When my wife worked for a few months in Brussels in 2015, I got into a lift in a parking garage and it had 4 or 5 different bodily fluids on the floor. That pretty much summed up our stay in that cesspool.
One advantage of our European system is I can go on the countryside here in Austria and most homes have a rifle, animals, crops, and the know-how to get by. Can’t measure that with GDP. And behind the former iron curtain is a lot of that same independence and loathing for the EU.
Buen artículo. El año pasado por estas fechas visité por turismo Europa con mis hijos. No encontramos más europeos que musulmanes, negros y latinos. Una estafa si uno hace el esfuerzo de conocer Europa desde Latinoamérica. Europa se ve definitivamente mejor en los libros.
But notice that the decrepitude also reaches nations outside the EU, like Switzerland and Norway. Or is the EU dragging them down as well? Perfidious Albion is not doing much better either. Even Russia does not look good in the long term.
Those are good points. There's a general declining trend in the West. But still both Norway and Switzerland outperform the EU on all the important metrics. Russia is a very different case, with the war, sanctions, etc. Still, overall Russia's economic performance has been marginally superior to the EU's during Putin's term. See this World Bank chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2023&locations=RU-EU&start=1998
100% agree on the economic side. But Norway and the Swiss have also blindly followed US policies antagonizing Russia, joining the EU sanctions, allowing more nato bases on its soil in the case of Norway, etc. And their social cultural problems are very similar to that of the rest of Europe.
Russia is not very different, doing well economically but atrocious demographics, inequality and having missed the opportunity to modernize its economy with the war. And culturally, while Russians show now obviously less pro Western attitudes, they do not seem to be creating something new.
Love the take, makes lotsa sense. The great post-1945 explosion in new consumer products was based in a highly innovative period in U.S. history: the Great Depression!
EU got ahead of its skis, it seems. Really just intended as an economic and financial union, not a sovereign state. It has no military or police, doesn't directly levy taxes, and can't enforce any foreign policy, so comparisons to the US aren't really valid. Somehow it was co-opted by central planners. It now seems opaque and inflexible. But its recent expansion will hopefully drive change. Too big to fail!
Okay, the concept of innovation through competition does make sense. However, during the periods of fragmentation Europe had to deal with external threaths, like Mongols or Ottomans, that were taking some parts of this civilization away (think about the Balkans or Kievan Rus). Apparently, no single country was really able to resist this threat - especially the Ottoman - and European countries had to unite to counter it, think of the battle in Vienna. So, I do agree that some level of fragmentation is very useful, but don't you think that collective European defense is a key to a second factor providing innovativenes, namely security and stability?
European countries have been perfectly capable of creating coalitions for centuries, and they did it for Lepanto first and to defend Vienna later. Not to mention the Crusades. The underlying problem is that coalition-making in the early 20th century spiraled into World Wars, which are now essentially impossible among European countries because of the nuclear age. The EU is irrelevant in the geopolitical debate, and it's a net negative on the economic front, that's why it isn't needed. Alliances and coalitions? Those are great.
It seems that the implication is that political disunity, which often leads to devastating military conflict, is the price of innovation and progress. Or is there an alternative future that promotes competition without leading to the destruction Europe has experienced for centuries?
Europe, with the EU, has had two major conflicts within my lifetime, both with heavy EU involvement, in Yugoslavia and the Ukraine. Continents with less political integration, like the Americas and Asia, had essentially none. If anything, the EU is a conflict-inducing element. But, even if one were to argue that it's not, the reality is that what stands in the way of inter-state conflict, everywhere, is the international system under the UN and the fear of nukes, certainly not Brussels.
It seems counter-intuitive. Conflict does spur innovation, yet war is the most wasteful thing humans as a species can do. Perhaps something in the middle, rivalry or even cold war if you like. It fueled the space race and the digital age. Yet now we live in a multi-polar world, much more like the 19th century. Skillful statecraft once again will dominate!
EU has never been a realist political project, based on respecting multipolarity and redefining European place in multipolar world. All different inputs that created and kept EU going had been essentially unipolar. It was either globalism, or beneath the political surface of obedient following globalism, childish recreation of former imperial national strategies.
It is difficult to grow up, for individuals, as well as for nation states.
EU is like an end of high school party at which individual states give up their sovereignty, inebriate themselves out of any sense of responsibility, and become like a mob. As with any mob, the key question is who is leading. Definitely not the birocratic elite.
Strong passions. Europe needs realist reappraisal of its own position in the multipolar world. Highly unlikely as long as Britain is redefining EU as primarily antiRussian, in the midst of a war with Russia.
