Stop Generalizing About Europe | Hacker News Reader

Stop Generalizing About Europe

jonasbentzen.com

This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia.

(Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.)

Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.

Just because Europe is made up of lots of countries, and there are lots of different ways to define it, doesn't mean you can't make statements about it. Perhaps the main point of the post was, be aware that Eastern Europe exists?

Just like "America" is a synecdoche for "The United States". :)

It depends on how the words are used; "Africa" to describe an area larger than a lot of continents combined, when you only mean a few countries - or just one! - is borderline offensive, though.

Thank you! I've been grasping to try and find a good word for this bit of semantics. Synecdoche is it!

America is the name of the country. It's The United States of America, like the Federal Republic of Germany or The People's Republic of China, etc.

America/Americas is the entire land mass containing all North American countries and South American countries. It's just also slang for "The United States of America".

If that is true then "Germany," "China," "Russia," "Ireland," "Australia," et al. are all slang for their proper (sometimes anglicized) country names.

But there's a difference in that "America" or "the Americas" can include a much larger area than just the USA, while that's not true for the countries you list. China is agreed by both the PRC and the RoC to include Taiwan -- they just disagree over who is the legitimate government; "Germany" historically meant all German-speaking lands, but that usage is now, for understandable reasons, defunct; the Commonwealth of Australia is coterminous with the collection of islands collectively known as Australia; and "Ireland" is in fact the full official name (in English) of what is sometimes known as the Republic of Ireland to distinguish it from Northern Ireland, to which the former until recently laid claim.

> China is agreed by both the PRC and the RoC to include Taiwan -- they just disagree over who is the legitimate government

This is the historical position of the Taiwanese government, but it's decreasingly true amongst the Taiwanese people, so to some degree it's already an anachronism. Many actual Taiwanese don't self-identify as "Chinese" at all (while obviously recognizing the common heritage).

However, given the common tendency to use "Chinese" to refer to the greater cultural sphere, there can some confusion...

[I make this mistake routinely talking to people from Taiwan, saying something like "blah blah because you're Chinese" to which they immediately reply "No, no, I'm Taiwanese" (and this is generally amongst the politically apathetic young).]

I would not disagree with you.

In fact, I was led to understand that this is not a recent phenomenon, and that even before the flight of the Nationalist government to Taiwan, many (most?) Taiwanese did not consider themselves Chinese, until the Nationalist exiles started promoting that idea heavily.

Well take this with a grain of salt (it comes mostly from informal discussion with Taiwanese), but my understanding is that whereas there was originally a sort of ethnic/historical split to Taiwanese identity following the RoC flight to Taiwan, recent generations of Taiwanese are increasingly self-identifying as "Taiwanese" (as distinct from "Chinese") regardless of which side they come from ethnically, though the ethnic split is still something people are aware of.

I.e., many people now seem to have separate "ethnic", "cultural", and "national" identities (which can make conversations rather confusing).

"to which the former until recently laid claim."

Now, now (Brit living in Ireland here)... In fact it is the other way around. We laid claim to the island in 1801 forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Around the turn of the 20th century, they weren't too happy with us though and wanted out, so in 1921 we agreed to let them have a chunk of it back (forming Ireland, Republic of and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Now even today they still want the rest back, and half of the rest wants to go back (hence all the troubles in Northern Ireland), but we aren't letting them :D

I think we may be talking at cross purposes.

I'm a Brit too, and I'm well aware of the history you describe. If anything, you've presented the truncated version: English/British interference in Ireland goes back more than 800 years, to the Anglo-Norman invasions of ~1170 and the award of the Lordship of Ireland to the King of England by Hadrian IV (the first, and so far the last, English pope).

I was alluding to Article 2 of the Constitution of Ireland of 1937, which explicitly claimed the whole island of Ireland as the state's national territory; this was replaced by more wishy-washy language about the Irish nation in the wake of the Good Friday agreement of 1999.

By the way, the Irish state created by the 1921 treaty explicitly wasn't a republic: it was a dominion of the British Empire, and the King of England was still technically King of Ireland (even under Irish law) until 1949.

Using "America" to refer to the USA is muuuuuch less controversional and much less inaccurate than using "Europe" for all the countries in Europe, or "Africa" for all the countries in Africa.

For example, various US organisations have "America" or "American" in their names, and openly only deal with the USA (e.g. RIAA, MPAA, etc.). Organisations in EU that have "European" in their name are not focussed on just that country. People from the USA use the term "American" to refer to people from the USA, not all of the USA.

"America" nearly always means the USA.

That's roughly for the same reason that if you say Obama, you're not referring to one of his kids.

The main point of the post was: Even if applied to western Europe or the European Union the original post he's responding to is grossly overgeneralizing and wrong.

Otherwise you're right: When talking about europe, most western europeans don't include russia or respectively those part of russia that geographically belong to europe and most probably ukraine and other eastern european countries are not included as well.

> When Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too.

This doesn't hold true for any of the Americans I've met (and I've met a lot). Also, one of the countries Martin Varsavsky mentions in his examples is actually the UK.

If it were true that the American definition of Europe doesn't include Eastern Europe, what part of the world do the many Americans who visit Budapest believe they're in? Asia?

> The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.

Western European countries that don't use the Euro: Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway (and then there's the UK, but of course that isn't part of your definition of Europe).

> Perhaps the main point of the post was, be aware that Eastern Europe exists?

No, the main point was, if you visit e.g. the UK, don't make general observations about Europe based on that.

I think most Americans would break the European continent into "Europe" (aka continental W. Europe), the UK, East Europe, and Russia.

Even if rounded up, there is a clear distinction between Europe (W. Europe + UK) and East Europe (E Europe + Russia) which probably has something to do with Cold War borders and allies.

Correct regarding the reasons and wrong regarding the current situation. You will be much more spot-on if you divide between the "former USSR" and "rest of Europe". Former USSR countries are mostly unified by the same language, religion (or lack of) and culture. They used to be the same country... much alike the USA.

"The rest of Europe" is now mostly part of (or willing to join) the European organizations like (but not only) the EU.

This is only the political situation. In terms of culture, language, religion, markets, laws, all the differences remain.

Oh, and not to forget... this is a huge generalization on my side. There are huge exceptions to this, eg. the Baltic Countries.

The majority of Eastern European countries were not part of the USSR. They were USSR's allies in the Warsaw Pact - in the same way that the Western European countries were USA's allies in NATO - but they were independent nations. I'm talking about countries such as Poland, The Czech Republic + Slovakia (Czechoslovakia), Hungary, the countries that were formerly Yugoslavia, etc.

> Former USSR countries are mostly unified by the same language, religion (or lack of) and culture.

Not true at all. I've been to both Russia and several other Eastern European countries, and I can guarantee you that even within the former USSR there were many different languages, ethnicities, and religions.

Nitpicking: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other satelittes of USSR weren't really independent. Certainly not in same way that UK or France were allies of USA. Maybe Yugoslavia was independent, but others for sure not.

Moscow made all the decisions, elections were rigged, there were uprisings, etc, etc. I know you probably know that, but just in case.

Well, they were "de jure" independent, I guess that's what (s)he means. They had their own anthem, flag, currency, government, etc...

Note that Yugoslavia was not part of the Warsaw Pact. It was aligned with USSR until 1948 when the Informbiro period started - i.e. the Tito-Stalin split.

> Former USSR countries are mostly unified by the same language, religion (or lack of) and culture

You are a bit wrong there. Consider the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Culturally, genetically and linguistically they have almost nothing in common with their USSR neighbours. And pretty much the only thing share by the three states are the geographic location, some common lineage, and the fact that they were part of the USSR for about 45 years.

For example, Estonia considers itself to be a Nordic country; its inhabitants are genetically Nordic (and often as blonde as Scandinavians) compared to the Balts of the other two states, and its language is closely related to Finnish. (During Soviet occupation, the Estonian language was dominated by Russian, which was made compulsory in schools; after the USSR collapsed, Estonian has blossomed, especially among youths; I believe the same thing happened in the other Baltic states.) Latvian and Lithuanian share a common linguistic heritage, but they are different, and Latvians and Lithuanians cannot understand each other (unlike, say, Italians and Spanish people, or Scandinavians). Genetically Latvians and Lithuanians are closer to Estonians and Finns than to Russians.

The Baltics is just one example. For examples of other countries that seem weirdly out of place in the traditional US image of the Soviet Union, look at the Central Asian ex-Soviets states, such as Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

> They used to be the same country

The Soviet Union was a union of countries -- many of them forcibly invaded and taken over by the Soviets in the wake of WW2 -- and everything (culture, language, religion, etc.) reflects this fact. The Soviets ruled everything, including the economy, from Moscow, but each of the member states very much preserved their own sense of identity; it was a union, but not a "unified" one. While the Soviet Union may have superficially resembled the US, it was always a very different beast.

Let's push it even more. Russia itself is not single language and culture country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Russia

> Former USSR countries are mostly unified by the same language, religion (or lack of) and culture. They used to be the same country... much alike the USA.

Wrong. There are significant Russian-speaking minorities in most of those countries, but they all have their own official language (with the exception of Russia [doh...] and Belarus, I believe). They all had them before WWII, Russian having been an imposition of the occupying power.

Common Religion? Have a look at Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan... all of them countries with overwhelming Muslim majorities.

Let's not confuse the Soviet ideal of a common language and religion (lack thereof) with real life. The USSR was imposed by the use of force after WWII, it has got nothing to do with the US.

> "The rest of Europe" is now mostly part of (or willing to join) the European organizations like (but not only) the EU.

Well, Switzerland for one has a long history of trying to avoid it at all cost, and the UK seems to actually want to loosen its ties with the EU. I can't imagine Norway or Iceland wanting to join the club anytime soon. There are negotiations ongoing with Turkey, but the case for accession seem to be losing internal momentum.

The EU has reached a point at which getting to a political consensus is basically impossible. At the same time, the emergence of Asia and Latin America as new centers of economic growth is having an impact on the Union's importance both commercially and politically. And the ongoing sovereign debt crisis isn't helping.

Iceland is actively trying to join the EU:

http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/Icelan...

Ah, OK, I didn't know that. Public support seems to be shifting again, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Iceland_to_the_Eur...

I think most Americans would break the European continent into "Europe" (aka continental W. Europe), the UK, East Europe, and Russia.

I think you're over generalizing now in thinking that most Americans know any other nations exist outside of America!

I don't think I have ever met anyone though that doesn't think of the UK as part of Europe. Note there is a very clear distinction between Europe and the European Union. UK is part of both, we are not part of the Euro$ experiment though. See, difficult to generalize already!

"I don't think I have ever met anyone though that doesn't think of the UK as part of Europe."

Except Brits, of course ;-)

Except some Brits.

It's really common to hear that someone from the UK is "going to Europe". Takes some time to get used to it.

I think you're over generalizing now in thinking that most Americans know any other nations exist outside of America!

Are you kidding me? This base derogatory discourse does no one any favors.

If you asked most Americans who have visited Budapest where they went/what area they were in, they would say Budapest. If you to press, they would admit that they were on the continent of Europe, but wonder why that mattered.

Similarly, if they went to India, they would tell you they were in India. Upon further questioning, they would admit that they were in fact also in Asia, but would be puzzled as to why that mattered.

Similarly, if they went to Egypt, they would tell you they were in Egypt. Upon further questioning they would admit that they were in fact in Africa, but would again be puzzled as to why that mattered.

Now, on the other hand, if they went to France they would either describe themselves as having gone to France, or having gone to Europe.

The key theme here is that the casual American mind, contrary to popular belief, doesn't generalize based on continent boundaries, but rather at a finer (often)multi-country/sub-continent grain. The largest unit of generalization on any particular continent gets the name of the continent (be it Africa, Asia, or Europe (I suspect Americans do generalize South America, and include anything south of the US in that generalization)). That doesn't mean they are generalizing the continent itself.

> If you asked most Americans ... they would say

How do you know what they would say? Aren't you wildly speculating, while at the same time inventing answers to imaginary surveys?

I really dislike this kind of argumentation. This thread has a huge amount of Malcolm Gladwell-esque gut-feeling-generalization-disguised-as-indisputable-fact, but it adds nothing and only serves to validate the OP's point, which is that generalizations are bad because they are usually wrong.

I am extrapolating from myself.

Ask a kid to "Draw Africa" and you will get a wildly different picture than if you ask the kid to "Draw Egypt". Clearly the child is not generalizing all of Africa; the child does not include Egypt in the internalized perception of what Africa "is" even though they know full well that Egypt is in Africa.

This isn't some sort of strange emergent phenomenon, it is nothing more than the result of how places are portrayed in popular media. "Egypt" and "Africa" are distinct destinations, despite the (well understood) geographic reality.

It shouldn't be a controversial statement, I am not saying anything that is the slightest bit profound.

I don't doubt that people walk around with conflicting, internalized geographies in their heads, I'm just pointing out that it's disingenuous to frame your own biases as something "most Americans" think when you don't have the data to back up such a statement. It's a very specific extrapolation to make.

I am stating two things:

1) Americans generalize.

Defense: Everybody does, it should be no suprise that Americans are no exception. You really want data on this?

