Go European: Discover European products and services

https://www.goeuropean.org/

by doener • 1 year ago

688 359 1 year ago

goeuropean.org

olivier-tille• 1 year ago

Similar project: https://european-alternatives.eu

hans_castorp5• 1 year ago

And: https://www.buy-european-made.eu/

Kkoala• 1 year ago

This is same as https://www.goeuropean.org/

Why did you change your name from Buy European Made to Go European?
We changed our name to better reflect our evolving mission and values. "Go European" encompasses a broader range of initiatives and activities that support European culture, tourism, and services, beyond just promoting European-made products.

ashenke• 1 year ago

This redirects to the submission link!

AntiqueFig2• 1 year ago

Also see this project for web services alternatives: https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/

mertbio2• 1 year ago

If you are advocating for European products, I would expect you to use Plausible or similar products instead of Google Analytics. This would allow you to avoid displaying the cookie banner.

robin_reala2• 1 year ago

Only if you’re not using cookies for anything else.

holowoodman2• 1 year ago

Wrong. Functionally necessary cookies like login or shopping cart cookies need no banners.

hans_castorp5• 1 year ago

There are other listings like that, e.g.:

https://european-alternatives.eu/category/web-analytics-serv...

risyachka2• 1 year ago

They are used for different things. If you are doing paid marketing or other more or less complex marketing Plausible doesn’t cut it.

mertbio2• 1 year ago

Could you be more specific? As far as I know, they have bunch of features like funnels, goals, revenue attributions etc.: https://plausible.io/docs/top-referrers

birjolaxew• 1 year ago

This would allow you to avoid displaying the cookie banner.

That isn't actually true (or at least is only allowed in the "it's a small enough violation of the law that the enforcers have bigger fish to fry" sense).

Cookie banners are required to gather informed consent, which is relevant for two EU legislations: the ePD, which requires it to access or store _any_ data from terminal equipment, and the GDPR which requires it for personally identifiable data. Most people only consider the latter, but the former is a much bigger hurdle to pass.

Despite Plausible's claim of not requiring cookie banners, their processing still accesses data from the terminal equipment. That was made very explicitly clear in a 2023 guideline from the EDPB[1].

The one saving grace for Plausible is that the ePD is a Directive, so the actual implementation into law differs by Member country. The claim might be true for some EU countries, but certainly isn't for all.

I've written a longer analysis of this in the context of Plausible for anyone interested[2] (although it might be worth skipping the first section, to get to the meat of the issue).

[1] https://www.edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/guid... [2] https://jfagerberg.me/blog/2022-06-09-analytics-cookie-compl...

rustc• 1 year ago

Despite Plausible's claim of not requiring cookie banners, their processing still accesses data from the terminal equipment.

Since Plausible is selling a product that clearly claims this, who is on the hook in case a user of Plausible gets a fine?

pembrook2• 1 year ago

I would like to turn this comment into a gold plaque and point to it any time an HN commenter repeats the “EU privacy regs and GDPR are actually super simple!” narrative.

As someone living in Europe who watches the EUs best and brightest mostly go to work in consulting firms because the only growth industry in the EU is “companies spending money on regulatory compliance,” it pains my soul.

zkid182• 1 year ago

folks mess "cookie banner" with "consent banner". many people do conflate them, but in some jurisdictions (e.g., the EU under GDPR), a "cookie banner" typically includes a consent mechanism.

if you're tracking users for analytics using cookies, fingerprinting, or any other method that identifies them (even probabilistically), you generally need explicit consent under GDPR and similar privacy laws. The key point is that it's not just about cookies; any persistent tracking requires consent.

shadowgovt3• 1 year ago

It was an interesting day when EU legislators made our Apache access logs questionably-legal.

dumbledoren8• 1 year ago

The key point is that it's not just about cookies; any persistent tracking requires consent.

The law mandates that you inform the user if you are setting any type of cookies. So its necessary to have a banner even if you don't need to get consent. You could inform the user in other ways, but cookie banners are easier.

musha68k• 1 year ago

Nice, and this doesn't even include non-EU offerings like Switzerland's Exoscale, Proton, etc.

sanxiyn3• 1 year ago

Proton seems to be there?

teamonkey• 1 year ago

It includes UK offerings (Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi, etc.)

Geenkaas• 1 year ago

This is such a shame, we should be looking to source and produce things globally and find better ways to improve the logistics and efficiency world-wide. Why would the EU take such a protective stance which only enforces isolation and increases cost?

Edit: Thanks for the responses, I am still looking for a signal that tells my post is sarcasm multiplied by cynicism.

franze2• 1 year ago

Because we do not want to support the Trump administration and the only way we can vote is with our wallets.

CER10TY2• 1 year ago

That doesn't really work as long as you have legislation like the CLOUD Act, which means EU-based businesses have to think twice about using any US providers, especially if they handle sensitive customer data and also since the DPF is on the way out.

junto• 1 year ago

Only because the US refuses to properly protect consumer privacy and seemingly can no longer be trusted at all. If Trump forces Microsoft to turn off Office 365 for example for the EU, or blocks AWS, GCP or Azure from doing business with the EU then European businesses are screwed. We’ve now realized these risks are potentially real and European countries are scrambling to look for alternatives (and realizing that they don’t really exist).

sanxiyn3• 1 year ago

Because US proved itself to be an unreliable partner.

oldpersonintx• 1 year ago

Because the US is asking Europe to defend itself eighty years after ww2

blackeyeblitzar3• 1 year ago

Apparently unreliable partner just means “not being taken advantage of”. If stopping a waste of American taxpayer money results in this reaction, it’s clear the countries looking to decouple were never really partners of the US.

probably_wrong• 1 year ago

If you want to go theoretical one would argue that this effort is precisely what you ask for: one link in the global chain has become inefficient and this page is the result of the system routing around it.

sergioisidoro• 1 year ago

Why? Because it's reacting to the current US trade policies.

The EU is realizing that one of their major trade partner, who they trusted with critically important goods and services, might pull the rug under their feet.

Not to mention that the EU in itself is already a huge achievement in terms of free trade agreements between EU countries.

shafyy2• 1 year ago

Yes, and ideally we would have no wars, either. But because of fucking psychos like Putin, Trump, Xi Jinping and many more, we do. Therefore, unfortunately, it makes sense for EU to decrease their economic dependence on outside players like the US and China.

bigfudge5• 1 year ago

I think it's important that we _do_ also include China in this. It's not just that Trump has demonstrated that the US is unreliable. We have also seen (again) that sociopaths in charge of authoritarian regimes can do things that are perfectly capable of acting against their own economic interests for political, cultural, religious reasons.

Depending on global interconnectedness of markets has not and will not save us. We need to divest and disconnect from all economies which are not reliable liberal democracies which broadly share our values.

