10 ms·

The thing about Europe: it's the actual land of the free now

160 points by cruzcampo 2y ago

palata 2y ago
> There are few unicorns in Europe, alas, and too little innovation. There is most definitely innovation in Europe. It just gets bought by the US, who is quick to forget where the technology came from. As for unicorns and trillion dollars companies... some may say it's a feature, not a bug. It's great to claim to have free speech and competition, but when a few people own a few big monopolies and control the media, is it real? Regulations are not bad.
- mentalgear 2y ago
  Exactly, regulation benefits the consumers by allowing for a competitive playing field on innovation, cost and labour. Deregulate the market and you get the oligopoly US of today (not the "great" version of the 1950s that had regulation which distributed the wealth much more equally).
  - aaa_aaa 2y ago
    Regulations by state just brings regulatory capture. It is always the case in EU or US. Both are lost to China now.
    - watwut 2y ago
      China, famously unregulated country full of freedom.
      - spwa4 2y ago
        How is this a mystery? What matters is whether the state provides funding for innovation. The market will never support a first moon landing. The market will not even support something like starlink, where the use is obvious. The US' technological advantage is the result of massive continuous state investment after WW2 and through the cold war. There were periods of such investment in Europe, but they have been over for decades now. The only places where some lasted during the cold war were the UK and France, and both of those are well and truly over. In the US they're only now dropping fast under Trump. The CCP is providing absurd amounts of funding for commercial innovation. Not just money either. Everything from monetary stimulus, tax exemptions (and strategically forgiving outright tax evasion) even "honey traps" (hiring prostitutes to entrap foreigners, even long term), even kidnapping foreigners.
    - intended 2y ago
      This is doctrine. The same way you make sure your planes fly, your code is updated, and you improve your product - you pay attention to your regulators. The SEC was defanged for years. The pendulum swung to low regulation, and lower taxes, leading to greater wealth concentration via asset purchases. These are all rectifiable. At all levels. It just not going to happen if we are listening to zero information news sources and disengage with everything but rage.
  - atoav 2y ago
    The right wing propagandist who photoshopped "I hate free speech" over Nancy Faeser standing at a Holocaust memorial and holding a sign with the Text: "We remember"? I guess it is kinda important to not ignore the context of the edited image, especially since Germany for good reasons is not including the rights of holocaust deniers and Nazis in their free speech. Quite a singular case and it sparked a huge controversy on free speech in Germany, with most scholars and officials siding with the sentiment that what David Bendels did was disguisting, but probably covered by free speech to some degree. Compared to the free speech violations (and the seemingly inconsequencial nature of the discussions after they happened) this is still just a singular case. Also, purely from a conceptual standpoint I do not think that a free society has to tolerate every opinion of people who objctively seek to abolish it. If you have a significant fascist movement in your country your speech will have become less free, so limiting their speech before they do is an act of defending democracy and everybody who believes in it. Just replace Nazis/fascists with radical islamists and check how free your speech really is.
    - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      Popper's paradox of tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Similarly, we should not tolerate the "free speech" of those that seek to silence others (e.g. fascists).
      - Jensson 2y ago
        Popper said we should tolerate the intolerant as long as they aren't violent, so its the exact opposite of what you say. In general intolerance just breeds more intolerance, people are much less tolerant today than 10 years ago due to the massive amount of intolerance towards intolerance that proliferated the past 10 years.
        lores 2y ago
        Violence is such a nebulous concept, though. There are forms of violence that aren't physical, even though the law typically only recognise those. Is publicly mocking people for having a different culture violence? Is calling for harm upon them? Is, through policy, causing harm to them violence? Is it violence if it's through willful inaction? I think all the above are, although the trade-off line is somewhere above mockery.
  - spwa4 2y ago
    Regulations in Europe also seem to have had the, I'm assuming completely unintentional, side effect of completely cementing the positions of the top of society in place. And this is nothing new, this actually predates modern democracy in Europe. It's been that way for centuries. In Europe the only time to leave, or join, the ultra-rich is during wars. That the EU doesn't have unicorns is not an accident of whatever rules you like or dislike, it's entirely by design.
    - chkuendig 2y ago
      Just leaving this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
      - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
        Amusingly enough, what the GP stated was true in 1910, but now the US is far more like pre-WW1 Europe in terms of distribution of wealth (c.f. Piketty's capital in the 21st century).
      - hansworst 2y ago
        Social mobility index doesn’t really look at how easy it is to become very rich (I.e. get into the 1%). This is also explained in the methodology section of the article you linked.
      - mamonster 2y ago
        I can already tell this index is complete BS as it has Sweden in the 4th place. The ceiling placed at around upper-middle class is made out of cement.
    - palata 2y ago
      The problem with the ultra-rich is not that it's hard to get there, but rather that it is possible. Nobody is personally worth billions, period. The fact that some individuals get there shows a flaw in the system. The second thing that I wanted to say is that even though there are examples of originally not ultra-rich people becoming ultra-rich in the US (e.g. Zuckerberg and Besos), the likelihood of this happening is almost zero. Why is it that people keep hoping that it may happen to them? We should not build a system for a handful to become ultra-rich, but for most to live as well as possible.
  - amy214 2y ago
    Regulations are complicated and a double edge sword, they inevitably introduce inefficiency and barriers, so the payoff needs to be greater. For example, regulations about mandating companies to delete your data - wonderful. A great win for California which is otherwise quite an overregulated states. On the flip side, in the UK, you may need a license for that television, or a license for that knife. That's the political thing with regulations. If a politician says "regulations sucks" most would tend to agree as far as that TV license, or getting a permit for a particular fence. Some regulations spit in the face of logic. It's as if the legislators said, "let's make being sick illegal! Checkmate, modern medicine, now everyone is healthy!" Such style of thinking is erosive of trust towards the political establishment and government.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  Yes, I agree: unicorns are, by and large, a failure of capitalism, not an example of success. They result from a system that doesn't value competition but values winning. That's not to say that the European tech sector is doing fantastically. Still, as an end user, I'd rather have a thousand companies like Proton, Filen, Tutanota, Tresorit, Infomaniak, or DeepL than one Google.
  - jbverschoor 2y ago
    Exactly. ONLY Proton rings a bell. Made by a Taiwanese person ;-)
    - koziserek 2y ago
      Spotify, maybe?
    - palata 2y ago
      I doubt Proton is written by exactly one person (I actually know more than one person who worked there ;-) ), and I'm pretty certain they were working in Switzerland. Not sure what your point is.
- jbverschoor 2y ago
  There's no risk capital. There's no vision. No guts, no glory. Just old glory. A bunch of scared real-estate investors and pension funds who have their roots in STAYING in Europe when the (ad)venturers went overseas and built what has become the US. It's not in the culture and it won't be.
  - Propelloni 2y ago
    Hehe, that's certainly one way of looking at it. Just as well we could say that the religious fanatics, the absolutists, the utopians, and some other malcontents dissatisfied with the enlightenment went overseas to establish their puritan and perfect societies because those boring Europeans just wouldn't see the light and all the violence did not change that. Would that be more accurate? No, but no less either.
- qsort 2y ago
  > As for unicorns and trillion dollars companies... some may say it's a feature, not a bug Cope much? As a European I'd rather not have half of our industries critically depend on AWS and Microsoft, especially now that the US has fully embraced governance by RNG. The choice isn't having or not having your own digital infrastructure, it's either having your own or having to depend on someone else.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    >As a European I'd rather not have half of our industries critically depend on AWS and Microsoft It seems to me that's a point in support of the idea that Unicorns are a problem and should not exist.
    - huntertwo 2y ago
      What a free society that would be!
      - palata 2y ago
        I don't get this interpretation of "free". Would you say that one should be "free" to kill someone else? Nobody wants absolute freedom. We all want some set of rules (e.g. "You should not be allowed to burn my house for fun"). Of course, we may want rules that benefit us personally ("Taxes should be paid to me personally, not to the country"), but that obviously doesn't work (if taxes are paid exclusively to me, they can't be paid exclusively to you). So as a group, we agree on a set of rules that benefits society the most. We want to "maximize the global utility", if I can say it like this. If "not having unicorns" is better for the society at large than "having unicorns", then it works. And your short-sighted, convenient understanding of "freedom" doesn't change that.
        huntertwo 2y ago
        How would you restrict the existence of unicorns? Also refrain from personal attacks on this site - you don’t know my understanding of freedom and denigrating me doesn’t help your argument. Edit: my implicit argument is that restricting unicorns while sounds nice on paper is that the net benefit of an implementation of that is net negative - not that absolute anarchy is the solution.