2) Americans, for the most part, do not think that all of Africa is "Africa-y", nor that all of Asia is "Asia-y", nor that all of Europe is "Europey".

Defense: Suggestions otherwise are absurd. If you disagree, you provide the data.

I was referring to your specific examples (Budapest, Egypt, Africa) as well as your thesis (Americans have certain finer-grained generalizations).

Not saying your conclusions are incorrect, just that your only data point is yourself, even though you phrase your comments as though you had tons of data. Everything else is just speculation, gut feeling, pop psychology, outright invention etc.

Even if my particular examples are specific to myself, the point remains intact and true of the larger population.

But really, India not being 'Asian' despite being in Asia is a readily observable American phenomenon. If you haven't noticed that, you either have not spent much time in America, or are deluding yourself.

And can you really deny that Egypt is treated differently in popular culture than what is commonly referred to as "Africa"? Do you actually disagree that this is the case, or are you just being a curmudgeon because I dared speak without first securing a sociology degree and perform a study?

You really want some data? The entire concept of "Middle East" is a pretty decent example of how Americans generalize at a finer grain than "continent". Go do a google news search for "Middle East". Count the results, enjoy your precious data.

Would you also demand data of someone who said that Americans think the sky is blue?

Apologies if I am coming across as a curmudgeon. Although you do seem to have been missing my point.

I am not questioning the truth of your statements -- for all I know you may be right. I am questioning the form in which they are offered, in a discussion which is already rife with personal opinions disguised as fact. Everyone has an opinion; facts are harder to come by.

Specifically, I pointed out that when you say "most Americans", you are just (as you readily admit) extrapolating from yourself. Why not just say "I"? That seems more truthful. I can't reasonably claim to know what "most Americans "think, and neither should you, I think. Extrapolating is just another way of assuming.

Sorry about the tangent.

The best data I would suggest looking at is American news. Correlate Egypt with African news and then again correlate Egypt with Middle Eastern news. American news will tend to display stories related to Egypt's interactions with countries such as Israel, Iran, Iraq, and other Asian countries lumped together under 'middle east'. The next most common news grouping for Egypt would be Mediterranean, dealing with with countries such Libya politically and then in vacation destinations around the sea itself. Very little broadcast news in America is about countries outside of the Mediterranean and Middle East influence. You don't hear much about Egypt's and Sudan's relationships unless you tend to go looking for it. Contrast that to Egyptian and Israeli relationships.

With the advent of the Internet changing the way we view and seek out news our will change our generalizations of geography greatly over time. But to understand the generalizations we have now in the 30's and up age group, replaying the 'Nightly News with Tom Brokaw' would lead to great insight.

hi, I'm in Denmark at the moment, would like talk to you about my impression of Denmark. How can I contact you?

Shoot me a message at https://www.facebook.com/bentzenj

> The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the

> Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers,

> and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of

> its parts.

Well, no it doesn't. Italy and Greece are extremely different to Scandinavia. At least regarding to things like temperament and culture. They are much more like Bulgaria and Turkey, though they may not really be willing to admit that. You can't really sell to Italians by operating in Denmark. That's not to say that you can sell to Italians by operating in Bulgaria either. Especially true for things like enterprise software, eg. accounting systems. "Better distributed wealth" and "use the Euro" do not alleviate the law and language bariers. What these two things do help about is only not having to carry 10 different currencies in you pocket. Which is not at all true if you have to visit one of the non-Euro states.

There is though one type of company that greatly benefits by the situation. And that is the international mega-corp. They can afford to produce or provide services from Bulgaria and sell to the whole world. IBM, HP, VMWare, Ubisoft, Crytek and on and on... All have offices in Sofia, Bulgaria. This is a result of the non-uniform wealth distribution. They can sell to Western Europe and U.S.A while being close to them, using workforce that speaks English and has tradition in technical sciences, while at the same time being relatively cheap.

As a result, Bulgarians don't have ambivalent feelings toward enterpreneurs at all.

So no, you can't generalize. You will be wrong every single time.

Disclaimer: As it should be obvious by now, I am a Bulgarian.

Louisiana is very different to California too, but that doesn't mean you can't refer to America as a general entity.

Bulgaria is a beautiful country, I visited it while living in Romania. Of course all the Eastern European countries like Bulgarian, Romania, Slovakia/Czech, Serbia etc are all different, but also very alike.

> Louisiana is very different to California too, but that doesn't mean you can't refer to America as a general entity.

But when you're making generalizations about Americans or business climate -- which can vary widely from state to state -- you probably shouldn't. Which is what the author is saying.

Well, we are going deep down the rabbit hole now :). Please excuse me if I say lots of stupid things.

How far apart are Louisiana and California? How far apart are Romania and Bulgaria? Yet, the two USA states share the same language (at least on official level), the same currency and the same "american" culture. Neither of these is true for BG and RO. And we are neighbours, mind that. As an added "benefit", we have separate electronic payment providers (+ most of the American ones). We use Visa and PayPal when we need to pay between countries. Until recently we didn't even have a common banking accounts system. Now we have IBAN and it's a lot better. We also don't have a common postal office. If I send a parcel from one neighbouring town of BG, to a town across Danube, it becomes an international delivery, and 5 years ago used to have to pass through the customs office.

As someone else mentioned, it's much better to sell from Romania (and Bulgaria for that matter) directly to the USA, instead of trying to enter the neighbour market.

And now surprise, we are always considered about the same thing by EU officials. We were accepted to the EU together, we must join the Schengen area together, we must adopt the Euro together... It's crazy :).

So, no, if we cave to compare to CA and LA, nope, they are a lot more similar.

They're similar in quantifiable traits (language, currency, same federal government). Culture, how individuals (often businesses) interact are much different.

The south as a whole is much different than the west coast, and somewhat the midwest.

Thank you for this. I was referring exactly to quantifiable traits.

but even comparing quite different states in the US they are more similar than the extremes of the EU you get in practice - arguably the expansion was botched and a lot of entrants came in before they had converged.

The do all have different legal environments.

Your ignorance of the respective areas is showing. It's hard to talk about a common culture between California and Louisiana when neither California nor Louisiana has a common internal culture.

In Louisiana, spend some time in Houma, and then some time in Shreveport. Louisiana has a Cajun-dominated region and a region that's very much part of the Old South, and they're not much alike.

In California, spend some time in Berkeley, and then some time in Redding, and then some time in El Centro. California has a relatively liberal coastal culture, a libertarian culture in its interior, and an almost exclusively Hispanic culture in portions of its south.

I'll gladly agree that Europe is gloriously diverse, but you really should stop underestimating American cultural diversity.

And you can make the exact same comments about any country in Europe.

And I think this is where this all leads - at some level all generalizations fail. All the way down to the individual level. Generalizing about my cube-mate fails: he hated Mexican food, till the new waitress started at our Mexican lunch spot. So now he hates all Mexican food minus that 1 restaurant.

---

This example is actually 10 years old, it but leapt to mind.

Easy, tiger. European countries have diversity like this too. In many places going one valley over will give you different dialects or languages, ethnic heritage, cultural oddities, etc.

Of course they do. I wasn't suggesting the contrary.

You were implying that CA and LA have more varied internal culture than do Bulgaria and Romania, else you wouldn't have made the comparison - it would have been redundant to what loxs had said.

That's what you inferred. gyardly says nothing about the internal culture of Bulgaria and Romania.

Nope, it's implied, due to the last phrase of my comment above. It may not have been consciously intended, but it is an implication of making that statement in the first place.

Thats what youve taken from his post. not what was implied.

He wasn't talking about culture, all his examples are commercial.

Umm, there is very little American cultural diversity. Slight differences in lifestyle don't make for cultural diversity. At least not in comparison to the various countries of Europe.

I'm Russian and will argue that most of the eastern Europe has very similar culture. Just because you rotate your head to say yes and nod to say no, does not make it vastly culturally different. The culture curtain ends somewhere around Czech Republic. Yes, I am even willing to say Ukraine is about 99% culturally similar, and that should stand for something since many know how much Russians despise being associated with Ukraine.

I am Ukrainian and I disagree with you strongly, mainly because of your out-of-blueish 99%. Traditional culture is very different. As for an urban one, while Eastern and Southern regions are similar in very aspects to Russia indeed, they are not what we mean by Ukrainian culture at all.

>Ukraine is about 99% culturally similar

That's very ignorant. It's exactly the same as saying that Germany and Austria are 99% culturally similar.

While I am not a researcher by any means into cultural history, I have lived 20 years in Russia, 3 years in Ukraine. I also have a deep Polish background. The differences in the cultures between these 3 is relatively minor.

Agreed. I'm American and spent three months this year full-time travelling the US by car. I did a complete circumnavigation, with a side-trip to Toronto thrown in. It was clear to me that, despite some small regional differences such as accent and general political inclinations, the country is remarkably homogenous. In the States we're far more "informed" - that is to say infected - by the nation-wide "news" media than by regional cultural memory. Texas remembers the Alamo, Vermont remembers Ethan Allen, the Pacific Northwest remembers Lewis and Clark, all in some fairly vague way. But nationally, everybody remembers <insert low-brow TV program name here> from last night and that's something to talk about!

> I'll gladly agree that Europe is gloriously diverse, but you really should stop underestimating American cultural diversity.

Same differences exist in Europe in particular countries. Mountainers in Poland have different culture from Silesians, or Kashubi. Kashubi have different language, too. And Poland is one of the least diverse countries in Europe thanks to Stalin forced expulsions.

Switzerland has smaller population than New York City, and still have 3 official languages (or 4, depending on how you count). And there are countries in western Europe that have serious separatist movements. More serious than Texas.

People all over the world watch Hollywood movies, so we know at least something about cultural diversity of USA. People in USA don't know anything about smaller countries in Europe, so they assume it's all the same. Availability heuristic.

I think that it makes it more probable for people in USA to underestimate Europe diversity than the other way around.

I find it odd that in an article about dispelling generalizations, the discussion seems to require a lot of generalization to make the point?

Namely, look at the following:

People in USA don't know anything about smaller countries in Europe, so they assume it's all the same. Availability heuristic.

Not all people in the USA have the same upbringing, world view, or experiences - just all not all people in the EU, Eurozone, or continent of Europe do. All of the hand-waving in the world won't change the fact the people are incredibly diverse in nearly all geographic or national units. You say it's impossible for a nation of 300+ million people whose heritage come from nearly every nation state to have diversity at a level anywhere near a population of 8 million people?

I'm sorry, but this generalization doesn't hold water, and does disservice to any point you are trying to make. When you back it up with People all over the world watch Hollywood movies, so we know at least something about cultural diversity of USA. that makes your point even weaker. "Urban Cowboy" will teach you nothing at all about the strong Chinese and Vietnamese cultures in Harris county, it won't touch at all on the wide diversity of languages and social norms that can change on a block-by-block basis here. "Love and a .45" will not teach you anything about how the culture in the Texas hill country is largely shaped by a blend of European (German and Polish primarily) and Mexican traditions.

No one is denigrating the cultural diversity here but the people claiming there is no cultural diversity in the US. You can tell me you know everything you really need to know about our culture, but then seem to miss the extreme differences in culture, or in some cases by others here, hand-wave away any difference entirely. To say that Southern Louisiana has the same "culture" as Northern California would be considered laughable by those having spent any reasonable time in the two regions. A more in-depth study rather than a few Hollywood movies would help modulate your position.

Surface similarities are a poor measure of homogeneity.

BTW, just to point out a common and incorrect generalization you made in this very comment:

"Yet, the two USA states share the same language (at least on official level)"

No, they don't.

At the federal level, there is no official language.

At the state level, English is an official language of California, however it is not an official language of Louisiana.

See the table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement

I guess things may be more different than you think, eh?

From Wikipedia:

"According to the 2000 census, among persons five years old and older,[78] 90.8% of Louisiana residents speak only English (99% total speak English)."

Ok, it might not be "official". Only "de facto".

It's less now in 2010, if i'm reading the 2010 census files right.

Also, for California, the number is only 58%. "As of 2005, 58% of California residents age five and older spoke English as a first language at home".

So they are still very different.

>Well, no it doesn't. Italy and Greece are extremely different to Scandinavia. At least regarding to things like temperament and culture. They are much more like Bulgaria and Turkey, though they may not really be willing to admit that. You can't really sell to Italians by operating in Denmark.

Really? As I Greek (with Italian acenstry), I really doubt this BS. Italians, for one, do plenty of business with European companies operating outside their country, be it Denmark of whatever. You know, companies like Nokia, Skype, et al.

>So no, you can't generalize. You will be wrong every single time.

Which doesn't matter at all, the only thing that matters is if you'd be closer to being right, with less effort, in _aggregate_ than when non-generalising.

> Really? As I Greek (with Italian acenstry), I really doubt this BS.

Well, you can doubt it, but it isn't BS, it's the truth.

I've been looking into the kitchen of a large variety of companies in size, product type, turnover and so on. The vast majority of intra-eu trade stays within the countries themselves with only a relatively small portion going to other countries, usually direct neighbours. Big trade partners within the EU are typically pairs dictated by geographic proximity (for instance the Netherlands and Germany, Germany and Poland and so on) or by the possession of some vast natural resource (eg. Germany - Russia in the case of natural gas).