I would include in this Hungary: We should be giving serious thought to how to kick them out of the EU.

rapsey• 1 year ago

This only makes sense in a simplified world of academic economics.

palata4• 1 year ago

Right now directories like this are getting popular mostly because they offer alternative to US products. Pretty sure Europeans would be happy to use a Canadian alternative to a US service.

bad_user• 1 year ago

As a European citizen, I'd say, indeed, I gladly consume Canadian products.

Furthermore, Canada should apply for EU or EEA membership.

briandear4• 1 year ago

But not alternatives to Chinese products? China’s human rights, environment, currency manipulation, tariffs, IP theft — some people seemingly unify as anti-Trump, but ignore China?

This tells me the resistance isn’t principled at all, but simply grandstanding.

apeescape• 1 year ago

Are you seriously asking why? If you've paid any attention to the news in the past few weeks, you couldn't have missed the daily efforts by Trump and his cabinet to isolate the USA from its allies. In the past, European countries have trusted that the common values shared by the Western countries will ensure mutual cooperation now and in the future. Now this thinking has proven naive, as Trump has threatened Europe with, e.g., shutting down technological services if it's in his interest to do so. It doesn't seem to matter whether Europe pays for these services or not. Therefore, it's paramount for Europe to not vendor-lock themselves in American companies, as they can't be trusted anymore. It's sad and shocking, but Europe has been backed into the corner with this one.

hans_castorp5• 1 year ago

Trump has threatened Europe with

He even threatened to invade a country that is part of the EU

squarefoot3• 1 year ago

It's to discourage the US from escalating the tariff war, which in the end always hurt consumers. People in the US are already paying that insane choice, but I don't hold my breath waiting for GOP voters to reconsider their choice: propaganda is a powerful weapon, and we're struggling against it also over here.

briandear4• 1 year ago

Did the EU not have tariffs before Trump? How about Canada? Or China? Or Mexico? Are tariffs ok as long as it isn’t Trump?

Hikikomori3• 1 year ago

Clown in charge has made the US an unreliable trading partner and ally.

Galatians4_167• 1 year ago

Try ending sarcasm with /s

dtquad• 1 year ago

Love it.

For digital products and services there is also European Alternatives: https://european-alternatives.eu/

As part of the European reorientation I avoid products and services from Hungary and Slovakia. I also avoid one specific Swedish company, Spotify, for promoting and funding the misinformation spewing American podcastbros who were partially responsible for the rise of Trump 2.0.

johmue• 1 year ago

Great, but please give me a link to the entry so I can go to it

AntiqueFig2• 1 year ago

Also see this project for web services alternatives: https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/

sanxiyn3• 1 year ago

Go Scaleway! I always wanted to root for it.

tuetuopay2• 1 year ago

And yet the website is hosted on AWS :')

Quite telling, this would be an ideal case for Scaleway/OVH/anyone else.

thinkindie• 1 year ago

i actually didn't realise Scaleway is a real European alternative to AWS/GCP/Azure. They seems to be covering the most common use case for AWS managed services.

vanrohan2• 1 year ago

Great to see a directory like this starting to include physical products. I'd be interested in having some extra datapoints to help with decision making:

- How much of the product/company's supply chain is in EU (to get an idea of just how European the product is, is it made here or abroad)

- Some way to show if the company is paying "fair" tax in EU (or are profits shifted abroad)

These are difficult datapoints to get, but I wonder if there can be some sort of "community notes" where this data can be crowd sourced and updated on the directory.

Lio2• 1 year ago

It might be worth noting that this is not specific to the EU, it's the whole of Europe. So for example it includes companies from Norway, Switerzland and the UK.

So asking how much tax is paid or how much supply chain is in the EU doesn't necissarily make sense here.

vanrohan2• 1 year ago

Im not particularly fussy if it's EU or European. The idea is more to get insight if it's just a dropshipper/reseller type of business, or involved in regional manufacturing.

freehorse• 1 year ago

Substitute EU with EU+norway/switzerland/UK/etc

The idea is whether the company has some loophole where the profits are registered in some offshore island in order to avoid taxes, as well as how big part of the product is actually made in europe as opposed as in X non-european country. I have seen a lot of products advertised as being products of the native country when they are actually rebranded chinese products or whatever (I have no issue with chinese products, but if the point is to know which products are european products this is important information).

kergonath9• 1 year ago

In this case, "in the EU" is a shorthand for "in the single market", "in the customs union", or "in the EEA (plus Switzerland)".

High-level discussions rarely go down to this level of detail, and from the point of view of the consumers it is not very relevant. What matters is coupling with the US or China, and the relevant regulations.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 1 year ago

albertgoeswoof4• 1 year ago

Thank you for including the UK, we are still part of Europe!

Added my company (https://mailpace.com) - I’m looking forward to a resurgence of innovation in European tech companies, the talent and education here is amazing, we just need to improve our investment and start treating tech with as much respect as we give to law, finance and other “prestigious” career paths here

Separo2• 1 year ago

Thank you for including the UK, we are still part of Europe!

Always.

hug

neuronic2• 1 year ago

Let's get Russian disinformation and influence out of Europe and heal the European relationships. Cannot wait to see Farage begging for food in the subway.

microtonal4• 1 year ago

I know that it's not in the cards (yet), but I hope the UK and the EU can be a single market again (even if the UK does not rejoin the EU). Let's make our market as large and attractive as possible! We love the UK and you are part of the European family :hugs:.

ChocolateGod• 1 year ago

Whilst a good idea, no politician is going to try and do it under the fear of reigniting the Brexit argument which ends up dominating politics in the country.

kergonath9• 1 year ago

Let's make our market as large and attractive as possible!

That would be the rational and sensible solution. This may be why it’s unlikely to happen. I would be happy to be wrong.

Keyframe• 1 year ago

Thank you for including the UK, we are still part of Europe!

We're all living in Only fools and horses anyways.

ethan_smith• 1 year ago

Totally agree! The UK will always be part of Europe culturally, no matter what political changes happen. Only Fools and Horses is such a classic - I think every European country has their own version of Del Boy trying to make it big with crazy schemes! Those cultural connections don't just disappear because of politics.

matt-p4• 1 year ago

I'd love to use this, but notice it's hosted in the EU, is there any way of ensuring we go through UK servers only?

albertgoeswoof4• 1 year ago

Our infra is split across France (our API, database, inbound servers etc.), Germany (backups) and UK (outbound SMTP servers).

