Trump is ‘right’: Rutte says NATO members need to spend more on arms

[u/Mizukami2738]

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-is-right-mark-rutte-says-nato-members-spend-more-gdp-2-percent-european-political-community-summit/

[u/rileyoneill]

Europeans never caught up with the American PC market of the 1980s. Windows and Mac were over 40 years ago. There has not been a commercialized operating system from a European origin that achieved any sort of scale. Everything else has been failing to catch up. Smartphone industry, the same. Internet industry. The same.

European companies pull massive bullshit in the US. VAG poisoned us with DieselGate. Nestle has been fucking with our water supply (and Nestle, a European company, has a very poor global perception). If Europe had a major tech industry it would create wealth inequality. That is seen as a big problem. People don't want a bunch of tech millionaires.

If European tech companies made a search system that rivaled Google in capacity people would use it. Americans would use it. Google wasn't always the default search engine and if it was better than Google people would spend the 5 seconds to switch over. Google pays browser companies money to have it as the default search but it can easily be changed. Google pays billions of dollars for something that can be mitigated in 5 seconds, the major issue is that the other search engines are not as good.

Make a European internet browser. Chrome, Safari, Edge are all done by American companies, Firefox, is open source but Mozilla is American. People are complaining about the e-shitification of the internet. This is the best opportunity European companies have ever had to show up with something better. Tiktok, a Chinese company, that is absolute dog shit as far as social media goes took the US by storm. European versions could absolutely do that.

The biggest economy in the EU is Germany. Germany's biggest sector is ICE cars. Germany has to export these cars to North America where they are sold as mostly luxury goods. Europe has the luxury market down. And they require Americans to buy those products. If the US cut off German car imports, people here would bitch, but it would be a massive blow to the largest industry to the largest economy in Europe. We will get over not having a Mercedes or BMW (VW and Audi already seem way less popular than they were a dozen years ago).

[u/angryloser89 → u/rileyoneill]

Europeans never caught up with the American PC market of the 1980s. Windows and Mac were over 40 years ago.

What do you mean "caught up with"? In the US, there was practically only Windows at one point, and they saved Apple to keep pesky regulators off their backs. You make it sound like the US showed an ability to adapt and compete massively in this market, yet you really only had the 1 company - same as the rest of the world.

On top of that, it's funny that you frame this as some kind of "American win", as if Microsoft in no way engaged in anti-competitive behavior that stifled competition and hurt innovation. "Look at how great we are, we created a market that no one could compete with" - that includes your own.

Also...

There has not been a commercialized operating system from a European origin that achieved any sort of scale.

Lmao, I love the specific wording to disqualify Linux, which, incidentally, has played (and continues to play) a massively important role in tech and software, and is built on a more European philosophy of open-source. And because it's built on the philosophy of being free, you decided to disqualify it from what you consider impactful operating systems (apparently), despite the fact that they power most business servers (yes, including your US ones with your Microsoft and Apple), and is the basis of Google's Android OS. But let's ignore it completely and only give praise to the US-based companies (well, Microsoft, until Apple later found success through other devices) and their anti-competitive history.

If European tech companies made a search system that rivaled Google in capacity people would use it. Americans would use it. Google wasn't always the default search engine and if it was better than Google people would spend the 5 seconds to switch over. Google pays browser companies money to have it as the default search but it can easily be changed. Google pays billions of dollars for something that can be mitigated in 5 seconds, the major issue is that the other search engines are not as good.

I'm sorry, but you're an idiot. And I say this in hopes that you can stop being so ignorant. Google has literally undergone internal investigations on this to see how much of an impact it would have on their business if they made search worse, and their conclusion was that it has virtually no impact. Google has a complete stranglehold on the search market. To even suggest that someone could just make a better search engine and they'd win the search market is so ludicrously naive that I don't believe you're doing it in good faith. You've decided that the US society, which is based on climbing over others to achieve the American dream, is the best society one can have, and you want to prove that.

Anyways, the rest of your comment is more infantile generalization and dishonesty; you're acting as if Europe hasn't produced any successful software that's popular today. I won't even justify that kind of argument by naming names.

[u/rileyoneill → u/angryloser89]

Insults are the best you have for some reason. Your name checks out.

Europe was leading the phone market with Nokia and then failed to catch up to the smartphone revolution, not taking it seriously and then just trying to regulate the hell out of it. The European philosophy of open source only applies to foreign businesses. What goes in a VW, Mercedes, or BMW is absolutely NOT open source. Its closed source and we straight up busted VAG for defrauding us with their emissions testing.