Generalizing doesn't help at all because it will lead you astray every single time. Companies normally do not deal in the aggregate, they make deals one at-a-time which eventually you can aggregate. But on a case-by-case basis if you used that aggregate information as your inputs you'd get just about all of them wrong.

When in Rome...

Also, I explicitly mentioned that I exclude international mega corps from the equation. When you are big enough, you can open offices in neighbouring countries, or on other continents and you can sell globally.

My point is about small-to-mid corporations, which was also the OP's point (as far as I understood)

>* Big trade partners within the EU are typically pairs dictated by geographic proximity (for instance the Netherlands and Germany, Germany and Poland and so on) or by the possession of some vast natural resource (eg. Germany - Russia in the case of natural gas).*

I'm not sure what you mean by big trade being between "pairs dictated by geographic proximity".

For example, Germany is the largest exporter to lots of countries in the EU, including Greece. I don't think we trade much with any of our "geographic neighbours". And Italy and France do quite well in exporting inside EU too.

Most importantly, I don't think he means this kind of industrial, agricultural trade, in his post. It's mostly about entrepreneurs in the tech field and new style businesses.

It should be also obvious that he knows what he's talking about (the original article that the post criticizes), because, unlike the critic, he has already created and worked with several companies in Europe.

This picture is quite true. The company I work for (Danish company) have little to no issue getting into the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Baltic and Icelandic markets. While we are not the same (although I am hoping for a Nordic Federation coming up!), our markets and policies are generally similar.

But right now we are trying to get in on the German markets (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), and that is a lot harder. First of all, German companies are very reluctant to purchase anything from a non-German company (if you are not German, you need an address in Germany, that's for sure), and secondly, they require that the product is in German (both itself and the manual).

The internal markets of the EEC is making a lot of things a lot easier than it was 20 or 30 years ago. But it is nowhere as easy as moving across state line in the US (or even to Canada).

The OP specifically stated that the reference to "Europe" typically refers to Western Europe which invalidates your comment. The thing about generalizing is a) it's generally accurate and b) it can be helpful. It has to be pretty egregiously wrong to be harmful.

> ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs

I haven't found this to be the case in the Nordic countries, at least. You can't walk around a corner without tripping over a startup incubator, and there's a lot of interest, among both techies and the public (and the government), about where the "next Nokia", "next Spotify", "next Rovio", etc. are going to come from. Germans also lionize their famed "Mittelstand", which is not made up of Valley-style startups, but is still definitely entrepreneurial.

In Scandinavia there is a small vocal subculture talking "startup". It is however a very small subculture. The majority of employees you will encounter will not be very entrepreneurial.

But they won't be 'ambivalent', will they? I mean, I've never met anyone here in the Netherlands that has negative feelings or things to say about startups or the like. In fact quite the opposite: my partner's entire family are all involved in them.

As I said there are some very entrepreneurial people in Denmark. It's just the majority of people will have ambivalent relationship to it. Meaning that while they might say the idea sounds cool, they will be strict about leaving early from work to pick up the kids, worry more about what courses the company can sponsor and getting their 7 weeks of vacation in than what they personally can do to make sure it's successful.

The entrepreneurial (and geeky) Danish people are extremely hard working though.

That's because most Scandinavian startups are still created outside of the startup "scene".

Agree with you, $crazygringo. Most of the time, when people talk about it: Europe = DE, FR, sometimes UK, more rarely IT/CH/AT and scandinavian countries. Asia = "chinese" Asia, which is China and South East Asia. South America = Brazil

Yes, when the author makes a point to mention Russia twice, it's obvious he's being pedantic.

Yes. We're talking about Western Europe, which doesn't include Scandinavia, which is where the author's from. And I don't think there's a conspiracy involved, I think it's just because that's where the largest economies in the area are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...

The author has visited Western Europe but many Americans have too.

I'm from Denmark and grew up knowing that we and the rest of Scandinavia is part of Western Europe.

Yes, and I grew up in the town where Pluto was discovered. I present to you the United Nations geoscheme for Europe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_Eu...

Never heard of it before and I suspect largely irrelevant outside of UN statistics.

As in anything in Europe these things are largely a product of history.

Those of us who grew up during the cold war talk about Western and Eastern Europe.

Within those sets there are various other deeper historical and cultural subsets and intersects, such as Scandinavia, Benelux and Balkan. Now there are newer political groupings such as EU, Schengen and Eurozone.

I expect anyone in Denmark and Scandinavia would include themselves in Western Europe where I would also include Italy and Spain. Danish people may have more in common culturally with someone from Estonia than from Spain. But it's just one of many historical intersecting and overlapping circles.

Attempts to ignore these circles and creating top down classifications in Europe, Africa, Middle East and probably elsewhere have historically not been a winning cause.

when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia.

Likewise, most people across the world seem to use "American" and "U.S. citizen" interchangeably, even though Canada and Brazil, for example, are in the Americas, making Canadians and Brazilians American, as well.

This comment here is quite important, as Martin Varsavsky isn't "American" in the way most of the people use it, but from Argentine.

Even "Western Europe" has a range of very different cultures.

Sorry, but no.

I've been in discussions recently with a French company whose development team is based in Dublin (Ireland for the geo-illiterate). Most of the tech staff in Dublin were East European, and the company's HR department was in Romania - a non-EU country.

This EU centric perception is a media perception, and bears no relationship to the reality on the ground in Europe.

Company in question was owned by a a UK multi-national, and builds software for banks all over the world. The 'Western EU' leaning is pure fantasy. I understand why Americans like it - it's simple and straight forward, and appeals to people from what is basically a simply and straight forward country - but it's just not the reality on the ground.

!+": Romania: !+": Wasn't even aware of its EU status. Why? Because when you think EU, it simply doesn't pop up. Which points vividly to the diversity of the EU. Romania, even now, is no one's idea of a Western country. It simply ain't. It ain't western; it ain't even that European. Tarring all of Europe with some kind of EU white wash is simply foolish.

> Romania - a non-EU country.

Romania is in the European Union. It is not in the Euro area monetary union, though.

Romania is an EU country since 2007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Un...

Minor nitpick: Romania has been a member of the EU since 2007.

Maybe even more interesting are the European countries not in the EU [1]:

Iceland+, Norway+, Switzerland, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of), Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Moldova, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein+, Vatican City, Russia, Ukraine

+ Countries that are part of the European Economic Area. (:D)

[1] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_European_countries_are_not_i...

quote:"[Romania] ain't even that European"

No kidding. This simply shows your ignorance about Europe.

> ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs

Germany has over three millions SMEs (small and medium enterprises, called 'Mittelstand'). I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. Exactly the opposite. You find world-market leaders in small towns all across rural Germany. You can guess that people are extremely proud to work for these companies.

99% of all companies are in the Mittelstand. "Roughly 95% of all German firms are family-owned. Of these, approx. 85% are managed by their owner."

" I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. "

quite often this is believed to be true: start-up == entrepreneurship

Well, I disagree here and it looks like you are mixing up 'entrepreneurs' and the "Mittelstand" you mentioned. I don't know if this is generally true, but i'm under the impression that there is some negative sentiment towards 'entrepreneurship' as it is connected with "making money fast" on the internet and/or "just" doing things to make money. That is in contrast to the "Mittelstand" which is seen as creating actual sustainable business aka Old-Economy.

This is obviously NOT true for all 'entrepreneurs' and all "Mittlerstand" businesses.

Sometimes the concepts of start-up, entrepreneurship and "Mittlerstand" get mixed up. I don't think many ppl bother to differentiate those in as much detail as paul graham does ;)

Germany does not want anything more than create new successful start-ups. We are just not focused on 'Internet start-ups'. There is a huge infrastructure in Germany to support it.

> negative sentiment towards 'entrepreneurship' as it is connected with "making money fast" on the internet and/or "just" doing things to make money.

In Germany? I have never heard that.

It is just that we don't focus on 'Internet startups'. Start-ups can be in logistics, chemical products, machine tools, ...

Are you sure you really mean start-ups as in: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html (in short: companies bound to grow really fast and bound to generate extraordinary profits fast)

Look, we all get that you can't call every new company a startup, but Paul Graham does not have the ultimate authority to decide on the definition of the word "startup" either.

Why, do you think startups are valued and created only in the US? Where do you think German multi-nationals come from? Slow-growth companies?

http://www.manager-magazin.de/magazin/artikel/0,2828,838699,...

People are afraid of changes or just don't get it. I'm from micro mid/east country in Europe and i can tell you that most people here think that computers are used only as support for other businesses. When you tell them that web/internet/... is also great business you'll get blank looks all over the place. Btw they're all using google/fb/... but only as consumers. Hmmm, thank god on that :-)

...my experience (originally from Germany, in the US since 2005) as well. It's a question of mentality. While in the US a vast number of people want to create their own business or already did when they are quite young, running a business or starting one is a herculian task in Germany. And you get punished when you fail. And you get taxed to death when you don't. Running a company can easily become a social stigma too. Even if starting your company happens to be easier now then it was 10 years ago, still the majority of people are rather focused on finding a secure position in a larger company with lots of benefits then "creating" something "new". Numerous reasons I guess for why that came to be (I don't think it was like that in the 50s/60s) - maybe as society ages there is less of a "drive" for radical innovation and a risk-averse mentality becomes mainstream. Either way, before I came to the US I had heard about "the difference in mentality" but I could not believe how "different" it really was and how much of an impact that meant on a daily basis: the biggest eye-opener was the completely different attitude towards things that needed to be changed and people just "did it".

Please note that Silicon Valley is not normal for the USA. Boston, for example, has a disturbingly "German-sounding" attitude towards computing, "Oh, yes, we have tech companies here, but the Real Deal of Boston is the universities and biomedical firms."

There is negative sentiment towards making money fast or just in it for the money everywhere, but that's not the definition of a startup.

Many (most?) startups do aim towards (or at least pretend to be) creating sustainable, fast-growing businesses, aiming for an exit from the start is very specific to SV/US. I don't see resistance to accept the crazy financial speculation that comes with your model of 'entrepreneurship' as something so negative.

>"Roughly 95% of all German firms are family-owned. Of these, approx. 85% are managed by their owner."

Lol?! ;)

Eh?! ;)

You just proved OP's point. What's "Eastern Europe"? I'm guessing you'd consider anything east of Germany/Austria/Italy to be "Eastern", right? Well, in Poland and the Czech Republic people consider themselves "Central Europe", which makes sense given that geographically Europe extends to the Ural mountains.

Don't generalize.

I live in Romania, so I can tell what we consider West: Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium.

If one goes to one of these countries, one feels like going west. Otherwise, it's less and less.

So when Americans speak about Europe, it's safe to assume that they might refer to these countries.

Rock bands will always have a hard time to tell Bucharest from Budapest.

As someone from the UK, I see your list as mostly similar to mine, except I'd put Austria in the Central Europe camp. I'd also put Switzerland and Italy as Central Europe in location but Western Europe in culture. There's definitely parts of Germany I'd class as western in location but eastern in culture.

Looking at his list, it seems that he is merely dividing Europe into West and East, no Centre. What's Northern Europe? What's Southern Europe?

Having just come back from touring Italy, I think I can say that anything south of the olive line (that is oil producing regions) would constitute Southern Europe. This, typically like European countries is not as useful as it seems as France, Italy etc. all exist both above and below the line, but there is definitely a cultural (and ethnic) difference between those living in colder and warmer climates.

Similarly I'd suggest the point at which grape production for wine tails off would signify the start of Northern Europe. Wine grapes are grown in England, but I wouldn't call England a big wine producing country. Similarly, the Netherlands has some wine production but I wouldn't class them as a major wine producer and as such part of Northern Europe. North of Dusseldorf or Hannover? Arguably Northern Europe. South of Dresden? Probably Central Europe.

I completely appreciate this is made on no scientific basis whatsoever and I'm probably completely wrong, but if you visit Spain, southern France, Italy, Greece and Western Turkey you'll see remarkable cultural and ethnic differences and similarities between them and Austria, Poland, central and southern Germany and in turn Northern Germany, the Netherlands, northern France and the UK.

TL;DR - Europe's a mess. We can't even really all agree on what it is.

Err.. that's curious, you mean that going almost exactly NORTH (Sweden, Finland) is considered going west? I'm not sure if I like this, even if only because it's so obviously, factually wrong :)

Geography is only part of it.

It's not geographical west but cultural/economical/mental west. It's about the perception, not the location.

Greece, south of Romania, could also be included in the western countries.

I think it mostly comes down to countries that were part of the Soviet bloc vs those that weren't.

When Americans talk about Europe, they talk about Europe, this is the problem. Someone who knows Europe geographically and politically often means with "Western Europe" the European countries with a strong economy. (Why would you exclude UK?) Others might use this term to refer to all countries west of Poland. What I am saying is: even the term "Western Europe" is really unprecise.

And even if you only talk about Western Europe without UK, it's still a very heterogenous landscape. Please, why do you think the EU exists? Why do you think two World Wars basically originated in Western Europe? Germany is really different from the Netherlands. Everything is different, houses look different, cities look different, job market is different, just about everything is different.