- rcarmo 2y ago
  There were quite a few unicorns that (until now) quickly moved to establish a US foothold and hired some of their new C-levels there, because that's where the lobbying and money typically are. Europe tends to have more established, "old" companies that do their own bit of innovation, and a few outliers like ASML that are crucial to many industries (besides silicon, there's pharma, media, retail, and of course a lot of manufacturing, each with their own innovation ecosystems, because many established companies have long figured out that it would be easier to sponsor local startups and then incorporate them than rebuild their orgs at random).
  - pjc50 2y ago
    I've just realized that this describes almost half of my career: ten years at a UK startup that almost immediately set itself up with a Delaware corp and a San Francisco office, so it could eventually sell out to Cadence; then several more years at a UK university chip design spinoff that also got bought out by a US multinational. Hard to compete with the power of the dollar. I guess the Trump plan to push the value of the dollar down may finally make US acquisitions of European companies impossible and US salaries uncompetitive.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > There are few unicorns in Europe I don't think that unicorns, which tend to have a quasi-monopolistic position in their market segment, are healthy for society, or even for the economy (in the long run), vs many smaller companies. So I see this as a good thing. The problem is that the draw of unicorns in the US does create a brain drain for those attracted by the prospect of becoming rich. It's quite difficult to become rich in Europe, compared to the US. It's mostly "old money" that's passed down. But you can be successful and comfortable. Is it important to be "rich"?
Doches 2y ago
https://archive.is/0D1Ov https://archive.is/0D1Ov
baal80spam 2y ago
This could be written only by a Non-European.
- spikels 2y ago
  Author is European https://mediadirectory.economist.com/people/stanley-pignal/ https://mediadirectory.economist.com/people/stanley-pignal/
ssm008 2y ago
https://archive.ph/0D1Ov https://archive.ph/0D1Ov
jbverschoor 2y ago
Emmm no it's not. Believe it or not, the BRICS are
- pjc50 2y ago
  The Russia and China that don't have free elections?
  - rapsey 2y ago
    Europe and the US have no moral high ground when it comes to the justice system being used against political opponents.
    - croes 2y ago
      How many political opponents in the EU and US died by falling out of windows or getting poisened?
    - kubb 2y ago
      Anna Politkovskaya – Investigative journalist and critic of the Chechen war, shot in Moscow (2006). Alexander Litvinenko – Ex-FSB officer poisoned with polonium in London (2006). Stanislav Markelov & Anastasia Baburova – Human rights lawyer and journalist, shot in Moscow (2009). Boris Nemtsov – Opposition leader, shot near the Kremlin (2015). Denis Voronenkov – Former Russian MP, shot in Kyiv (2017). Nikolai Andrushchenko – Journalist, beaten to death in St. Petersburg (2017). Alexei Navalny – Opposition leader, died in prison after previous poisoning (2024). --- Maybe Europe isn't perfect, but the Russian morals are so low that no effort is requried to be better than them.
      - wiseowise 2y ago
        Bah, that’s the real freedom, comrade. Freedom to kill opposition. How can you call yourself “free” if you can’t freely put polonium in your opponents chai?
      - rapsey 2y ago
pjc50 2y ago
(paywalled, commenting on above the fold section) > There are thus no European Rasputins pumping untold millions into political campaigns, getting pride of place at leaders’ inaugurations or their own new-minted government departments to run I think this is underselling the very real risks of European-style fascism, driven by the same social media and other forces, just because it doesn't exactly resemble Musk. But it does seem like the crisis is now compelling the cozy ""centre"" to actually do something, like re-armament and actually prosecuting politicians for their financial fraud. Not just Le Pen but previously things like Wirecard.
- sigmoid10 2y ago
  >like re-armament and actually prosecuting politicians for their financial fraud. Not just Le Pen but previously things like Wirecard. In the end, all those things can be traced to curbing Russia's direct and indirect warfare. Re-armament? Direct Russian threat. Le Pen? Financed by Russia. Marsalek? Part of a Russian spy-network that operated from Austria, where the FPÖ is not just financed by Russia but also has a literal cooperation contract with Putin. Similar story with the AfD in Germany. The US used to be good at this as well. If they were as close to the war in Ukraine as Europe is, they might still be. But instead they have gone from being the biggest opponent of Russia to one of it's most subverted supporters.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  We have plenty of foreign Rasputins to complain about, as well as some local ones.
- jabl 2y ago
  Modern European democracy is indeed not immune to fascism (or something resembling it, to stave of a quibble of what actually fascism means). Most prominently Orban in Hungary. Poland was well on their way towards something similar, but luckily a major electoral defeat caused a reversal of this development. Most European countries do have their own far-right parties (like Le Pen in France, AFD in Germany, etc.). But with multi-winner districts and lots of other parties, they struggle to gain anything resembling a majority that would enable them to rule by fiat. Also politics in most European countries is much more parliament driven, with the prime minister having a lot less power and more oversight than e.g. the US president.
brickfaced 2y ago
Land of the free, where police raid your home at dawn over mean tweets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-german-politician-police-raid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-g... https://archive.ph/hETjp https://archive.ph/hETjp Not a one-off, either: https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult-politicians-which-is-why-we-need-to-protect-free-speech-in-the-us/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult...
- pjc50 2y ago
  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj5nlxz44yo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj5nlxz44yo
- croes 2y ago
  "In March 2022, the investigation was dropped due to a lack of public interest in prosecution.In August 2022, the Hamburg Regional Court also ruled that the house search was unlawful and unreasonable." Freedom doesn't mean that no errors are made but that they are aknowledged as errors. The responsible politician still gets rediculed for that and isn't praised by his fanbase.
- foobahify 2y ago
  [flagged]
- lm28469 2y ago
  There are hour long videos of US cops shooting unarmed people in their own homes available online if you want to make a "LaNd Of ThE FrEe" dick size contest
- rspoerri 2y ago
  The laws are different: "Incitement and defamation laws are far broader in Germany than in the United States, with some European legislation on the books that forbids defaming leaders and makes Holocaust denial a crime.". You are not allowed hate speech on the internet in a lot of countries. You will be prosecuted for that. But different to other countries, in a majority of the european countries (turkey, greece are currently problematic) people are not deported, put in jail or camps and forgotten, even without a sentence and hearing.
rapsey 2y ago
What we in Europe have is just more political corruption of the justice system and a populace too comfortable to care.
- j_maffe 2y ago
  You'll have to be more specific about where in Europe. Some places, yes. But only a minority
  - rapsey 2y ago
    Rotherham in the UK, Le Pen in France, Romanian elections.
    - j_maffe 2y ago
      You think Rotherham and Le Pen are more corrupt than Donald trump? Also Romanian elections properly dealt with foreign intervention, unlike the US.
      - rapsey 2y ago
        Yes I think covering up mass child rape politically and criminally is worse than Donald Trump. Foreign intervention in Romanian or US elections is a fairy tale. Justification for political corruption of the judicial branch. It is funny how once right wing candidates get close to winning political power, they suddenly turn into criminals and traitors. Makes total sense.
  - xvokcarts 2y ago
    Shouldn't you be more specific as well, since you're asking that from the parent commenter?
    - j_maffe 2y ago
      No because I'm not the one making absolutist statements. The burden is on the one giving the stronger claim.
snehk 2y ago
> Yet to many Europeans the idea that free expression is under threat seems odd. Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice. A journalist in Germany was just sentenced to seven months for posting a meme of a politician where she holds up a sign saying "I hate free speech". https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-naher-journalist-david-bendels-wegen-verleumdung-zu-freiheitsstrafe-verurteilt-a-87085d7d-53c3-4a72-ba14-1a31e43a58f8 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-...
- froidpink 2y ago
  source?
  - mzhaase 2y ago
    https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-naher-journalist-david-bendels-wegen-verleumdung-zu-freiheitsstrafe-verurteilt-a-87085d7d-53c3-4a72-ba14-1a31e43a58f8 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-...
  - doublerabbit 2y ago
    https://x.com/M_Simonyan/status/1909968556332097681 https://x.com/M_Simonyan/status/1909968556332097681
  - xvokcarts 2y ago
    The UK folks don't seem to feel so free to say stuff either: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/704467 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/704467
  - graemep 2y ago
    I do not know about that but people have had police raids for calling the head of the german Green Party an idiot: https://www.ft.com/content/27626fa8-3379-4b69-891d-379401675942 https://www.ft.com/content/27626fa8-3379-4b69-891d-379401675... The Online Safety Act in the UK has been discussed here before and it is part of a general trend to prevent "harmful" speech including specifically "legal but harmful speech".
MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
> "Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice." David Bendels has been threatened with prison time and sentenced to seven months of probation for a Twitter meme [0]. It is the harshest sentence ever handed down to a journalist for a speech crime in the Federal Republic of Germany. This is the tweet, poking fun at the German minister of the interior Nancy Faeser (the sign says "I hate free speech"): https://x.com/Deu_Kurier/status/1762895292075053348 https://x.com/Deu_Kurier/status/1762895292075053348 [0] https://www-welt-de.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/article255889578/Nancy-Faeser-Harte-Strafe-fuer-Journalist-wegen-X-Posts-Ricarda-Lang-kritisiert-mangelnde-Verhaeltnismaessigkeit.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-welt-de.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/artic...
