The EU council can publish whatever press release they want - that's not gonna make a slightest dent in the business-hostile environment. Maybe it's perfectly clear for von der Leyen why the EU needs engineers and scientists but these sweet old ladies in the local job center will make sure your application shall never pass. And between those two entities (EU council and your local city council) guess who has the real power over your success?
A successful environment for business forms only when the most local government gives it a go. For example, Poland is quite welcoming and it shows[1].
I would absolutely love for the EU to wake up but in order for that to happen, something needs to change deeply in the governing structure.
Also in the general culture. People I feel are too comfortable. The amount of times I've heard the phrase, "But we don't need to shoot for those stars, I'm okay if we do this small thing that makes us comfortable."
They are still plenty of ambitious people in the EU and new folks are growing up. Problem is, path to success in the EU is ridden with endless fights with the bureaucracy even for the simplest things.
Re: general culture: there are much more social protections in the EU (paid vacations, maternity leave, etc) which are truly good and nice but no tech startup is actually practically possible while conforming to these laws.
Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup? I'm guessing this was just an example but a weird one nonetheless.
I always thought the biggest hurdle to overcome here in the EU is despite advancements with the schengen zone is branching out to other countries for business and talent is still much more difficult than a Bay Area company wanting to expand to Texas for example.
> Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup?
No.
> biggest hurdle to overcome here in the EU is despite advancements with the schengen zone is branching out to other countries for business
For business you'll need to address differences in language and culture that are much, much deeper than the ones between the Bay Area and Itasca, TX (which claims to be the most conservative city of the state). Local legislation tends to be less of a problem here than the US though. YMMV.
> and talent
This one is less challenging. The company I work for has a 50/50 balance between "born Irish" and "new Irish" (such as me). Being remote-first is a huge helper.
> Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup? I'm guessing this was just an example but a weird one nonetheless.
Almost none of these rules by itself is insurmountable[1]. But it all adds up friction in the workforce dynamic which might end up halting the company. And afterwards you will be unable to bankrupt the dead company specifically because of the social protections.
Or the sheer inability to fire a developer in Germany because laws here assume that the only work that exists is at a factory producing physical things. So hiring an intellectual worker becomes a huge commitment not to dissimilar to marriage and all of that doesn't help growing.
[1] A notorious exception perhaps would be the paid maternity leave, as fraud with this one is something that happens in real life and can be deadly to a micro startup at the earliest stage.
> I always thought the biggest hurdle to overcome here in the EU is despite advancements with the schengen zone is branching out to other countries for business and talent is still much more difficult than a Bay Area company wanting to expand to Texas for example.
I don't see that WRT Ukraine specifically, but after Trump 2.0 I see an urge to invest more in science and R&D in Europe to offset the cuts in the US. When we bring Ukraine to the discussion, it's obvious the EU needs to invest a lot more in independent military technology that has no connection to outside partners that might no longer be aligned with the Union's objectives.
Why would we buy F-35's when we have Gripen, Rafale and Eurofighter?
They will need to spend waaaay more money across Europe and insist on relaxing working rules if they are planning on attracting top talent. Shit like shutting down VU earth science in Amsterdam after spending 20 million euros on new facilities should not fly. The same is true for the way soft money positions work. I know a nonzero number of people who have won ERC grants which are work millions of euros only to have the university they work at refuse to offer them a contract because they have reached the limit of years allowed to work on a temporary contract. This means they either have to find a new host for their erc or not accept the grant. I love working in Europe as a scientist and have done so for 10+ years. But I think there should be more of everything in order to compete with America.
The issue with soft money positions is mostly that universities insist on being shitty employers.
By default, all jobs are supposed to be open-ended. Fixed-term contracts are only allowed for legitimate reasons. Hiring someone for the expected duration of a PhD is a legitimate reason. The availability of funding is not. And even if the reason would be legitimate in isolation, multiple consecutive fixed-term contracts would be evidence that the employer has a permanent need for the employee, turning the contract automatically permanent.
When I was still in Finland, people were speculating that all postdoc positions were technically illegal, as were tenure-track positions. But it was also understood that if someone actually insisted on enforcing the law, the government would have to change it. Because rewriting the laws is much easier than making universities change their ways.
