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Comment by Deukhoofd | Hacker News Reader

It's honestly got to the point where I barely open comments related to EU projects any more. While most of the time there's somewhat nuanced discussions in comments, once the EU gets mentioned for some reason most of the comments basically boil down to "EU bad, US better", and "Big government bad", completely ignoring the actual contents of what the post it about.

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The odd part is that these bad takes seem to typically come from people that don't even live the EU, and don't understand how it works.

They just don't like that it exists.

The EU is a major world power, like the US and China, which means everyone in the world will have opinions about them, of every level of informedness :)

The US is used to this. The EU still have to adjust.

is that odd? it doesn’t seem surprising to me that Americans would think USA good EU bad

Forgive me for not taking their opinion about an economic block that they don't seem to understand and that their country doesn't belong to very seriously.

if I was suggesting that they're right to criticise the EU, I would have said that. what I was suggesting was that "America number 1, everyone else turds" is an extremely normal and expected attitude for a lot of Americans, and not something that I would describe as "odd". you seem to have read it differently

I guess the question is, is that level of response what one would expect or hope for in a forum like HN? Maybe we could aspire to a better level of discourse?

Funny cause Europeans always think their opinions of the US should be taken very seriously, and they have a lot of them

Funny, do they? I don't participate in threads about the US and its policies, so I wouldn't be able to tell.

Well, as someone who has lived in various parts of the U.S (mainly Utah, Oregon and Northern California), as well as Germany, Denmark, and is married to an Italian: Germans, Danes, and Italians often have a lot of cursorily formed opinions of the U.S, while in the U.S if people have strong opinions about the EU (and not actual familiarity) they are often not just wrong or stupid but also just as often completely unhinged from reality.

I'm guessing this is due to stupidity manifesting in different ways in their respective regions.

> completely unhinged from reality

Like apparently the UK bring a knife-ridden crime epicentre, when the knife-crime rate is, while unacceptably high, actually rather lower than the US, and that's before you consider guns which are about 10 times more on top of that.

(And let's please at least pretend that the UK is still in the EU for argument's sake :)

It is odd that you believe citizenship demands some kind of absolutist factionalism that is not just felt but continually reinforced using all available media channels.

I live in the EU, understand how it works, and that's why I hate it, and I want my country out of it ASAP :)

I think the benefits far outweigh the downsides. To be frank, I think a big chunk of its problems is that it is not integrated enough.

Then again, my perspective is from someone not originally from Europe, that chose to migrate here and declined job offers from the US even though I would receive considerably more money had I accepted. I have zero regrets, by the way.

So take my opinion as one without the social nuance from someone born here.

I think many of the benefits could be achieved with better methods, other then putting a French style barley democratic bureaucracy on top of all existing democracies.

The reality is also that almost non of the people in the countries were actually asked if they wanted to join.

There is a difference between being pro European integration and pro existing EU structure.

how where people not asked if they wanted to join?

mind you, European integration is a major political pillar in national politics of basically all countries inside of europe and its periphery.

People vote on parties based on there political program, and most people seem to want to vast economic benefits being a member states brings. (heck, ukraine is basically fighting a war at the moment about an issue which basically boils down to European integration).

People definetly had a say if they wanted EU membership through the political process of there country.

The only case where this is a bit of a grey area is of the founding countries of the precursor of the EU. (european community of coal and steel). Most of those measures got passed as policy without a lot of democratic process by the populance.

But we cannot change the past, and considering the state of most of europe during the 1950's i wouldn't judge them so harshly for it.

I mean those problems are well understood. There are not that many parties to vote for and people vote for the party they dislike least. Some of those parties wanted to join the EU. In general it was elites that wanted to join the EU, not the party base. People might have voted social domestic because they wanted domestic labor laws but instead their country was integrated in essentially a super-national state.

The reality is most people vote primary for domestic polices, and the extent what the EU would do was not understood by voters at the time. There is a difference in initially joining and then having very little choice in the continue growth of that institutions power.

