Too many people smoke in Europe and it’s too widely accepted.
GDPR is great, but we all hate cookie banners
I thought America was racist until I saw a member of UK Parliament tweeting about a boat of migrants sinking with “Good riddance”.
French food is wildly overrated, as is Paris.
Not Eurpoe specifically but I shared a rather basic comment on YouTube joking about Great Britain causing famines in India but its okay because they brought trains and the result is a mile long thread of pissed off UK suckers telling me I’m wrong, that there was no fammine, the Wikipedia article and its 300 sources are fake, and that the British empire totally went around modernizing civilization for the benefit of humanity. (Was a post about Irish complaining about a very crappy Irish History book made by a British author)
So I guess for any of those people, no GB was just a colonist empire racing to exploit the hell out of resources faster than France, Spain, and Portugal. The technology they brought was used almost exclusively in their conquest operations (Trains used to transport goods and resources) and they actively supported and supplied opposition groups to destabilize and overthrow governments similar to what the USA does today.
I mean seriously, they held immense power over China via opium and are responsible for practically every shill state in the middle east because they provided weapons to overthrow the Ottaman empire.
The iconic pan arab flag is actually a British designed flag given to all the opposition groups they funded to break up Ottaman power.
They fell apart after exhausting their power in WWII and the USA came in to save them so now they gleefully cheer about how they carried in WWII with intelligence services as if Germany couldn’t have easily invaded the entire nation overnight had Hitler not been an incompetent moron.
Thankfully, after exploiting half the world, they totally didn’t spend the last of their power screwing over every former colony into some long term problem that they could exploit without the need for military power.
The question should read
“Americans; give us your baseless opinions of a continent you don’t understand, and then get a rage-on in the comments when you are laughed at”
Your cops are bad too
France, Germany, and Austria all have a military-industrial complex problem. MIL money might not dominate their politics the same way as the US, but there is a problem there.
Even with their post-WW2 defensive militaries, Germany and Austria are perfectly ready to sell military hardware to anyone with the cash. H&K, Glock, and Steyr all hail from those two.
France sold off the Exocet anti-ship missile to just about anyone. As far as I can tell, it has only been fired in anger at the boats of other NATO members. Thanks, France!
European car manufacturers largely suck ass, I’d rather buy a Hyundai or a damn Nissan than some French or German piece of crap.
Europeans use cars from all car manufacturers. Hardly seen are Chinese brands.
Soooo, yah know.
I’d buy a European car before a Hyundai/Kia.
German cars are highly regarded around the world.
Now Italian cars…
Magneti Mirelli 😬
That’s not true anymore, at least among people who own ten year old German cars and those who work on them. The good german car thing evaporated around 2000, reputation is catching up finally.
I work for German car manufactorer, so my opinion might be biased, but I hate this job so it might balance things.
My experience is that German cars sucks now, but every single other car sucks more.The truth these days is that damn near every car has reasons why you shouldnt buy it.
The Germans are still fraudulently trading on their rep from the 80s, the French are always being different just for the fucking hell of it wether the customer likes it or not, the Italians love needing bespoke tools for simple jobs, everything British is now chinese or german, the Americans would be burned at the stake for suggesting the next model be smaller, Japans “reliability” rep is mostly being upheld by Toyota and Honda who charge accordingly, China is coming along in leaps and bounds but still cant figure out “supply chain logistics” for spare parts and Korea just keeps dropping the fucking ball over dumb simple shit.
People ask me all the time “What do you think about CAR” and Ive honestly resorted to “If you like it, buy it. Ive known people with reliable Fiats and unreliable Toyotas. The only unhappy people are the ones who bought a car they didnt WANT.”
Wish I could update my 10yo vw golf (which has served me very well) for something not electric. I know, I know, but I’m renting a flat, with a parking space, and only way to charge an electric would be on the street overnight, which is very inconvenient as well as damaging
Edit: but what I meant is you don’t know what you’re talking about
Great, go do the brakes with standard tools, oh wait, you have to use a special “triple square” tool instead of having a standard hex bolt like every other car. And on and on with the bullshit.
It takes me places though. I’m not a mechanic 🤷♂️
It still increases the cost of ownership and issues with reliability.
I am guessing you are from America. I am aware of the figures in terms of reliability, and Japanese manufacturers do a clean sweep in that area, and have done for decades. If that is your only metric, then you may be correct. German cars require religiously regular servicing, and will go wrong if this doesn’t happen fastidiously.