Agreed. However, how shitty is it when you win a grant worth millions of euros, a large fraction of which would go directly into the university coffers and not your project, and the university responds with, "lol, no thanks."
Lack of ambition I call it. People have become too comfortable. Europe had become rich enough that throwing away such opportunities wouldn't affect them. Now it does, but they are too entrenched to see it. The number of times I've seen a position go empty just because people couldn't resolve their internal conflcits is too high. Also, there's apparently no punishment for letting positions go empty.
The problem France has is that the administration (including to deal with immigration status and residence card), tax law, employment law, business laws, everything is highly hostile as soon as you set foot there.
It's bonkers, really, to play against yourself that way.
As a German: It's probably easier to just come here and pretend you lost your passport or something than going the official way. Start the process in multiple Bundesländer, under different names. That way, the bureaucracy probably won't catch up with you for the next 40 years.
Unless this is a sarcasm, you have proven that either you are 150% disconnected from reality or is discounting the entire immigration hurdle and access to every basic necessity(bank, housing, healthcare, work permit, qualification recognition etc) requiring a valid ID.
The most interesting aspect for me is the deep history. In Ireland, in particular, it's not rare to wander around and bump into a neolithic structure. When we were looking for a house to buy, one of the candidates had one such structure on a little nicely preserved square at the end of the street.
The continent is a short flight away. Being in an island, I haven't used the excellent train network of the continent as much as my friends in the continent.
One selling point of this society is the low inequality. I get my hair and beard done in the same place my barista goes - this would be almost unthinkable in Brazil, which is where I come from. Low inequality creates a more cohesive society where class divisions are less relevant. It also reduces crime, because the financial gain is not favorable compared to the risks. Because of that, my police doesn't need firearms and, if someone discharges a gun somewhere, it ends up on the newspapers. Irish politics are remarkably sane (if boring). I assume it's because of list-based voting, that punishes rejection very severely. We wouldn't have a Trump here in Ireland.
Other aspects are free high quality schooling, almost free university education, and an almost free healthcare system. This last is the low point - when you have a two-tier system, you have resources diverted from who needs care to who can pay for it, increasing wait times for those who can't pay for health insurance or private care.
Most of these points stand for the rest of the European Union as well. There are some variations, but not that much.
Final selling point of Ireland is that English is an official language. AFAIK, it's the only country in the EU with English as an official language, at least until the UK decides to rejoin.
.. because they got flagged by the security service.
People spent a lot of the cold war guessing "is this person a defector or a double agent?", and I guess we're going back there. Similar things happen in the US, of course, both for Russians and Chinese people. And let's not forget the Russian tourists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...
They can invite whoever they want, but I think they will struggle to attract talent unless they actually start making some changes to make it a more attractive option rather than just assuming elsewhere is going to get worse.
I did a post-doc in France after my PhD in the UK. It was possibly worthwhile just for the experience, but the actual funding and research environment is not one I would recommend to my colleagues.
von der Leyen's country, Germany, has a very hostile immigrations system. Not as bad as America these days, but still dystopian. The Auslaenderamt across Germany is filled with racists and bigots.
It depends… There are really good people and there are bad people. While there is room to improve, I have decent number of colleagues who praises the system and decent number who have points that they deserve more respect. That being said, there is a secret saying, if you hate foreigners then you work in immigration to make their life hard and derive pleasure. Other than that, the rules change too much than necessary, because immigrants are the powerless scapegoats for any political and social failure of the nation, so the case workers are always playing catchup to the new changes and commit mistakes both unintentionally and intentionally(to avoid legal issues).
The upside of this, jailing racists and nazis for being racists and nazis, is that we don’t have (too many) problems with nazis and racists.
> You are supposed to work with the people you went to school with, and your family connections, all your life
What you describe is common in very closed societies, something we are proud we work not to be. In places where the language doesn’t have a word for networking, we use “networking”. Not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but where I live we have a lot of “new Irish” (as opposed to “born Irish”) and we like to have meet-ups so that all those people who are new to this place can feel welcome.