Unfortunately we haven't seen enough demand in the UK to set up a UK only infra (nor are there any UK cloud providers that would work for us?)

noneeeed3• 1 year ago

Perfect timing. I've been working on a little side project which is getting close to actually being done. Being able to use at least one non-US company for it will be great.

noneeeed3• 1 year ago

Who do you host with btw? I'd love to avoid the big US SaaS providers if I can but would like something a level above a VPS, especially for database.

albertgoeswoof4• 1 year ago

Clever cloud for containers and database (French)

tuco86• 1 year ago

hetzner has been working great the last 10 years for me. they opened datacenters in the us too.

h1fra2• 1 year ago

I'm always sad that very successful European companies got fully incorporated in the US: datadog, algolia, dataiku, dashlane, etc.

Also it seems to be missing some techs company: pigment, aircall, contentsquare (but not sure if it's a mistake)

FirmwareBurner8• 1 year ago

America loves investing in risky ventures, and startups love money so they go to fish where the fish are.

If Europe would invest into local startups instead of propping up the real estate bubble, they wouldn't sell themselves to the US for money. Our downfall is by our own design here.

Governments don't create startups but they can 100% create the right legal, monetary and tax incentives to steer private capital and workers towards them, but as long as they are steered towards protecting the interests of gentrified land owners and those of 100-year-old companies, nothing will ever change and we'll just stare at how US and Chinese companies are overtaking us.

kbcool2• 1 year ago

Or America's advantage is by its own design.

Rich people can invest relatively small amounts in hundreds, if not thousands of startups through preferentially treated retirement funds and pay no (or little) tax on the ones that make it big.

This is what has made it so easy to secure funding in the US.

Should Europe do the same? There's definitely an ethical dilemma in making the rich, richer for the sake of innovation.

TrackerFF• 1 year ago

The difference between US and Europe:

- In Europe, getting funding is literally like pulling teeth. Just to get a measly hundred thousands of € in funding you're expected to provide a comprehensive business plan, financials, etc. that would rival M&A due diligence other places. In Silicon Valley you can get more funding by simply meeting the right angel investor, and providing a good pitch - done deal.

- In Europe, the end goal for many startups is to be acquired by some megacorp or market leader, for something like €10m-€50m. In the US you can multiply that number by 10 or 100, or in general have ambitions of developing the startup into a unicorn.

That was at least how things used to be. US has a long, long history of (risk willing) VC investments - while European countries have been lagging far behind.

Good VC cultures have developed in some European countries for the past 10-15 years, and startups have become more ambitious, but unfortunately there's still a culture of nickel and diming startups. And the places that rob you, will fund you maybe a month or two worth of capital.

EDIT: Should be said, that I'm also from Europe. And as someone else have pointed out in this thread, Europeans hate risk.

mrweasel4• 1 year ago

Isn't funding at that extreme level pretty much localized to a few areas in the US, like Silicon Valley/Bay Area, Portland/Seattle area, New York and maybe Colorado. It is probably easier than in the EU, but I don't think may start ups in Alabama are getting crazy funding.

As for getting acquired, that's the same in the US. Either you goal is total dominance on your own or getting acquired by Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle or Salesforce.

You do have a point, start ups doesn't have access to the same level of uncritical funding. The SV model also isn't ideal, but it should be possible to find somewhere in the middle.

jxjnskkzxxhx• 1 year ago

Good VC cultures

I say this as proud European: the problem isn't just VC culture, it's European culture. In Europe there's an extreme risk aversion to trying things that have nonzero risk of failing.

dumbledoren8• 1 year ago

- In Europe, getting funding is literally like pulling teeth.

Because Europe was not able to print unlimited Euros to flood its economy with free cash like how the US was able to do it thanks to the reserve currency status of the dollar. But no worries - now that dollar's monopoly is ending, the American investment landscape is also coming down back to Earth. US startups and companies wont be able to burn endless amounts of shareholder/investor money to out-compete and kill all competitors anymore. That should allow all regions in the world to be able to compete.

That was at least how things used to be. US has a long, long history of (risk willing) VC investments - while European countries have been lagging far behind Europeans hate risk

Right, that's because Europe did not have zirp-enabled free cash. You can dump millions on all kinds of ideas including dumb ones when you have free cash and still see 1% of them make it big even if 99% of them fail. But when you don't have free cash, you have to be careful.

So finding investment wasn't a problem or issue of the European culture or business landscape. The US being able to burn cash on even dumb ideas thanks to zirp made it appear like it was a problem.

h1fra2• 1 year ago

I'm sure Europe is less nice, but also it's hard to even try. e.g: when you get accepted into YC you immediately go to Delaware, and even if the whole company is still in europe, it's no longer an european one :/

deadbabe• 1 year ago

If they stayed in Europe they wouldn’t have been as successful.

drkrab• 1 year ago

Unfortunately that’s the case because large US-based companies can leverage their existing global sales / marketing / governance setup to rationalize very high exit valuations. In the EU we don’t have the large software shops that can do that. So for an EU based startup - it’s exit to a US-based company or go all the way to an IPO / profitability.

carlosjobim3• 1 year ago

Your comment illustrated the problem: Europeans are very content with making excuses for their failures so they can continue not making an effort.

Those Europeans who are not at home with that culture move to America. It's been like this for hundreds of years.

zppln3• 1 year ago

While I do find it an interesting exercise to reflect over my own choices of products and services and consider how I could divest myself from relying on ones provided by US companies (and I do agree Europe is too reliant on the US in some regards), it is a bit sad to see how quickly things are spiraling here. People really love to have a clear enemy...

Yeul• 1 year ago

If you walk into a European supermarket, fashion store or MediaMarkt there is very little coming from the US. The giant container ships are coming from the East not the West.

FirmwareBurner8• 1 year ago

The chips and software in a lot of those products are coming from the US, even if the final products are manufactured in the East.

The US makes the biggest margins from valuable IP and software services, not from mass produced widgets coming in shipping containers.

zppln3• 1 year ago

Sure. My microwave from 1988 is about the only thing made in the US in my home (interstingly an Electrolux). However, every purchase I make is with a Visa card. Most services I use are American. And as I'm typing this... anyone know a European alternative to SwiftKey? :P

ccppurcell• 1 year ago

I'd always rather, if possible, give my money to a company that pays their tax where I do. That's simple self interest.

Asraelite3• 1 year ago

Self interest is not something to be proud of.

tuetuopay2• 1 year ago

Well, it's not really to have a clear enemy. It's an effort to avoid having one.

The day the US drops the Cloud Act would be the death of all European CSPs. Until then, cloud offerings not subject to it will thrive, and the US will be seen as hostile.

And for all other subjects, it's a simple matter of not putting all of your eggs in the same basket. Having privileged trade partners is a good thing, but it becomes a bad one when it's a partner (singular). Today, the US has full power on Europe's tech landscape, which is concerning, even if it's a friend country.

Oh, and I say a "friend country", but given the latest announcements where the US Govt. clearly targets Europe and wants to sanction it (e.g. tariffs on French exports), the friend is turning around.

