...but then the other flip side is the government does things that result in contamination, dangerous chemicals in food, cookware, people dying, whatever.

You can't be "not convinced" that things would be better - "we" have a free market and that market produced sunscreen in the first place, without which we would have worse health outcomes. There's nothing to imagine - it happened. Things are better for us.

Not all things the free market produced actually have resulted in better health outcomes than if they had been disallowed (many result in the opposite, in fact) and certainly not better economic outcomes for the people who bought and used them. Regulation, as always, is a balancing act between enabling those who would do good and stymieing those (who with the best of intentions or outright sociopathy) would do harm.

So yes I remain unconvinced. Free market maximalists tend to highlight their favorite part of the story while ignoring history.

Regulation has not always resulted in better health outcomes than if the product had otherwise been regulated either. We don't need to set up this false dichotomy between markets and regulation and then bash markets over the head with the negatives aspects while ignoring negatives outcomes as a result of government action which you seem to be insinuating.

So to remain unconvinced doesn't make sense here. Though I guess I can just say I'm unconvinced of government regulations because why not? Same line of reasoning that you're using here.

Sounds like we just agree then. Regulations are necessary and should be tuned, and the Free Market can operate within those regulations, the best of all worlds is where these things work together.

Sure but then I'm not sure why you disagreed with the OP? I don't think they said anything different than what I've written.

> If the negative effect is this obvious in sunscreen, just imagine how much more impactful removing regulation on cancer drugs would be.

Note that I'm not even explicitly disagreeing with OP, you interpreted my "flipside" as a disagreement. It's undeniable that removing regulations in cancer treatments will be "impactful". Possibly even it will have positive impact. But I am unconvinced that this would be a wise pattern to adopt more broadly.

The original does not read to me as a call for tweaking regulations, it reads like an anti-regulation Boogeyman post. Forgive me for possibly over indexing on patterns I've observed from HNers making this type of comment.

They are of course free at any time to come in and declare that my characterization is unfair, at which my point about the flipside is still completely valid.

Oh, I didn't read it that way at all which is why I interpreted your flip side comment as I did. You seemed to be defending regulation for no good reason in that context where the OP was pointing out how regulation seemed to (and I have done no research on this so I don't know) be holding the United States back, and then pointed out areas where we also have in their opinion regulations that are too strict.

Nope, all dead for me.

I just tried again and I can load the home pages for both sites without issues from Ohio in a private Safari window. Don't have a way to upload a screenshot.

You are generally correct, despite the rebuttals in the reply comments to yours.

But I think the challenge here is that we can have great places if we do the following:

1. Focus on transportation and ways of living that focus on walking or taking a tram.

2. Create and support medium-density, mixed-use neighborhoods

3. Require good, sound architectural principles. When you think of Paris and those narrow streets or the apartment complexes in the best neighborhoods, we need those. None of this modernist bullshit or 5-over-1s made with recycled concrete. Use bricks, stone, and more. Incorporate design elements requiring skilled craftsmen, and pay for it.

Those 3 alone should get you most of the way there.

My final comment would be, when you're thinking about spending $5,000 - $10,000 or whatever on a big international trip to go look at some nice stuff in some other country, consider spending that money instead on your own home, or garden, or donate to organizations that maintain those things for you. It also doesn't have to be all or none, you can still travel, and still invest locally. Make where you live the kind of place you would have wanted to travel to. Gardens in Great Britain, for example, can happen where you live too you just need to spend the money and build and maintain those things... like they do.

The transit and transportation stuff is much more difficult to fix. Most Americans want a Jeep and suburban house and to wait in line and beep their horn at the Costco gas station and that's a tough hill to climb, but the 3 items I highlighted above are guaranteed to increase quality of life and lower costs long-term.

I'd love to do all 3, and actively push my city council to prioritize rezoning for mixed use + medium density.. and eliminating parking minimums. I previously lived in NYC and it was true like the author said; I could have boundless weekend trips to a variety of places with Amtrak + Bus service.

I do as well here where I live. The one battle I will unfortunately always lose because of upfront cost and because people stopped caring about Western civilization is the quality architecture battle. I get it we should build build build, but I do wish we could build build build lasting, high-quality, architecturally sound buildings which would raise property values and lived experience wherever implemented.

> Setting aside the simple fact that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

This "simple" fact needs quite a bit of additional context and work. Making grandiose ethical claims like this can be countered with other grandiose claims such as the fact that there is no ethical existence under communism or socialism.