- mehwoot 2y ago
  He claims it was poking fun. The court found differently. > Bendels claimed the meme, posted by his newspaper's X account, was satirical. > But the judge in the case said during the verdict that Bendels published a 'deliberately untrue and contemptuous statement about Interior Minister Ms. Faeser (...) that would not be recognizable to the unbiased reader and is likely to significantly impair her public work'.
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    If a picture of Nancy Faeser holding a "I hate free speech" sign can be ruled to be a "deliberately untrue and contemptuous statement", satire has become effectively illegal.
- lm28469 2y ago
  You might want to look into libel and defamation laws in the US too lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    In the US, the threshold for libel is very high for people of public interest, and rightfully so.
anilakar 2y ago
What is this country called Europe they're talking about?
mrtksn 2y ago
There're a few contradicting narratives going on: 1) Big companies actually don't innovate, they are slow and bureaucratic. It is startups that do innovation 2) Look at the top 10 companies by market cap, it's all the Chinese and American companies. Therefore USA is the pinnacle of innovation and Europe is falling behind(because of your favorite scapegoat) 3) Europe has many startups but they can't become huge because of excessive regulations. They end up moving to US, leaving Europe to lag behind 4) China has grew much more than the west, the west is lagging behind now. This is because the west has become socialist, we need to remove the taxes on the rich reduce regulations and protections to be able to compete with China. Those all(and a few more actually) have some truth in them and a lot of wrong. A new narrative that captures the picture correctly is needed because at the current state those few camps are wedging wars where each ignore contradicting evidence instead of structuring it in a way that things fit.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > the west is lagging behind now. This is because the west has become socialist The idea that the West is more socialist than Communist China, a one party state run by the Communist Party of China, just goes to show how completely useless ideological labelling is now. Just as "woke" has become a shorthand for "anything I don't like".
  - jabl 2y ago
    I agree with the sentiment in general, but wrt China in particular, how socialist is it really? Yes, it's a one-party authoritarian state that calls itself communist, largely due to historical reasons. But the contemporary Chinese economy seems very much to be a market economy. Albeit one with a lot of state intervention typical of authoritarian regimes, but that doesn't make it socialist much less communist.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      > how socialist is it really Well indeed. What does that mean? Nobody seems to be interested in any kind of intellectual accuracy or coherence, they just want to use "socialism bad" as a thought-terminating cliche.
haunter 2y ago
Hungary exist though, not just in Europe but in the EU. And it’s the perfect sample of what the GOP want to achieve in the long run.
- mathw 2y ago
  Hungary sadly shows us that the EU's defences against one of its own members going rogue are very poor. No doubt a relic of the idealism in which it was founded - we're all nice people, of course we're going to stay that way. And also the pragmatism of not handing over too much control from national governments to the EU bodies.
- cruzcampo 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - haunter 2y ago
    Hungary is so far down the road that I won't believe Fidesz can be beaten in legit elections
    - cruzcampo 2y ago
      [flagged]
throwme_123 2y ago
It's hard to believe anything from the Economist these days. They are basically sold to some circles of influence, such as Qatar and are merely propaganda. Example, the world cup: " The Economist https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com › leaders › 2022 › 11 › 17 › in-defence-of-qatars-hosting-of-the-world-cup In defence of Qatar's hosting of the World Cup - The Economist The claim that Qatar is a den of homophobia is also misleading. " The Economist https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com › middle-east-and-africa › 2022 › 11 › 02 › qatar-races-to-ready-itself-for-an-unusual-world-cup Qatar races to ready itself for an unusual World Cup - The Economist The Economist https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com › international › 2022 › 11 › 17 › the-qatar-world-cup-shows-how-football-is-changing The Qatar World Cup shows how football is changing - The Economist Much of a broader $300bn economic development plan called Qatar 2030 etc.
- _tik_ 2y ago
  They are still better than most US news outlet.
- rcarmo 2y ago
  As someone who actually reads the Economist weekly, I would like to disagree. Also, _of course_ there was a series of articles on Qatar in 2022. Not all of them were positive, mind you.
spants 2y ago
Is it April 1st still?
aaa_aaa 2y ago
Except, anything you "say" can be hate speech or antisemitism in many EU countries. You will be censored, de-platformed or prosecuted.
- mathw 2y ago
  And why shouldn't incitement to racial hatred be illegal?
  - aaa_aaa 2y ago
    Hate for people you do not know is idiotic and despicable, but it is not a crime.
    - cruzcampo 2y ago
      [flagged]
- palata 2y ago
  If anything you "say" involves Nazi salutes, then sure. Again, it's a feature.
  - aaa_aaa 2y ago
    It still cannot be a crime. Laws against it are just nurturing this environment.
    - palata 2y ago
      > It still cannot be a crime. It sure can, as proven by all the countries where it is.
mrweasel 2y ago
> The boring processes of rule by consensus can slow the EU to a crawl: it took four days and four nights of haggling to agree on the bloc’s latest seven-year budget, in 2020. That's a weird complaint. 27 member states, manage to agree on a seven year budget, in less than a week. That's seems alright to me. I get that there have been weeks if not months of work done by bureaucrats leading up to that week, but still, seems reasonably fast.
- jabl 2y ago
  Yes, it was a bad example. But the underlying issue is very real, in that many important decisions are made with unanimous votes. Which puts the entire EU at the whims of any single country, which could even be compromised by Putin (cough Orban). More decisions should be moved to qualified majority voting. Oh, and the EU should PRONTO implement the suggestions in the 2024 Draghi and Letta reports.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  That's faster that in takes the US Congress to agree on a budget extension for the next year.
- philistine 2y ago
  Compared to the grueling process of making US government budgets, I'd wager it was easier for the Europeans to make theirs.
sMarsIntruder 2y ago
lol
neuroelectron 2y ago
the thing about Europe is it's not very important. The perfect posture so that mid countries can look powerful in comparison.
gampleman 2y ago
> Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant. Well, according to the Academic Freedom Index [1], there are 2 countries that have worse academic freedom than the US: Hungary (as mentioned) and Greece. The UK, Portugal, the Netherlands, Serbia and North Macedonia are broadly comparable. > No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza. In the UK, we do have terror legislation that allows us to detain journalists who talk about Gaza for 48 hours and confiscate their devices indefinitely (and no, we don't have free speech protections allowing us to not divulge passwords to these devices) [2]. > news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians We do like to put them into prison though [3]. [1]: https://academic-freedom-index.net https://academic-freedom-index.net [2]: https://scottishpen.org/statement-on-detention-of-author-and-human-rights-campaigner-craig-murray/ https://scottishpen.org/statement-on-detention-of-author-and... [3]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/04/pers-a04.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/04/pers-a04.html
- unconed 2y ago
  >Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant. This is just wrong. People have been fired for expressing opinions related to COVID, to ethnical tension, islamisation, and so on. Woke in Europe has a lag time of a few years, but the bohemian bourgeoisie is present in full force. Not only is academic and intellectual freedom under threat, but the danger and persecutions are very very very very obviously being applied with massive political double standards. If you're on the left and you spout narratives that subsidized institutions and lobbying groups agree with, you won't get penalized. If you're on the right, a meme posted by someone else can get your rights suspended.
huntertwo 2y ago
Isn’t encryption illegal in the UK? Can’t you go to prison for social media posts making fun of politicians? Isn’t there low economic growth caused by restrictive regulation? Seems like the political class runs stuff over there.
- fulafel 2y ago
  I'd assume that when a UK publication writes an article like this, it refers to Europe as separate from the UK (esp as the UK is not mentioned).
- a2128 2y ago
  Do you think the UK just can't access most of the internet that uses SSL encryption? What makes you think encryption is illegal?
xvokcarts 2y ago
There's very high taxation of high income individuals (60%) as well as companies, supported by a big majority of population, which is then used as propaganda by the gvmnt that high taxes benefit everyone because the government knows best what we need. My feeling is that fellow citizens actually support this idea. Those that don't agree find other ways, which is so easy in EU it almost looks like it's by design. Such an environment is not as business friendly as it seems. Most politicians in this environment see a solution to every problem in new taxes. Hard to talk about freedom, when you're not allowed to vote on taxes. There's a also a push for truthspeak - younger generations are no longer sure freedom of speech should be sacred, because it wasn't explained as important enough, so they themselves get ideas about what should be censored and why. Again, the gvnmt is quick to agree with them by offering a way to compile a list of truths. Also, public healthcare in EU is only for the poor - if you can afford to pay private, you're not even thinking about going public. It just doesn't work like some people here thinks it does. So, no, Europe is not a dreamland compared to USA, it just has a different set of problems.
- jusssi 2y ago