As another fellow European, I also agree that this is putting nazis and dangerous people behind bars but recently more generic people had gone behind bars or legal hurdles compared to actual nazis amd racists because due to heavy shift to right, racism and nazi supporters now pretend to be doing political campaigns to cover their crimes and walking free. Not a good sign but I am optimistic.
> racism and nazi supporters now pretend to be doing political campaigns to cover their crimes
Yes. We need to have stronger laws to catch those. Not even when they are overtly doing political campaigns, but even when they are just misinforming and radicalizing people for politicians they support. We need to stop that.
"The upside of this, jailing racists and nazis for being racists and nazis, is that we don’t have (too many) problems with nazis and racists."
I wonder what metric you use for (too many problems). We also jail the most outspoken jihadis, but western Europe has a huge problem with Islamic radicalism anyway.
The far right has fairly high preferences in the last decade or so, so in practice, you have a lot of far right politicians in parliaments and sometimes governments.
Jailing people don't make them disappear, indeed they are good at exploiting the forced pause and radicalizing other people that happen to sit behind the same bars. Which means that their new recruits will stem from the most violent, least socialized subsets of the society.
Ideologies are somewhat contagious. Unless you isolate the carriers socially, which is hard to impossible, they tend to infect new people.
I believe the question here is influence. There is no jihadist party in Europe, but there are plenty of parties (some in governments, some even with almost full control of their countries) that are nazi in everything BUT name.
> The far right has fairly high preferences in the last decade or so, so in practice, you have a lot of far right politicians in parliaments and sometimes governments.
Outrage drives engagement and makes media more profitable. This is why things like Fox News and the Murdochs exist. Now they have discovered they can influence elections as well. We can blame Russia for giving a helping hand to far-right authoritarians aiming to destabilize the EU (and the US, let's not forget that).
> Jailing people don't make them disappear,
No, but it sends a message.
> Ideologies are somewhat contagious. Unless you isolate the carriers socially, which is hard to impossible, they tend to infect new people.
Like any disease, it's hard to fight and, like any contagious and deadly disease, it's worth fighting.
As a European: While we sure do have problems along the lines of nepotism and some of the other stuff, your comment feels like an exaggeration that exceeds the limits of interacting in good faith.
It's a prime example of corruption, nepotism, subordination, people being jailed, and extradited without prosecution... It's not looking good.
You have a new "deep state" out in the open, composed of billionaires, some of whom got rich through taxpayers' money, you have the President dropping crypto dumps, allowing him to get an influx of cash from undisclosed sources... and isn't he still doing fundraising? For what?
> Not sure what they are planning to gain this way. Just alienate Trump administration and become a subject of government action? That's near certain to happen when you fall out of line.
> Restrictions on speech always begin by something that many will argue is sensible, then they start growing into what boils down to totalitarianism.
May I introduce you to the Paradox of Tolerance, formulated by the Austrian Karl Popper after seeing the rise of Nazism?
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
> But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
"When our enemies say: 'but we gave you freedom of thought before' - yeah, you did! That doesn't mean we should do the same for you! Your stupidity shall not be contagious! That you gave it to us is proof of how dumb you are!"
Of course I did get the point and I disagree. There’s a difference between allowing people to say bad things and allowing the same people to restrict the speech of others. How about we do the former without the latter?
No it doesn’t. Quoting the part of the Quran that says that Muhammad fucked a nine year old child doesn’t automatically lead to totalitarianism. Restricting the right of people from claiming that IS totalitarian though.
I also want to add that I didn’t flag your comments and I support your right to express yourself fully.
> Some European languages have no word for "networking".
This seems completely made up.
> Even these ridiculous cases aside, in Europe it's very difficult to fall out of line and question the authority on every level.
What a bunch of nonsense. Exactly because we have things like worker protections we are perfectly fine telling our boss when nonsense comes out. We cant get fired on a whim like Americans, which forces Americans to sycophantic behavior so they wont lose their job and healthcare.
> It takes weeks to build trust with an American, it might take whole life to build trust with a European.
The EU is hostile to all emerging technologies like AI, why would any scientist go there? Let alone the poverty wages you'll earn and the 50%+ tax you'll pay.