TL;DR today Europe does not see the US as an enemy. But it does everything for it to never happen, and this include reducing the dependency on the US.

dns_snek• 1 year ago

I don't think anyone loves this but it's the most rational response to the threats made by the US government against its former allies.

ramchip• 1 year ago

The US is threatening to take my home country by force and subjugate us. Maybe that context helps understand?

Al-Khwarizmi• 1 year ago

You don't need an enemy for this sort of campaign to make sense. It should be common sense to prefer local products, and even more so to avoid extreme dependencies like the one most of the West has on American tech companies.

In my view, we (Europe) have long been acting foolishly by passively sitting in the back seat and allowing the US to drive for us, thereby creating a radical dependency. This wouldn't be healthy even if the US were the most loyal ally. What Trump's antics are doing is trigger a return to what should have always been the norm.

throaway19897• 1 year ago

Trump isn't really giving anyone the choice with talking about annexing its allies. You seem to be blaming the victim here.

Separo2• 1 year ago

Switzerland and the UK will always be honorary Europeans.

{hug emoji}

Biganon• 1 year ago

Switzerland hugs back

jeroenhd11• 1 year ago

Switzerland and the UK may not be in the EU, but they're undeniably European!

0xTJ• 1 year ago

In Canada, there's a big push for buying Canadian given the Trump trade war, and especially avoiding products from the US. A kitchen store I went into over the weekend had little red maple leaf stamps on the price tags of Canadian products and the provincial liquor store in Ontario has pulled US products from shelves (though that's more of a marketing stunt by the populist Premier). Many Canadian-owned businesses have added logos at the top of their webpages (I noticed Canada Computers and Memory Express over the last few days, as I was browsing for graphics cards).

9rx9• 1 year ago

There is some push, but still quite a bit of reluctance to see free trade between provinces.

kharak• 1 year ago

Did similar movements had a measurable impact? Asking because I have the impression that boycott movements are ineffective, but I never verified that.

microtonal4• 1 year ago

Talk to Tesla and ask how they are doing in the EU and Canada :).

coffeebeqn2• 1 year ago

I suppose a big ticket item like a car is much easier to boycott than 50 small items from the grocery where trying to search through the ownership tree for every conglomerate would use up the rest of my sanity

hazzamanic• 1 year ago

I was recently in Malaysia and they've boycotted certain American brands over the Israel-Palestine war. For example, KFC has given up and was shutdown everywhere. So boycotts can work. Maccas seemed to be doing just fine though, take from that what you will

mentalgear4• 1 year ago

There's also a browser extension: https://codeberg.org/K-Robin/GoEuropean

(btw: codeberg is the European alternative to Github)

jeroenhd11• 1 year ago

Such a shame to see Gitlab go for gold in America rather than staying with its European basis. While Codeberg is absolutely fine in itself, I think Gitlab is a much better offering for many companies.

NalNezumi• 1 year ago

Today I learned that DeepL was German. It's hands down the best Japanese to English translator (according to my Japanese coworkers) and I was surprised how many used it in office. (never used it myself as a trilingual)

briandear4• 1 year ago

I like DeepL, but without Catalan, it has less value.

eliaskg• 1 year ago

Deepl is amazing as it is way faster in translating than LLMs

generalizations• 1 year ago

How does it compare to 4o? I used to use deepl but not since the later chatgpt versions came out.

nodar86• 1 year ago

what do you mean by chatgpt versions?

yurishimo2• 1 year ago

What I like about DeepL is that it tries to translate colloquially. For popular metaphors or sayings, Google does okay but it’s not perfect, especially if you don’t provide the entire sentence as context. DeepL does better with recognizing fragments imo.

amai• 1 year ago

https://www.deepl.com/write is also better in improving the style of your texts than chatGPT and other genAIs

dartharva• 1 year ago

Toting Adidas, Puma, Jack & Jones, Decathlon etc. as "European-meade" is laughable when everyone knows their clothes are actually manufactured in third-world low-labor-protection countries.

Heck, I can make a safe bet that the vast majority of the companies listed here sell items at least partially made outside of Europe.

FeepingCreature• 1 year ago

Tbf that goes for American-made too. The goal of this isn't to fix the supply chain, it's to reduce dependency on the USA.

alaeddine-13• 1 year ago

I think the most critical missing piece is GPUs right now. As AI becomes more and more crucial, GPU/AI hardware design and manufacturing will become a matter of sovereignty and unfortunately, can't find any EU alternative

coffeebeqn2• 1 year ago

If we want to get really protectionist, ASML could stop selling outside of the EU. That would be kind of bad for everyone though

perihelions• 1 year ago

- "We are a group of individuals from across Europe who connected via the subreddit r/BuyfromEU."

Then, why do you promote a list of European Reddit "alternatives" such as "Lemmy", you say people are supposed to use instead?

This is the laziest form of internet activism there is: lecture people what you believe they're supposed to be doing in ways you don't yourself do, and can't be inconvenienced to try.

(Bonus points for building this boycott website on top of Amazon Cloudfront, Cloudflare, and Google Analytics).

Hikikomori3• 1 year ago

They can be on both? Lots of users on reddit to reach.

kergonath9• 1 year ago

Nobody seriously claims that Europe should be self-sufficient in everything and isolated from the rest of the world. It’s ok to simultaneously 1) try to make things better, and 2) still talk to Americans or use American products (same for China). Discussing alternatives does not imply burning bridges.

I am just going to leave this here: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

ekianjo• 1 year ago

there's absolutely no European alternative to Amazon. Thanks for clearing that up.

yread• 1 year ago

Why do you need one company from which you buy everything? Go to idealo.de/es/fr... find what you need, compare prices and buy it from the cheapest supplier

dismalpedigree• 1 year ago

No top level domain alternatives? Org, com, net, gov, mil are US TLDs.

jeroenhd11• 1 year ago

There are plenty of national TLDs, but internationally the English language ones are more common.

gov and mil aren't available to non-American institutions anyway, and .edu locked down to American-only around 2001.

Perhaps this website could've gone with .eu, but this movement is larger than just the EU. I don't think TLDs matter much at the moment, at least not until America's trade war starts affecting TLDs as well.

paganel• 1 year ago

Is there any European alternative for Hacker News? And if yes, what's its URL/web address?

Preferable in French or Italian, or maybe even German, which I wanted to learn for a long time and this would be a good enough motivation, because, and with all due respect to the Irish, having a continent-wide conversation in a language natively spoken by only ~5 million of its own people is not very conductive to the forming of an European spirit.

jgilias2• 1 year ago

Please no. It's good that tech conversations are global. I wish there were more Chinese and Russians on here, not less. And this comes from someone who's very critical of the current US admin, and lives in the Baltics.

