How do Americans feel about these regionalistic sentiment based posts here on hacker news?. Trump kind helped accelerate this trend but is this generally good for the collective west?
However, if this ever got big enough to hurt America's economy in a measurable way, the press would be all over it and Americans would retaliate. Considering how our trade is structured, Europe would experience a lot more pain.
In other words, I think it's cool that you raise visibility to your products. I think you should do it. But you'll lose more than we will if this gets too serious at America's expense.
Optimally we should all develop specialities and maintain a local reserve in most key industries. But all out of war isn't in our interest.
There’s a lot of things the rest of the world has no or bad backups for.
The US is choosing to leverage its position without much concern for those consequences right now. The rest of the world is busy routing around that, and the leverage is slowly reducing.
It will take time: the US was a key member of the world economy. But there’s frequent new reminders of why it’s necessary.
I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting. Maybe we aren't brothers but we are cousins. The real threats are elsewhere.
> I understand why you feel what you feel, but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades.
That's on them. If people allow themselves to be misled that is not something that other countries should take into account when determining their foreign policy. If there is an abuser here then it is perfectly clear where that abuser is located.
> I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
And that's fine. But then you should do something about the root cause of those complaints and if and when you do you will find that maybe Europe and the bulk of the population of the USA have a lot in common.
> I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting.
You are the one promoting that attitude with your original comment.
These delusional beliefs have already lead to aggression and animosity towards the EU and the rest of the world, which is why this is happening in the first place.
What should the EU do? The current US administration is destroying every partnership you've built, giving up all of its soft power, it's single-handedly driving the world off a proverbial cliff with the war in Iran which will lead to yet another once-in-a-generation economic crisis and a new wave of totally preventable human suffering.
And for what? To persecute a mythical enemy of the Great American Prosperity? To divert attention away from domestic economic failures, unbelievable wealth disparity, from the fact the your country is ran by sadistic pedophiles? To intentionally weaken the rest of the world? To perpetuate a genocide?
The only sensible thing for the EU to do is to get off the damn ride. There's nothing we can do, short of becoming a vassal state of the US, that would appease the current US administration.
Framing this as an attack on the US is just typical DARVO tactics (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) and it's exactly why the EU needs to get away.
The US has gone out of its way to prove that it is an unreliable partner. To Europe, to Canada, to its allies all over the world. It is obvious that that would result in re-evaluation of the relationship. You can't just upend 80 years of building up a relationship and expect that it will be without consequences. Just like your spouse would have a right to re-evaluate their relationship with you if you punched them in the face to remind them that 'you hold all the cards'.
If you believe that the EU is 'starting it' you are exemplifying the mentality that lead us to where we are today: that might makes right and that if you're abused you should just take it and that even an attempt to leave is considered betrayal.
Some people still don't grasp the gravity of the damage.
Emotional boycotts don't work like that. Once the customers will find an acceptable replacement for some US brand they will not return to the brand, because in the first years "not consuming US" has become socially a premium and added value, and then it just runs by inertia. Canadians were selling their houses in Florida out of rage. Do you think that the same people will buy other house again in Florida in five years?. Will be drinking Kentucky bourbon? Forget about it.
> if this ever got big enough to hurt America's economy in a measurable way, the press would be all over it and Americans would retaliate.
And the press would be called piggy, and Americans would retaliate voting Republicans in four years to raise the debt a couple trillions more. America does not need Europe to hurt their economy, is doing a stellar job by themselves.
Any attempt to punish your European customers can be satisfying for a while, (yeah lets remove their Youtube), but then you will just lose those customers. So now you earn zero money showing adds to this people and lose access to their free work keeping your web interesting and alive. And somebody competing against you will inherit that big chunk of the market that you so graciously gave to them.
And the Streissand effect created would be the size of the Moon. Keeping a low international profile is the best strategy right now. Any association of your brand with Trump is the kiss of death.
Mutt here. It’s annoying how feckless the European pushback is. Half of these alternatives either run significant rails through America or are insignificantly small. Meanwhile, our ambassador to Greece is busy selling her sugar daddy’s natural gas to Albania and Bulgaria [1]. (Nobody is even pretending the folks buying her corruption will be prosecuted. Athens held up Russian sanctions to get one of their tycoons a carve-out.)
[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/at-davos-kimberly-guilfo...
When sensitive data was a topic even 15 years ago we built European only solutions because America and it's barely existing privacy laws were not to trust. (Built software for government, universities and other companies back then)
From my POV this has nothing to do with orange guy but it's an ongoing trend of benefiting from our customer and data protection laws.
It seems like a provincial mindset.
I think you're attributing Big Tech's bad behavior to politicians where you should be attributing politicians' bad behavior to Big Tech's lobbying.
You can also read the website. It lists reasons why people should move. No mention of Donald Trump.
That makes perfect sense. Half of Europeans vote right, just like Americans. There's no need for injecting super villains and otherism into the conversation.
But I don't blame any country for disassociating with the US. Not just because Trump is our president, but more so that we elected him, twice.
This is about privacy and annoying ads everywhere. Europeans hate Google for the same reasons we do. Is that so hard to believe?
People everywhere want the same things you do.
<insert "European right-wing is actually further left than America's left wing" comment here>
Those watching can see that the oligarchs, the economic platform, and the propaganda delivery system are in position to groom the selected voter base for the long term.
The opposition to this open corruption and mayhem (gerrymandering, voter bribery) is only leading nationally by ... 8 points.