I'm sorry, but almost everytime I hear Americans use the term Europe, the sourrounding statement is almost always wrong. To illustrate it a bit: imagine I would make statements about the continent America like: in America xxx. There is almost no chance that such a statement holds any informational value... :-)

not arguing, but your post made me think. When europeans talk about americans, do they mean north, south, both, or USA citizens ?

They almost always mean USA citizens. Although Canadians may be included too.

In Denmark, a American is someone from the USA and America is the US. If you want to talk about continents you say north or South America.

I'm surprised that I haven't seen anyone mention cold-war divisions yet. While not American myself, my impression is that frequently 'Europe' often means 'cold war ally states', the places where American boomers could easily travel during the explosion of tourism. At least in casual conversation, that is - directly asked the question, you could get a wide variety of responses as shown in these comments.

"Europe" can mean a number of different things depending upon the subject under discussion and which particular European one happens to be talking to. Which just reinforces the point that generalizing about Europe is not advisable.

even if we talk about the Western Europe only, the article is STILL 100% valid

"All of this wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't for the fact that I see these kinds of generalizations all the time. It's not uncommon for Americans who've briefly visited one or two countries in Europe to say, "In Europe they..." or "Europeans are...". This makes me cringe every time, because it is the equivalent of a European person visiting a city in Mexico and going, "In North America they..." or "North Americans are..." solely based on their experiences in that Mexican city."

A better analogy is the way Europeans come to America, visit New York City and L.A., and think they know everything about the nation as a whole, as if the U.S. is a homogenous culture, rather than a conglomerate of roughly 10 or 11 different cultures. The worst part is that the majority of Europeans (yep, I'm generalizing) I encounter seem to think that the massively exported American pop culture is representative of U.S. culture, when it is absolutely not. I grew up in rural Appalachia (West Virginia, western Virginia) and the culture for both business and informal activities is vastly different than that of the Deep South, West Coast, Mid Atlantic, etc.

See this book: http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cult...

as if the U.S. is a homogenous culture

Compared to Europe, it certainly is.

From a merely linguistic viewpoint, in North America there's English and Spanish (Ok, and native american languages, but they're really not much spoken). In Western and Northern Europe, there's French, Italian, Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish.

The thing is, identity is a matter of contrast.

See this : http://squid314.livejournal.com/306048.html

Not to mention the hundreds of local accents, sub-languages and even manners of speech and expression. Of course, that's also applicable to the US on a somewhat larger scale.

Did you forget that 7 million people speak French in Québec? And because a language is not much spoken, it doesn't count?

Oh, right. It doesn't change the fact that the US is very culturally homogenous.

because a language is not much spoken, it doesn't count?

A langage that isn't much spoken is one you're much less likely to encounter.

I neglected them because they're numerically negligible, and because if I had cited all native languages in the United State, I should then, too, have procedeed to cite all minority languages from Western Europe, which are more widely spoken.

There are, for instance, 13 million native speakers of Bavarian. By comparison, there's less than 3 millions native americans in the United States.

I could have been more pedantic, but for brevity's sake, I decided not to go too much into details.

My point stands.

If I'm reading you correctly, Quebec wouldn't apply, because Quebec is in Canada, not the United States.

By describing the cultural differences within the US as "vastly different", you are basically just confirming the idea of Americans not understanding the depth of cultural diversity in Europe.

I'm very well aware of the significant differences between the Deep South and the West Coast etc, but those differences pale in comparison to the vast centuries old cultural differences you can find in Europe even between towns only a few dozen miles apart. Hell, the differences inside the US barely compare to regional differences within small European countries.

This is not a matter of ignorance. Even in well educated and well traveled Americans seem to be unable to really comprehend the depth of cultural differences outside the US.

To support the "cultural differences you can find in Europe even between towns only a few dozen miles apart"... Words, languages and even food can be different going from one village to the next here in Spain.

> The Europe that Americans refer to does mostly use the Euro, have better-distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.

None of the Scandinavian countries have Euroes.

Hmm. Perhaps you could stop generalizing about people generalizing about Europe. Varsavsky has lived and built businesses in Madrid since 1995, so I think that his contrasts between the European market and the American market from the entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy.

Your points about European diversity are quite valid, although I think they're beside the point. But your ad hominem "Oh my, another American is butting his nose into Europe" framing is less than persuasive.

Have you followed the HN discussion about Varsavskys post? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4968589 He takes his experience from Spain and UK and glosses it all over europe with some hearsay in between. Some of his statements may apply to spain and the UK, but pretty much all of them don't apply in germany - even the ones about germany. So it's not an ad hominem attack when the author says "another one that falls in the trap."

No, actually, I hadn't; I'm nominally on vacation.

What I'm about to say is intellectually sloppy. But Varsavsky's facts are not terribly important. His point about German startups was true at one time, and is no longer true, but his larger point about legal requirements for the workplace being strict in Europe and essentially non-existent in America is true. His contrast of personal liability for entrepreneurs in Europe with the essential absence of any such liability in America is true.

His post is not directed towards Europeans. It is directed towards American entrepreneurs who are looking at Europe - and could come to Europe with vastly incorrect assumptions about what it means to start and run a business here.

Along the way, sure, he makes some pretty generalized points about business in Europe that may be less than accurate. The "no new valuable businesses" point is a little off and to my mind not even the point. But what he is actually saying is that, should you want to start a startup in Europe as an American, here are some things you should know in advance, and here are some reasons you might want to do it despite a risk profile that is entirely different.

The diversity of Europe doesn't even matter in this context, except as a reason Americans might like to live here.

And OP's point that the income diversity between Scandinavia and Russia is really beside the point. The point is that the European middle class is healthier than the American middle class, and if you can steer around the problem that they speak fifty different languages, you've actually got a bigger market for consumer goods and services here than in the States - and that's a weird and unusual thought that I, personally, found quite inspiring.

That's something I already mentioned in the discussion about the original post: There are some interesting facts and some valid generalizations about europe, especially when you compare europe to america. The problem is not discussing these, but those are very very high level - even more high-level than generalizations about the USA. The problem is selling specifics as general truth which is what he does in large parts of his post. I'm not wearing leather trousers while posting this, despite being a mere 200 km from the Weisswurstäquator.

Btw: The point about a larger market is an interesting notion, but don't forget that you might just as well sell to canadians, middle and south america and you'd have a larger, even more unified market. That's exactly where the european diversity matters: It's hard to sell to france as a german startup and they other way round. So to get around that you actually need to serve a fragmented market with different rules and regulations for each fragment. See for example how last.fm radio was available in selected countries only or spotify as well.

> His contrast of personal liability for entrepreneurs in Europe with the essential absence of any such liability in America is true.

In the UK an entrepreneur can set up a LTD company which limits personal liability.

The EU has had limited liability for traders since 1989.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability)

> In 1989, the European Union enacted its Twelfth Council Company Law Directive, requiring that member states make available legal structures for individuals to trade with limited liability. This was implemented in England and Wales by Statutory Instrument SI 1992/1699 which allowed single-member limited-liability companies.

This is just one small example of something which is factually incorrect. It's not a matter of opinion; it's not shades of grey; it's not one person's impressions of a country. A statement was made; that statement is wrong. There are many others in the original article.

Scattering these errors in an opinion piece gave it the feel of a shallow attack piece.

> His post is not directed towards Europeans. It is directed towards American entrepreneurs who are looking at Europe - and could come to Europe with vastly incorrect assumptions about what it means to start and run a business here.

They're definitely going to have vastly incorrect assumptions if they believe everything in that article!

Yes - and, very important when we talk about the EU, any EU citizen can set up a UK LTD company, if s/he wants to.

It is true that there still are many differences in legislation between EU countries, but the EU is gradually standardizing laws in many fields.

In the UK an entrepreneur can set up a LTD company which limits personal liability.

Pedantically, the UK allowed limited liability companies for about 150 years. This is not a new thing.

> His contrast of personal liability for entrepreneurs in Europe with the essential absence of any such liability in America is true.

Not sure what you refer to here since as far as I know most European countries have provided limited liability companies to entrepreneurs since the 19th century. I know for sure Sweden has has them since 1848.

EDIT: Read the original article and it seemed to talk about failure to pay social charges for employees being a criminal liability. That may or may not be the case in Spain, but at leats in Sweden it is no different from failing to pay salaries in general. If you cannot pay what you owe you have to bankrupt your company and the government will pay the salaries. If they think you did it for fraudulent reasons they might press charges against you personally, but that is rare.

There is a new discussion over Berlin vs London from a new Varsavsky's post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4973904

> Varsavsky has lived and built businesses in Madrid since 1995

Which is exactly why I'm puzzled by some of his completely wrong statements about Europe.

Have you ever been to Madrid? They're about as far away from the epicenter of Europe as you can get and still be in the Union - and not at all Central European. A lot of the points he made are very, very Spanish.

But as I just posted upthread, as a contrast between the "general look and feel" of Europe vs. the US, I thought his post was bang on.

Of course, I'm also an American in Europe - married to a Hungarian for 23 years. So take me with a grain of salt, I guess.

I think it would be a shame if American entrepreneurs were to be deterred from starting businesses in Europe solely because they've heard this and that general statement about Europe that isn't correct.

Martin Varsavsky goes into specifics regarding legislation, etc., and, as others have pointed out, many of those details are simply not correct when applied to all/most of Europe the way he does.

Vivtek, you are projecting. Stop being a dick.

> Stop being a dick.

Indeed.

> his contrasts between the European market and the American market from the entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy.

They're not. And I've run businesses in lots of different countries as well. Martin is on the ball when it comes to comparing Spain the US, but his contrasts between the European and the American market from the entrepreneurs point of view are way off the mark.

He should have simply titled his post: "what it's like to be an entrepreneur in Spain" and there would have been no issue at all.

Btw, Varsavsky isn't an American, he's had quite a few business dealings in the UK and in Spain but as far as I know doesn't hold a stake in a company in any of the other EU countries that he's writing about and I really don't understand what it was that he was trying to achieve with his post.

If you don't believe me go visit Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Tampere, Paris, Stockholm, Bucharest, Warsaw or a hundred other places and compare those contrasts for yourself.

On the whole there are very few of Varsavsky's points that hold water, a summary between the US business climate and the EU one from an entrepreneurs pint of view could be made much shorter:

- in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees

- in America you will (due to the larger and more homogeneous home market) likely have a much better chance grow fast

- in Europe you will have to think internationally from day 1

- in Europe it is less dog-eat-dog and more cooperative

Those are from my own personal experience.

"- in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees"

Yes, but you can be a dick to the employees of your US subsidiaries. (Personal experience with a few German corporations led to this observation...)

I just took it as his contrast between SV entrepreneural attitudes and the reality of the labor market and general attitudes in Europe, and it agrees with what I see here, because I live in Budapest.

But man do I not want to argue about it. I mostly just didn't like OP's style of argument, to be honest, and I did like Varsavsky's post, essentially because it highlighted the four points you highlight here.

I did wonder whether he was American; his English is a little odd.

> in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees

Instead, I'd rephrase that as giving a proper response to employees that are being dicks to your business.

Varsavsky might have gotten wrong most of his observations about developing a startup in EU. But one that he nailed was the advice about employees getting paid medical leaves without really needing them just to screw their employers.

As he said, if you're in this position, get a PI to gather evidence against that employee, and by all means, BE A DICK!

Too much meta-generalizations!

It's amazing how many from the USA insist that the inner diversity in the USA is comparable to the one in Europe. I've heard this many times, namely here in HN. It is not comparable. PERIOD.

Even if the poster goes a bit to the extreme of bringing Russia in to the conversation, even inside the EU, there is still no comparison on how how diverse Europe is (e.g. Portugal to Norway, Greece to France, Spain to Germany) compared to the USA. Some countries, like Austria and Germany do have some similarities, but - to the untrained eye - Canada and the USA will seem relatively similar also, when compared to Mexico!

Perhaps the diversity of the USA is not the extreme of Europe, but I would be quick to point out that the regional differences in the US are quite notable even to an outside observer.

There are 5 major regions of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. Each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life.

Now regardless of US or Europe we have to factor in the population density of a location. It's no secret that urban culture is very different from rural culture be it in Oregon or in France.

Granted: we mostly speak the same language, we all share a common currency, and we all answer to the same federal body which represents us.

There is more diversity in Europe, that much I am sure of. But there is no problem with a comparison of the two.

Another aspect we should factor is history. Countries in Europe are in general much older than the USA. That is probably one of the biggest reasons for such rich diversity in Europe. Portugal has the same borders since 1249; Greece exists since the classical age; etc.

That is why I think that despite existing notable differences between those regions of the USA, they are on a different scale. Dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy and (even) quality of life, of each country is affected by it's history.

If you focus on 'diversity', you miss the bigger picture, because of course every place is unique. The US has for example far more pronounced extremes of urban vs rural (which many too forget). The real issue is distance, and how Europeans and Americans in general have vastly different concepts of what's far.

If you're in the US or Canada, driving for 10 hours means you're going to visit your aunt. Doing the same anywhere in Europe means you're likely 2 countries over, and it becomes a 'huge trip' in people's heads. Heck, I know several people who have driven more than halfway across Canada, in Europe no-one who drove e.g. from Paris to Istanbul.