By "hostile" are you referring to Europe's tendency to adopt new technologies deliberately and methodically, taking into consideration things like ethics, public safety, and societal impact? I think it's hostile (to people) to not do these things, to charge towards new and potentially society-altering technologies with roughly the same level of caution and care as the Kool-Aid Man smashing through walls with reckless abandon
There's a saying in German that roughly translates to "When two are fighting, the third benefits."
This'll end up being the case here as well. While the US and China battle fiercely, the EU will be the only safe haven for both of their investments and we'll grow even richer while enjoying our three hour lunch break.
To battle fiercely is to become weaker and more dependent on others who are not battling.
I live and run an IT startup in the EU.
The EU council can publish whatever press release they want - that's not gonna make a slightest dent in the business-hostile environment. Maybe it's perfectly clear for von der Leyen why the EU needs engineers and scientists but these sweet old ladies in the local job center will make sure your application shall never pass. And between those two entities (EU council and your local city council) guess who has the real power over your success?
A successful environment for business forms only when the most local government gives it a go. For example, Poland is quite welcoming and it shows[1].
I would absolutely love for the EU to wake up but in order for that to happen, something needs to change deeply in the governing structure.
[1] https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/08/14/polands-records-eus-f...
Also in the general culture. People I feel are too comfortable. The amount of times I've heard the phrase, "But we don't need to shoot for those stars, I'm okay if we do this small thing that makes us comfortable."
The ambitious people have left for the US.
They are still plenty of ambitious people in the EU and new folks are growing up. Problem is, path to success in the EU is ridden with endless fights with the bureaucracy even for the simplest things.
Re: general culture: there are much more social protections in the EU (paid vacations, maternity leave, etc) which are truly good and nice but no tech startup is actually practically possible while conforming to these laws.
Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup? I'm guessing this was just an example but a weird one nonetheless.
I always thought the biggest hurdle to overcome here in the EU is despite advancements with the schengen zone is branching out to other countries for business and talent is still much more difficult than a Bay Area company wanting to expand to Texas for example.
> Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup?
No.
> biggest hurdle to overcome here in the EU is despite advancements with the schengen zone is branching out to other countries for business
For business you'll need to address differences in language and culture that are much, much deeper than the ones between the Bay Area and Itasca, TX (which claims to be the most conservative city of the state). Local legislation tends to be less of a problem here than the US though. YMMV.
> and talent
This one is less challenging. The company I work for has a 50/50 balance between "born Irish" and "new Irish" (such as me). Being remote-first is a huge helper.
> Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup? I'm guessing this was just an example but a weird one nonetheless.
Almost none of these rules by itself is insurmountable[1]. But it all adds up friction in the workforce dynamic which might end up halting the company. And afterwards you will be unable to bankrupt the dead company specifically because of the social protections.
Or the sheer inability to fire a developer in Germany because laws here assume that the only work that exists is at a factory producing physical things. So hiring an intellectual worker becomes a huge commitment not to dissimilar to marriage and all of that doesn't help growing.
[1] A notorious exception perhaps would be the paid maternity leave, as fraud with this one is something that happens in real life and can be deadly to a micro startup at the earliest stage.
> I always thought the biggest hurdle to overcome here in the EU is despite advancements with the schengen zone is branching out to other countries for business and talent is still much more difficult than a Bay Area company wanting to expand to Texas for example.
Correct, because of the same bureaucracy.
This is too general. EU is many countries. Starting a business in Sweden is insanely easy for example...
I think this was true 10 years ago but nut anymore after Ukraine.
I'm not so sure. I have a bit of insight into the ukraine-war-related contracts and all I can see is just some change, but not a substantial change.
They still prefer committees and meetings over actual shell production.
The fact only Ukraine is at war complicates things a bit - funding and the risk of creating secondary impacts are still an issue.
I hope but I'm not so sure.
I don't see that WRT Ukraine specifically, but after Trump 2.0 I see an urge to invest more in science and R&D in Europe to offset the cuts in the US. When we bring Ukraine to the discussion, it's obvious the EU needs to invest a lot more in independent military technology that has no connection to outside partners that might no longer be aligned with the Union's objectives.