And in fact, in many places where aspects of the EU were put to a popular vote it actually fails.

There is also the reality that things like the EU/Euro were political projects and that Germany after the Cold War had to agree to some of these things in order for France and Britain to accept its unification.

People certainty were not asked if Eastern nations should be allowed to join the EU. Again, shouldn't a popular vote be in order when an institution like the EU considers adding a new member that can massively impact its economy and will receive untold billions in subsidies?

I'm Swiss so for me, a decision of such huge importance should actually be based on a popular vote. Not 'well in the 70s leftist parties were broadly more popular'. And once you are in, its incredibly hard to get out, and that is by design.

A real European Union based on fundamentally pro European pro Democracy principles would have been established over many steps and many votes. This would give some granularity to the choices. Maybe the population like one aspect of the many EU polices, but not the other.

In Switzerland we rejected the EG, but we joined Schengen, both based on popular vote. We join institutions such as ESA and many others. That seems to me to be a much better process of incrementally growing together.

> the state of most of europe during the 1950's i wouldn't judge them so harshly for it.

Lets not pretend the EU was formed in the 1950s.

> There are not that many parties to vote for and people vote for the party they dislike least

This is democracy at its finest.

How exactly is it just "barely" democratic?

I think most Americans have literally no opinions about the EU. I’ve always assumed anybody talking about it lives there. It’s virtually absent from our lives here.

I’m American and my opinion is EU good. Also euro expanding east bad; single currency for radically different economies doesn’t work out well in theory and practice, ends up saddling everyone with a lot of debt since inflation in just Greece isn’t an option for France.

As a British person, I'd suggest you reconsider. Things over here are not so rosy. Drugs shortages, crazy inflation, no discernible benefits at all except to a government that hates judicial oversight of any kind.

The UK has been doing a bad job at a lot of things and they ended up blamed the EU. Now all the problems are blamed by the opposition on leaving the EU.

The reality is that most of the UKs problems were not because of the EU before and are not because they left the UK now.

Can you share more about this 'drug shortage'? Is it like the empty shop shelves and empty fuel pumps that is claimed to still exist for years now despite being resolved within days/weeks at the time?

IDK about the UK, but in Czechia, we had a shortage of, among others, antibiotics, only very recently alleviated.

At the worst times, you could phone to thirty pharmacies with a relatively standard recipe (Augmentin etc.) and be turned away everywhere.

Been there, done that.

The fact is not everything was the EU's fault. There was a lot Westminster could have done to make things better. They choose not to and indeed actually gold plated many EU directives due to virtue signaling which made them much more difficult to follow.

That said not all the good stuff actually was caused by the EU either. I'd recommend watching Yes Minister but apparently that will get you put on a watchlist these days... https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1153smh/yes_min...

The fact is politicians at all levels including EU take credit for things they didn't do and try to ignore the fallout from things they did. All the while blaming the voters. Mainly because changing public perception of policy choices takes time and effort and they have limited of both and tend to want to focus on things they actually care about.

"Drugs shortages, crazy inflation"

Sounds precisely like Czechia right now.

I think inflation in the EU is roughly at the same level as the UK right now.

edit: apparently this is a controversial statement

Its actually higher than in the UK.

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate?con...

Euro Area inflation is significantly lower than UK, same as Germany, France, Spain, ...

In the EU as a whole it's slightly higher because of the East countries (Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, ...) where inflation is crazy high because of their dependency on Russia for energy.

UK is in the very West of Europe, not East, and not reliant on Russia as East countries are. The economic impact of Brexit has just been significant, as it was supposed to be. Everybody knew it would be. Brexit was never about economy, but mainly sovereignty. That's a legitimate trade-off, of course, and many in the UK prefer to be a bit poorer in exchange for less dependency on their neighbours. I respect that. But it's important not to fool oneself thinking that leaving the highest economy in the world (EU economy was bigger than US' before UK left) was going to be good for the UK economy. That's just nonsense.

