Item — HN Reader

That was a good article, I don’t usually read The Register.

Even as a US citizen, I say: good for Europe!

The world is simply a better place when countries have independence and can be as self reliant as possible.

In the US media there is an ongoing rhetoric that everything in the US is wonderful and everything in the rest of the world is much worse. I am privileged to have travelled widely so I know what a mostly wonderful and friendly world we live in.

I just use a few EU tech products (Hetzner, Proton, Mistral) but they seem good enough to me.

1 comments

> The world is simply a better place when countries have independence and can be as self reliant as possible.

I would tend to agree, but to take the other side: This also gives rise to massive wars. You don’t tend to go to war when your economy is so intertwined that war is the economic equivalent of a mass casualty event.

> You don’t tend to go to war when your economy is so intertwined that war is the economic equivalent of a mass casualty event.

That is after all the core motivation[1] behind what became[2] the European Union:

The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes, not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230516193200/http://aei.pitt.e...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...

I can also agree with the ‘other side’ viewpoint as well. There are things to do to mitigate war though besides interlocking infrastructure: young people studying abroad, travel, friendships with people in other countries. Not too far off topic: a US war planner during world war 2 took Yokohama off the list of Japanese cities to be annihilated with bombing because he and his wife visited that city and loved it. Anything that fights against dehumanizing people in other countries during times of conflict is a good thing.