And while the European market is supposedly unified, in practice there are significant variations in pricing and availability as soon as you cross a border, simply because that's something few people do. And of course the language difference means most local media is opaque to outsiders.

So I would say that the US is definitely diverse, but it's a gradual diversity, that transitions smoothly from ultra-urban to no-one-for-miles rural. It works on very large distances, and is mediated by a shared media, politics and language. European countries meanwhile are much more homogenous on the inside, but there are a lot of forces keeping each one unique.

Why drive that distance when there are decent trains or, much more common these days, excellent low cost airlines? [Pretty common for people to fly for 4+ hours to go on vacation from the UK to Turkey].

Heck, I know several people who have driven more than halfway across Canada, in Europe no-one who drove e.g. from Paris to Istanbul.

Abstract away the vast distances of road and think of it as nodes on a directed graph. How many nodes (ie: inhabited locations of distinct identity) did you pass through from source to destination? That's a kind sociocultural or even ecological distance you traveled, and it can actually be larger on a Paris-Istanbul trip than on a cross-Canadian trip.

Uh, how did you get "Paris-Instanbul is less diverse than cross-Canada" from my comment? I think I said the exact opposite.

I was actually saying "Paris-Istanbul is more diverse than cross-Canada". North America has large distances between "significant nodes" on the map, Europe/Asia has smaller distances.

So you replied in agreement with a tortured graph theory analogy devoid of concrete ties to reality? I'm confused. Usually when people say "actually" they are correcting someone.

There are many more such regions in Poland, for example - I have no time at the moment to look up their translations, but we have, among others: Mazowsze, Slask, Pomorze, Lubelszczyzna, Warmia i Mazury. That's five, too. And each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect (to the point of using language completely incomprehensible to others, which at least three(!) of this regions do), culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life.

These differences between regions inside one country is exactly what is comparable to differences between Midwest and Northeast.

Now think about the fact that Europe consists of tens of countries, many of which are significantly more diverse internally than Poland. And try to compare this monstrous complexity to differences between USA regions.

For me it seems to be daunting and impossible task because of huge difference in scale, yet you have no problem with it. I can only admire your courage :)

You can compare Europe to the US, but you are comparing a diverse geographical area to a nation state. Apples to Oranges. It's like comparing the US to Asia.

Actually, Norway isn't part of the EU. They have rejected membership by referendum, twice.

I think a lot of us need to admit that the author is right. I, for one, do generalize about Europe. I think of social democracies with high taxes. I think of arcane rules and regulations to start and run a business. And most of all, I limit the term "Europe" to include about 20 of the 50 European countries. I will never think of Russia as a European country. If I entered a contest and won a vacation to "Europe" - and the destination turned out to be Albania - I'd be thinking "Wat?!? That's not Europe."

From the outside, the term "Europe" is a confusing morass of distinctions. There's Europe, the Eurozone, the EU. The UN also has a geoscheme that is different than all three of those. Hell, half of Americans probably don't know the difference between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.

Most British people would struggle to tell you the difference between Great Britain and the UK.

Then again, I think a fair number of Brits would state Northern Ireland (the difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom) is part of Great Britain

You've also got the Channel Islands, and the Isles of Mann and Wight to contend with. Then there's the fact that one is a political union and one a union under the monarch... something like that anyway.

This video explains all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10

I was unaware that the Isle of Wight had any unusual political status....

You are indeed correct; it's just a county of England.

That's a shame, I was hoping for some amusement along the lines of Berwick upon Tweed still fighting the Crimean War with the Russian Empire:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwick-upon-Tweed#Relations_wi...

> Most English people would struggle to tell you the difference between Great Britain and the UK.

FTFY

As most British people are English, if the percentage of unaware English people is high enough, then most British people would be unaware :-D

Drat, once again foiled by logic.

No european will include Russia in Europe. Except, of course, the important matters like gas, football and Eurovision. Same for Israel.

Europe traditionally stops at the Urals - so a considerable part of Russia, including Moscow, is very much part of Europe.

> I think of social democracies with high taxes. I think of arcane rules and regulations to start and run a business.

.. Aaand you'd be right about France, Germany, Spain, England, The Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and Italy (and Norway, Sweden, Finland).

In other words, you'd be right about "the countries that matter" (and some that don't).

"Arcane rules and regulations to start and run a business":

Please explain what you mean by this for the Netherlands? (I say this as an expat Brit with his own business in the NL)

Fine, let's assume the Netherlands has none of those. I was mostly concerned with high taxes.

I can think of one: The CEO of a Dutch corporation (BV) needs to receive a minimum salary of €47.000 per year, even if your startup is operating at a loss. You can easily get this reduced by the tax inspector if you show a loss but it's a hassle and you can't reduce it to zero. (So you if you fund your own incorporated startup you will have to pay your saving to yourself, and lose taxes along the way)

I am an African currently living in Europe. When you think that my home country ( just 1 out of 54 in Africa ) is made up of over 500 tribes which were really separate and distinct nations pre-colonializiation by the British, you come to realize that any generalization made of a continent is rarely (if ever) a representation of the observed set.

There is a small town very near to where I grew up where everybody speaks Portuguese. The mayor and his councilmen speak Portuguese in their chambers. There are Festas and bullfights, of which I have attended many, and even played Baritone in an Azorian-tradition marching band. The local grocery stores have food with labels in Portuguese (occasionally Spanish as a second language). The most popular sports team in the entire city is Benfica, and the most popular TV channel is RTP.

This town is called Gustine, and it is located in California.

If you are going to throw a fit about generalizations of Europe, at least have the courtesy to do the same with your generalizations of the US. After having lived in multiple corners of this country, I can honestly tell you that our majority language and our TV stations are the lowest common denominators of our culture...not defining aspects of it.

I addressed all that in my post. I never claimed that Americans were one homogenous group (and by the way, I've lived in California, too). I claimed that US, despite being a melting pot, is an actual nation (which is not the case with the EU) and that there are a least some common denominators - one of them being the language which is spoken natively by more than 80% of the population.

So how exactly is it imprudent or offensive for Americans to point out some of the common denominators of Europe?

Not at all - as long as you're at least generally right. If you're grossly misrepresenting things that apply to one country as "common denominator of Europe" it's offensive. It's offensive to pretend all germans wear lederhosen or probably a couple of americans were annoyed if I'd say that all americans wear cowboy boots and hats, have a winchester on their back and a colt on their belt and speak the worst texan dialect ever.

The problem comes when people think that there is as much variation amoung US states as between EU countries. There are much more common denominators amoung parts of the USA than EU.

If you want Americans to stop making ridiculous generalizations about Europe, the way to do it is by similarly pledging to avoid the sort of ridiculous generalizations about America made by some Europeans - not by arguing about relative levels of heterogeneity.

Personally, I suspect certain differences between American regional subcultures - for instance, attitudes about the proper role of government in society - are broader than those you'll find between European countries.

I live in Romania, and just 40 miles away from me there's an entire different country, Bulgaria, with its rivers , whole mountain ranges, TV channels, folk tales and a different alphabet than ours. We have been each other neighbors for around 1,000 years, give or take, and yet I can only understand at most 5 words of the Bulgarian language and when it comes to "shared culture" I can only relate to some Bulgarian animation that I used to watch as a 5-year old a long time ago.

Now, on the entrepreneurial side of the story, I work for a Romanian startup who seriously considered expanding in the regional market (Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria). Now, Polish and Bulgarian are both Slavic languages but use different alphabets, so we would have had to hire different local people in both countries (with all the different laws, accounting and the likes), while with Hungarian (a Finno-Ugric language) we could have hired someone from my city, Bucharest, thx to the local Hungarian minority. We finally stopped the non-sense and decided to focus on a single huge market, the United States.

I am from Africa - a continent of more than a billion people speaking around two thousand languages. In Africa, you find one of the first Christian nations in the word as well as communities practicing ancient forms of traditional belief systems. Climate ranges from scorching heat and arid desert to tropical rain forests. You find the very wealthy elite monopolizing all the resources as well as mass poverty. I could go on.

To make matters worse, borders between countries are artificially drawn by colonialists. That results in frequent conflicts and makes effective governance or business extremely difficult. Yet, almost everyone refers to Africa as one homogeneous (dark) unit.

Schadenfreude from your African fellow.

Well, it's not uncommon to hear the expression "Sub-saharan Africa". That's better than nothing.

At least in Europe, we usually differentiate between Mediterranean/Maghreb/Islamic Africa and "everything below".

Actually, I believe most southern Europeans refer to "Africa" in the loosest sense of the word as being the sub-Saharan part, since the northern countries are seen as Mediterranean and are just too close to home to be thought of as in another continent. Likewise, no-one will refer to the Near East as being "Asia".

I could make an almost identical argument about the usage of terms like "Americans". The states and even cities themselves are all very different.

The cultural differences among states do vary, but not to the degree countries in Europe do.

Yes, indeed they are. But they all share a common language. It's a bit like Germany, Switzerland and Austria or even the german states themselves. We all share a common language so it we've seen the same movies, read the same media, etc. Certainly it's on a larger scale than the german states, but it's on a smaller scale than europe. If I travel 200 km to the east I'm in Poland. My GF comes from a village close to the belarussian border. I can pick the car, drive there in 6 hours or so and while it's Europe and even still EU, I can't even begin to talk to her parents or pretty much any other person in the village. I don't understand a single word they say, I have very little clue about how their life was and still is. If I drive 1000 km to the south I crossed at least 4 borders and heard at least as many languages on the way. So the proper comparison would be to compare texas to mexico or any middle american state.

"But they all share a common language"

Ha! You haven't been to Watsonville, California or just about anywhere along the border with Mexico, have you?

Try to follow the conversation between somebody living in my village and the next one 5 km further down the road. Or a bavarian and someone from Hamburg. They wouldn't understand each others dialects. You know what I mean. Even the folks down on the mexican border get fox news and understand plain old english.

Things tend to be pretty ok in western europe where most can agree on english, but don't forget that a large part of europe was behind the iron curtain and didn't get to learn english until 1989. The majority of people in the east doesn't speak any english at all.

In the city I named (Watsonville) there are many people that don't understand English and many of the signs there are in Spanish. This city is in the heart of agricultural California so most foreigners (and Californians, to be honest) never see it.

It is only about 60 minutes from Silicon Valley and yet has more culturally and linguistically in common with Mexico in many ways.

The people 150km to the south from here speak Sorbisch [1]. They have their own culture, their own schools even though they're mostly german national. Still, they get german TV and mix with "regular" germans on a daily basis. However, the people 200km to the east all speak polish and don't get any german tv. Which group is more likely to have some common ground with me?

The question is not if there are enclaves of other cultures and languages within a larger body of uniform people since on a small enough scale you will always find enclaves: Chinatown, Little Italy, or Kreuzberg in Berlin[2] but how uniform the population is. No population is truly uniform and I don't think anyone pretends that West-Coast Americans and East-Cost Americans are the same as Texan, but I dare to postulate that a common overarching government and a common official language leads to a greater degree of uniformness than 20+ official languages and a loosely knit set of contracts. A norwegian is most likely more different from a greek than a New Yorker from a Californian.

[1] The Sorbs are one of a couple recognized german minorities which explains their special status http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs [2] Strong turkish/arab minority

I haven't been to the particular locations you name, but my experience with multilingualism in the US is that it's more like "Spanish spoken here" than "Does anyone speak English?"

Right, so that's 2 languages (English & Spanish). There are currently 23 offical working languages in the EU.

And I'm sure if you live in Watsonville, California, you can get your tax forms in English, right? This is definitly not the case within the whole of the EU and the EU offical languages. (e.g. someone in Ireland could not get their tax forms in Swedish).

Language isn't the only cultural barrier. Lets stop being obstructive - the argument is sound. There are many sub-cultures in North America. They have profoundly different outlooks.

The bigger lesson is, political boundaries suck at defining people or culture.

There's way more than two languages: http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/

If you live in a larger urban area in the US, odds are that you can encounter several dozen languages in a day.

Yes, clearly there are many different languages spoken in a large, populous country like the USA.

However that's not at all like the European Union which has to publish all EU Directives in 23 languages, and each country has 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 official languages for their region. In the USA, English is the lingua franca, and official stuff can be done in English. There is no language that you can use all over the EU that will work in all (or sometimes any) official capacity.

Several dozen? Probably only in New York.

Three to five separate languages per day, as you would encounter in any other moderately multicultural/multinational locale? Yeah, any large urban area will do that.

"If I drive 1000 km to the south I crossed at least 4 borders and heard at least as many languages on the way. So the proper comparison would be to compare texas to mexico or any middle american state."

If I drive 1000 km to the southwest, I'm still in Texas... :) If I wish to drive to the nearest ski resort, I spend most of the drive time getting across the damn state! If I want to hear about 40 different languages, I just go to the nearest shopping mall or to the cafe in the next building.

And you'd be right. But you'd also have admit that Americans tend to do that to themselves. "The American Way" and whatnot; less bright people even saying "Unamerican" as if that was a thing. Those aren't labels others gave you, Americans proudly confess them. And then there is this ever-present flag and/or red-white-blue. From far away those similiarities seem to kinda outweigh the differences, it's just real hard to look past that, it being everywhere and all the time.