Also, please no regarding the language. Coming from a small country, it's great that we have a lingua-franca that we can use to communicate effectively. Doubling-down on going native when it comes to our respective languages won't help the single market, or European integration in general.

EDIT: Won't help our militaries either if and when they'll need to coordinate.

cpach• 1 year ago

I have lots of tech conversations in my native tongue. But they don’t happen on webforums, they happen in (semi-private) chat rooms.

Toutouxc• 1 year ago

having a continent-wide conversation in a language natively spoken by only ~5 million of its own people

Did something happen to the UK?

fads_go3• 1 year ago

Brexit

jeroenhd11• 1 year ago

Splitting Europe by language again will only be a disadvantage. Depending on where you live in Europe, the lingua franca is either English or Russian, with maybe a bit of German and French in border regions.

I don't see the value add of an international forum with local languages. There's a great Dutch tech forum already (tweakers.net) visited almost exclusively by Dutch and Flemish people. Great for locals, but entirely impossible to join in on as a foreigner.

Also, you may be confusing Europe with the EU. The UK has almost 70 million people speaking English every day.

batrat• 1 year ago

(Rant sorry)

While i'm from EU and I support the movement, after I looked over some numbers it is hard to ditch something like Amazon. 1st thing for me are the prices and monthly I can save at least 100 Euros just from shopping on deals. Second Amazon employs 150k people across EU and this is not a low number (how about them?).

Yes we need alternatives but the rich EU guys also have to invest some. Sometimes I feel that average Joe needs to support the "movement" while rich just mid their own business.

Same goes also with local producers: "support local farmers!". ME: "but the price difference is almost double form Kaufland/Lidl/Carrefour/etc for the same thing!" Sorry, I'm not in a position to just spend more just because...

guerrilla• 1 year ago

Your arguments ignore externalities. You aren't saving 100 EUR. You pay for it in many other ways. There's no such thing as free lunch, as the saying goes. They're just hijacking your short-term thinking.

onli• 1 year ago

He isn't saving 100€ at all if Amazon's prices are higher than the competition, which is almost always true for every product I ever checked during the last five years, at least.

kbcool2• 1 year ago

We must be buying different things if you think Amazon is cheap in the EU.

I find almost everything can be had cheaper elsewhere these days, except the Chinese junk like you find on Temu, the enshitification has well and truly sunk in.

I always paste products I find right back into Google and more often than not find them cheaper elsewhere

wiether• 1 year ago

I guess people just buy different stuff and have different experiences then.

The last physical thing I bought on Amazon was a Brita glass carafe.

44.99€

The cheapest I can find elsewhere is 49.9O€ with 4.99€ of shipping. Otherwise it's mostly 54.99€ and it's even 59.90€ on Brita's own store.

The other physical stuff in my order history of the last three months are orders made for relatives because they found that it was cheaper on Amazon and wanted to take advantage of my Premium subscription.

So, as always, YMMV.

Tepix• 1 year ago

If you can't afford it, don't. But perhaps you will find alternatives for some of your purchases.

chillingeffect• 1 year ago

Similar here. It doesnt have to be all or nothing. Im in the u.s. and have a cool local co-op. So i buy most commodities at the cheapest grocery store and then some fancy stuff at the co-op to help them stay afloat and support local farmers. It's probably enough if everyone spends to their ability and maybe pushes themselves a little too.

In the summer we also have farners markets and thise are about the same price as the cheapest stores so i switch to them for fruits and veggies.

mrweasel4• 1 year ago

Amazon is probably the easiest for me to ditch. It's not really that much cheaper, and when you include shipping it's certainly not cheaper. Shipping times are horrible, search is broken, half of everything is a scam and again, it's not that much cheaper, if at at all.

I can see that being very dependent on what you're buying though.

Galatians4_167• 1 year ago

Add to that how amazon boxes stand out, and are easily targeted by porch thieves.

stevenwoo• 1 year ago

The inventory commingling thing was the thing that made me stop using Amazon, one could never, ever be sure something was legitimate or counterfeit, until it was in one's possession and this made it never feel like it had in the early days.

rafaelmn5• 1 year ago

Thats what every "support local" campaign boils down to - accept suboptimal deals because they are somehow more connected to you. I am glad to sell my services to the US and will buy their services, likewise for EU stuff if it is competitive.

Besides this outrage at the US from EU perspective is mind-boggling, for the first time since I can remember US is moving away from imperialist global polices, and Europe is in a position where they can become an independent global actor after WW2. Sure Trump administration isn't making the process pleasant but Europeans should be happy about these changes. And the tariff situation is nothing the EU has not been doing for decades, Trump did escalate it suddenly, but it is not like EU is not imposing massive tariffs to protect its industry, even at the expense of EU members that have no significant stakes in this industry.

piva002• 1 year ago

Besides this outrage at the US from EU perspective is mind-boggling, for the first time since I can remember US is moving away from imperialist global polices, and Europe is in a position where they can become an independent global actor after WW2. Sure Trump administration isn't making the process pleasant but Europeans should be happy about these changes.

It's not mind-boggling when the US is threatening to take over territories from EU member-states. That's the mind-boggling part: that it is acceptable and normal to the point where it's not even part of the discourse anymore, it's completely normal to have a US president stating a desire to annex Greenland.

Surely Overton's window can't have shifted that much that fast.

On the other hand I do agree on the imperial ambitions part with you, having the USA pull out from being an imperialistic power is definitely something I cheer on, just upsetting they can never seem to do anything with grace and subtlety, have to live up to the stereotypes I guess.

Trasmatta2• 1 year ago

Besides this outrage at the US from EU perspective is mind-boggling, for the first time since I can remember US is moving away from imperialist global polices

What's mind boggling is saying that the US is becoming LESS imperialist, when Trump has threatened to annex both Canada and Greenland, and come out in favor of the most imperialist country in Europe.

shadowgovt3• 1 year ago

And for some things (and most tech things), "support local" isn't an option.

How do I "support local" when purchasing a micro-format PC for running a Cloud node? There's no chip-fab in town. The parts are sourced to two or three different countries.

fads_go3• 1 year ago

Hard disagree. For me, "support local" means paying a little more for goods that are 10x better instead of commoditized crap fully optimized for enshitification.

throaway19897• 1 year ago

They aren't suboptimal where I am. US products are cheaper, but they are routinely less healthy, more addictive, and poorer quality than the alternatives.

Its fine if you can't afford it or don't want to pay the difference, but by and large they are not suboptimal, at all.

jajko• 1 year ago

In Switzerland amazon never bothered to enter the market, so local competition filled the gap, and it created much better service while doing it.