  > There's very high taxation of high income individuals (60%) 55.9% *, at highest bracket. And when you get there, you usually have means to have at least some of your income as capital gains, which is uniformly taxed lower. I.e. you don't become a high income individual, you become an owner of profitable family business. Edit: I said originally, "55.9%, marginal", but that was wrong. Corrected. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/top-personal-income-tax-rates-europe/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/top-personal-income-ta... https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/capital-gains-tax-rates-europe/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/capital-gains-tax-rate... > supported by a big majority of population That's democracy for you.
nickslaughter02 2y ago
The land of the free which wants to force companies to install a mandatory on-device scanning of your communication? The land of the free which wants to break end to end encryption and allow the government to spy on you? We have wildly different definitions of "free". https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/eu_backdoor_encryption/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/eu_backdoor_encryptio...
- palata 2y ago
  > which wants to force companies to install a mandatory on-device scanning of your communication? To be fair, it's only in discussions now, it hasn't been voted AFAIK and it hasn't been implemented. Compare that to the NSA... ever heard of Snowden?
  - nickslaughter02 2y ago
    > To be fair, it's only in discussions now, it hasn't been voted AFAIK and it hasn't been implemented. Correct but ChatControl now has a majority among EU Commissioners. The fact that something like this is even proposed in the "free" land and the people responsible not laughed out of the room is sickening. > Compare that to the NSA... ever heard of Snowden? Spying on your unencrypted communication? That's not comparable + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
    - palata 2y ago
      > Spying on your unencrypted communication? Either you're in bad faith, or you actually don't know how it works in the US and what the NSA was (probably is still) doing.
      - nickslaughter02 2y ago
        Do tell.
gizmo 2y ago
Much of what this article writes is not true: - You can absolutely get in trouble for voicing political speech in Europe. We've seen plenty of headlines of people who got fired in Europe for making offensive statements. In the UK in particular criticizing the wealthy is extremely dangerous because of slander laws. - Europe absolutely does not have an extremely generous immigration policy. An estimated 24,000 immigrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean. And this is because of European policy. It's because Europe refuses to honor refugee/asylum claims at the airport desperate people are forced to cross the sea in rickety dinghies. - Europe does not track wealth of its citizens. Many companies are privately held. Many assets are held overseas. So how does the Economist know wealth inequality is low? But it is known that every time a heat wave hits Europe many elderly die because they can't afford to cool their home. - “Nobody in Europe is even casually implying they will invade other countries.” Did the Economist forget that European soldiers actually joined the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq? Europe also used its military to topple the Gaddafi government in Libya. Europe doesn't just talk about invading other countries, it actually has invaded other countries in recent history. Must be amnesia! (You might believe these invasions were morally justified, but that's beside the point.) - It's true that Europe does not have out of control tech execs who boast about throwing bits of Europe into the wood chipper. But this is because Europe's entirely depends on the US for tech and we don't have any oddball "founder CEO" types. There is no European Bezos, Gates, Jobs, or Musk. CEOs in Europe are professional managers. It's not the same. The article isn't horrible, but it makes way too many claims that don't hold up to slight scrutiny.
- watwut 2y ago
  Afghanistan invasion was America invading Afhanistan and using NATO article 5 to force Europe into it with them. Funny how now an American is somehow trying to blame Europe for it while America is acting like a victim because they were not sole benefactors of the alliance.
  - gizmo 2y ago
    1. Europe joined the US willingly in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even with article 5 NATO countries could have protested against it or provided minimal non-combat support. 2. This isn't about blame or NATO or ethics. This is about the Economist rewriting history.
nickslaughter02 2y ago
> Germany is not much better. It's illegal to insult elected officials, and if you say the wrong thing, or post the wrong meme, you may well find yourself the subject of a raid at dawn. Just crazy stuff. https://world.hey.com/dhh/europeans-don-t-have-or-understand-free-speech-c7c406e8 https://world.hey.com/dhh/europeans-don-t-have-or-understand...
- cruzcampo 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - nickslaughter02 2y ago
    Saying somebody else has it even worse doesn't make it any less bad.
    - cruzcampo 2y ago
      [flagged]
axegon_ 2y ago
The sad thing is I've always seen (and still do see) the US as a friend, despite the fact that the current government is trying really hard to turn the US into a dictatorship(shutting down medias that criticize them, cozying up with literal criminals, murderers and worse and so on and calling it "freedom" - the exact same approach lenin had). I know things will turn around eventually since this is not the first such instance in the history of the US. Coming from eastern Europe, the US was the place to be when I was growing up and this carried on into the first half of my 20's. I immigrated into western Europe in my teens and continued my education there but as soon as my country entered the EU, somehow the appeal of going to the US slowly started to vanish. The idea of dealing with immigration offices and endless bureaucracy was really not pleasant. And surprisingly after I completed my studies, I moved back home and all things considered, this was probably the best decision I've ever made. Now let's set something straight: Europe is bureaucratic hellhole, which is the reason why entrepreneurship is fairly uncommon. Here we are taught to go through the procedures, get whatever licenses and paperwork is required, make sure we follow all steps and cover everything up and then and only then start building a product. The US philosophy is the complete opposite approach: start building and figure it out along the way, which is the reason why Europe is always behind the curve. This however ended up being both a curse and blessing in disguise for us: the digitalization of everyday life took longer, whereas everyone and their dog in the US had a smartphone and social networks from day 0. In addition, here in Europe we've been exposed to bad actors such as russia for centuries and many of us can navigate through their tactics, whereas the US instantly swallowed everything that was thrown at them with the oldest trick in their book: "media is lying to you, see this picture/video only here". A decade and a half of actively trying to discredit establishments and it ended where it's at. And as much as GDPR is a pain in the ass, companies here are very well aware how badly things can go for them if things are not kept in check. Which, as a citizen, is a great thing. The other problem with the quick rise of digitization in the US in conjunction with practically non-existent regulations around privacy are grifters, which truly swarmed the internet. Business strategy: make a dumb video "owning someone", share it around so people learn who you are, get them roiled up against one another, having half of them become your worshipers, release a book, merchandise or courses and you are set for life. From practical nobodies all the way up to presidents - it's a guaranteed success. But you have to have 0 moral values to do that and at some point you will need people around you. Thing is that it's only a question of time before everyone around you starts realizing that no one has moral values and start screwing each other up. The US is currently in that stage. All things considered, the US has fallen really far behind in terms of freedom in single digit months. Edit: Some time ago my mum was watching some interview with an analyst who really summed it up: "I used to believe the US was about 100 years ahead of China in terms of innovation. I was wrong, it's probably closer to 50. And if you ask me where we are in Europe? Preoccupied with coming up with more inconvenient bottle caps to solve a problem we don't have".
penguin_booze 2y ago
A quote picked from Reddit: "America has become what the British thought Australia would".
fedorvin 2y ago
Europe is not a single country. Some of them are more free then others. For example: Germany monitors all of your internet traffic and can give you fines over it. classifying a panopticon as "free" is insane.
- computerthings 2y ago
  [dead]
- verzali 2y ago
  Do you really think the American government isn't monitoring your Internet traffic?
  - fedorvin 2y ago
    Im not American:)
    - nprateem 2y ago
      So?
      - fedorvin 2y ago
        I never said that the US is free in any way
- karussell 2y ago
  Can you give a source for "Germany monitors all of your internet traffic"?
hnburnsy 2y ago
Yeah, I guess if free means 'free to fine tech companies to the tune of 30 billion dollars', sure it is free.
EasyMark 2y ago
They shouldn't get too confident, what's happening here in the USA can happen there as well, and we get a chance to end it every 2 years, hopefully that's the case next November, remember that Congress could stop this at any point, and we have all the warning signs that Trump is a fascist and wants to be dictator for life.
kyriakos 2y ago
why is this flagged?
hintymad 2y ago
> Yet to many Europeans the idea that free expression is under threat seems odd. Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice. What about the 60 Minutes segment from February 2025, where CBS correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewed German prosecutors about Germany’s strict hate speech laws? The report, aired on February 16, 2025, discussed how German authorities can raid homes and seize devices over online posts deemed offensive, such as hate speech, insults, or misinformation. The prosecutors, including Dr. Matthäus Fink, Svenja Meininghaus, and Frank-Michael Laue, explained that German law allows police to act against speech that incites hatred or insults. I'm particularly concerned that "hate" and "insult" and "misinformation" can be so subjective. That's why the US 1A protects even hate speech. And what about British police arrested people who post memes online for the similar reasons?