Sure. Why not, I'm bored today and waiting for some stuff to finish up :D

The fact that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism is not material to whether or not ethical existence is possible under communism or socialism. In order to survive in a capitalist society, one inherently has to make choices that require trade-offs, and those trade-offs are burdened by a history of decisions made not just by the people alive today, but our ancestors as well. Does that mean I walk around chanting "Reparations", "Land-back", or other calls to action? No, but I do acknowledge that there are unresolved issues and as a Canadian, I know we need to do more to resolve treaty issues, and environmental issues, and system discrimination. I also know that Americans need to do better to address systemic discrimination and many, many other issues. It also doesn't mean I want to give back my house, or give away all of my possessions. It just means I try to make good choices and support businesses and people that are open about the trade-offs they make and try to engage as ethically as possible.

Acknowledging those facts doesn't absolve us of responsibility, it's a framework that allows folks concerned about whether or not they are doing the right thing to accept the trade-offs that they choose to make and be responsible and accountable for those choices to themselves or their communities.

We live in a world with scarce resources. It's possible that with a foundational redesign of the global economy, and the requisite authoritarian government that would be required to force such a redesign, we could eliminate food scarcity, solve energy scarcity, and make sure that everyone has a place to live. Those trade-offs are probably not worth the ethical cost in political and physical violence required to accomplish it. We have seen the trade-offs that happen when the powerful are able to exploit communist or socialist governments. We are seeing the "late stage capitalism" impacts of allowing the powerful to exploit capitalism in democratic societies. Acknowledging that the current capitalist system has lead to the greatest prosperity for the upper echelon (financially) of humanity, and a dramatic reduction in global poverty shouldn't obscure the reality that much of that wealth comes from exploitation of people and the environment.

It's a huge problem to unwind, and we can't let the burden of every choice that we make stop us from trying to do better, but we (as in society in general) can't do better if we don't at least acknowledge the compromises we are making along the way, and try to plan to fix it in the future.

Probably a topic better suited to beer and a pub setting than HN though :P

> The fact that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

I don't believe that this is a fact. How are you demonstrating that this is a fact?

When you talk about things like reparations or "land back" you're already cargo-culting in concepts and ideas that themselves need to be fleshed out in order to make a subsequent claim that a specific economic system is unethical. Someone can just argue all economic systems are unethical, how are you going to defend against that? And can you pay reparations for example without going back in all of human history and finding all cases of injustices and then tallying it up? Why pick an arbitrary point in time? Better yet, why not start in countries where slavery still exists instead of focusing on the west which led the world in abolishing slavery and created concepts such as universal human rights.

Even with respect to "eliminating food scarcity" - eliminate in what sense? All olive groves and grapevines and rice farms have to be destroyed and rebuilt to only build certain foods?

Dabbling in communism or other inhumane and authoritarian governmental systems is extremely dangerous and in the same vein of extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence, suggesting as you did creating an authoritarian government to create a utopia is precisely the same project of suffering and death that mass murderers throughout history have undertaken to abject failure, and thus, you need some incredible amount of evidence and theory to be able to even fairly suggest going down this path.

It's simple, I am not going to defend any economic system because they all require trade-offs, because any economic model that we could currently implement must necessarily ration scarce resources according to some set of rules. Those rules will explicitly deny someone else resources, and the adminstration of that economy will also be subject to abuse by the people who enforce the rules.

I am not going to do the work of gathering the evidence for you, and I don't think this is the right venue for a debate on the topic.

If you'd like to concede the debate that's fine, but you can't drop a few comments that are, well, not at all simple, and then when someone points out the flaws in your reasoning or asks clarifying questions you throw your hands up and say it's not the right venue for debate.

If you don't have evidence I think it's mature of you to admit that and applaud you in doing so. We all like to just talk and don't have to always provide evidence for every citation or what not and it's fair to just say hey I'm just making this up and it requires further discussion.

It only needs additional context and work if you are unfamiliar with the concepts underlying it. Possibly consider you are out of your depth here, rather than jumping to conclusions.

No that's incorrect. Instead I believe the underlying concepts are debatable and so stating it as a "simple fact" is a bit unfair.

Well they can compete with that.

Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right? If you're going to take this wildly cynical approach you should at least do a more proper comparison....

