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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

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.

> 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.

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)

> 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.