160 points by cruzcampo 2y ago

> There are few unicorns in Europe, alas, and too little innovation. There is most definitely innovation in Europe. It just gets bought by the US, who is quick to forget where the technology came from. As for unicorns and trillion dollars companies... some may say it's a feature, not a bug. It's great to claim to have free speech and competition, but when a few people own a few big monopolies and control the media, is it real? Regulations are not bad.

mentalgear 2y ago
Exactly, regulation benefits the consumers by allowing for a competitive playing field on innovation, cost and labour. Deregulate the market and you get the oligopoly US of today (not the "great" version of the 1950s that had regulation which distributed the wealth much more equally).
- aaa_aaa 2y ago
  Regulations by state just brings regulatory capture. It is always the case in EU or US. Both are lost to China now.
  - watwut 2y ago
    China, famously unregulated country full of freedom.
    - spwa4 2y ago
      How is this a mystery? What matters is whether the state provides funding for innovation. The market will never support a first moon landing. The market will not even support something like starlink, where the use is obvious. The US' technological advantage is the result of massive continuous state investment after WW2 and through the cold war. There were periods of such investment in Europe, but they have been over for decades now. The only places where some lasted during the cold war were the UK and France, and both of those are well and truly over. In the US they're only now dropping fast under Trump. The CCP is providing absurd amounts of funding for commercial innovation. Not just money either. Everything from monetary stimulus, tax exemptions (and strategically forgiving outright tax evasion) even "honey traps" (hiring prostitutes to entrap foreigners, even long term), even kidnapping foreigners.
  - intended 2y ago
    This is doctrine. The same way you make sure your planes fly, your code is updated, and you improve your product - you pay attention to your regulators. The SEC was defanged for years. The pendulum swung to low regulation, and lower taxes, leading to greater wealth concentration via asset purchases. These are all rectifiable. At all levels. It just not going to happen if we are listening to zero information news sources and disengage with everything but rage.
- atoav 2y ago
  The right wing propagandist who photoshopped "I hate free speech" over Nancy Faeser standing at a Holocaust memorial and holding a sign with the Text: "We remember"? I guess it is kinda important to not ignore the context of the edited image, especially since Germany for good reasons is not including the rights of holocaust deniers and Nazis in their free speech. Quite a singular case and it sparked a huge controversy on free speech in Germany, with most scholars and officials siding with the sentiment that what David Bendels did was disguisting, but probably covered by free speech to some degree. Compared to the free speech violations (and the seemingly inconsequencial nature of the discussions after they happened) this is still just a singular case. Also, purely from a conceptual standpoint I do not think that a free society has to tolerate every opinion of people who objctively seek to abolish it. If you have a significant fascist movement in your country your speech will have become less free, so limiting their speech before they do is an act of defending democracy and everybody who believes in it. Just replace Nazis/fascists with radical islamists and check how free your speech really is.
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    Popper's paradox of tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Similarly, we should not tolerate the "free speech" of those that seek to silence others (e.g. fascists).
    - Jensson 2y ago
      Popper said we should tolerate the intolerant as long as they aren't violent, so its the exact opposite of what you say. In general intolerance just breeds more intolerance, people are much less tolerant today than 10 years ago due to the massive amount of intolerance towards intolerance that proliferated the past 10 years.
      - lores 2y ago
        Violence is such a nebulous concept, though. There are forms of violence that aren't physical, even though the law typically only recognise those. Is publicly mocking people for having a different culture violence? Is calling for harm upon them? Is, through policy, causing harm to them violence? Is it violence if it's through willful inaction? I think all the above are, although the trade-off line is somewhere above mockery.
- spwa4 2y ago
  Regulations in Europe also seem to have had the, I'm assuming completely unintentional, side effect of completely cementing the positions of the top of society in place. And this is nothing new, this actually predates modern democracy in Europe. It's been that way for centuries. In Europe the only time to leave, or join, the ultra-rich is during wars. That the EU doesn't have unicorns is not an accident of whatever rules you like or dislike, it's entirely by design.
  - chkuendig 2y ago
    Just leaving this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
    - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
      Amusingly enough, what the GP stated was true in 1910, but now the US is far more like pre-WW1 Europe in terms of distribution of wealth (c.f. Piketty's capital in the 21st century).
    - hansworst 2y ago
      Social mobility index doesn’t really look at how easy it is to become very rich (I.e. get into the 1%). This is also explained in the methodology section of the article you linked.
    - mamonster 2y ago
      I can already tell this index is complete BS as it has Sweden in the 4th place. The ceiling placed at around upper-middle class is made out of cement.
  - palata 2y ago
    The problem with the ultra-rich is not that it's hard to get there, but rather that it is possible. Nobody is personally worth billions, period. The fact that some individuals get there shows a flaw in the system. The second thing that I wanted to say is that even though there are examples of originally not ultra-rich people becoming ultra-rich in the US (e.g. Zuckerberg and Besos), the likelihood of this happening is almost zero. Why is it that people keep hoping that it may happen to them? We should not build a system for a handful to become ultra-rich, but for most to live as well as possible.
- amy214 2y ago
  Regulations are complicated and a double edge sword, they inevitably introduce inefficiency and barriers, so the payoff needs to be greater. For example, regulations about mandating companies to delete your data - wonderful. A great win for California which is otherwise quite an overregulated states. On the flip side, in the UK, you may need a license for that television, or a license for that knife. That's the political thing with regulations. If a politician says "regulations sucks" most would tend to agree as far as that TV license, or getting a permit for a particular fence. Some regulations spit in the face of logic. It's as if the legislators said, "let's make being sick illegal! Checkmate, modern medicine, now everyone is healthy!" Such style of thinking is erosive of trust towards the political establishment and government.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
Yes, I agree: unicorns are, by and large, a failure of capitalism, not an example of success. They result from a system that doesn't value competition but values winning. That's not to say that the European tech sector is doing fantastically. Still, as an end user, I'd rather have a thousand companies like Proton, Filen, Tutanota, Tresorit, Infomaniak, or DeepL than one Google.
- jbverschoor 2y ago
  Exactly. ONLY Proton rings a bell. Made by a Taiwanese person ;-)
  - koziserek 2y ago
    Spotify, maybe?
  - palata 2y ago
    I doubt Proton is written by exactly one person (I actually know more than one person who worked there ;-) ), and I'm pretty certain they were working in Switzerland. Not sure what your point is.
jbverschoor 2y ago
There's no risk capital. There's no vision. No guts, no glory. Just old glory. A bunch of scared real-estate investors and pension funds who have their roots in STAYING in Europe when the (ad)venturers went overseas and built what has become the US. It's not in the culture and it won't be.
- Propelloni 2y ago
  Hehe, that's certainly one way of looking at it. Just as well we could say that the religious fanatics, the absolutists, the utopians, and some other malcontents dissatisfied with the enlightenment went overseas to establish their puritan and perfect societies because those boring Europeans just wouldn't see the light and all the violence did not change that. Would that be more accurate? No, but no less either.
qsort 2y ago
> As for unicorns and trillion dollars companies... some may say it's a feature, not a bug Cope much? As a European I'd rather not have half of our industries critically depend on AWS and Microsoft, especially now that the US has fully embraced governance by RNG. The choice isn't having or not having your own digital infrastructure, it's either having your own or having to depend on someone else.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  >As a European I'd rather not have half of our industries critically depend on AWS and Microsoft It seems to me that's a point in support of the idea that Unicorns are a problem and should not exist.
  - huntertwo 2y ago
    What a free society that would be!
    - palata 2y ago
      I don't get this interpretation of "free". Would you say that one should be "free" to kill someone else? Nobody wants absolute freedom. We all want some set of rules (e.g. "You should not be allowed to burn my house for fun"). Of course, we may want rules that benefit us personally ("Taxes should be paid to me personally, not to the country"), but that obviously doesn't work (if taxes are paid exclusively to me, they can't be paid exclusively to you). So as a group, we agree on a set of rules that benefits society the most. We want to "maximize the global utility", if I can say it like this. If "not having unicorns" is better for the society at large than "having unicorns", then it works. And your short-sighted, convenient understanding of "freedom" doesn't change that.
      - huntertwo 2y ago
        How would you restrict the existence of unicorns? Also refrain from personal attacks on this site - you don’t know my understanding of freedom and denigrating me doesn’t help your argument. Edit: my implicit argument is that restricting unicorns while sounds nice on paper is that the net benefit of an implementation of that is net negative - not that absolute anarchy is the solution.
rcarmo 2y ago
There were quite a few unicorns that (until now) quickly moved to establish a US foothold and hired some of their new C-levels there, because that's where the lobbying and money typically are. Europe tends to have more established, "old" companies that do their own bit of innovation, and a few outliers like ASML that are crucial to many industries (besides silicon, there's pharma, media, retail, and of course a lot of manufacturing, each with their own innovation ecosystems, because many established companies have long figured out that it would be easier to sponsor local startups and then incorporate them than rebuild their orgs at random).
- pjc50 2y ago
  I've just realized that this describes almost half of my career: ten years at a UK startup that almost immediately set itself up with a Delaware corp and a San Francisco office, so it could eventually sell out to Cadence; then several more years at a UK university chip design spinoff that also got bought out by a US multinational. Hard to compete with the power of the dollar. I guess the Trump plan to push the value of the dollar down may finally make US acquisitions of European companies impossible and US salaries uncompetitive.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> There are few unicorns in Europe I don't think that unicorns, which tend to have a quasi-monopolistic position in their market segment, are healthy for society, or even for the economy (in the long run), vs many smaller companies. So I see this as a good thing. The problem is that the draw of unicorns in the US does create a brain drain for those attracted by the prospect of becoming rich. It's quite difficult to become rich in Europe, compared to the US. It's mostly "old money" that's passed down. But you can be successful and comfortable. Is it important to be "rich"?