I think forcing this comparison shows a lack of empathy for how compromised of a position the H1B really is.

If I lose my job I have unemployment insurance, cobra benefits, personal savings, and I don’t require another employer to sponsor my visa. If I lose my job the most likely outcome is I find another one after searching a few months.

If someone on an H1B visa loses their job the most likely outcome is they are forced to leave the country.

Well, truthfully I don't really care all that much about it any more than I do any other problems that people generally experience. It's even more tragic that someone has an H1B means other folks don't - aren't their lives even worse for not having the opportunity that someone else does? Can the H1B visa holder even compete with the person denied the H1B?

The reason I wrote this comment is because the OP itself decided it was warranted with this cynical comment to suggest Americans don't work hard because oh if they get fired well they just find another job but the H1B visa holder gets gasp deported. But this itself diminishes the stresses and experience of those who don't find that other job, or don't find that replacement tech job, or any other devastating affects that someone experiences from job loss. Yea you might have a few months of COBRA benefits, but then what? You might not even have any savings because of some emergency that occurred. What's worse, being deported after a couple of months or becoming homeless in America? What if you're deported to Australia or Japan? Why are you or others assuming a happy ending for someone laid off in America but assuming the worst case scenario for an H1B visa holder and then comparing the two in that way?

Yeah, sounds like your situation is insecure too. That really sucks.

That's not correct lol

I mean worst come to worst you can drive Uber full time until the market recovers? And this is certainly not an option for H1B.

Unless Americans does not want this type of job, which actually validates your cynical interpretation of OP's comment. Meanwhile a lot of illegal immigrants are happily driving for Uber and plenty more will be if they can do it legally.

> I mean worst come to worst you can drive Uber full time until the market recovers? And this is certainly not an option for H1B.

Why can't the H1B visa holder also just be deported and drive for Uber in their home country full-time until the market recovers?

> Meanwhile a lot of illegal immigrants are happily driving for Uber and plenty more will be if they can do it legally.

As a capitalist I'm all in favor of driving wages for workers to as close to 0 as possible. If Uber is $1 for me instead of $15 that's great. I don't think our unions or blue-collar workforce are in favor of that though.

> Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right?

I think there's some law that lets you stay on health insurance for a few months at least, and you can save up as a countermeasure to the loss of the paycheck. Bad as it is it's not comparable to getting deported after a couple of months.

Hard to say how directly they can compare, and it probably depends on the individual situation and of course their line of work and other such items. In the woe-is-me olympics they both seem pretty awful and, one might even say, competitive in terms of how awful they are. Maybe being deported means you go back to France or Canada or something.

> I think there's some law that lets you stay on health insurance for a few months at least

Yes, but often you will have to pay the full cost in order to do so, which will be difficult for many people after having lost their source of income..

> It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.

These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes and suggestions are precisely why so many folks have come to be anti-EU. Nevermind the actual other real day-to-day issues with the organization.

I'm sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well? Why should Taiwan be an exception and not part of China? Seems many of the EU are of the opinion that "We support sovereignty when it conveniently aligns with my chosen organization".

The default and perhaps what is best for democracy is to have many smaller nation states, city states, and the other various confederations and the like. The super-organization of nations into these unwieldy states is in many respects anti-democratic and perhaps only temporary as these large nations and alliances were built precisely to fight other, large nation states.

>These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes

This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.

The superiority complex really often seems to come from countries like Switzerland or the UK in the Brexit situation. Countries that already have often privileged deals and then decide to forfeit them, which they are allowed to do, it's not an attack on their sovereignty, the EU is not mainland China and Switzerland or the UK were not Taiwan, they're free to do what they want, they just can't have their cake and eat it too.

> This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.

I don't think so. Even in the case where the Swiss or UK are breaking agreements or demanding changes to those agreements, it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time. In the case of Switzerland let's say they no longer feel the EU's freedom of movement policy works with the existing agreement because the EU has failed to protect its borders. You're painting a breaking of the agreement in the sense that nothing has changed in the agreement, but that may not be true and so breaking the agreement by the Swiss would have actually been because of a break in the agreement by the EU.

These interactions taking place and then now all of a sudden the Swiss are to be the recipient of some draconian action "we'll show them" is not really that strange given it's relatively straightforward to see how these two entities can reasonable come to a disagreement which may or may not resolve itself.

>it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time.

what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.