I see Sweden the "utopia" that some claim has even higher inflation than UK, I guess that must be because of Brexit too right? And Italy, the land of the great food?

The UK would do much better had they not chosen Brexit. Basically everyone here admits that (bank of England etc) apart from some zealot politicians. And the health system has collapsed. The problems are not solely caused by Brexit but it exacerbates nearly all of them.

Exactly. Brexit long term net effect could be a few points off their GDP. That's not the end of the world, but it's certainly significant and it will make British people a poorer, which of course has an impact on public services. Whether this is worth it's up to British people to assess.

My personal suspiction is that UK citizens were mislead about the consequences of leaving but, hey, democracy is about taking decisions with incomplete information. People have spoken and their decision is sacred. I wish the UK the best luck and it's with sadness that I believe they will need a lot of it.

Democracy is about informed voters. The voters were tricked by silly things like lying bus ads. Doesn’t look like a Democracy to me.

If your definition of Democracy requires no deception or falsehood in politics then there likely has never been a Democracy in human history. The voters never work with perfect knowledge, and the politicians always lie.

There's a bar to what we should call Democracy. It clearly isn't America with how liberal manufacturing consent works. We're in a neoliberal era.

Besides their xenophobia and racism, at least the Nordic countries are closer to informed voters.

What concrete advantage would it have for you?

Not all too different from Europeans smugly commenting about how crazy Americans are for having different priorities in threads that happen to relate to American issues.

As a third party (New Zealander), I don't think that's correct. I think the US criticism of EU is much more often baseless compared to the reverse situation (as evidenced by the number of issues which are picked up by the residents of non aligned countries).

Also as a New Zealander - I think the opposite - EU criticism of the US really misses many points about the competitiveness of their society and burden they bear protecting the rest of the world's democracies. I think it is really about people's personal politics - Kiwis generally are much more aligned (left) with EU socialism/interventionism and hence relate more and see US criticism as baseless. It's all a matter of perspective & personal politics vs one side being more baseless than the other.

"burden they bear protecting the rest of the world's democracies"

As an Australian, that's a pretty glowing interpretation of the US intervening where they aren't wanted or needed

Was the US protecting 'democracy' when they annexed Hawaii, or how they've treated Cuba? Or Vietnam or South America or Iraq or any litany of other countries

Hell. They helped depose Gough Whitlam because he dared threaten to nationalize our mines ala Norway, not to mention that worthless spying ring that is Pine Gap

You’re completely disregarding that they’re talking about the US being the armed forces of all western democracies and strawmanning about 19th-early 20th century imperialism (which Western Europe took part in far more than the US did.)

The US helped bomb Yemen this decade. Drone strikes still happen in multiple countries if I’m not mistaken. America funds Israel now. That’s all happening now.

Which is irrelevant to the discussion.

The subject is about how the US sucks and should be critiqued. You're talking about defending what the US does around the world. I'm giving examples of how the US really is around the world, at least the Global South. What discussion do you think is happening?

I did not realize that the Iraq War was "19th-early 20th century imperialism"

Nor the mid 1970's

This is a further straw man when the point is that American economics and politics is what allows for the military that protects western democracies around the globe. Address the point don’t change the subject.

As a USian, I think it is super important to question a super power that takes it upon themselves to protect the rest of the world's democracies--even if they have to force them into democracy first.

The same way I think it is super important to challenge Russia's current defense against Ukrainian aggression.

America is an awful country and they have lead 50+ coups. Murdered many millions. Installed tons of fascists, right wingers, and dictators. How is that protecting the rest of the world’s democracies?

If you’re in NZ you don’t have to fall for American capitalist agitation propaganda. It’s obvious the US only cares about advancing capitalism and its own imperialist whims.

In my experience, criticism of the US is of the "this is clearly harming more people than it helps" variety, while criticism of the EU is of the "look at what these silly people are trying to provide as a service to their citizens" variety.

Nah criticism from Europeans generally comes down, “look at dumb Americans doing things differently than us, don’t they know we’re objectively right about political and economic institutions?”