Doches 2y ago

https://archive.is/0D1Ov https://archive.is/0D1Ov

baal80spam 2y ago

This could be written only by a Non-European.

spikels 2y ago
Author is European https://mediadirectory.economist.com/people/stanley-pignal/ https://mediadirectory.economist.com/people/stanley-pignal/

ssm008 2y ago

https://archive.ph/0D1Ov https://archive.ph/0D1Ov

jbverschoor 2y ago

Emmm no it's not. Believe it or not, the BRICS are

pjc50 2y ago
The Russia and China that don't have free elections?
- rapsey 2y ago
  Europe and the US have no moral high ground when it comes to the justice system being used against political opponents.
  - croes 2y ago
    How many political opponents in the EU and US died by falling out of windows or getting poisened?
  - kubb 2y ago
    Anna Politkovskaya – Investigative journalist and critic of the Chechen war, shot in Moscow (2006). Alexander Litvinenko – Ex-FSB officer poisoned with polonium in London (2006). Stanislav Markelov & Anastasia Baburova – Human rights lawyer and journalist, shot in Moscow (2009). Boris Nemtsov – Opposition leader, shot near the Kremlin (2015). Denis Voronenkov – Former Russian MP, shot in Kyiv (2017). Nikolai Andrushchenko – Journalist, beaten to death in St. Petersburg (2017). Alexei Navalny – Opposition leader, died in prison after previous poisoning (2024). --- Maybe Europe isn't perfect, but the Russian morals are so low that no effort is requried to be better than them.
    - wiseowise 2y ago
      Bah, that’s the real freedom, comrade. Freedom to kill opposition. How can you call yourself “free” if you can’t freely put polonium in your opponents chai?
    - rapsey 2y ago

pjc50 2y ago

(paywalled, commenting on above the fold section) > There are thus no European Rasputins pumping untold millions into political campaigns, getting pride of place at leaders’ inaugurations or their own new-minted government departments to run I think this is underselling the very real risks of European-style fascism, driven by the same social media and other forces, just because it doesn't exactly resemble Musk. But it does seem like the crisis is now compelling the cozy ""centre"" to actually do something, like re-armament and actually prosecuting politicians for their financial fraud. Not just Le Pen but previously things like Wirecard.

sigmoid10 2y ago
>like re-armament and actually prosecuting politicians for their financial fraud. Not just Le Pen but previously things like Wirecard. In the end, all those things can be traced to curbing Russia's direct and indirect warfare. Re-armament? Direct Russian threat. Le Pen? Financed by Russia. Marsalek? Part of a Russian spy-network that operated from Austria, where the FPÖ is not just financed by Russia but also has a literal cooperation contract with Putin. Similar story with the AfD in Germany. The US used to be good at this as well. If they were as close to the war in Ukraine as Europe is, they might still be. But instead they have gone from being the biggest opponent of Russia to one of it's most subverted supporters.
rbanffy 2y ago
We have plenty of foreign Rasputins to complain about, as well as some local ones.
jabl 2y ago
Modern European democracy is indeed not immune to fascism (or something resembling it, to stave of a quibble of what actually fascism means). Most prominently Orban in Hungary. Poland was well on their way towards something similar, but luckily a major electoral defeat caused a reversal of this development. Most European countries do have their own far-right parties (like Le Pen in France, AFD in Germany, etc.). But with multi-winner districts and lots of other parties, they struggle to gain anything resembling a majority that would enable them to rule by fiat. Also politics in most European countries is much more parliament driven, with the prime minister having a lot less power and more oversight than e.g. the US president.

brickfaced 2y ago

Land of the free, where police raid your home at dawn over mean tweets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-german-politician-police-raid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-g... https://archive.ph/hETjp https://archive.ph/hETjp Not a one-off, either: https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult-politicians-which-is-why-we-need-to-protect-free-speech-in-the-us/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/21/world-news/germans-cant-insult...

pjc50 2y ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj5nlxz44yo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj5nlxz44yo
croes 2y ago
"In March 2022, the investigation was dropped due to a lack of public interest in prosecution.In August 2022, the Hamburg Regional Court also ruled that the house search was unlawful and unreasonable." Freedom doesn't mean that no errors are made but that they are aknowledged as errors. The responsible politician still gets rediculed for that and isn't praised by his fanbase.
foobahify 2y ago
[flagged]
lm28469 2y ago
There are hour long videos of US cops shooting unarmed people in their own homes available online if you want to make a "LaNd Of ThE FrEe" dick size contest
rspoerri 2y ago
The laws are different: "Incitement and defamation laws are far broader in Germany than in the United States, with some European legislation on the books that forbids defaming leaders and makes Holocaust denial a crime.". You are not allowed hate speech on the internet in a lot of countries. You will be prosecuted for that. But different to other countries, in a majority of the european countries (turkey, greece are currently problematic) people are not deported, put in jail or camps and forgotten, even without a sentence and hearing.

rapsey 2y ago

What we in Europe have is just more political corruption of the justice system and a populace too comfortable to care.

j_maffe 2y ago
You'll have to be more specific about where in Europe. Some places, yes. But only a minority
- rapsey 2y ago
  Rotherham in the UK, Le Pen in France, Romanian elections.
  - j_maffe 2y ago
    You think Rotherham and Le Pen are more corrupt than Donald trump? Also Romanian elections properly dealt with foreign intervention, unlike the US.
    - rapsey 2y ago
      Yes I think covering up mass child rape politically and criminally is worse than Donald Trump. Foreign intervention in Romanian or US elections is a fairy tale. Justification for political corruption of the judicial branch. It is funny how once right wing candidates get close to winning political power, they suddenly turn into criminals and traitors. Makes total sense.
- xvokcarts 2y ago
  Shouldn't you be more specific as well, since you're asking that from the parent commenter?
  - j_maffe 2y ago
    No because I'm not the one making absolutist statements. The burden is on the one giving the stronger claim.

snehk 2y ago

> Yet to many Europeans the idea that free expression is under threat seems odd. Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice. A journalist in Germany was just sentenced to seven months for posting a meme of a politician where she holds up a sign saying "I hate free speech". https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-naher-journalist-david-bendels-wegen-verleumdung-zu-freiheitsstrafe-verurteilt-a-87085d7d-53c3-4a72-ba14-1a31e43a58f8 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-...

froidpink 2y ago
source?
- mzhaase 2y ago
  https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-naher-journalist-david-bendels-wegen-verleumdung-zu-freiheitsstrafe-verurteilt-a-87085d7d-53c3-4a72-ba14-1a31e43a58f8 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-...
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  https://x.com/M_Simonyan/status/1909968556332097681 https://x.com/M_Simonyan/status/1909968556332097681
- xvokcarts 2y ago
  The UK folks don't seem to feel so free to say stuff either: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/704467 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/704467
- graemep 2y ago
  I do not know about that but people have had police raids for calling the head of the german Green Party an idiot: https://www.ft.com/content/27626fa8-3379-4b69-891d-379401675942 https://www.ft.com/content/27626fa8-3379-4b69-891d-379401675... The Online Safety Act in the UK has been discussed here before and it is part of a general trend to prevent "harmful" speech including specifically "legal but harmful speech".