And the EU is not going to do braconian measures, the EU does not bully its smaller neighbors. Britain wasn't intimated, threatened and nobody tried to interfere with it when they wanted to leave. THey decided to do so and did. Swizterland can cap its population and deny freedom of movement, nobody's going to bully them, but they're obviously not going to have the relationship they had with the EU.

To even rhetorically compare the EU to the US (which has threatened to annex an ally's territory) or China (which throws minorities into camps and threatens a democracy with force) is pretty damn absurd. Ask Taiwan if they want to trade places with Switzerland on the world map if they could.

> what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.

I think you are putting this referendum on a pedestal it doesn't need to go on. All countries control population to some extent, whether that's in how they support parental leave or how they support mothers, or through immigration control, quotas, points systems, &c. Switzerland is just adding in another wrinkle. Plus all legislation was at one point new.

The EU didn't break any agreement.

> the Swiss are to be the recipient of some draconian action "we'll show them"

It's quite clear that the EU-Swiss agreements were negotiated as a whole and one side just can't suddenly pick parts of it that it will reject.

Sure it did. Spain just gave 500,000 "undocumented migrants" a residence permit. They can now freely move throughout the continent. That sort of act was never envisioned when the Swiss agreed to FoM with the EU, which for most of its history was used only by a tiny minority of people all of whom had a similar culture.

The EU/Swiss agreements don't have to be negotiated as a whole. The whole guillotine clause schtick exists only to try and transfer as much power to the EU Commission as possible. Nothing stops European countries being reasonable and looking for ways to work with each other on whatever areas they can agree; it's a deliberate ideological choice to refuse.

What EU-Switzerland agreement was broken by the EU by this action of Spain? And please do be exact which one and how. Otherwise stop telling lies.

> Nothing stops European countries being reasonable and looking for ways to work with each other on whatever areas they can agree; it's a deliberate ideological choice to refuse.

Yes, and it's the fine and reasonable ideology of protecting your own (in this case EU members') interests against the interests of other countries. Which is why neither the UK nor Switzerland nor other non-members can pick and choose. Makes them understandably unhappy of course, but so what? They are protecting their interests and we are protecting ours.

The treaties don't explicitly say "you may not grant residence en masse to city sized populations of illegal immigrants", because not doing that was considered so obvious it didn't need to be said at the time they were written. Such treaties don't cover a lot of possible but unlikely eventualities, which is why it's bad and wrong to make treat renegotiation artificially difficult.

> it's the fine and reasonable ideology of protecting your own (in this case EU members') interests

It doesn't protect their interests. That's the whole point. If it were about protecting the interests of European countries they could negotiate their each interest individually and independently with each other. The EU construct is deliberately designed to ignore the interests of any specific member state in favour of the interest of a new entity, the European Union, which has an entirely separate set of interests that don't correspond to the interests of the people living in it.

> Which is why neither the UK nor Switzerland nor other non-members can pick and choose

They actually can pick and choose and both have done so successfully. Hence why the EU/Swiss relations aren't governed by membership and why the EU has agreed to work with the UK on various interests without requiring membership (despite denying they'd ever do this at the time).

You can use that definition of breaking a treaty if you like. But it's not a good idea. It sends the world a message that negotiating with European countries is dangerous because to avoid getting screwed you'd have to write down all known common sense and social conventions in the text of the treaty, and probably include the contents of a specific dictionary as well, and even then they might just do something crazy you never predicted whilst claiming the agreement was being respected.

Note: this argument was actually used by the pro-Leave faction in the UK. They explicitly argued that any deal Cameron reached with the other EU member states would be worthless because European countries can't be trusted to honor their agreements when it becomes ideologically inconvenient. And that argument landed, which is why Cameron returned with a vaguely worded emergency break deal and then never mentioned it again - nobody took it seriously, and he was forced to campaign on the state of the union as it was, and lost. So these tactics do have a cost.

Treaty law just doesn't work with 'common sense and social conventions' any more than compilers that won't compile your 'common sense and social conventions' text. You have to say exactly what you want, nothing more, nothing less. That's the work of lawyers and negotiators. As my lawyer friends say, well-written agreements make good friends (and vice versa).

But also note that you are the only one against Spain creating a path for a group of people that live there to gain legal status. No one mentioned that as a specific issue worth raising at international level. It's a non-issue.

> But also note that you are the only one against Spain creating a path for a group of people that live there to gain legal status.