Honestly this post is a perfect example.

You've classified "Americans" as one group when your really talking about "American Nationalists". It sounds like your attributing nationalist propaganda you see on Fox News to all Americans. This is also a great example of state/city variation. Living in Boston for 7 years I can probably count the number of times I've heard someone talking about "The American Way" or using the term "Unamerican" on one hand. One week long trip to Texas and you hear it a dozen times or more.

I didn't say all Americans are that way, I just said some (rather loud, rather constant) Americans generalize themselves; while I don't quite get that vibe from Europe. Movies, presidential speeches, whatnot... it's really not just some nationalists, you export that a lot. That doesn't say anything about those who have no use for that stuff and see through it, I'm just claiming you have a lot of people who don't. I cannot think of any country that is so developed and so into nationalism, at least appearing so from the outside.

You're making the mistake of thinking of Europeans as a whole and comparing it to America.

I've met plenty of Europeans who were incredibly nationalistic from France, Great Britain, Austria, Czech, etc. and they are extremely vocal and proud of their national heritage/identity. They love telling people that they're French, English, Austrian, Czech, etc. but they never claim to be European.

Similarities could be drawn between the individual European countries and US states/regions (Texas is a prime example).

They love telling people that they're French, English, Austrian, Czech, etc. but they never claim to be European.

Uhm, which was my point exactly?

As an American currently living outside America, I would like to emphatically state that America's cultural exports almost always represent Eagleland (check TVTropes... or don't waste half your Friday!) rather than the actual United States.

The problem is that it has taken a convergence of demographic tip-over into a mostly urbanized population and a major political/economic/cultural crisis to stop large portions of the American population from deluding themselves into thinking of America as Eagleland.

I never claimed that it's representative, that was a strawman from reply #1. I just said compared to Europe, Americans seem to do a lot of the stereotyping themselves -- and that also means "American media" compared to "European media". I stand by that, and you just basically confirmed it.

I think you'll need several more hands if you count the times when Bostonians talk like that to mock Texans.

This is addressed in the article.

> I could make an almost identical argument about the usage of terms like "Americans".

I hear you and partly agree, but the comparison is a stretch.

In USA, how many hours by car do you need to find a local that doesn't speak your language?

The very same ad can easily be broadcast US-wide. Never do that in Europe (not that anyone has ever tried).

Trying to impose a law on all EU countries alone is usually unsuccessful [1]. Cultures are quite different. The feeling of being part of EU is far weaker than that of being part of your European nation. We don't say we are EU citizens. We don't watch the same thing on TV. We don't read the same newspapers. We don't have the same food habits.

My point: European countries are by far further apart than US states, and as a result, generalizations are more likely to fail.

But, sure, you do feel differently about death penalty, gun control, socialism and Mormons from state to state.

  [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loVjrNFJAik

"In USA, how many hours by car do you need to find a local that doesn't speak your language?"

Zero. The janitors and the landscapers of the company don't speak much English. The baker at the ethnic grocery down the street doesn't speak English, but his daughter does.

Depends on your definition of "a local" - I may have lived in a particular city for 30 years, doesn't make me "a local". In fact, I can think of places (I grew up in one) where being "a local" required multiple generations.

True. Local has a different define in a rural or stable area than it does in a rapidly growing area.

That's actually my point.

A lot of Europeans would answer, "I'd have to take the train (or the plane)," because they would think about the nearest country, not the nearest janitor.

In USA, how many hours by car do you need to find a local that doesn't speak your language?

I don't have to drive. Last week, I walked to a local deli and heard the following languages on the street within a few minutes: english, spanish, russian, chinese, polish(maybe, not sure) and arabic.

I was curious so here are some population figures (from wikipedia)

    Eurozone: 332,839,084

    EU: 503,492,041

    Europe: 739,165,030

So 45% of Europeans (66% of EU citizens) are in the Eurozone.

For those who don't know, the Eurozone is basically those 17 EU member states who use the Euro as their currency. The remaining 10 members of the EU use their own national currency.

Fun fact: There are countries outside the EU that use the Euro, but Eurozone (or Euro area) only includes EU.

(FTR: Kosovo and Montenegro use the Euro, aswell as some microstates like Monaco and Vatican City)

Here's a great lil' venn diagram of all the European bodies

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Supranati...

One of my bugbears, but to be completely accurate this is an Euler Diagram, not a Venn Diagram. Technically, a Venn Diagram has to have all possible intersections represented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_diagram

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram

http://blog.stevemould.com/venn-vs-euler-diagrams/

Can't stress enough that the 740 million figures includes Russia and Kazakhstan in the bunch. Two countries that are more Asian than they are European.

That is based on the European populations of those countries - not their entire populations!!

As a brazilian, I completely understand this feeling. A lot of people think Buenos Aires is Brazil's capital, when it's actually Argentina's capital. And small parts of our culture are taken as national main interest, as carnival.

But it's ok to me. In the end, there's no much to do besides correcting people. It's not worth to be upset with this behaviour. People will always generalize and will always state things about places they don't even know with total confidence.

What worries me is that some American entrepreneurs may be deterred from starting businesses in Europe based on untrue generalizations, whether positive or negative. There are huge possibilities in Europe, but in order to plan your business strategy you need facts.

I agree. What I was trying to say is that it doesn't worth to be upset with any misunderstanding about the place you born, wherever it is. Instead, you can correct people, so they have a more realistic view of your country.

But I also believe that any entrepreneur considering to start a company in Europe must research deeply, in a way that he find facts, and not only opinions from people from Internet.

True, you're generalizing when you say "Europeans are...", but you would also be generalizing if you said "Americans are...", "San Franciscans are...", "Rich people are...", "Programmers are...", and so on and so forth for any group of people you can think of. Talking about a group of people is generalizing, and generalizing is a necessary part of life, because despite the fact that doing so may cause untrue things to be said about certain people, it is also true that generalizations are true about more people than they are untrue about. That's why they're called generalizations.

People say "vc's in the bay area understand startups." Is this universally true? Of course not. But am I ignorant for saying so? Not in the slightest, because in more cases than not, it is true.

So yeah, the guy's statements might not be holistically accurate, but who's are? He's offering guidlines, and I believe that's fair.

Disclosure: I have not yet had the pleasure of visiting Europe. It is possible that my opinions might change after experiencing life there firsthand.

Reverse "Europeans" with "Americans" and this post is equally good advice for Europeans who say "Oh Americans are...".

Stereotypes aren't just an American thing. They exist worldwide.

I would love to write a similar post titled "Americans and Europeans, stop generalizing about India". As much as I cringe every time I hear someone do an "Indian accent" (it differs vastly from state to state), drawing simple boundaries is the way we make sense of the world around us. As experience grows, we learn to make finer distinctions and the texture of life around us grows from monochrome to technicolour.

Please feel free to draw these simple boundaries around anything of importance to you as long as those generalizations are adequate for your life and those around you. Don't however think that your generalizations are absolutely real. They're real for you and may not be for others. This is what is ultimately so beautiful about the world.

If you think of it, pop culture shared amongst Europeans have a greater chance to be American than European.

As a French dude, I've always dreamt of a more unified European culture. As in producing movies, TV shows with European money, catering to a European audience. England already produces some more-than-decent TV shows as it is.

We should also make English the official language, that would help us all move forward.

> We should also make English the official language, that would help us all move forward.

We should better create an entirely new artificial official language so that nobody feels discriminated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto ?

Nah. English is an easy language, taught in a vast majority of high schools in Europe, the Northerners already all speak it perfectly, it has Latin roots and Germanic roots, it's fairly neutral, used by the US and Canada and is so far the de facto language of business. We should invest in English.

I've wanted English to be a mandatory second language after your native one in all of Europe for a while.

Also creating languages never works, see Esperanto and all those ridiculous lab-synthetized languages that pretend to solve all the problems and all end up showing the very same bias it was trying to avoid in the first place (Esperanto for example is WAY easier for a romance-family speaker than for say a dude from Poland).

Please no. The world's languages are already being killed-off by English a little too quickly.

Good thing. Inability to communicate in a common language is a huge barrier for development, peace and understanding global issues.

If I were to design a new international language I would take the vocabulary and grammar from Basic English [1] and modernize the writting system to be fully phonetic.

Still, I'm afraid that such Newspeak-like language could be implemented only in some totalitarian dictatorship, so I hope that it won't happen any time soon...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English

they do them some times, think eurovision, or the (IIRC) french-german production of the borgias' story.

And I must have a seen a thousand things co-produced by Canal+.

Anyway, I really miss jeux sans frontieres :(

I was taught at my (European-based) business negotiation course that such generalizations as the ones mentioned in the article, are a basic American negotiation strategy to undermine European confidence. I was told that Americans are aware (most of the time) that their behaviour is received as ignorant and rude. After reading the article, I'm back to wondering whether my business negotiation professor was just prejudiced or is there a grain of truth in what he told me?

The comedy to this is the extreme generalizing that goes on globally when talking about America / Americans.

We're all cowboy surfer rednecks that love our guns and religion, are all broke with maxed out credit cards and overweight with a nasty case of diabetes.

Yes, that's a silly generalization, but it's not comparable to the one mentioned in the OP. If you want to compare thinking of all Americans as rednecks, you can compare it to thinking of of all french as sweet talking wine lovers, spaniards as lazy and always sleeping the siesta, or germans as rigid uptight and rude; and so on an so forth.

We are rigid uptight and rude. Call me, I'll prove that to you.

Well, actually, 2/3 of Americans are overweight and 75% are indebted in some fashion (though that could be "good debt"). And Americans have one of the most disturbing attitudes towards religion I've ever seen. American seculars turn entirely away from God while fundamentalists also turn entirely away from God... in the other direction.

So you get a country where service employees working on Christmas is considered totally normal, but fundamentalists crow on and on about the disrespect done to Christianity by deigning to acknowledge Hanukah and Kwanzaa. Which is ironic, because prior to Kwanzaa being invented from whole cloth and Hanukah morphing into Jewsmas, it really was solely and only the Christmas season.

Damned capitalist pigs ;-) (yes, I'm originally American).

Oh, and there are more guns than people in America, but those are mostly concentrated in rural states where guns are easier to obtain legally. The population of America has only recently tipped over from being mostly rural/suburban to mostly urban/suburban.

A good and bad article all in one.

It's good, because it addresses some common misconceptions.

It's bad, because it implies that you can't generalize about anything nor anyone. Obviously, there are - broadly - common traits in Europe. The point is fine, to the extent that the broader generalizations you make, the more people will be described incorrectly - and you cite some great numbers to emphasize that.

The post makes it sound as if there is some scientific constant for maximum population size you can generalize about.

Broadly common traits such as breathing and eating.

I think there's a lot of truth to this essay. As am American, I've certainly been guilty of these kinds of generalizations. To Americans (colloquially meaning U.S. citizens here), I think the phenomenon can be attributed mainly to two causes. The first is that Americans don't travel much, only a small minority hold passports. And who can travel with a meagre two contiguous weeks of holiday per year, and with real incomes of the 99% declining for the past 30 years? The second is that the political propaganda machine in the States explicitly lumps all the nations of Europe into the "un-American, thus wrong-thinking" category. You need look no further than our last presidential election for evidence of this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16583813 . There's probably a third force at work that just occurred to me: I think that in American schools, kids are not taught anything meaningful about Europe other than perhaps a vague bit about the World Wars. Namely who was "good", and who was "evil", black & white just like modern American politics. My apartment here in Berlin has a Berlin-raised caretaker who I've had a few extended conversations with. I'm astounded by how much he knows about American history, to the point of even forming opinions (historical ones, not politico-propaganda-influenced ones as far as I can tell) on individual events such as the battle of Little Bighorn. He's in his late 40s, speaks English fluently, and knows more about American history than most Americans I've met. I'm not sure that I entirely know what to make of this, but it certainly leaves me with the impression that there's an element of learning and sheer curiosity about the world that's largely absent in the States.

This is a byproduct of the world being so far away for so long. The distance had an impact in both directions. I ran into people from other countries making ridiculous generalizations about the US when I first stepped on to the Internet in the '90s.

Now I know hundreds of people from other countries, and there's very little generalizing going on in either direction. But this is mostly people in their 20s and 30s, not people who grew up without a direct link to the world.

From the outside, Europe may seem more united than it is. I think that the difference between two randomly selected European states is the same as the difference between a random European state and the US.

Also I disagree, that there is a need for a stronger union. Free trade union yes, but other than that, every state should be sovereign.

I came to this party rather late, but here are my $0.02.

I don't pretend to be a super well-traveled individual, but I have traveled a bit.

I feel both Jonas Bentzen and the article he refutes are wrong to some degree, though Mr Bentzen seems to be making a less severe generalisation.

What I see occurring here is a classic example of metonymy and cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities vs. perceived 'real culture'.

Metonymy: A country seems to be defined by its major city or cities--to the outsider, the fewer cities represent it, the better.

Cosmopolitan cities: The problem is these major cities tend to be cosmopolitan cities. Think Alpha-, Alpha, Alpha+ and Alpha++. These types of cities tend to strive towards homogeneity. I had a history prof (who leaned towards socialism) lay out and explain how, historically, the bigger a city gets, the less unique and further away from its ancestors and traditions it culturally becomes. Cultural hegemony.