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

> "Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice." David Bendels has been threatened with prison time and sentenced to seven months of probation for a Twitter meme [0]. It is the harshest sentence ever handed down to a journalist for a speech crime in the Federal Republic of Germany. This is the tweet, poking fun at the German minister of the interior Nancy Faeser (the sign says "I hate free speech"): https://x.com/Deu_Kurier/status/1762895292075053348 https://x.com/Deu_Kurier/status/1762895292075053348 [0] https://www-welt-de.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/article255889578/Nancy-Faeser-Harte-Strafe-fuer-Journalist-wegen-X-Posts-Ricarda-Lang-kritisiert-mangelnde-Verhaeltnismaessigkeit.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-welt-de.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/artic...

mehwoot 2y ago
He claims it was poking fun. The court found differently. > Bendels claimed the meme, posted by his newspaper's X account, was satirical. > But the judge in the case said during the verdict that Bendels published a 'deliberately untrue and contemptuous statement about Interior Minister Ms. Faeser (...) that would not be recognizable to the unbiased reader and is likely to significantly impair her public work'.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  If a picture of Nancy Faeser holding a "I hate free speech" sign can be ruled to be a "deliberately untrue and contemptuous statement", satire has become effectively illegal.
lm28469 2y ago
You might want to look into libel and defamation laws in the US too lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  In the US, the threshold for libel is very high for people of public interest, and rightfully so.

anilakar 2y ago

What is this country called Europe they're talking about?

mrtksn 2y ago

There're a few contradicting narratives going on: 1) Big companies actually don't innovate, they are slow and bureaucratic. It is startups that do innovation 2) Look at the top 10 companies by market cap, it's all the Chinese and American companies. Therefore USA is the pinnacle of innovation and Europe is falling behind(because of your favorite scapegoat) 3) Europe has many startups but they can't become huge because of excessive regulations. They end up moving to US, leaving Europe to lag behind 4) China has grew much more than the west, the west is lagging behind now. This is because the west has become socialist, we need to remove the taxes on the rich reduce regulations and protections to be able to compete with China. Those all(and a few more actually) have some truth in them and a lot of wrong. A new narrative that captures the picture correctly is needed because at the current state those few camps are wedging wars where each ignore contradicting evidence instead of structuring it in a way that things fit.

pjc50 2y ago
> the west is lagging behind now. This is because the west has become socialist The idea that the West is more socialist than Communist China, a one party state run by the Communist Party of China, just goes to show how completely useless ideological labelling is now. Just as "woke" has become a shorthand for "anything I don't like".
- jabl 2y ago
  I agree with the sentiment in general, but wrt China in particular, how socialist is it really? Yes, it's a one-party authoritarian state that calls itself communist, largely due to historical reasons. But the contemporary Chinese economy seems very much to be a market economy. Albeit one with a lot of state intervention typical of authoritarian regimes, but that doesn't make it socialist much less communist.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > how socialist is it really Well indeed. What does that mean? Nobody seems to be interested in any kind of intellectual accuracy or coherence, they just want to use "socialism bad" as a thought-terminating cliche.

haunter 2y ago

Hungary exist though, not just in Europe but in the EU. And it’s the perfect sample of what the GOP want to achieve in the long run.

mathw 2y ago
Hungary sadly shows us that the EU's defences against one of its own members going rogue are very poor. No doubt a relic of the idealism in which it was founded - we're all nice people, of course we're going to stay that way. And also the pragmatism of not handing over too much control from national governments to the EU bodies.
cruzcampo 2y ago
[flagged]
- haunter 2y ago
  Hungary is so far down the road that I won't believe Fidesz can be beaten in legit elections
  - cruzcampo 2y ago
    [flagged]

throwme_123 2y ago

It's hard to believe anything from the Economist these days. They are basically sold to some circles of influence, such as Qatar and are merely propaganda. Example, the world cup: " The Economist https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com › leaders › 2022 › 11 › 17 › in-defence-of-qatars-hosting-of-the-world-cup In defence of Qatar's hosting of the World Cup - The Economist The claim that Qatar is a den of homophobia is also misleading. " The Economist https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com › middle-east-and-africa › 2022 › 11 › 02 › qatar-races-to-ready-itself-for-an-unusual-world-cup Qatar races to ready itself for an unusual World Cup - The Economist The Economist https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com › international › 2022 › 11 › 17 › the-qatar-world-cup-shows-how-football-is-changing The Qatar World Cup shows how football is changing - The Economist Much of a broader $300bn economic development plan called Qatar 2030 etc.

_tik_ 2y ago
They are still better than most US news outlet.
rcarmo 2y ago
As someone who actually reads the Economist weekly, I would like to disagree. Also, _of course_ there was a series of articles on Qatar in 2022. Not all of them were positive, mind you.

spants 2y ago

Is it April 1st still?

aaa_aaa 2y ago

Except, anything you "say" can be hate speech or antisemitism in many EU countries. You will be censored, de-platformed or prosecuted.

mathw 2y ago
And why shouldn't incitement to racial hatred be illegal?
- aaa_aaa 2y ago
  Hate for people you do not know is idiotic and despicable, but it is not a crime.
  - cruzcampo 2y ago
    [flagged]
palata 2y ago
If anything you "say" involves Nazi salutes, then sure. Again, it's a feature.
- aaa_aaa 2y ago
  It still cannot be a crime. Laws against it are just nurturing this environment.
  - palata 2y ago
    > It still cannot be a crime. It sure can, as proven by all the countries where it is.

mrweasel 2y ago

> The boring processes of rule by consensus can slow the EU to a crawl: it took four days and four nights of haggling to agree on the bloc’s latest seven-year budget, in 2020. That's a weird complaint. 27 member states, manage to agree on a seven year budget, in less than a week. That's seems alright to me. I get that there have been weeks if not months of work done by bureaucrats leading up to that week, but still, seems reasonably fast.

jabl 2y ago
Yes, it was a bad example. But the underlying issue is very real, in that many important decisions are made with unanimous votes. Which puts the entire EU at the whims of any single country, which could even be compromised by Putin (cough Orban). More decisions should be moved to qualified majority voting. Oh, and the EU should PRONTO implement the suggestions in the 2024 Draghi and Letta reports.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
That's faster that in takes the US Congress to agree on a budget extension for the next year.
philistine 2y ago
Compared to the grueling process of making US government budgets, I'd wager it was easier for the Europeans to make theirs.

sMarsIntruder 2y ago

lol

neuroelectron 2y ago

the thing about Europe is it's not very important. The perfect posture so that mid countries can look powerful in comparison.

gampleman 2y ago

> Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant. Well, according to the Academic Freedom Index [1], there are 2 countries that have worse academic freedom than the US: Hungary (as mentioned) and Greece. The UK, Portugal, the Netherlands, Serbia and North Macedonia are broadly comparable. > No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza. In the UK, we do have terror legislation that allows us to detain journalists who talk about Gaza for 48 hours and confiscate their devices indefinitely (and no, we don't have free speech protections allowing us to not divulge passwords to these devices) [2]. > news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians We do like to put them into prison though [3]. [1]: https://academic-freedom-index.net https://academic-freedom-index.net [2]: https://scottishpen.org/statement-on-detention-of-author-and-human-rights-campaigner-craig-murray/ https://scottishpen.org/statement-on-detention-of-author-and... [3]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/04/pers-a04.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/04/pers-a04.html

unconed 2y ago
>Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant. This is just wrong. People have been fired for expressing opinions related to COVID, to ethnical tension, islamisation, and so on. Woke in Europe has a lag time of a few years, but the bohemian bourgeoisie is present in full force. Not only is academic and intellectual freedom under threat, but the danger and persecutions are very very very very obviously being applied with massive political double standards. If you're on the left and you spout narratives that subsidized institutions and lobbying groups agree with, you won't get penalized. If you're on the right, a meme posted by someone else can get your rights suspended.

huntertwo 2y ago

Isn’t encryption illegal in the UK? Can’t you go to prison for social media posts making fun of politicians? Isn’t there low economic growth caused by restrictive regulation? Seems like the political class runs stuff over there.

fulafel 2y ago
I'd assume that when a UK publication writes an article like this, it refers to Europe as separate from the UK (esp as the UK is not mentioned).
a2128 2y ago
Do you think the UK just can't access most of the internet that uses SSL encryption? What makes you think encryption is illegal?

xvokcarts 2y ago

There's very high taxation of high income individuals (60%) as well as companies, supported by a big majority of population, which is then used as propaganda by the gvmnt that high taxes benefit everyone because the government knows best what we need. My feeling is that fellow citizens actually support this idea. Those that don't agree find other ways, which is so easy in EU it almost looks like it's by design. Such an environment is not as business friendly as it seems. Most politicians in this environment see a solution to every problem in new taxes. Hard to talk about freedom, when you're not allowed to vote on taxes. There's a also a push for truthspeak - younger generations are no longer sure freedom of speech should be sacred, because it wasn't explained as important enough, so they themselves get ideas about what should be censored and why. Again, the gvnmt is quick to agree with them by offering a way to compile a list of truths. Also, public healthcare in EU is only for the poor - if you can afford to pay private, you're not even thinking about going public. It just doesn't work like some people here thinks it does. So, no, Europe is not a dreamland compared to USA, it just has a different set of problems.