The US market get given a different range from many manufacturers. The VW range is objectively quite toned down in style and build quality. I presume because they would piss all over the domestic market if they didn’t.
Get into a hyundai or a Nissan in Europe and the difference in build quality, materials, aesthetic design and textures are worlds apart.
I have had a range of cars over the 30 years I have been driving, and this is my experience in the UK.
When you are forced to buy a car just to maintain a job or not be run over on your way to get groceries on the transportation “infrastructure” provided by American cities, reliability for a car does make the top of the list.
I did not see it that way. When you say it like that I guess that would change my perspective a little too.
EU institutions are just as regulatory captured as everywhere else. The EU bureaucracy is horribly inefficient with tons of unfirable “human drones” making 2x for the same role one does in the the private market, where they just do 1/10x of the work. The only reason EU is not quite as corrupt as USA is ironically because all the competing rich fuckers of each nation are competing with each other’s lobbying
I don’t really understand why paying government workers a living wage is a bad thing here?
I am not familiar with the statistics in Europe, but do government employees really make 2x as much as private sector? And if so, are they really doing 1/10th of the work? Those numbers seem absurd.
“Inefficient” bureaucracy, and a well-paid work force, does not equal corruption.
That’s not stuff we’re not ready to hear though; we all know that.
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We have less corruption because our bureaucracy is horribly inefficient.
If they want to bribe someone, they need to bribe a ton of people making it more costly and more visible.
Want to know what an efficient bureaucracy looks like? A dictatorship.
It might be unpopular opinion, but I firmly believe that Inefficiencies in the bureaucracy is a good thing considering alternatives. It acts like a buffer, redundancies are in effect acting like checks and balances, and it’s way harder to break or subvert than the one without redundancy.
And money that spent on it are such a minuscule percentage of overall spendings, it worth it in the endWhile it may act as a buffer for reactionaries sometimes, it also serves as a way to stymie progressive politics for the same reasons.
Looking at some other governmental examples, I am happy to take this drawback. I think stopping another Trump or Putin is more important than improving. It’s obviously important to do both, but if there is a choice…
Yeah it’s not a binary choice. We don’t have to accept either stagnation (i.e. slow cooking towards fascism) or fascism speedrun.
To be honest, looking at everything that is happening in the world, we have a uniary choice of being happy that fascism is sometimes slow.
I am not even remotely optimistic fornthe future
The American South equals the European East
Europe is not as different from the US as it likes to pretend, especially politically.
Racism is not a unique or exceptionally American phenomenon, and the things I’ve heard from otherwise progressive Europeans can fucking curdle milk equal or in excess to what people in my ultra-rural ultra-conservative home region of the US can say.
You guys should start bulking up your militaries. At best, the US will completely abandon you, and I really don’t want to think about worst-case scenario as I live in the US.
You all need to just start making English an official language across the EU. Yeah I know that’s very American imperialist of me to say, but most of you speak it already anyway and it would make travel and communication so much easier. It feels like you all are insisting on speaking different languages just to pretend you have unique cultures when let’s be real, once you welcome McDonalds that ship has sailed.
Most Europeans still have a casual sense of arrogance and superiority over the rest of the world. It’s not very heavy, but it’s there, even among some of the best people I know
How does it manifest?
I don’t what the commenter is referring to specifically, but I encountered it as a young Australian working as a farm labourer. There were a couple of Germans working on the farm who looked down on me for having never travelled to Europe, and not being fluent in a second european language. The difference is that I was working for a living, and didn’t have the money for travel. They were just working there as an experience while travelling overseas. As an older person, I now see that as a class issue, but at the time I got the impression that Europeans were snobby. I suspect they just came from wealthier backgrounds.
I totally get it, the people that can afford going abroad like that aren’t going to be the average.
It reminds me of this story about Swedes being the cause of an insult. Apparently they got known in Spain for being lazy no-good bums, whereas they typically are known for being incredibly diligent workers. Turns out the Swedes going to Spain were only ever there for vacation, and thus earned a reputation for never doing work.
Yeah that’s a fair point. We make generalisations about people from other countries, but they’re not all the same. Later in life I lived in Germany while I was pursuing my engineering career, and felt more affinity with the engineers of similar background to myself than I do for rich people in my own country. Growing up in the 21st century in western countries somewhat blinds you to class awareness because the media and education system doesn’t discuss it but I feel that is starting to change now as online interaction breaks down those legacy barriers.
I have a formal sense of arrogance, thank you.