Alternative to war to force innovation with cooperation: Space Exploration and settlement, which will make cooperation essential, and life precious- because any human in space off this earth has skills.
Salvage of any machine or skilled person will take on an entirely new dimension. <
Or we can stay here and wait for stupid fat women to start a nuclear war… by accident… it just almost happened, see Victoria Nuland et al.
This forced cooperation along with ceaseless interactions including yes violence is to an extent the story of North America the first 200 years.
The idea that there wasn’t nearly ceaseless interaction, trade, diplomacy with the Native Americans yes as well as war is a horrible, debilitating myth created in the 19th century. A great disservice done to all.
You made some compelling points in your piece, if (obviously) a bit bombastic and occasionally weakened by your own obvious ill humor, but the fact that you wrote “100%” to a comment stating that “stupid fat women” (wtf) will be the ones to start nuclear war, and not other infinitely more obvious culprits, makes it clear that you’ll back whatever hack comments on your piece just to get traffic. “100%”? How did you lose the capacity for critical thought between publishing this thoughtful piece and responding to a crackpot reader?
In my defense, Europe has been afflicted by a particularly long and dire stream of stupid women leaders. Are you British, Susan? You must remember such examples of English womanhood as Theresa May and Liz Truss. If you're German, you've suffered Angela Merkel and Ursula Von der Leyen, not to speak of insane dangerous freaks desperate for WW3 against Russia like Annalena Baerbock. I could go on with every country. Feminism means that we've had a particularly salient set of idiot ladies running Europe lately. Again, just as many idiot men, but this is kind of a new thing, is all.
No fan of Theresa May, but whatever my thoughts of her were they didn’t include “Likely to pull the lever on nuclear war.” I’d say the same for Merkel. Baerbock is a non-entity. What is the logic here? We’ve experienced the advent of some women leaders in the past couple of decades, therefore we’re going to frame them as the LIKELIER candidates to start a nuclear war despite all evidence to the contrary? I’d really like our discussions to stay on planet Earth, if that’s not too tall an order.
I disagree. Nuland is an extremely, uniquely dangerous lunatic willing to fight WW3 who has had huge amounts of power for decades. Baerbock is the freaking Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the leading EU country, so not a “non-entity.” Liz Truss was insanely aggressive towards Russia and we only avoided more trouble because the lettuce outlasted her. Merkel has publicly gloated about how she tricked Putin into signing the Minsk accords to later stab him in the back. Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright were the two people who pushed most and had the most influence on the US going to war against Yugoslavia in Kosovo. I could go on. This is real, this is not us having a laugh.
A theory that US, and perhaps the whole world will be destroyed by batshit crazy women is not without supportive arguments. Fat women can be beautiful. Fat women can be loved.
Men have succeeded in avoiding nuclear war until now.
I agree, we need to make that comment gender inclusive: for every stupid fat woman there's at least one stupid fat man. You're right. It's just that some of these ladies, like Nuland, are particularly evil and irritating.
A very good hypothesis and probably a big factor in why Europe sucks. I’ve heard another argument about what can possibly lead to stagnation and national decline though. That is a massive over abundance of cheap/free labor in your society which reduces any incentive for creating new more efficient labor saving devices and technologies. Why bother inventing advanced farming technology when you already have tons of slaves plowing your fields for free? It lowers your reward for such an investment and reduces the necessity. In short it makes you lazy.
We have a lot of examples of this in history like Slaves doing all the work for you in Rome or the American South. Or China with its massive unskilled manpower reserves which function more or less the same as slaves. Today you of course have open borders with hordes of unskilled immigrants flooding the manual labor job markets. Hell even certain technologies like AI/Robotics might eventually have the same effect once they are widespread.
Absolutely. My only issue with that is that it explains part of the differential with China (which increasingly lacks cheap labor) but not the differential with the US, which has similar labor conditions.
I very much agree. The globalization was sold as a net positive but the longterm outcome is a net negative for the average citizen of EU.
It would have been fine if we only traded commodities and materials but the use of China as « legal » slaves and unmitigated immigration will result in the EU becoming the slave pool overtime.
Of course well off people and politicians in power don’t care because they are not (too much) at risk of becoming a slave.
But this is basically what’s happening for the common man, he is forced to compete with people who are ready to accept very bad deals because they don’t have the same social needs/pressure. It’s just social dumping external AND internal.
Very, very substandard indeed. One of the Chinese government’s greatest achievements has been to stamp down hard on corruption - which thrives beyond all bounds in Europe (and especially in Brussels).