jusssi 2y ago
> There's very high taxation of high income individuals (60%) 55.9% *, at highest bracket. And when you get there, you usually have means to have at least some of your income as capital gains, which is uniformly taxed lower. I.e. you don't become a high income individual, you become an owner of profitable family business. Edit: I said originally, "55.9%, marginal", but that was wrong. Corrected. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/top-personal-income-tax-rates-europe/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/top-personal-income-ta... https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/capital-gains-tax-rates-europe/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/capital-gains-tax-rate... > supported by a big majority of population That's democracy for you.

nickslaughter02 2y ago

The land of the free which wants to force companies to install a mandatory on-device scanning of your communication? The land of the free which wants to break end to end encryption and allow the government to spy on you? We have wildly different definitions of "free". https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/eu_backdoor_encryption/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/eu_backdoor_encryptio...

palata 2y ago
> which wants to force companies to install a mandatory on-device scanning of your communication? To be fair, it's only in discussions now, it hasn't been voted AFAIK and it hasn't been implemented. Compare that to the NSA... ever heard of Snowden?
- nickslaughter02 2y ago
  > To be fair, it's only in discussions now, it hasn't been voted AFAIK and it hasn't been implemented. Correct but ChatControl now has a majority among EU Commissioners. The fact that something like this is even proposed in the "free" land and the people responsible not laughed out of the room is sickening. > Compare that to the NSA... ever heard of Snowden? Spying on your unencrypted communication? That's not comparable + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  - palata 2y ago
    > Spying on your unencrypted communication? Either you're in bad faith, or you actually don't know how it works in the US and what the NSA was (probably is still) doing.
    - nickslaughter02 2y ago
      Do tell.

gizmo 2y ago

Much of what this article writes is not true: - You can absolutely get in trouble for voicing political speech in Europe. We've seen plenty of headlines of people who got fired in Europe for making offensive statements. In the UK in particular criticizing the wealthy is extremely dangerous because of slander laws. - Europe absolutely does not have an extremely generous immigration policy. An estimated 24,000 immigrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean. And this is because of European policy. It's because Europe refuses to honor refugee/asylum claims at the airport desperate people are forced to cross the sea in rickety dinghies. - Europe does not track wealth of its citizens. Many companies are privately held. Many assets are held overseas. So how does the Economist know wealth inequality is low? But it is known that every time a heat wave hits Europe many elderly die because they can't afford to cool their home. - “Nobody in Europe is even casually implying they will invade other countries.” Did the Economist forget that European soldiers actually joined the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq? Europe also used its military to topple the Gaddafi government in Libya. Europe doesn't just talk about invading other countries, it actually has invaded other countries in recent history. Must be amnesia! (You might believe these invasions were morally justified, but that's beside the point.) - It's true that Europe does not have out of control tech execs who boast about throwing bits of Europe into the wood chipper. But this is because Europe's entirely depends on the US for tech and we don't have any oddball "founder CEO" types. There is no European Bezos, Gates, Jobs, or Musk. CEOs in Europe are professional managers. It's not the same. The article isn't horrible, but it makes way too many claims that don't hold up to slight scrutiny.

watwut 2y ago
Afghanistan invasion was America invading Afhanistan and using NATO article 5 to force Europe into it with them. Funny how now an American is somehow trying to blame Europe for it while America is acting like a victim because they were not sole benefactors of the alliance.
- gizmo 2y ago
  1. Europe joined the US willingly in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even with article 5 NATO countries could have protested against it or provided minimal non-combat support. 2. This isn't about blame or NATO or ethics. This is about the Economist rewriting history.

nickslaughter02 2y ago

> Germany is not much better. It's illegal to insult elected officials, and if you say the wrong thing, or post the wrong meme, you may well find yourself the subject of a raid at dawn. Just crazy stuff. https://world.hey.com/dhh/europeans-don-t-have-or-understand-free-speech-c7c406e8 https://world.hey.com/dhh/europeans-don-t-have-or-understand...

cruzcampo 2y ago
[flagged]
- nickslaughter02 2y ago
  Saying somebody else has it even worse doesn't make it any less bad.
  - cruzcampo 2y ago
    [flagged]

axegon_ 2y ago

The sad thing is I've always seen (and still do see) the US as a friend, despite the fact that the current government is trying really hard to turn the US into a dictatorship(shutting down medias that criticize them, cozying up with literal criminals, murderers and worse and so on and calling it "freedom" - the exact same approach lenin had). I know things will turn around eventually since this is not the first such instance in the history of the US. Coming from eastern Europe, the US was the place to be when I was growing up and this carried on into the first half of my 20's. I immigrated into western Europe in my teens and continued my education there but as soon as my country entered the EU, somehow the appeal of going to the US slowly started to vanish. The idea of dealing with immigration offices and endless bureaucracy was really not pleasant. And surprisingly after I completed my studies, I moved back home and all things considered, this was probably the best decision I've ever made. Now let's set something straight: Europe is bureaucratic hellhole, which is the reason why entrepreneurship is fairly uncommon. Here we are taught to go through the procedures, get whatever licenses and paperwork is required, make sure we follow all steps and cover everything up and then and only then start building a product. The US philosophy is the complete opposite approach: start building and figure it out along the way, which is the reason why Europe is always behind the curve. This however ended up being both a curse and blessing in disguise for us: the digitalization of everyday life took longer, whereas everyone and their dog in the US had a smartphone and social networks from day 0. In addition, here in Europe we've been exposed to bad actors such as russia for centuries and many of us can navigate through their tactics, whereas the US instantly swallowed everything that was thrown at them with the oldest trick in their book: "media is lying to you, see this picture/video only here". A decade and a half of actively trying to discredit establishments and it ended where it's at. And as much as GDPR is a pain in the ass, companies here are very well aware how badly things can go for them if things are not kept in check. Which, as a citizen, is a great thing. The other problem with the quick rise of digitization in the US in conjunction with practically non-existent regulations around privacy are grifters, which truly swarmed the internet. Business strategy: make a dumb video "owning someone", share it around so people learn who you are, get them roiled up against one another, having half of them become your worshipers, release a book, merchandise or courses and you are set for life. From practical nobodies all the way up to presidents - it's a guaranteed success. But you have to have 0 moral values to do that and at some point you will need people around you. Thing is that it's only a question of time before everyone around you starts realizing that no one has moral values and start screwing each other up. The US is currently in that stage. All things considered, the US has fallen really far behind in terms of freedom in single digit months. Edit: Some time ago my mum was watching some interview with an analyst who really summed it up: "I used to believe the US was about 100 years ahead of China in terms of innovation. I was wrong, it's probably closer to 50. And if you ask me where we are in Europe? Preoccupied with coming up with more inconvenient bottle caps to solve a problem we don't have".

penguin_booze 2y ago

A quote picked from Reddit: "America has become what the British thought Australia would".

fedorvin 2y ago

Europe is not a single country. Some of them are more free then others. For example: Germany monitors all of your internet traffic and can give you fines over it. classifying a panopticon as "free" is insane.

computerthings 2y ago
[dead]
verzali 2y ago
Do you really think the American government isn't monitoring your Internet traffic?
- fedorvin 2y ago
  Im not American:)
  - nprateem 2y ago
    So?
    - fedorvin 2y ago
      I never said that the US is free in any way
karussell 2y ago
Can you give a source for "Germany monitors all of your internet traffic"?

hnburnsy 2y ago

Yeah, I guess if free means 'free to fine tech companies to the tune of 30 billion dollars', sure it is free.

EasyMark 2y ago

They shouldn't get too confident, what's happening here in the USA can happen there as well, and we get a chance to end it every 2 years, hopefully that's the case next November, remember that Congress could stop this at any point, and we have all the warning signs that Trump is a fascist and wants to be dictator for life.

kyriakos 2y ago

why is this flagged?

hintymad 2y ago

> Yet to many Europeans the idea that free expression is under threat seems odd. Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice. What about the 60 Minutes segment from February 2025, where CBS correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewed German prosecutors about Germany’s strict hate speech laws? The report, aired on February 16, 2025, discussed how German authorities can raid homes and seize devices over online posts deemed offensive, such as hate speech, insults, or misinformation. The prosecutors, including Dr. Matthäus Fink, Svenja Meininghaus, and Frank-Michael Laue, explained that German law allows police to act against speech that incites hatred or insults. I'm particularly concerned that "hate" and "insult" and "misinformation" can be so subjective. That's why the US 1A protects even hate speech. And what about British police arrested people who post memes online for the similar reasons?