Metropolitan cities: Then there are 'medium-size' cities, or 'second major cities' that fight to keep some traditions and cultures from their respective countries. Some metropolitan cities strive to be more cosmopolitan, and have that sensation; I'm thinking of a few (very few) Beta-, Beta, and Beta+ cities here.

During the French Revolution, there were two major schools of thought in Spain. One went like this: Bonaparte wants to modernise countries and wage war on 'tradition'; let's join the French movement and abolish our backward traditions. These people, in Spain, were called 'afrancesados' ('Frenchifieds', pro-French), pejoratively. They were found in major Spanish cities.

Here is the really important part: people outside of major Spanish cities thought they were protecting the 'real' Spanish culture; they were often of humble birth, people that had given rise to what people outside of Spain thought was 'very Spanish' (flamenco, cante jondo, running of the bulls, gypsies, etc.) from a cultural perspective. They had traditions; old traditions. They were superstitious, street-smart, but they were also deceived by kings and, to use a modern term, their governments.

I don't see much has changed with regard to cultural representation.

The government projects/sells an image of their country to foreigners. Some people buy into it. The reality is that not only is each country vastly different, each region and city is.

We should be comparing cities with cities, not countries with countries.

As a European myself, I think it is fine to generalize* about Europe. Many points in Varsavsky's blog post were correct and it raised awareness of some things to consider. Sure, it had its omissions and errors, but also remember it was a blog post, not an article in a peer reviewed journal. Reading the article + the ensuing hacker news discussion one is already much better informed.

What is naive is to expect some blog post to give you an overarching view of a very complex subject. Kind of like reading a wikipedia article something and expecting to be expert on the subject matter after that.

*Making generalizations is a wonderful property of the human brain. Without that we'd all be lost in the fractal complexity of everyday detail.

> Making generalizations is a wonderful property of the human brain. Without that we'd all be lost in the fractal complexity of everyday detail.

Sure - the problem is when the generalizations are so broad as to become complete falsehoods. If I went to Upper East Side in New York and concluded that Americans are extremely wealthy persons who live in townhouses, I would be incorrect.

In my opinion Varsavsky's blog post was ok. Sure it mostly covered Spain and France, but that's where he's worked at. It conveyed actual experience from one person's perspective.

Some responsibility always lies with the reader: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_reading

That's like saying that it's alright if I write a blog post about how all Americans drive Chevrolets, and then it's up to the reader to figure out the truth by applying critical reading.

While the reader should apply critical reading, the writer should certainly make sure his facts are straight.

I agree with everything said here - maybe apart from the points about demographics. We know Varsavsky was referring to Western Europe. In any case, I don't think it's such a bad thing to ignore differences for a moment and do a bit of generalizing.

We end up making preconceptions and assumptions about what will and won't work in other countries. Cultural and linguistic barriers are almost being used as an excuse. This is a massive mistake we are making in Europe. There are plenty of products and/or ideas which all of Europe has had an appetite for.

Naturally, appetite for ideas/services may exist in one country more than the others. That's where you'll find your early adopters but it's not the bigger picture!

Stereotypes and generalizations are so common because they are useful, not because Americans are ignorant. Not just because no one cannot remember every detail about everything - generalizations are models, simplifications of reality, which help you make an informant decision confidently. For example: are you willing to adhere to workplace regulations? If its a low priority maybe you should skip Europe.

I'm from an EU country that in my opinion was 150 degrees (180-30) from what Martin Varsavsky described, but I still appreciated his article. I know it meant Western Europe and I learned that US entrepreneurs are a lot different. Generally.

What's a harder climb -- getting Americans to stop generalizing about Europe or Africa? Wait -- if they could get to the point of realizing that Africa is a continent and not a country, that in itself would be a giant leap forward.

Isn't it true that the Western European economies are high-tax, high-regulation economies with high degrees of risk-aversion (both public and private) compared to America? Where does that stereotype fail?

From what I know, it's hard to fire underperformers in most of Western Europe. Many traditional industries are protected (like French book stores). Taxes are high. Anti-market sentiment is strong. It's not a place where I would want to start a company to do what has never been done before.

I'd like to be wrong. I hear Europe is a nice place to live, otherwise. But it is called the "old world" for a reason.

In Monaco there's no income tax. And it's not the only country in Europe without income tax. In Estonia the marginal tax rate is 21%. In the US it's 35%+ ?

> From what I know, it's hard to fire underperformers in most of Western Europe.

That's typical in places like France, Spain, Italy. But as my fellow Dane tries to say in his article: don't generalize and think it's the same everywhere :)

And for the similar reasons I think it would be in the interest of fruitful discussion to try and not generalize India and China into... well, India and China, respectively. Yes, they are both single countries, but every one of them has a population greater than America and Europe combined. At this scale I'd expect that those countries have cultural substructures corresponding to european nation-states in size and diversity.

Ok. Then what? Try and imagine an article written for US based entrepreneurs that didn't generalize about Europe to some degree? It would be awfully confusing (if written at all) So better to gently chide some of the more extreme generalizations than worry about stopping the practise entirely.

what about calling countries by their name? let's say, when you're talking about Germany, you say "Germany" instead of "Europe"?

I think you are pedantic about other people's semantics and not your own. E.G. when you say American, do you mean US citizens or people from the two continents of America? I think you mean the former. Just like they most likely mean Western Europe.

I think it's pedantic to confuse 'americans' with everyone from north/south america.

So when Americans say American do they mean US Citizen or someone from North/South America? ...

They mean residents of the USA. Note that there are two nations that are "United States of _____" in the western hemisphere.

A trifle off-topic but it's interesting to read that the author believes in a 'strong European union' with 27 unelected commissioners and an unelected president following a constitution that has never been put to the peoples of the EU countries.

This guy seriously doesn't understand that "Europe" to most us westerners basically means "All European countries with a coastline, down to Italy."

Martin is from Argentina, not American, and he has built and invested in businesses in both Europe and the US. He knows what he's talking about.

I'm European and think this article is bunk. Hardly anyone (in western Europe at least) considers Russia to be a part of Europe.

I am Swedish and I believe most Swedes consider Russia to be part of Europe. Making generalizations about Europe or even Western Europe (something which did not exist before the cold war) is dangerous.

Can we agree on the colloquial: "American"=USAian , "European"=EUian ? (And specify otherwise if otherwise?)

American is the proper demonym in the English language for a citizen of the United States of America.

No. For instance Swiss and Norwegians are Europeans, but not part of the EU.

I'm going to take this a step further and just say "Stop Generalizing" (Wait... was that a generalization?)

I'd wager $100 that 99% of HN readers can't even name the fastest growing economy in Europe...

I'd wager that they also can't name the fastest growing economy in the United States. What of it?

I can name the fastest growing national economy in the USA. It's easy...there is only one nation. In Europe, there are 50... how hard to get can this be?

That's trivial, and obviously not the point of this offshoot thread. While the federal government regulates interstate commerce, each state is free to set up its own tax structure, create different incentives for businesses to open up shop, etc. And each state has its own set of natural resources and hazards.

The question of which US state has the fastest growing economy is equally interesting as the GP's question about European economies.

I don't see how they are at all related. For one thing, I can pretty much guarantee you that the difference in GDP growth between the fastest growing European economy and the slowest is leaps and bounds larger than the same difference between states. For another thing, for many businesses in the US, it's fairly trivial to relocate should things go south. Not so for moving between countries in Europe.

I don't think you are correct. There are some deeply poor regions of the US that have been that way for 100 years.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_povert... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081031102640.ht... Between states it ranges from 5% to 20%. Between countries in Europe it ranges from 10% to 20%. I'm sure the figures aren't directly comparable, but it at least suggests that there's a similar level of economic diversity.

Heh...wow! I think your statistics don't mean at all what you think they mean. When I mentioned growth, I was talking about year-over-year growth (or decline) in national GDP. According to that statistic, Europe contains some of the fastest growing (Turkey, Estonia, Lithuania) and slowest growing (Greece, Italy, Spain) countries in the world.

Your statistic shows poverty rate. The fact that there is greater variation between states in the US than between countries in Europe just shows what many of us have known for years: even if your economy sucks, the worst-off do better in Europe than in the US. In other words, the US is a great place to be if you are wealthy and successful. Europe is a much better place to be if you are anyone else.

...no takers? Here's a hint: it's largest city ranks 5th world-wide in number of billionaires residing there.

Turkey/Istanbul maybe?

Yup! Turkey has placed high in the world-wide rankings for growth throughout the '00s, despite the financial crises happening on its doorstep. It's interesting, because when EU negotiations began, the attitude was very much "poor little Turkey is looking to the rest of Europe for help" and the EU was playing the part of reluctant partner. Today, most Turks are against EU membership, but the EU has been making more and more efforts to prevent negotiations from breaking off. (I wouldn't say that the EU wants Turkey to join...and even if they did I don't think it would be possible for most EU members to admit to wanting Turkey to join.)

Isn't the vast majority of Turkey in Asia?

To sum up the comments: Stop generalizing about my generalizing.

OP: Stop generalizing about Americans.

Wow, there is so much euro-hurt over that Varsavsky post that people are resorting to random nit-picking on the definition of Europe.

America is a continent. No matter how much the people from the US call themselves "Americans" You are generalizing when you say "Americans".

Thanks

America is NOT a continent. North America and South America are the two continents.

Further, there are more than one United States. Ever consider how the people of the United States of Mexico feel when you ignore them like that?

Well, I'm a European myself, but the corrections sounds a little on the pedantic side:

>"Most of Europe has the euro as a common currency" -- Only 17 of Europe's 50 countries use the Euro.

Yes. Only some of the LARGEST countries, for a total of 332 million people. Not to mention that he did say "most".

>"Europe is great for an American tech entrepreneur because wealth is better distributed" The difference between the Scandinavian countries and, say, Russia is enourmous when it comes to wealth distribution.

That's one of the reasons most people don't include Russia when they talk about Europe. Not to mention that it can even refer only to the EU countries.

>"More consumers can buy your products and services" Certainly depends on whether you're selling to Swiss or Romanians.

The same point keeps repeated.

It's as if someone talked about investing in the US, and someone felt obliged to blog about the differences between Illinois and New York and rural Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota.

Yes, we got it already. It's not like someone will go to invest blindly to the _geographic region_ that is Europe. He will most likely go to what is called Western Europe, or the EU.

> It's as if someone talked about investing in the US, and someone felt obliged to blog about the differences between Illinois and New York and rural Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota.

This, exactly, seems to be the point OP is missing.

It's all about scale. That is the point that almost everyone else is missing! The differences between New York and rural Idaho, in all, are smaller than the differences between Greece and Norway. They are however comparable to the differences between North and Southern Italy.

Scale

>It's all about scale. That is the point that almost everyone else is missing! The differences between New York and rural Idaho, in all, are smaller than the differences between Greece and Norway.

You'd be surprised.

Rural Idaho and New York have very little in common in buying preferences, business opportunities, employment opportunities, cost of living, potential market and such.

And New York and parts of Mississippi or South Dakota have even less. Would you base an startup on Holly Ridge or Indianola?

Heck, there are parts of South Dakota (the Indian reservations) that have a life expectancy of 48 years -- a third world like number.

Again, you force me to repeat myself. My point is that it's all about scale. There are surely big differences between NY and Idaho, but these are smaller than those between Norway and Greece (as an example). Greece and Norway have very little in common in ANYTHING, not only "buying preferences, business opportunities, cost of living, potential market and such". They are totally different countries. The huge difference between these countries was visible more than a 1000 years ago, when Varagians guards were employed by eastern roman empire / Bizamtium. In fact, part of the reason why the differences are bigger in europe is exactly because of the longer history of the countries, but that is a whole different subject. The point is, YES, there are differences between such states in the USA. NO, they are not as huge as those between countries in Europe. (Probably, but arguably, the fact that in Europe these countries exist for way longer than the USA, is a reason why the diversity between them is so strong)

> Only some of the LARGEST countries, for a total of 332 million people. Not to mention that he did say "most".

332 million is less than half of Europe's population. That's not "most of Europe" by any stretch.

> It's not like someone will go to invest blindly to the _geographic region_ that is Europe. He will most likely go to what is called Western Europe, or the EU.

Even Western Europe has huge differences in buying power (contrast Germany with Spain, e.g.). You mention the EU... The EU includes Eastern European countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, etc.

Point is, facts matter - especially if you're building a business.

If you're going to base all your thing on a totally unrealistic vision of Europe then yeah, your points stand.

But so we're clear, all the points the original article was making was about Europe as a an economic entity, most likely not including the likes of Ruasia and Kazakhstan (which you're obviously not afraid to do to reach that quite ludicrous and irrelevant figure of 750+ million people).

At this rate you might as well include all of Africa and Asia in Europe too.

> If you're going to base all your thing on a totally unrealistic vision of Europe then yeah, your points stand.

That's like saying the US only consists of New York + D.C. + the Midwest + California.

> all the points the original article was making was about Europe as a an economic entity

Then why didn't he write "the EU" instead of "Europe"? But even if he had, many of his statements would still be wrong. For instance much of what he said didn't apply to Germany (and that's a pretty solid player in the EU).

