This is not a "present" given to Poland. This is ensuring a better life for all Europeans.
But the result is inarguably positive. Those countries had only recently become democracies after decades of military dictatorships or otherwise unstable third-world style governments. Today they're the most dynamic economies in the EU in many respects, and their democracies are well established and functioning.
The EU doesn't get nearly enough credit for how it transformed the continent. People have forgotten how nearly all European countries were in a very bad shape after WWII. Fascists had remained in power in Spain and Portugal. Soviets were orchestrating communist takeovers in countries like Italy. It's a small miracle that the liberal democratic economic order won so quickly and decisively.
In what sense are they "dynamic economies"? Their GDP per capita has barely increased at all over the past two decades, they're mired in debt, and haven't produced a single new company that's significant on the global stage.
Of course this rate of growth proved unsustainable: in 2008 the (Spanish) real estate bubble burst and this caused bank bail outs, massive unemployment (rates around 25%), and put an end to GDP growth for many years, exacerbated by the fact that Spain did no longer have its own currency to devalue in order to regain international competitiveness.
At the time the bubble burst, government debt in Spain was at a bit more than 40% GDP, with a budget surplus, far lower than for example the "responsible" Germany at more than 60%.
Now what does any of that have to do with "socialists"? If anything, it's a cautionary tale about badly designed currency zones and financial markets misallocating capital.
(The techbros hate it for a different, if related, reason - they aren't nearly as successful at capturing regulators, astroturfing and controlling discourse, and otherwise taking charge of that second entity as they are with the hapless US federal government).
I'd propose a different reason - the techbros disassociate with the EU because if someone want to work in tech that means getting fairly intimate with US culture, companies and markets. There is a reason this conversation is happening on a message board backed by a US company (moderated to US standards, I might add) - the Europeans don't have the ecosystem to sustain something similar.
If Europe were capable of building the ecosystems needed to fielding a large number of competent tech companies then techbros would start turning up there too.
>American alt-right/far-right/MAGA/techbro
Bucketing these all together doesn’t even make sense. A “techbro” has completely different reasons to dislike the EU (regulatory regime unfriendly to tech startups) than some MAGA focused on US competitors.
As someone from the tech industry, I’m disappointed in the EU as it falls further and further behind on innovation. I love the EU though and frequently visit it (which is not something a MAGA would do).
Ofcourse Christ conservatives hate it.
It was after that US/Russia sponsored this communist takeover of our country that the new puppet governments have thrown the natives into extreme misery until someone from the EU decided to reduce the levels of corruption and misery. We simply swapped one master for another and hasn't been good for our land.
So please don't compare our country to whatever "solutions" brought by the same entities who caused our problems in the first place. We needed almost 50 years to remove socialism from this country and reduce the venezuelan/cuban style poverty forced upon us.
They are still getting half of what Belgium is getting and unlike the overwhelming majority of bureaucrats in Brussels Polish farmers actually produce something useful.
I rather have workers get the money than more corporate welfare.
Some capitalists create enormous value, some destroy it, some are essentially passive recipients of returns generated by others.
Capitalists provide real productive functions like capital allocation, risk-bearing, founding, governance, monitoring, etc.
Capitalists are completely useless when they have no workers, so I don't understand your points outside of "wow capitalists require a lot of workers to exist."
Hence the rush towards LLM systems, the dream of perpetual labor machine is too enticing.
There is also no risks for capitalists, do we live on the same planet where the stated US economic policy isn't to socialize the risks and privatize the gains?
So you argue no capitalists ever lost money? It happens all the time, the risk is real.
Consider the risks of VC backed initiatives, which far more often than not, return less than market salary to entrepreneurs, and less than the S&P 500 to capitalists.
For a shot at the jackpot, entrepreneurs are risking substandard salaries, and capitalists substandard returns.
You could argue that the capitalist’s risk is more significant than the entrepreneur’s. Even in failure, a VC initiative can afford the entrepreneur greater networking and professional experience than other roles, which increases their future earning potential and offsets their risk of substandard salary.
Hard to say the same for the capitalist, who is also, of course, risking a far greater amount of currency than anyone else.
But a risk’s significance is not determined by the amount wagered; it is determined by the consequences of losing the wager. As well as the consequences of participation, or lack thereof.
Median American lifetime earnings are somewhere between one and two million dollars; let’s say an entire life costs two million. A capitalist capable of investing a billion dollars could risk an entire lifetime’s money on a venture every other month, for eighty years, cradle to grave, and if they suffered complete losses every time, they’d still die with enough money for 1600 years of life in a wealthy nation.
The sum risked is immense. But the consequences of losing it are null.
It is, of course, more nuanced than that. Many businesses are funded by people with far less than a billion dollars, and many of them fail. There's also 3,000 billionaires, and an overwhelming majority of human lives that cost far less than American's.
once people get honest about this - that VC losses tend to be tax write-offs
& that prior to the VC model - you investors with skin in the game via equity | debt.
then maybe people will stop hyping up VCs and start doing things in a sustainable manner.
but to the gilet wearing hierarchy on the coasts - I'm being a heretic.