Nah I have an issue with it too, conceptually. You're basically rewarding bad actors for breaking rules and laws which is unfair to those who were and are trying to immigrate legally. At a minimum.

Immigration isn't a moral good, it's just a switch we can flip on or off. Too few people? A given society can have more permissive rules. Too many people? Have more restrictive rules. Being an immigrant is just a random status one has by virtue of moving to another country - it's just paperwork.

I'm probably missing something but your last sentence doesn't seem to agree with the rest of the post. If it's just paperwork then surely nothing bad happens not following it (mostly because it's just not possible to immigrate lawfully to most countries in this age).

Note that I'm not defending unlawful immigrants; but once you spend a large amount of life in a country and you did nothing bad I don't see any issue with said country allowing you to stay. It's just acknowledging the status quo. Of course having a safe legal path to residency is obviously much better but too many politicians today as well as in the past are incentivised to disallow that.

> If it's just paperwork then surely nothing bad happens not following it

Well not filling out the paperwork means you'd be in the country without authorization which you know just subjects you to being deported or fined or to face other penalties depending on the laws and regulations of that country. So to your point, nothing really "bad" per-se happens by not following it. You just might be deported or fined and then you have to just accept that reality.

> Note that I'm not defending unlawful immigrants; but once you spend a large amount of life in a country and you did nothing bad I don't see any issue with said country allowing you to stay.

Sure, but conversely if that country decides you're not allowed to stay there's nothing wrong with that. Just being in a country for a long time doesn't retroactively grant you citizenship or anything. Though some countries may from time to time decide that it does, which I find unfortunate especially for those who are pursuing the proper methods. We shouldn't encourage breaking of rules or laws in our societies as a default.

> Of course having a safe legal path to residency

Well in the US at least we do have a safe and legal path to residency. Most other countries around the world are far, far more strict on these requirements.

> sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well?

Why? I think the first is a good idea and the second fine if that’s what they want.

Because those would be breaking up the unions of those countries. It's no different morally or philosophically from Switzerland leaving the EU.

Say what? Switzerland isn't in the EU, how can it leave?

It has treaties, but not membership. That doesn't make it "leaving" if they annul the treaties.

This was the OP:

> It wouldn’t be full Chexit. Just renegotiating and then rejecting the Schengen chapter. It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.

My terminology was matching what was used here.

Sorry, nobody in the know would interpreted "Chexit" to mean "leave the EU" for the obvious reason that Switzerland is not in the EU.

This is pointlessly argumentative, but I'm just going to continue having a conversation using the terminology brought up by the OP and what I interpreted them to mean. It seems to be working just fine for us.

> These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes and suggestions are precisely why so many folks have come to be anti-EU.

This would be a hilariously dumb reason to be anti-EU when the other major Western power, the US, has had a much bigger "we'll show them", strongarm attitude for much longer.

It's the opposite of what you think, if some countries get privileges without following the basic principles, then the EU would be unpopular.

You are mistaken. I am pro-Scotland independence and EU admission but anti Catalonia independence. Simply because the former will expand and strengthen the EU and the latter will divide and weaken it, especially since it's supported by Russia.

Those "guillotine clauses" mostly exist because member states didn't want to cede their sovereignty to the EU. If a treaty covers areas where member states have shared or full responsibility, it must be ratified unanimously by every member state. (Which in some case requires ratification by regional parliaments.) Any changes to such treaties must also be ratified, which means there will be 30+ parties negotiating and trying to win new concessions.

> data centers can be built basically anywhere, and that's why a lot of them are moving to rural red states where they welcome the construction.

There’s no such thing as a red state or blue state, these are fictions created to generate political fighting for no value to society.

Second - many states such as Ohio have begun pushing back strongly against data centers. In Ohio we had been offering tax breaks for construction because we welcomed the economic activity, but thankfully the government here after seeing a lot of pushback across the state has realized providing tax incentives or subsidies is economically and politically stupid relative the benefits of the new data centers.

To your point, they can be built anywhere. So many folks are saying yep, let’s build them somewhere else and drain water and raise energy prices there instead of here.

Smart politics in a state like Ohio would require data centers to relocate corporate jobs to the state or face full or perhaps even surcharges for utility rates because why not?

I’m not sure why Europeans always bring Trump in here when it comes to this topic, except perhaps he, successfully it appears, woke many of them up from the slumber of dependency on global supply chains, of course, that Americans have been talking about for quite some time.

