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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

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?

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> 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

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?! ;)

> 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 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 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.

"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.

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'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.

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.

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

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".

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.

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.

"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.

> 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.

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

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

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.

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