Do you have anything of substance to contribute, `edgyquant`?

Yes, precisely like that.

Again, useless fluff. It is more enjoyable for everyone involved when you produce signal and not noise.

Comments which can be adequately summarized as "nuh uh" are noise. There is no information whatsoever being communicated with such low-effort posts.

The same can be said of your posts. I pushed back against someone, so buzz off. You aren’t the arbiter of usefulness just as Europeans aren’t the arbiter of what other countries should be doing economically or politically.

So glad to see someone pointing out this phenomenon!

A crowd that is ideological resistant to reality in quite a entertaining fashion. Just remember the Boing 737 Max, which was never explored under this focus. Why does European airbus thrive, while us aircraft industry declined? Both are heavily state subsidized, so it is not that. There is something dysfunctional in us business culture, that extracts value first, and then runs without creating something for the value extracted.

It sometimes is almost reminiscent of the eastern European oligarchs that emerged at the end of the coldwar.

> Why does European airbus thrive, while us aircraft industry declined?

The documentary "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing"[1] goes into this topic, and I believe the wiki page[2] summary captures it nicely:

> "There were many decades when Boeing did extraordinary things by focusing on excellence and safety and ingenuity. Those three virtues were seen as the key to profit. It could work, and beautifully. And then they were taken over by a group that decided Wall Street was the end-all, be-all. [...]"

Of course, I have no idea if this is just cherry-picking information, but it does seem plausible why things "suddenly" changed.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11893274/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boe...

I've heard one theory that the merger with McDonnell Douglas swept the bean-counters from there into executive positions ruining the engineering focus at Boeing.

That's what I read and understood to be the cause. Prior to that Boeing had an engineering culture all the way up.

The Microsoft spreadsheet happy-hippos are relying on India to buy enormous sums of Boeing passenger planes is one headline the media is running with, and another line of propaganda is to not bet against India. They say.

>> There is something dysfunctional in us business culture, that extracts value first,

You just said it. When we prioritize the money over the activity that makes the money... We deprioritize the activity - it's at least second place if not worse.

If there was a machine that increased a company's stock value by crushing orphans invented today, tomorrow there would be lobbyists in Congress pushing to allow corporations to directly apply for adoptions.

>A crowd that is ideological resistant to reality in quite a entertaining fashion. Just remember the Boing 737 Max, which was never explored under this focus.

Boeing was heavily criticized by HN in every thread I saw about it. You picked a wrong example.

I can’t comment on the broader US/EU perception question, but I would partly attribute Airbus’ success to its harnessing of smaller scale engineering excellence always present in Western European aviation. Airbus merely solved the problem of risk of high scale production which has historically been a challenge for European manufacturers relative to Americans operating in their large, uniform market.

And Volskwagen cheating on it's emissions?

This is bit of a glib view of Boeing.

Boeng and Airbus will trade spaces for a while, until China starts stelling it's gear at 1/2 the price and then we will see some material changes.

Way to cherrypick - A380 wasn't exactly a masterpiece in economics. Should we discuss Airbus/Araine?

not being a masterpiece in economics is not on the same scale as building an aircraft which is technically simply unfit to fly.

Sure, you can make bad bussiness decisions but this doesn't mean you cannot build proper airplanes.

I think pointing out Airbus is a bit questionable. Yes Airbus does well now, but Europe tried to do these kinds of things in many different places and most of them didn't end up so well.

And at the same time, if we stay within Aerospace, why is SpaceX utterly dominating anything from Europe. Is US business culture to blame?

    the comments basically boil down to "EU bad, US better"

Nothing stops the EU from landing a probe on the surface of Mars, successfully.

Outside of the whole issue of Russia invading Ukraine instead of launching the damn thing like they were supposed to:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin_(rover)

Oh well, one way to avoid it crashing I guess. ;-)

Still, Europe being responsible for Mars having two Shapirelli craters is cool as well. ;-)

I can't shake the feeling you have been baited successfully.

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