Why would we buy F-35's when we have Gripen, Rafale and Eurofighter?
They will need to spend waaaay more money across Europe and insist on relaxing working rules if they are planning on attracting top talent. Shit like shutting down VU earth science in Amsterdam after spending 20 million euros on new facilities should not fly. The same is true for the way soft money positions work. I know a nonzero number of people who have won ERC grants which are work millions of euros only to have the university they work at refuse to offer them a contract because they have reached the limit of years allowed to work on a temporary contract. This means they either have to find a new host for their erc or not accept the grant. I love working in Europe as a scientist and have done so for 10+ years. But I think there should be more of everything in order to compete with America.
The issue with soft money positions is mostly that universities insist on being shitty employers.
By default, all jobs are supposed to be open-ended. Fixed-term contracts are only allowed for legitimate reasons. Hiring someone for the expected duration of a PhD is a legitimate reason. The availability of funding is not. And even if the reason would be legitimate in isolation, multiple consecutive fixed-term contracts would be evidence that the employer has a permanent need for the employee, turning the contract automatically permanent.
When I was still in Finland, people were speculating that all postdoc positions were technically illegal, as were tenure-track positions. But it was also understood that if someone actually insisted on enforcing the law, the government would have to change it. Because rewriting the laws is much easier than making universities change their ways.
Agreed. However, how shitty is it when you win a grant worth millions of euros, a large fraction of which would go directly into the university coffers and not your project, and the university responds with, "lol, no thanks."
Lack of ambition I call it. People have become too comfortable. Europe had become rich enough that throwing away such opportunities wouldn't affect them. Now it does, but they are too entrenched to see it. The number of times I've seen a position go empty just because people couldn't resolve their internal conflcits is too high. Also, there's apparently no punishment for letting positions go empty.
There's nothing of substance here, there's isn't any actual visa or residency fast track or any reforms mentioned just a vague "invitation".
Those programs are on a national level due to how the EU works. Here's the French one: https://france2030.agencerecherche.fr/ChooseFranceForScience...
The problem France has is that the administration (including to deal with immigration status and residence card), tax law, employment law, business laws, everything is highly hostile as soon as you set foot there.
It's bonkers, really, to play against yourself that way.
My move was the easiest thing ever, and a four-year Blue Card was great. QoL is phenomenal, too.
The same can be said of the US under the Trump regime.
And before... the process has been a nightmare for years - be it for H1-B, L1 or even O1 visas.
As a German: It's probably easier to just come here and pretend you lost your passport or something than going the official way. Start the process in multiple Bundesländer, under different names. That way, the bureaucracy probably won't catch up with you for the next 40 years.
Unless this is a sarcasm, you have proven that either you are 150% disconnected from reality or is discounting the entire immigration hurdle and access to every basic necessity(bank, housing, healthcare, work permit, qualification recognition etc) requiring a valid ID.
I can tell you I have zero regrets from moving to Ireland almost ten years ago.
I second Ursula’s invitation. There’s much wonder to discover this side of the Atlantic.
I'd love to hear more about what you like about living there.
The most interesting aspect for me is the deep history. In Ireland, in particular, it's not rare to wander around and bump into a neolithic structure. When we were looking for a house to buy, one of the candidates had one such structure on a little nicely preserved square at the end of the street.
The continent is a short flight away. Being in an island, I haven't used the excellent train network of the continent as much as my friends in the continent.
One selling point of this society is the low inequality. I get my hair and beard done in the same place my barista goes - this would be almost unthinkable in Brazil, which is where I come from. Low inequality creates a more cohesive society where class divisions are less relevant. It also reduces crime, because the financial gain is not favorable compared to the risks. Because of that, my police doesn't need firearms and, if someone discharges a gun somewhere, it ends up on the newspapers. Irish politics are remarkably sane (if boring). I assume it's because of list-based voting, that punishes rejection very severely. We wouldn't have a Trump here in Ireland.
Other aspects are free high quality schooling, almost free university education, and an almost free healthcare system. This last is the low point - when you have a two-tier system, you have resources diverted from who needs care to who can pay for it, increasing wait times for those who can't pay for health insurance or private care.
Most of these points stand for the rest of the European Union as well. There are some variations, but not that much.