Are we talking about the same Chinese that have across history thrived on drug trade and still today sell substandard quality stuff under no name « brands » that they swap around faster than I change pants.
If you know your way around their ways it’s workable but corrupted might be the defining characteristic of the Chinese we know. Any Western company that make stuff there always have a bunch of western people overseeing production so they don’t get fucked over by terrible quality parts.
They are cheap (not that much anymore) but very much corrupt, unlike the Germans who are straight(er) but very expensive.
> After all, when in history has a vassal surpassed its master in any sense, in any industry or endeavor.
Rather often. Venice surpassing Byzantium is the example that comes to mind. Also the Dutch becoming a major world power while fighting an independence war against the Hapsburgs.
Brussels has better food than France and better beer than Germany. In my view that more than compensates for it being a little dank, ugly and sullen (which can also be said is a number of cities in the UK, France, Holland, etc)
How is it that a lot of European countries have still an higher median wealth than the US even if the US GDP is higher. We have higher salaries in the US but still are poorer than a lot of European.
How has the US been able to innovate a lot in spite of it being united for so long? Was it due to the US's federal system? Because the US has also nationalized a lot of issues. Federalization in the US is thus less intense than it was in the past.
FWIW, I compare the EU to a traditionally Christian, much less integrated, much less corrupt, and much wealthier version of what India is for Hindus. Yet in spite of its much lesser integration relative to India, the EU appears to be failing. One would think that the EU could do with even more decentralization and deregulation and more pro-free speech laws, but what else could fix it?
As a side note, does this also apply to Russia? I mean the idea that a state is more innovative and dynamic when it is weak?
I don’t think weakness drives innovation: competition does, between states, universities, whatever; and you need to be able to stand up and oppose whatever the ruling ideology is defending, so it helps to have somewhere you can escape to. That’s why the US, with strong free speech protections and a decentralized state, has been so much more innovative.
Maybe EU member states can embrace free speech and the very same kind of interstate competition that US states have previously embraced, then? I know that labor mobility in the EU, for instance, is much lower than it is in the US, especially if one compares US states to EU member states.
It's hopeless because you combine inefficiency with vassalage: it's not a bug that so many of us Europeans end up in the US, it's a feature of the system
But the EU allows Europe to achieve much greater economies of scale, similar to the US, China, and India. Is there any way to do this with much less bureaucratization and regulation?
Well, maybe "somewhat" rather than "slightly" is more accurate. In order to be "much" better would have to significantly reduce regulations and the size of the federal government, reform our energy policy, and fix housing / zoning at the state level. Not super hopeful.
When my wife worked for a few months in Brussels in 2015, I got into a lift in a parking garage and it had 4 or 5 different bodily fluids on the floor. That pretty much summed up our stay in that cesspool.
One advantage of our European system is I can go on the countryside here in Austria and most homes have a rifle, animals, crops, and the know-how to get by. Can’t measure that with GDP. And behind the former iron curtain is a lot of that same independence and loathing for the EU.
Buen artículo. El año pasado por estas fechas visité por turismo Europa con mis hijos. No encontramos más europeos que musulmanes, negros y latinos. Una estafa si uno hace el esfuerzo de conocer Europa desde Latinoamérica. Europa se ve definitivamente mejor en los libros.
Why not try a book?
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172187/escape-from-rome
This is brilliant!
But notice that the decrepitude also reaches nations outside the EU, like Switzerland and Norway. Or is the EU dragging them down as well? Perfidious Albion is not doing much better either. Even Russia does not look good in the long term.
Those are good points. There's a general declining trend in the West. But still both Norway and Switzerland outperform the EU on all the important metrics. Russia is a very different case, with the war, sanctions, etc. Still, overall Russia's economic performance has been marginally superior to the EU's during Putin's term. See this World Bank chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2023&locations=RU-EU&start=1998
100% agree on the economic side. But Norway and the Swiss have also blindly followed US policies antagonizing Russia, joining the EU sanctions, allowing more nato bases on its soil in the case of Norway, etc. And their social cultural problems are very similar to that of the rest of Europe.
Russia is not very different, doing well economically but atrocious demographics, inequality and having missed the opportunity to modernize its economy with the war. And culturally, while Russians show now obviously less pro Western attitudes, they do not seem to be creating something new.
My 0,02€.
Love the take, makes lotsa sense. The great post-1945 explosion in new consumer products was based in a highly innovative period in U.S. history: the Great Depression!
At least Brussels has sprouts, amirite?
