invested money left and right while the EU went into austerity mode. I don't know about the covid consequences in the US at the moment but no one is really happy about what's going on in the EU. Red zones everywhere, closing regions after holidays, event and cultural sectors are ravaged, unemployment is rising up and our government are still all about `investing into the future but cut the spending at the same time`. I am now convinced no one can really read anything into economic and governance. It's all just tea reading and twisted stories so it fits the worldview of the authors. Who is winning what exactly ? The only constant narrative on both sides of the ocean is that wealthy people are still getting wealthier and the 99% are getting worse. And China bad.

tcldr 6y ago

In my mind, the biggest mistake the EU has made is not being more vocal about its achievements. Perhaps this was because it was felt it would stoke some anti-EU nationalists and threaten the project, but now that that cat is well and truly out of the bag it's now actually a great opportunity to finally take more vocal leadership around the EUs values, goals and achievements. Ironically, today, the integrity of the institution only seems to be enhanced by the less than savoury reputations and agendas of many of its detractors.

dgellow 6y ago
> the biggest mistake the EU has made is not being more vocal about its achievements Yes, the EU has a lot of work to do to improve their communication. EU communication within country members is almost non-existent. People in France have often zero idea what is being done in Brussels, don't know that their neighborhood new bike lanes and kindergarten have been financed by European funds. You regularly see people complaining in national media about EU lack of support for their own country, even when they just received a major financial support. Look for example at Italy, Poland, Hungary, where the anti-EU sentiment has become quite important while they received some of the highest crisis funds that have even been created.
- dudul 6y ago
  Where is the money coming from to fund the European funds? It is just the sum of members contributions. Funny that you mention France as an example since France is one of the countries that pay more to the EU than it receives.
  - tcldr 6y ago
    If you look at the inflow/outflow of funds explicitly I can see why you'd arrive at that conclusion. But one of the biggest benefits of being in the EU is being part of the world's largest trading bloc. Particularly for France who have a leading role.
    - 6y ago

jessaustin 6y ago

For a generation, observers have bet against Europe’s future, arguing that it lacks the high growth, centralized political institutions, domestic legitimacy, and hard military tools required to have an effective global presence. Every time I read about USA's "high growth", I think of how hollow that "growth" has been. [0] The latter three things are curses rather than advantages. Anyone who is surprised that military activity leads to suffering, has only the vaguest, most abstract understanding of either of the words "military" or "suffering". FP has published plenty by such people, so TFA may be some kind of breakthrough. [0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

LatteLazy 6y ago

Europe wins because it doesn't play stupid games. Sure, it still has to deal with the down sides of other people's foreign policy mistakes. But it's doesn't also have to deal with its own mistakes. Because it pursues a simple, equitable policy instead of trying to dominate everything.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

It wins because it's not really democratic. No-one votes for the EU president. No-one votes for the membership of the European Commission (which decides all the policies) [0] I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Seeing the mess that democracy has made in the UK and USA at the moment, it's nice having at least one global power that isn't vulnerable to populist theatrics. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...

rektide 6y ago

been on a kick of watching old Bruce Sterling videos recently (they are so very good). i happened across this one from next 2017, where he is proposing we pretend we are in 2027 looking 10 years in the past, back at 2017. https://youtu.be/C2O_fxmrP_Q https://youtu.be/C2O_fxmrP_Q in this view he suggests that Germany right now is the way to act and the people doing it right. some good materials here to consider, a way to look at how the world has been running, and perhaps in line with this article from foreign policy.