Russia and Kazakhstan (and also Turkey) are transcontinental countries with parts in Europe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transcontinental_countr...

The population of Europe is 739 million and going by the number of Russians I meet here in Scotland and on holiday in France and the Med they seem to be joining in pretty well with the European cultural milieu...

I suspect people from outside of Europe don't appreciate how much things have changed in the last 25 years - all for the better as far as I can see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe

> It's as if someone talked about investing in the US, and someone felt obliged to blog about the differences between Illinois and New York and rural Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota.

Someone should do this. Like... actually write this post.

It's as if someone talked about investing in the US, and someone felt obliged to blog about the differences between Illinois and New York and rural Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota.

I think he covered that point pretty well to be honest, you know, in the paragraph that starts off:

You may say, "Well, this is like the US with its different states." I would disagree because, while there is certainly a noticable difference between, say, New York City and a rural Mississippian town...

I agree that for generalized investment purposes you can most likely leave off former USSR states, but the genralisation that UK isn't part of the Europe talk is a little crazy. Either way, you'd be a fool to do any kind of business solely relying on some internet blog post.

Indeed, not only some of the largest countries, but the bulk of the PPP-adjusted GDP of "Europe" uses the Euro as a currency, so this point is not even pedantic, it's factually incorrect. If Wikipedia's facts are straight, the Eurozone member states total to nearly 11e12 PPP-adjusted international dollars, while all states of Europe (including huge economies outside the EU, like Russia) have a total PPP-adjusted GDP of 20e12. QED: most of Europe has the Euro as a common currency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eur... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone#Member_states

Created an account just to state this: tech people please don't go into discussing politics / economics. Brits want to exit EU because of wars in the past? This is ridiculous!

What about the real reasons: 1. Britain has 70% of its laws created by the EU by burocrats who were never voted into the office and can't be voted out of the office: Barroso (President of the European Commission) and Von Rumpoy (whatever his name - never elected President of the UE). 70% of British laws are created by unelected foreigners who definitely don't share their anglo-saxon heritage, focusing more on Germany-centered economic views.

Germany has always been goods producer. UK has always been a trading nation. You say forcing UK to obey Teutonian laws will prevent future wars and upheaval and I'm telling you it may as well cause them (look at another country not consistent with German economic policies: Greece)

Not to mention other things: UK is banned from entering into trade treaties with Canada, Australia, India, and the US - their historical partners - EU has to do it for them! They have to accept EU imposed anti-British customs with India, Australia and Canada because by the EU law they have to trade openly with EU and mustn't with Anglo-Saxon world. And economically - this is killing them. EU exports into UK much more than UK into EU. Why bother? It's not like they will loose business once outside of the block.

And other things - newly passed EU laws that will basically kill London's stock exchange and investment banks to keep German tax payers happy.

THIS and not history of wars is the cause of 2 in 3 Britons being in favor of EU exit. It's just bad business for them and their economy and nobody in the EU seem to care. As long as the Chancellor is happy.

> Germany has always been goods producer. UK has always been a trading nation

Yeah, why has the UK then stopped trading?

Btw., I live in a German Hansestadt, which for centuries has been trading with all the known world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

The UK can't trade with the US? Haha, what a joke.

Let's face it: the UK has focused on its financial 'industry' and has sold products of questionable quality.

Indeed the UK had a couple of Hanseatic ports, in London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steelyard and King's Lynn.

I don't understand people who think a trading nation can survive outside a free trade area either.

UK is outside of tree trade agreements with the Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, etc.) because of its free trade agreement (i.e. EU) with collapsing eurozone. That's not good business for them.

Well the CETA (Canada EU trade agreement) with zero tariffs and improved labour mobility is close to being settled by the sound of it. It is not clear if the UK would ever manage to negotiate to join NAFTA.

The Hanseatic league stretched from England to Novgorod, and highlights the strong need for small independent sovereign city states, rather than top-heavy bureaucracies like the EU.

The EU is an attempt by the European political classes to copy all the worst parts of the US political system, while ignoring the traditions of political liberty that (used to) make the US actually work.

Having said that, I am hopeful that once the EU finally collapses, Europe will be blessed with a lot of small independent competing nation states, so there will be some hope for liberty if the US continues along the path of becoming a modern Byzantium.

> The Hanseatic league stretched from England to Novgorod

The Hansa Teutonica had its capital in Lübeck.

One possible future of the EU is a union of regions, not nations. The EU will take over much of what the current nations think they are.

> I am hopeful that once the EU finally collapses

Neither you nor I will see the EU collapse. Just the opposite. It might even expand.

Wasn't it Hitler who called Brits 'a nation of shop-keepers' ?

What a trading nation would do is make a living of - for example - buying tea from India to sell across Europe. Not some low-level, small scale enterprise. That has never been the engine of the German economy. German trade has always been a by-product of craftsmanship and not its replacement.

Funny that you say that. Just a ten kilometers from where I live is this: http://www.haelssen-lyon.de/index.php?id=22&L=1

Also this: http://www.teaandcoffee.net/1107/tea.htm

> The Port of Hamburg is Europe’s tea capital number and handles more than 70% of all German tea imports, as well as some 50% of the European-wide traded teas.

Germany has been for centuries been heavy into international trade. The city where I live operates a large part of the world container fleet...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship

> The vast majority of the capacity of fully cellular container ships used in the liner trade is owned by German shipowners, with approximately 75% owned by Hamburg brokers

Agreed. Germany may import more into the EU market than anybody else including UK. That's not my point. My point is that from the British perspective it is much better to open borders and trade with India, Canada, Australia, US, then to try doing the same with the EU. They closed themselves in the EU-block distancing from emerging markets in Asia and from the Commonwealth while Indians for that example are literally begging them for business. To no avail as the UK can't have free trade agreements with India as long as it stays within the EU. The same EU by the way which is just in the process of passing laws that will kill the biggest British business and pride - the City.

If you narrow yourself to the trade and banking within the EU, yes I agree, Germany are bigger player than anybody else. Start thinking globally, and you'll soon realize that UK stands much better chances in global economy trading freely with the Commonwealth and Asia than turning their back to these markets and focusing on the local European block.

Think Hong Kong, think Canada, think Australia -- from UK perspective it is just better business to be in an free trade economic block with them then to stay in euro disaster zone. This is what they have been doing for centuries. UK is no.1 in the world in terms of value of items traded per capita. Yes, they are a nation of shop-keepers. EU seems to be one-size-fits-all solution that obviously doesn't work for them anymore and probably never worked. They'll exit, open borders to Asia, ex-colonies, trade with them, do their banking, logistics and all the other stuff they have been doing centuries. While Germany will still export/import in Hamburg, nobody minds, everybody just does what's the best for their country. No surprises there.

Germany is in the EU and trades very successful with China, India, Brasil, Russia, US, ...

http://atlanticsentinel.com/2011/03/bric1-germanys-new-bedfe...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/23/us-germany-china-i...

If the UK can't do that, it is not due to the EU, but because of local incompetence. Germany has high growth rates in trade with the countries and a huge export surplus (even with China).

2 or 3 of the countries in the UK are not "Anglo-Saxon" countries, but would be "Celtic" countries. :P

Additionally the UK does elect and choose EU legislators, in the European Parliament & Council of Minsiters, European Commission, etc. etc.

Not to mention there is a distinct possibility that the UK will itself break up in the next few years.

Very much depends on how you define "UK will break up". Remember Ireland seceded from the UK in the 1920s. The break up has already begun.

The same goes for Spain, Belgium, Italy...

beyond funny - EU advocating continental unity causing break-down even such already small countries as Belgium. Even more funny - Von Rumpoy is from Belgium traveling continent advocating for unity, while his own small country is falling apart into pieces.

I think it makes perfect sense. You have a pan-european state that deals with the big stuff (like human rights) and national ethnic groups for the little stuff.

There has been a trend towards large countries breaking up into national/ethnic groupings for almost 200 years in Europe. The phrase "Balkanization" dates, not from the recent Yugoslav wars, but initially from 200 years ago when the Ottoman's were breaking up!

No. This a feudal phenomenon right from the Middle Ages. The Papal Rome (EU) that deals with the big stuff and regionalization. That's why many historians and philosophers claim that times we are living in will be referred to as neo-feudal in the future:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-feudalism

That's backwardation. Similarly, in the Middle Ages there was no concept of nation states. Sounds like EU agenda, doesn't it?

Not to mention other similarities: 1% above the law elites, bankers, etc. and 99% of serfs. Definition of serf: born in debt and dies in debt. Religious wars (think crusades to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan to enforce our Christian-born values), etc, etc. Whatever you touch in terms of social sciences in the modern societies of the West is feudal. Including things like rise of Asia and deterioration of the West.

We're in the process of building of a neo-feudal society.

Not fun. Just trying to fight against it every step it takes.

And yet, christian groups think the EU is a secular force trying to destroy the christian values they believe in with things like allowing women to work, allowing gays to exist, etc.

So who's right? Or are you both extremists?

Your opinion surprises me. Everyone else in the EU is pretty much convinced that the UK is just trying to eat the cake and have it.

IIRC, the UK has opted out of Schengen and the Euro. That would look OK to me were we not talking of two core EU projects that were supposed to be game changers.

Coming from a country that is currently under an European assistance program, I am not myself very fond of the "Chancellor", but your opinion seems to be purely based on the hatred for a particular country and simple anglophilia. It's clear that the EU must have common laws. And it's clear that if the EU is supposed to ever become a superpower in the economic and geopolitical sense, a free trade zone will not suffice.

Believe me, European laws don't please everyone. e.g. production quotas have seriously harmed economies that were highly reliant on agricultural production.

And regarding Greece... well, Greece has played foul from the beginning. Greek authorities have purposefully reported lower than reality deficit figure as early as 1999. Of course the EU failed there too, and I'm convinced that austerity measures are not the best solution for this mess. But saying that Greece is being "punished" because it has refused to follow a particular model is a clear exaggeration.

EU is a failing Project that has chosen to ignore democratic procedures and no-votes for decades. It doesn't work, it never did and it never will. It's basic economics that you can't have the same central bank for two countries like Germany and Greece, isn't it? But not when integration unelected fanatics like ex-marxist Barroso come into play. They don't care about nuances like democratic NOs or economic commonse sense. They want to build this - as you called it - superpower - at all costs and against the people. And people are tired of this nonsense.

It may look fine when you sit in Eastern Europe and get all the funds. But think for German taxpayer for a while who now has to pay for your infrastruture, meet your debt obligations in case something goes wrong, and import all the unemployed form your country. How much longer do you think Germans will take it? Of course, it's nice to be on the receiving end. But being in an economic crisis + having your own unemployed + tax hikes for your highways, do you think this makes EU popular among German voters? No, it doesn't. If Germany was given a chance there is a good chance they would opt to exit as well.

Eastern Europe is very pro-EU because it is bribed by all the money stolen from the Western Europe. But nobody, really nobody, in the West wants to stay on the board of the Titanic anymore.

Your speech is starting to sound too stereotypical and plain xenophobic to be taken seriously, but I'll give it a try.

Countries that "import unemployed people" do so for their own good. Or do you know a lot of Brits currently willing to do housecleaning work or have a factory job? Switzerland is a good example of that. ~30% foreign workers, most of them doing the jobs that Swiss people themselves would rather not do. It's very easy to blame people from other countries for you own problems, but they're paying their taxes too, just like anyone else.

Plus, Germany exports a lot to other EU countries. It's not like they're in the EU for the sole noble purpose of European prosperity.

Don't pretend that Germany didn't benefit hugely from the economic integration of weaker countries such as Greece. It takes two to tango, and tango you did.

The single currency tied the economies together, it allowed Greeks to use the cheap credit of the German economy to buy what? German cars. Germany's export businesses grew hugely because of the real value of the euro was weaker than the Deutsche Mark.

This is a problem where no single party is at fault. Yes, the Greeks were irresponsible with the credit but it's not the full story.

Apart from that, I agree with your points about the general economic union. Without a peaceful political and cultural one, it was doomed to fail.

> Everyone else in the EU is pretty much convinced that the UK is just trying to eat the cake and have it.

Considering that the UK is the fourth-largest contributor to the EU budget, paying more than we get back, and haven't benefited from the Euro in the way that eg. Germany has, I would say that we're giving you plenty of cake. There's no reason the EU has to be an all-or-nothing affair; there are plenty of other countries that have opted out of the Euro as well, and frankly with the chaos over Greece which has been heavily caused by their uncompetitiveness in a shared currency, I don't think you're in a great position to criticise that decision.

Then stop comparing things like healthcare in a country of less than 10 million to one with 300 million+

My 2c, is stop trying to be one nation then. The EU zone is something of a fiasco and its really killing the entire zone with countries like Turkey and Greece. Don't blame us .. blame your governing body for making it difficult to operate in Europe.

Turkey isn't in the EU.

They've been struggling to become a part of the EU, though. Could be what he meant.

Seemed more that he was giving an example of how Turkey was a country that was pulling the Eurozone down from within... illustrating the depth of his understanding of the geography and economy of the region...

Uh, what's the problem with Turkey?

It's not Merica and you guys don't have NASCAR.

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