I speak specifically about galaxus/digitec which often have more and more available stock than actual amazon in EU, any category has 1000s of items, much better organized and findable. Plus it has many great features not seen or usable elsewhere - directly showing evolution of price across the time, reviews which are absolutely not gamed due to tiny market, so I can rely on them very well (while on amazon its tricky at best). You can easily buy used versions of same item at fraction of the price, its showed at top of each product page.

Their guarantee handling is stellar. And for stuff in stock its next day delivery.

carlosjobim3• 1 year ago

Why don't they compete outside of Switzerland?

piva002• 1 year ago

Using price comparison services here in Sweden I almost never see a better deal on Amazon, at best they have the exact same price as the cheapest deal, seems to be their MO here to check the pricing data from competitors and set their prices exactly the same as the cheapest on offer at the time.

neuronic2• 1 year ago

I have stopped using Amazon all together >1 year ago. Prime Video is as shitty as it gets and most stuff ordered on Amazon is Chinese shovelware in the same rankings as Temu. I give exactly zero shit about same day delivery in 99,99% of the cases.

Amazon shines in customer support though.

Search & categorization is entirely broken, the webshop experience is absolutely abysmal. Just order from better online stores. In Germany, I found these (surprisingly ok):

- Kaufland --> https://www.kaufland.de

- Galaxus Deutschland --> https://www.galaxus.de

- Lidl --> https://www.lidl.de (Schwarz IT is building a European Cloud btw!)

- ShopApotheke --> https://www.shop-apotheke.com/

- Home24 --> https://www.home24.de/

Then, buying specialized stuff on the actual website is often a decent experience. Just price hunt on sites like Idealo (attention though, Axel Springer!) and proceed to the specific stores from there.

https://www.idealo.de/ --> https://www.shop-apotheke.com/

I explicitly avoided mentioning Otto as alternative to Amazon although it is technically the closest. While their shop is ok, prices and customer experience are horrifyingly bad (especially returns and delivery). For an unbiased view:

https://www.otto.de/

fads_go3• 1 year ago

"support local farmers!". ME: "but the price difference is almost double form Kaufland/Lidl/Carrefour/etc for the same thing!"

But it isn't the same thing. Locally grown food tends to taste much better and have higher nutritional value.

Plus, something I didn't expect when I started buying most of my food from my local farmer's market-- these farmers are like friends. Every meal I sit down to eat, I have a direct connection to it's source. Of course I go to "grocery stores" for staples, and it always feels so weird, empty, fake.

throaway19897• 1 year ago

Non-US companies ALSO employ non-US workers

mbs159• 1 year ago

In my country in the EU we don't have Amazon, but there does not seem to be a need for it since almost every small and big goods seller has a e-store. The rest we buy from foreign stores with a slight increase in delivery cost.

schnitzelstoat3• 1 year ago

Economic nationalism is bad when Trump does it and bad when Europe does it too.

We should have unilateral free trade. Ricardo showed this was better over 200 years ago.

torlok• 1 year ago

Europe is not a nation, and the boycott is against a single country acting like an adversary. Europeans aren't boycotting Xiaomi or Huawei.

schnitzelstoat3• 1 year ago

There are EU-wide tariffs though. Like those against Chinese EVs: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

fcatalan• 1 year ago

I think some Game Theory 101 might be relevant here. Yes it's good to cooperate initially but after that, tit for tat is the thing to do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

jeroenhd11• 1 year ago

It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. We'd all be better off if nobody started any trade wars, but the moment one party starts becoming hostile, everyone else must respond in kind or they'll be taken advantage of.

I hoped Americans had stopped being stupid and elected better leaders, but Trump's re-election shows that America and its people do not care about being reliable business partners. Ridding ourselves of American dependence will take decades, but with at least four more years of this bullshit ahead of us, we'd better get started soon.

schnitzelstoat3• 1 year ago

But Ricardo determined the opposite. That unilateral free trade is better even in the face of tariffs. In the end, it's their own consumers that pay the tariffs.

If Trump wants to make Americans poorer then so be it, but we shouldn't follow suit.

dumbledoren8• 1 year ago

Economic nationalism is bad when Trump does it and bad when Europe does it too.

Now, now. Because Trump is 'hOrRiBLe' for putting an honest face on fascism and imperialism that always existed in the US and its vassals, we have to have outrage and do the very things we criticize him for doing.

nonrandomstring2• 1 year ago

Breakups are painful. A great battle is afoot on the "data sovereignty" ground, for sure.

It's over a year since I spoke at Cloud Native Media [0] on the urgent need to extricate sensitive processes and data from US American companies.

At the time there were a few angry reactions - mainly from people accepting the risks for the first time and acknowledging how deeply enmeshed/dependent their operations are. Most of the assembled creators, CEOs, journalists, fully understood and were enthusiastic about relocating away from US BigTech.

It's March 2025 and the US has gone full-fascism. AFAICS, all of US BigTech (bar some tepid resistance from Apple) has fully aligned with an agenda that is unconscionable to liberal democracy.

Yet we still have problems like UK government departments that are running on Microsoft Teams or casually using Google docs in ways that seem wholly inappropriate to security and safety of data and users.

Where I'm working on sensitive projects I find myself repeatedly having to point out that we urgently need independent end-to-end encrypted video chat and collaboration tools.

For email I've started removing some @gmail recipients in CC where they are not strictly NTK.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cloud-native-talk/

dumbledoren8• 1 year ago

It's March 2025 and the US has gone full-fascism.

It's amazing to see people say things like this as if the US was any different before. Trump just put an honest face on fascism and imperialism. Before, they were exercised in a 'polite', polished manner. Even by Obama who stomped down the Occupy Wall Street.

krapp• 1 year ago

Yes, it was different before. The status quo may have been fascistic and certainly imperialist but still would have been far more preferable to what's coming.

nonrandomstring2• 1 year ago

It's amazing to be the one saying it! I'm generally reflective and reluctant to take up slogans. But once the jackboots started proudly and openly signalling it on the world stage, it got a bit difficult to keep pretending otherwise. God knows we all tried. For at least 10 years anyone who spoke of what they saw coming was attacked, banned, piled-on and ridiculed.... all those "Good People" (many of them here) did the fascists work for them. It's understandable. Nobody wants to feel uncomfortable, right? But now is the time for more self-honesty.

tdrz4• 1 year ago

I'm looking for a European alternative to Visa/Mastercard that works across countries, not just in one country. I know there's this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative but I believe it's not operational atm.

jycr753• 1 year ago

cash.

tdrz4• 1 year ago

I'd prefer a card with a European payment processor logo on it. An app might do as well...

jgilias2• 1 year ago

Technology-wise this is a solved problem. Uses open-source software too. All the EU needs to do is say 'self-custody is fine, please use a EUR-based stable coin for payments EU-wide'. The market will do the rest (the stable-coin, payment terminals, integrations with cash registers, DeFi forex for places where EUR is not used, etc.).

lifty• 1 year ago

I hope there will be more adoption of EU stable coins like https://monerium.com, and a payments ecosystem will form around it. The rails are there, we need the apps and the integrations next.

jeroenhd11• 1 year ago

I don't think there's such a thing yet for payment terminals. Local alternatives all seem to have died off because banks in other countries didn't support them.