You can’t vote in American elections, true, but you also can’t vote for the Ayatollah or Saudi Prince who controls your oil supply, the Brazilian president where your rubber comes from, or a Chinese Communist Party official who manufactures your stuff, nor do you vote for elections in other EU countries and I’d argue your EU vote is but an abstract concept of a vote.

You’ve never had control (no country fully does), and so, are you only now waking up to that fact and have been goaded out of a once peaceful slumber? If so you should probably thank Donald Trump, sadly enough. But I’d stop focusing on him when the US is by far the least of Europe’s collective concerns.

He said exactly why: because Trump's policies are unpredictable. Before that, there was no problem, really. Of course, it's a political movement and Trump is much a symptom as a disease, but you're saying we should thank him for bringing about this unpredictability — because now we can see that unpredictability is possible? There's something seriously loopy about that argument. It's like asking one to thank the burglars because they woke them from their peaceful slumber of safety...

i think you re over-indexing on Trump and not recognizing that this has been a problem for Europe for much longer than Trump has been a serious political figure. Europe has and to some extent is still very much asleep and holding on to a world that no longer exists. Hyper-focusing on Trump is a dangerous manifestation of that antiquated understanding of the world. The US is at the bottom of Europe’s list of problems.

You've just reiterated the exact same points you made in the comment I replied to. Consider that it might be you who is getting hung up* on the "Trump" name, which, in common discourse, can, and usually does function as a signifier not just for the man himself but for the Trumpist political attitude and movement, and even more generally, the quasi-fascist/quasi-monarchist regressive politically infantile post-truth nationalist/authoritarian-revival movements which we are witnessing world-wide. Declaring that this phenomenon is "at the bottom of Europe's list of problems" might sound like surprising and important, but it's just plain false.

As for Europe being "asleep", who isn't? I would say the US is just as much (if not more) asleep, wondering unwittingly into a techno-dystopian future. Or look at how they have been whiplashed by China's rise (which has their own big problems too). Not to mention the more recent disastrous reputational decline on the world scene. Of course, that wouldn't happen if Americans would recognize these dangers and not imagine themselves self-importantly as singularly awake at the wheel of international politics and economics while the car is heading head-long into the proverbial ditch.

*I assume that this is what you mean by "over-indexing" – I'm not feeling like digging around for the origin and exact meaning of this phrase, which is definitely not common English.

> I'm not feeling like digging around for the origin and exact meaning of this phrase, which is definitely not common English.

Just to start here, the term is very common in America.

> Declaring that this phenomenon is "at the bottom of Europe's list of problems" might sound like surprising and important, but it's just plain false.

Well I can think of 3 problems right now that are much more pressing for Europe:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the broad inability of the EU to come to its aid in 2022.

China and hollowing out of European manufacturing. Germany in particular is shedding manufacturing jobs - common knowledge but happy to provide a few sources if this is a new development for you.

Migration crises and war in the Middle East that the EU is unable to address militarily or diplomatically.

Donald Trump saying a few mean words and initiating tariffs obviously start to fall in the EU problems rankings once we just start talking about the global geopolitical and strategic situation.

> As for Europe being "asleep", who isn't? I would say the US is just as much (if not more) asleep,

Both the US and China are leaving the rest of the world behind. As you noted, both have issues. The US started during the first Trump term to begin addressing posed by China’s continued economic and military challenges and continued through the Biden term via various legislation and policies, and now continues again during Trump’s 2nd term.

You seem to look at actions like arresting Maduro or attacking Iran from the perspective that such actions are harming international reputation or are the whims of, well pick whichever word you already used to describe him, but these are actions showing that the US is instead of “sleeping” actually very much awake and taking important strategic and necessary action. I can walk you through those as well if you’d like.

> But why would the Europeans want to copy the US "cloud" model of micro-compartmentalizing services…

Maybe it’s the best approach? Maybe it’s more profitable and European companies want to grow their business?

best for who? for the cloud provider for all the vendor lockins? theres hardly anything i like about the popular cloud providers to be honest

If Europe copy winner takes fraud is allowed and price transparency higwash ideology, then it will also end up with exact copy of current American dysfunction - ultimately including loss of democracy, Trump figure with unchecked power and failing constitution.

Europe can fail on its own, but recreating the exact billionaires are able to scam everything will make it fail faster.