Final selling point of Ireland is that English is an official language. AFAIK, it's the only country in the EU with English as an official language, at least until the UK decides to rejoin.
At the same time an EU country is deporting Russian scientists and banning them from the Schengen zone: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/04/14/sweden-s-security-se...
Is there a better way to coerce them to go work for putin instead of the western world?
.. because they got flagged by the security service.
People spent a lot of the cold war guessing "is this person a defector or a double agent?", and I guess we're going back there. Similar things happen in the US, of course, both for Russians and Chinese people. And let's not forget the Russian tourists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...
They can invite whoever they want, but I think they will struggle to attract talent unless they actually start making some changes to make it a more attractive option rather than just assuming elsewhere is going to get worse.
I did a post-doc in France after my PhD in the UK. It was possibly worthwhile just for the experience, but the actual funding and research environment is not one I would recommend to my colleagues.
von der Leyen's country, Germany, has a very hostile immigrations system. Not as bad as America these days, but still dystopian. The Auslaenderamt across Germany is filled with racists and bigots.
It depends… There are really good people and there are bad people. While there is room to improve, I have decent number of colleagues who praises the system and decent number who have points that they deserve more respect. That being said, there is a secret saying, if you hate foreigners then you work in immigration to make their life hard and derive pleasure. Other than that, the rules change too much than necessary, because immigrants are the powerless scapegoats for any political and social failure of the nation, so the case workers are always playing catchup to the new changes and commit mistakes both unintentionally and intentionally(to avoid legal issues).
[flagged]
The upside of this, jailing racists and nazis for being racists and nazis, is that we don’t have (too many) problems with nazis and racists.
> You are supposed to work with the people you went to school with, and your family connections, all your life
What you describe is common in very closed societies, something we are proud we work not to be. In places where the language doesn’t have a word for networking, we use “networking”. Not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but where I live we have a lot of “new Irish” (as opposed to “born Irish”) and we like to have meet-ups so that all those people who are new to this place can feel welcome.
As another fellow European, I also agree that this is putting nazis and dangerous people behind bars but recently more generic people had gone behind bars or legal hurdles compared to actual nazis amd racists because due to heavy shift to right, racism and nazi supporters now pretend to be doing political campaigns to cover their crimes and walking free. Not a good sign but I am optimistic.
> racism and nazi supporters now pretend to be doing political campaigns to cover their crimes
Yes. We need to have stronger laws to catch those. Not even when they are overtly doing political campaigns, but even when they are just misinforming and radicalizing people for politicians they support. We need to stop that.
"The upside of this, jailing racists and nazis for being racists and nazis, is that we don’t have (too many) problems with nazis and racists."
I wonder what metric you use for (too many problems). We also jail the most outspoken jihadis, but western Europe has a huge problem with Islamic radicalism anyway.
The far right has fairly high preferences in the last decade or so, so in practice, you have a lot of far right politicians in parliaments and sometimes governments.
Jailing people don't make them disappear, indeed they are good at exploiting the forced pause and radicalizing other people that happen to sit behind the same bars. Which means that their new recruits will stem from the most violent, least socialized subsets of the society.
Ideologies are somewhat contagious. Unless you isolate the carriers socially, which is hard to impossible, they tend to infect new people.
> We also jail the most outspoken jihadis,
I believe the question here is influence. There is no jihadist party in Europe, but there are plenty of parties (some in governments, some even with almost full control of their countries) that are nazi in everything BUT name.
> The far right has fairly high preferences in the last decade or so, so in practice, you have a lot of far right politicians in parliaments and sometimes governments.
Outrage drives engagement and makes media more profitable. This is why things like Fox News and the Murdochs exist. Now they have discovered they can influence elections as well. We can blame Russia for giving a helping hand to far-right authoritarians aiming to destabilize the EU (and the US, let's not forget that).
> Jailing people don't make them disappear,
No, but it sends a message.
> Ideologies are somewhat contagious. Unless you isolate the carriers socially, which is hard to impossible, they tend to infect new people.
Like any disease, it's hard to fight and, like any contagious and deadly disease, it's worth fighting.