Yup, and fries. Fries are (no kidding) the local delicacy
EU got ahead of its skis, it seems. Really just intended as an economic and financial union, not a sovereign state. It has no military or police, doesn't directly levy taxes, and can't enforce any foreign policy, so comparisons to the US aren't really valid. Somehow it was co-opted by central planners. It now seems opaque and inflexible. But its recent expansion will hopefully drive change. Too big to fail!
Okay, the concept of innovation through competition does make sense. However, during the periods of fragmentation Europe had to deal with external threaths, like Mongols or Ottomans, that were taking some parts of this civilization away (think about the Balkans or Kievan Rus). Apparently, no single country was really able to resist this threat - especially the Ottoman - and European countries had to unite to counter it, think of the battle in Vienna. So, I do agree that some level of fragmentation is very useful, but don't you think that collective European defense is a key to a second factor providing innovativenes, namely security and stability?
European countries have been perfectly capable of creating coalitions for centuries, and they did it for Lepanto first and to defend Vienna later. Not to mention the Crusades. The underlying problem is that coalition-making in the early 20th century spiraled into World Wars, which are now essentially impossible among European countries because of the nuclear age. The EU is irrelevant in the geopolitical debate, and it's a net negative on the economic front, that's why it isn't needed. Alliances and coalitions? Those are great.
It seems that the implication is that political disunity, which often leads to devastating military conflict, is the price of innovation and progress. Or is there an alternative future that promotes competition without leading to the destruction Europe has experienced for centuries?
Europe, with the EU, has had two major conflicts within my lifetime, both with heavy EU involvement, in Yugoslavia and the Ukraine. Continents with less political integration, like the Americas and Asia, had essentially none. If anything, the EU is a conflict-inducing element. But, even if one were to argue that it's not, the reality is that what stands in the way of inter-state conflict, everywhere, is the international system under the UN and the fear of nukes, certainly not Brussels.
It seems counter-intuitive. Conflict does spur innovation, yet war is the most wasteful thing humans as a species can do. Perhaps something in the middle, rivalry or even cold war if you like. It fueled the space race and the digital age. Yet now we live in a multi-polar world, much more like the 19th century. Skillful statecraft once again will dominate!
EU has never been a realist political project, based on respecting multipolarity and redefining European place in multipolar world. All different inputs that created and kept EU going had been essentially unipolar. It was either globalism, or beneath the political surface of obedient following globalism, childish recreation of former imperial national strategies.
It is difficult to grow up, for individuals, as well as for nation states.
EU is like an end of high school party at which individual states give up their sovereignty, inebriate themselves out of any sense of responsibility, and become like a mob. As with any mob, the key question is who is leading. Definitely not the birocratic elite.
Strong passions. Europe needs realist reappraisal of its own position in the multipolar world. Highly unlikely as long as Britain is redefining EU as primarily antiRussian, in the midst of a war with Russia.
Alternative to war to force innovation with cooperation: Space Exploration and settlement, which will make cooperation essential, and life precious- because any human in space off this earth has skills.
Salvage of any machine or skilled person will take on an entirely new dimension. <
Or we can stay here and wait for stupid fat women to start a nuclear war… by accident… it just almost happened, see Victoria Nuland et al.
This forced cooperation along with ceaseless interactions including yes violence is to an extent the story of North America the first 200 years.
The idea that there wasn’t nearly ceaseless interaction, trade, diplomacy with the Native Americans yes as well as war is a horrible, debilitating myth created in the 19th century. A great disservice done to all.
100%
You made some compelling points in your piece, if (obviously) a bit bombastic and occasionally weakened by your own obvious ill humor, but the fact that you wrote “100%” to a comment stating that “stupid fat women” (wtf) will be the ones to start nuclear war, and not other infinitely more obvious culprits, makes it clear that you’ll back whatever hack comments on your piece just to get traffic. “100%”? How did you lose the capacity for critical thought between publishing this thoughtful piece and responding to a crackpot reader?
In my defense, Europe has been afflicted by a particularly long and dire stream of stupid women leaders. Are you British, Susan? You must remember such examples of English womanhood as Theresa May and Liz Truss. If you're German, you've suffered Angela Merkel and Ursula Von der Leyen, not to speak of insane dangerous freaks desperate for WW3 against Russia like Annalena Baerbock. I could go on with every country. Feminism means that we've had a particularly salient set of idiot ladies running Europe lately. Again, just as many idiot men, but this is kind of a new thing, is all.