I hope the new attempt you linked will make a difference. This time, international support seems to be at the basis of the system. Widespread integration of a unified form of iDeal/Bancontact/Payconiq could easily replace the need for American style credit card forms across Europe.

BlackFly3• 1 year ago

The European alternative was sold to--sorry, merged into--Mastercard and rebranded to Maestro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europay_International. It was the E in EMV. So friendly were European and American relations in the past that it was allowed to happen.

tremon2• 1 year ago

Yes, and the only current alternative to Mastercard's Maestro is Visa's V-Pay :/

squarefoot3• 1 year ago

Missing olimex.com, a Bulgarian manufacturer and seller of SBC and microcontroller boards, including industrial grade LTS ones.

Not a shill, just a happy customer.

tdrz4• 1 year ago

+1 for olimex. They really stayed true to their vision, not looking to go big or go bust, just doing cool, quality things.

reaperducer• 1 year ago

I think this is useful more than just actual Europeans.

I'm an American, and my wife and I have been looking at "Made in…" labels on our products for decades. Not as a geopolitical protest; just as routine intellectual curiosity.

Over the last five years or so, we've noticed a significant shift in the locations listed on the things we buy. A lot of what we buy used to read "Made in China" (and before that shift, "Made in Mexico") but these days more and more of it is from Europe.

Sometimes it's the vague "Made in the EU," which I assume means Turkey or Romania or some other less-fashionable quarter. But increasingly, it's France and Switzerland, and the U.K.

(My personal, completely unscientific guess is that the next shift in manufacturing will be to Africa. Lots of cheap labor close to raw materials and access to both hemispheres by sea.)

tacker2000• 1 year ago

Turkey is not part of the EU.

Galatians4_167• 1 year ago

They should be.

dumbledoren8• 1 year ago

It has a customs union.

pbiggar• 1 year ago

A similar product is Boycat - https://boycat.io. AFAIK they are adding a campaign focused on the US since the US started adding tarifs everywhere. Would love to see them adding something for the EU side of things.

bauerd• 1 year ago

Please add mlbile apps that scan product barcodes and display the origin country. I think EAN-13 barcodes make this easy already

ReptileMan• 1 year ago

The problem with buying European is that shipping between countries is nightmarishly expensive.

If Brussels wants to try something useful - instead of bottle caps create a proper shipping network that can ship from Malaga to Vilinus in 2 days for 0.5 euro per KG. It is not that we don't have national postal companies. It is absurd to buy something for 15 euro in italy and pay 30 euro shipping to romania.

tdrz4• 1 year ago

I understand that for you cheaper shipping options are important, but other people might find other things important. The EU has the capability to address multiple issues at a moment, so it should not be "instead of doing <my favorite thing to make fun of>". btw, shipping to Romania is expensive because infrastructure is still quite bad and the reliability of the national post is quite low. PS: Bottle caps that stay attached to the bottles is great!

jeroenhd11• 1 year ago

International freight shipping is incredibly cheap per kilogram (1 TEU/20ft shipping container costs about 6000 euros to ship, with a max eeight of about 28900kg, so about 20 cents per kg), at least by sea and rivers. Many of the costs come from the moment products arrive on land. Land-locked countries and countries with major population centers far away from docks and freight terminals pay the price.

Shipping individual packages within a short amount of time costs money. The solution is to do what companies like Amazon and AliExpress do: stock up products in many different companies in bulk so that packages can be dispatched locally for much cheaper.

Many of the shipping routes between countries go by plane rather than by boat, filling up unused weight in passenger planes or being shipped in bulk by passenger planes. Planes are a lot more expensive, especially by weight, but you'll get your products within days rather than weeks.

If you're a business importing goods in bulk, you'll have to deal with weeks or even months of delays between ordering and delivery, but international cargo delivery per product is essentially free unless you ship things like cars.

Things will become cheaper as warehouses are spread wider and transport legs get optimized more. Currently, there aren't many companies shipping from Italy to Romania, so there aren't many boats or trains making the journey, and shipping is expensive. When demand grows, more availability will follow, and prices will drop eventually.

R0ger• 1 year ago

great to see list include software products as well

fnordahl• 1 year ago

Personally I find myself reevaluating the choices I made for my personal data at the beginning of the cloud era.

Back then, one of the arguments I convinced myself with was that the cloud behemoths had so much to lose on integrity breach that it would just not happen.

It didn’t even occur to me at the time that my data being held hostage in some geopolitical gameplay should be part of the risk assessment.

I'm seriously considering self-hosting as an alternative, in combination with regional cloud services.

Maybe we have an Internet renaissance on our hands, taking it back to its decentralized nature?

zkid182• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, data on Cypriot companies is quite limited. There are far more products built on the island than what is officially listed. Speaking as a founder of a CY-based company, SpatialChat

DaveMcMartin• 1 year ago

It’s genuinely sad to see the world splintering into waves of nationalistic protectionism.

Not long ago, we had something promising, a slow but steady crawl toward a united global community. Progress was gradual, sure, but it was real. Countries could specialize and trade freely: I’d buy your chips, you’d buy my steel, and we’d both come out ahead. It worked.

Now, though, it’s all about "national sovereignty" and "independence" as if going it alone could ever match the strength of interdependence.

The trust we built feels shattered and TBH it’s hard to imagine it being rebuilt anytime soon, if ever.

Pet_Ant2• 1 year ago

The problem was that the people that benefitted most from free trade never do the work to ensure that a fair share of the profits went to the working class who were now being displaced. If you can no longer get lifelong middleclass job with a high school diploma, but you need a degree, then the degree should be paid for by the state... or you see what you see, a race to the bottom and then a backlash.

ty68539• 1 year ago

There are plenty of worker owned businesses. If this leads to more worker prosperity then the free market should push workers into them and to form them. They are free to do so, so what gives?

MichaelZuo2• 1 year ago

This seems circular, since there are no credible authorities to decide what is “a fair share” or not, other than the political process in the first place.

(And then only in the ideal perfectly spherical cow world where single issue voters don’t exist…)

pjc506• 1 year ago

The greatest number of people benefiting from free trade in this instance have been Chinese. Within America, the beneficiaries seem to have been farmers - China is a major US export market as well as an import market, people keep forgetting these things have two sides.

citrin_ru• 1 year ago

Tariffs unlikely would benefit working class either. Benefits likely will be captured mostly by business owners (in protected by tariffs sectors) while everyone will get higher prices (which will hit peoples with low income the most). Manufacturing is more automated nowadays (than it was in the post WW2 era) so it will bring a small number of jobs (copare to the US population) and many of them will require a degree (or certfication).

