Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

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Curious where you are. I am in Canada and it's certainly mixed feelings but I think there are plenty of Canadians that understand that despite the current craziness we're in this together for the long term. Similarly in the US there are plenty that understand this.

In relation to Europe vs. the US. Even before the current administration Europe has been at odds with American companies: "The European Union Renews Its Offensive Against US Technology Firms" (2022) - https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/pb22-2.pd...

The framing that this started now with the current administration is not correct. The current administration certainly heated things up so to speak and brought things to the surface but the tension has been there for a long while. Europe is not capable of competing with US tech in general for various structural reasons. Europeans tend to argue this is because of US power but we see countries like China and India succeeding where Europe fails.

The more interesting question is whether there is a large enough lasting change in the US that takes away its structural advantages. I don't think this is the case. If you look at AI the hub of world economic activity and innovation is still in the US including startups and incumbents. s/AI/anything/ . China is certainly trying, and arguably succeeding, in taking some of that but it's still not at the same level. Europe is not even a player.

Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies. If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on.

The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.

Top 3 CS programs still seem to be in the US. MIT, Stanford, CMU.

The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away.

China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressive regime the really smart people will prefer not to be there since the second you become successful you also become a threat to the regime. Their work culture is also pretty toxic.

https://monitor.icef.com/2025/11/there-were-more-internation...

It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well.

> It's hard to predict long term...

It's not hard at all if you can interpret charts and can observe trends. You do yourself no favors by intentionally misunderestimating an adversary, to borrow a Bushism.

> and crazy people which was always true

The experiment with giving the crazy people unchecked power over every lever of government is new, however.

This is perhaps a shrewd move against China: they can't steal technology and scientific advances from the US if there aren't any to steal.

Trump's power is not unchecked. He probably doesn't even win the craziest president award.

Historical US presidents:

Andrew Jackson -> threatened to hang his VP. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/41212/did-andrew...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson had meetings while sitting on the toilet: https://historyfacts.com/famous-figures/fact/lyndon-b-johnso...

Richard Nixon - needs no introductions?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/13yplux/crazies...

Also remember we had: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism and the requirement by Truman that all civil service employees be screened for "loyalty".

There are now "loyalty tests" for those who apply to positions at the FBI, to be hired you have to state that the "patriots" on Jan. 6 2021 were the rioters attempting a coup, not the Capitol Police defending the constitutional transfer of government power.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/08/...

But technically you are correct, of course. Trump never demanded that VP Mike Pence be hanged, the rioters he sent to Congress did.

I think the parent post is defending what somewhat older people know to be true. Nixon was far worse than Trump, also betrayed US allies for example. And where it hurts: he effectively stole gold from them.

And I'm sure in another 20 years even democrat voters will remember, probably correctly, that Trump was so much better than $us_president_at_that_time.

> Nixon was far worse than Trump

Nixon was never credibly accused of sexual assault, never organized a mob of rioters to sack the US capitol, never published tertiary syphilis-coded rants for the world to see in the middle of the night, nearly every night.

Nixon had a competent cabinet, some of them even had principles. Nixon's Attorney General was willing to resign on principle for his refusal to fire the special prosecutor. Nixon didn't put his own attorney at the head of the DOJ.

I could go on. To be clear: Nixon was a corrupt thug. At the same time he was nowhere near as symptomatic of a national malignant political cancer as Trump has been. Plus there was a congress to keep Nixon in check, we don't have a functioning Congress now, just a department of a political party.

> the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years

Not many hundred, considering the US declaration of independence was in 1776 and there were some adjustment after that. Perhaps some decades?

> It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well..

It's not all about economy though. I'm much happier living in Southern Europe than I would be in the US with probably 3x the disposable income.

I'd never consider living there, really.

> Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.

Everyone's been saying this for like 20 years. It just hasn't happened.

At some point you realize that the people constantly pushing "multipolarity" just really don't like the US. It's wishful thinking

Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance. Otherwise xkcd https://xkcd.com/605/ would be true.

Using stock market wisdom to criticize the US, and defend "multipolar" countries like China and Russia?

Love it!

You’ll never get an honest conversation on this topic from these people. They’ve been allowing themselves to steep in America bad doomer “news” content for decades to the point these people can’t tell up from down. Every year the discussions here get closer and closer to Reddit slop, with the same exact talking points and acceptable spectrum of ideas.

Do you really think the American empire is never to be challenged? Everything and everyone goes down after a while. Whether it‘s now is unclear, though the active resentment against the US is unprecedented.

Sadly, your comment lacks any substance to argue with, all there is are unsubstantiated ad hominems. Sad.

No I'm a realist and realize that all candidates (CERTAINLY China and Russia, but even EU if we're honest) are far, far worse than "the American empire".

How is the EU worse?

Last time any part of the EU was anything close to hegemonic was before WW2. Perhaps you should look up how peaceful that period was.

I don't think it follows.

Multipolar doesn't mean replacement of hegemon.

It's also two different things, you might be right that China, Russia or the EU would be worse as a hegemon, but that doesn't imply that it wouldn't happen.

Being a realist would imply that you would understand that a fundamentally worse hegemon could still replace an existing hegemon.

Interesting. I merely pointed the flaw in your logic. You assumed I'm some multipolar proponent.

Why can't people understand this basic fact? China does not have a free press. The only information you're getting on public channels about China, unless you dig as deep as a financial analyst (i.e. getting trade data about China, but exclusively from non-Chinese sources. Other countries. Central Banks. Satellite images. Ship records. And so on) you are getting propaganda and nothing but propaganda.

So it doesn't matter what is going on with China, in the press you will always find "China is succeeding", with 1000 because's, usually "because" exactly what the last CCP meeting decided their economic plan is. It doesn't mean shit.

These same people also gobble up anti America and anti western headlines like fat kids at a buffet. They’re literally gluttonous for this kind of doomer porn. It’s hilarious, and also incredibly sad.

Why are pro EU headlines anti - western?

And we have Fox.

Everything went South after the US listened to Merkel's phone. That happened during the Obama administration.

If the EU or France are not capable of adopting Linux instead of M$ on the desktop, how are they going to switch phones over to something else that is not US based? By something else I don't mean Huawei.

Oh Android OS is quite workable. The hardware is the problem. And there the whole world goes to South Asia / China. Same with laptops.

But yeah, a missing agenda item. I guess desktop first. Have not said that for a while

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