As a European: While we sure do have problems along the lines of nepotism and some of the other stuff, your comment feels like an exaggeration that exceeds the limits of interacting in good faith.
In the US, people get disappeared for protesting Israel: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-palestine-protest-tru...
He has not been disappeared - you have a very first world problem take on disappeared which amounts to "his lawyers briefly did not know where he was held". He has a bail hearing today: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/23/mohsen-mahda...
Where I came from "disappeared" means being bundled into a van and turning up dead or not at all.
Have you seen the current US administration?
It's a prime example of corruption, nepotism, subordination, people being jailed, and extradited without prosecution... It's not looking good.
You have a new "deep state" out in the open, composed of billionaires, some of whom got rich through taxpayers' money, you have the President dropping crypto dumps, allowing him to get an influx of cash from undisclosed sources... and isn't he still doing fundraising? For what?
your previous comment:
> Not sure what they are planning to gain this way. Just alienate Trump administration and become a subject of government action? That's near certain to happen when you fall out of line.
I avoid getting jailed for lying about the Holocaust by simply not lying about the Holocaust. Try this one weird trick.
You can also avoid fines for mentioning what the Quran says by simply not talking about what the Quran says.
(Read the article: “disparaging” means quoting what the Quran says about what Muhammad did)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...
Restrictions on speech always begin by something that many will argue is sensible, then they start growing into what boils down to totalitarianism.
> Restrictions on speech always begin by something that many will argue is sensible, then they start growing into what boils down to totalitarianism.
May I introduce you to the Paradox of Tolerance, formulated by the Austrian Karl Popper after seeing the rise of Nazism?
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
> But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
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"When our enemies say: 'but we gave you freedom of thought before' - yeah, you did! That doesn't mean we should do the same for you! Your stupidity shall not be contagious! That you gave it to us is proof of how dumb you are!"
- Goebbels
Of course I did get the point and I disagree. There’s a difference between allowing people to say bad things and allowing the same people to restrict the speech of others. How about we do the former without the latter?
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No it doesn’t. Quoting the part of the Quran that says that Muhammad fucked a nine year old child doesn’t automatically lead to totalitarianism. Restricting the right of people from claiming that IS totalitarian though.
I also want to add that I didn’t flag your comments and I support your right to express yourself fully.
> Some European languages have no word for "networking".
This seems completely made up.
> Even these ridiculous cases aside, in Europe it's very difficult to fall out of line and question the authority on every level.
What a bunch of nonsense. Exactly because we have things like worker protections we are perfectly fine telling our boss when nonsense comes out. We cant get fired on a whim like Americans, which forces Americans to sycophantic behavior so they wont lose their job and healthcare.
> It takes weeks to build trust with an American, it might take whole life to build trust with a European.
Sounds like a you problem.
> This seems completely made up.
I agree. Which European languages? Not English for a start!
The comment is cherry picking bits from different countries and combining them to create a fictional "Europe".
The EU is hostile to all emerging technologies like AI, why would any scientist go there? Let alone the poverty wages you'll earn and the 50%+ tax you'll pay.
By "hostile" are you referring to Europe's tendency to adopt new technologies deliberately and methodically, taking into consideration things like ethics, public safety, and societal impact? I think it's hostile (to people) to not do these things, to charge towards new and potentially society-altering technologies with roughly the same level of caution and care as the Kool-Aid Man smashing through walls with reckless abandon
Absolutely I mean that. They'll get left behind, again. Like every other major economic and technical breakthrough.
While the US and China battle fiercely, the EU is still on their 3 hour lunch break.
There's a saying in German that roughly translates to "When two are fighting, the third benefits."
This'll end up being the case here as well. While the US and China battle fiercely, the EU will be the only safe haven for both of their investments and we'll grow even richer while enjoying our three hour lunch break.
To battle fiercely is to become weaker and more dependent on others who are not battling.
The Slovak version: "Kde sa dvaja bijú, tretí víťazí."
"Where two fight, victory goes to third."
That's just straight up FUD.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20230601STO...
https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/10/08/why-openais-voice-m...
The EU despises technical advancement and will kill it at any cost.
Regulation is the source from which all advancement is derived.