Hikikomori3• 1 year ago

Globalism or imperialism 2.0 perpetrated by America? I'd like to see that kind of utopia, but unclear how we can overcome greed, corruption and bad actors.

whatever13• 1 year ago

Turns out capital without borders ruins prices for scarce things (like housing) everywhere.

mentalgear4• 1 year ago

Housing is a fundamental human right.

Corporations should not be allowed to buy or hold large amounts of residential property or zoned housing land. They create artificial scarcity by holding it back, driving up prices purely for profit.

A less direct but still effective approach is to restrict residential property purchases to citizens. This helps prevent international hedge funds and (sovereign) wealth-funds from monopolizing the housing market.

Some of the most affordable housing markets in the world, such as Austria, implement these policies—alongside strong state-led housing initiatives.

torpfactory• 1 year ago

I’d argue most of the cost of scare housing is supply limits imposed by ridiculous over regulation of new construction. It’s not like we forgot how to build houses and apartments we just aren’t allowed to.

diego_moita2• 1 year ago

Depends on the perspective.

A "Rules-based world order" has been the rationale of the West for decades: WTO, U.N., free trade, democracy, countries' sovereignty, etc. But this "global community" was lipstick on a pig. From a 3rd World perspective that was just hypocrisy.

The "rules" were always chosen by the rich countries: free trade but keep farm protectionism against 3rd world's cheap produce, sovereignty but not for Palestinians, democracy but not if Chile, Iran or most of Africa or Latin America choose to have socialist leaders (Allende, Mossadegh, etc), ...

And now that even the rules are not advantageous to the rich anymore (e.g.:China's and Mexico's manufacturing, India's and South America's farming) the rich countries are scrapping the rules.

eCa2• 1 year ago

European here.

To be frank, it’s more about the rest of the ”west” updating our list of friendly countries. It is the US that has chosen to take an ever more adversarial position lately, pretty much worsening daily.

The trust among the rest of the west feels like it instead is strengthening. I interpret both ”buy European” and ”buy Canadian” as more of ”don’t buy from USA” with a thin layer of politeness.

1over1374• 1 year ago

There is no such veneer of politeness in Canada. The sentiment is more 'boycott USA'.

ty68539• 1 year ago

It's crushing Hong Kong was handed over, as they had about the free-est import/export burdens and regulations in the world. Everyone everywhere wants to kill the golden goose and it's mind boggling that the only people that seem to understand this right now is a few emirates and Singaporean quasi-dictators.

Hoppe might have been right about democracy.

9rx9• 1 year ago

Countries could specialize and trade freely: I’d buy your chips, you’d buy my steel, and we’d both come out ahead. It worked.

It worked until emotions entered the picture. "I don't like making chips. I prefer producing steel. Why do you get to have all the fun?" they've said for decades and with increasing furor.

If you could move freely about the world without any restrictions so that those who enjoy steelmaking could easily move to where the steel is made maybe it would have had a better chance, but even then people generally prioritize location (to be close to family, friends, certain amenities, etc.) above all else so it is likely they would still seek a varied local economy despite the benefits of a global economy.

robertlagrant• 1 year ago

"I don't like making chips. I prefer producing steel. Why do you get to have all the fun?" they've said for decades and with increasing furor.

Who says this? TSMC?

zwnow2• 1 year ago

Nah protectionism is really important. Globalization introduces dependencies and therefor allows countries to easily exploit others. Globalization is not as good as you describe it.

ruszki• 1 year ago

Does dependency make wars less probable? Genuine question. Logically it should, but I don’t know the numbers.

dr_kretyn• 1 year ago

Maybe. But, isn't the EU a large collection of countries? Meaning that it isn't about updating the free trade of the West; it's about rejecting the US which turned into a not-a-friend seemingly overnight. As a Canadian and a European, I'm going outside my way to not buy from the US. I used to boycott Nestle but if Canadian Superstore has only Nescafe or something from the US, I'm going for Nestle.

mlrtime5• 1 year ago

Except that friend has been paying to defend off bullies it's entire life with little reciprocity. And when they do, all those friends give them a hard time. The US can't win here, they either meddle too much or "not-a-friend". Meanwhile the US has maxed out it's credit cards and risks paying for it's own bills. Pick one.

Havoc• 1 year ago

It’s genuinely sad to see the world splintering into waves of nationalistic protectionism.

And baffling that the country leading the charge on the splintering is the one with most to gain/lose.

Feels like selfharm on scale of brexit

wodenokoto• 1 year ago

"Not long ago, we had something promising, a slow but steady crawl toward a united global community."

How long ago was not long ago in your eyes?

I'd say, the promise of international trade and globalization uniting the world fell apart some time in the 2000 or 2010s with China showing they would not open up to ideas of human rights and personal freedom. The sales pitch for investing in China (from a political point of view) was that we could trade the communism and fascism out of them.

Then in Russia showed that we couldn't trade our way to peace. The idea was that cheap gas from Russia would make Europe and Russia dependent on either side of the deal, and we wouldn't disturb world peace and break the trade. That didn't go well.

And now America wants to but limit trade with their biggest trade partners and closest allies, in the hopes that it'll bring them manufacturing prowess.

My economics professor in 2005, said the world was more globalized in the wake of WWI. I don't know if that was true, but at least they didn't have passports back then.

mogall2• 1 year ago

Yeah this isn't what people make it out to be.

I already pointed it out in another thread about this exact website: Go and search for "keyboard", what's the first search result? Logitech, a company that makes their products almost exclusively in china. There's nothing european about this.

"Yeah but it's a european company so!" yeah i don't care. It's not an european product. It's a chinese product. I don't care if the CEO lives in europe or it has a German flag on the cover or whatever - if the product is made in china, it's not an european product.

Also this is like the 5th time i see this here, which makes me wonder if this is some sort of organic-looking promotional campaign.

diego_moita2• 1 year ago

These days, from a Canadian perspective, non-US is already good enough.

Yeah, China sucks. But the US sucks even more.

1over1374• 1 year ago

There's nothing european about this. / "Yeah but it's a european company so!"

You are contradicting yourself. There is something European about it.

Anyway, as long as it's not from the USA, it's a win.

mogall2• 1 year ago

I don't care. It's a chinese product, i refuse to take anyone who says otherwise seriously. European products are made in europe, not china.

agumonkey• 1 year ago

Has there been efforts to create migration plans / tutorials for most of non EU tools ? so that a lot of teams can get off the US train wreck.

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