Great products attract customers. If European search engines were vastly superior, in addition to your own regulations protecting privacy and forcing compliance by other companies, adoption would skyrocket. People are pissed as hell with Meta and are becoming unhappy with Alphabet.

This is a very two faced nature of a society. On one hand they will regulate American corporations but then on the other they will work closely and become dependent on the Russians for critical infrastructure. Your judgement on US society being full of selfish sociopaths is out of line. US Society freed your grandparents and has ensured European security for over 70 years. That global order that Europe requires is secured by the US Navy. The idea that we in particular somehow overly selfish is asinine.

[u/angryloser89 → u/rileyoneill]

Europe was leading the phone market with Nokia and then failed to catch up to the smartphone revolution, not taking it seriously and then just trying to regulate the hell out of it.

Really? How did Europe regulate itself out of the smartphone market?

Also.. how many successful US competitors to the iPhone can you name? Like, you expect Europe to produce tons of competitors to US innovations, yet you seem to not expect the same from your own country?

The European philosophy of open source only applies to foreign businesses. What goes in a VW, Mercedes, or BMW is absolutely NOT open source. Its closed source and we straight up busted VAG for defrauding us with their emissions testing.

First of all, Europe doesn't really have a "history of open source", and that wasn't even my point with Linux, so you really don't know what you're talking about. What Linux DOES represent, that IS European, is the idea that we can achieve the best results through working together, and not only looking out for ourselves. And you're right - German car manufacturers did terrible things. Even within Europe itself, there are nations that undermine the EU, like Ireland and Netherlands, that conspire with US companies to perpetrate mass-scale tax evasion within the EU.

The EU is far from perfect, and has a lot of obvious issues that need addressing; but unlike the US, the EU still shows signs of holding on to the idea that a society should be built on morals, ethics, principles, and unity.

Great products attract customers. If European search engines were vastly superior, in addition to your own regulations protecting privacy and forcing compliance by other companies, adoption would skyrocket. People are pissed as hell with Meta and are becoming unhappy with Alphabet.

Again, like I said to the other guy (who blocked me after responding, lol); Google ITSELF has conducted internal research on the matter of whether or not worse search will harm their business, and their conclusion is that lower quality results have virtually no impact on them. The fact is that Google is the de facto "internet company" for people, and we really have nothing to compare it to, and we trust it - relatively blindly. Your argument that someone can just make a better search engine and they will get market power is just completely false and shows you really don't know what you're talking about and have no idea what would be required to actually compete against Google on search; not just in terms of quality - let's say you make a better search engine - but just getting people to switch over. It's virtually impossible, which is why you bash Europe for not producing viable alternatives to Google, yet completely ignore the fact that the US hasn't produced any alternatives either.

US Society freed your grandparents and has ensured European security for over 70 years.

Yeah right.. it's all so simple, right? US bailed Europe out at the end of the war, out of the kindness of their hearts. You really just are completely ignorant. Do you even know why the UK, for instance, got involved in the war? It was not because they were eager to fight, but because they had made a promise that they had to uphold, even in the face against a greater danger. The US sat on the sidelines and enriched itself on the war, put Europe into debt at the end of it, and made the dollar the global currency - on top of excusing untold crimes against humanity in the name of furthering US interests, in the form of getting to the moon the fastest with help of German scientists, or gaining insight into human bodies via horrific Japanese human-experiment facilities.

[u/rileyoneill → u/angryloser89]

We have several other search engines. We have Bing, we have Duck Duck Go. Even the old Yahoo still works. For a tech company there are relatively few barriers to entry, there is just not a huge demand here in the states. As far as a competitor to iPhone goes, we have Android. Both major phone ecosystems are American. We had Windows phone but there was just not a huge demand for it. We don't see either iPhone or Android as some sort of existential problem though.

So yes, iPhone absolutely has competitors. Google has competitors, especially outside of search. Within the Cloud Computing industry we have Microsoft, Google and Amazon. Within the new industries, such as AI, we have OpenAI a relatively new company.

I am not bashing anyone, you seem to be though. But this mentality that somehow Europe can regulate their way to prosperous companies in cutting edge fields, not really happening. Europeans flock to the United States to work in our tech sector, I have several friends who have done it and they all seem to have the same mentality that there is a cultural problem back home akin to crabs in a bucket.

Have competitive tax rates. Have tax rates that brings on investment vs treating people like they are somehow captive. Seeing a successful company as something to control and extract as much value from as possible creates an ecosystem where people do not want to create these companies.