No fan of Theresa May, but whatever my thoughts of her were they didn’t include “Likely to pull the lever on nuclear war.” I’d say the same for Merkel. Baerbock is a non-entity. What is the logic here? We’ve experienced the advent of some women leaders in the past couple of decades, therefore we’re going to frame them as the LIKELIER candidates to start a nuclear war despite all evidence to the contrary? I’d really like our discussions to stay on planet Earth, if that’s not too tall an order.
I disagree. Nuland is an extremely, uniquely dangerous lunatic willing to fight WW3 who has had huge amounts of power for decades. Baerbock is the freaking Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the leading EU country, so not a “non-entity.” Liz Truss was insanely aggressive towards Russia and we only avoided more trouble because the lettuce outlasted her. Merkel has publicly gloated about how she tricked Putin into signing the Minsk accords to later stab him in the back. Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright were the two people who pushed most and had the most influence on the US going to war against Yugoslavia in Kosovo. I could go on. This is real, this is not us having a laugh.
A theory that US, and perhaps the whole world will be destroyed by batshit crazy women is not without supportive arguments. Fat women can be beautiful. Fat women can be loved.
Men have succeeded in avoiding nuclear war until now.
I agree, we need to make that comment gender inclusive: for every stupid fat woman there's at least one stupid fat man. You're right. It's just that some of these ladies, like Nuland, are particularly evil and irritating.
The EU 🇪🇺 as an inefficient 🐲Middle Kingdom. 🌏🤔
Pretty much sums 🧮🔢 it up....
....could I have an extra helping of regulation with that won ton please? 🥡🥟🥢
A very good hypothesis and probably a big factor in why Europe sucks. I’ve heard another argument about what can possibly lead to stagnation and national decline though. That is a massive over abundance of cheap/free labor in your society which reduces any incentive for creating new more efficient labor saving devices and technologies. Why bother inventing advanced farming technology when you already have tons of slaves plowing your fields for free? It lowers your reward for such an investment and reduces the necessity. In short it makes you lazy.
We have a lot of examples of this in history like Slaves doing all the work for you in Rome or the American South. Or China with its massive unskilled manpower reserves which function more or less the same as slaves. Today you of course have open borders with hordes of unskilled immigrants flooding the manual labor job markets. Hell even certain technologies like AI/Robotics might eventually have the same effect once they are widespread.
Could be some truth in this hypothesis as well.
Absolutely. My only issue with that is that it explains part of the differential with China (which increasingly lacks cheap labor) but not the differential with the US, which has similar labor conditions.
I very much agree. The globalization was sold as a net positive but the longterm outcome is a net negative for the average citizen of EU.
It would have been fine if we only traded commodities and materials but the use of China as « legal » slaves and unmitigated immigration will result in the EU becoming the slave pool overtime.
Of course well off people and politicians in power don’t care because they are not (too much) at risk of becoming a slave.
But this is basically what’s happening for the common man, he is forced to compete with people who are ready to accept very bad deals because they don’t have the same social needs/pressure. It’s just social dumping external AND internal.
Very, very substandard indeed. One of the Chinese government’s greatest achievements has been to stamp down hard on corruption - which thrives beyond all bounds in Europe (and especially in Brussels).
Are we talking about the same Chinese that have across history thrived on drug trade and still today sell substandard quality stuff under no name « brands » that they swap around faster than I change pants.
If you know your way around their ways it’s workable but corrupted might be the defining characteristic of the Chinese we know. Any Western company that make stuff there always have a bunch of western people overseeing production so they don’t get fucked over by terrible quality parts.
They are cheap (not that much anymore) but very much corrupt, unlike the Germans who are straight(er) but very expensive.
In what world do you live in ?
The corpse of Deng wants to strangle Xi.
> After all, when in history has a vassal surpassed its master in any sense, in any industry or endeavor.
Rather often. Venice surpassing Byzantium is the example that comes to mind. Also the Dutch becoming a major world power while fighting an independence war against the Hapsburgs.
the keyword is "fighting"
Brussels has better food than France and better beer than Germany. In my view that more than compensates for it being a little dank, ugly and sullen (which can also be said is a number of cities in the UK, France, Holland, etc)
Agree about the beer, a saving grace
UK and Holland ok but France really ?
Once you are not in close proximity to the northern frontier (with Belgium indeed) it is nothing like that.
How is it that a lot of European countries have still an higher median wealth than the US even if the US GDP is higher. We have higher salaries in the US but still are poorer than a lot of European.
https://viewfromtheback.com/2023/10/03/things-about-france-that-dont-surprise-me-wealth-creation/
If I see the severe poverty home in Pottawattamie County (13% poverty) I do not understand what we do wrong :
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/iowa#severe_housing_problems
How has the US been able to innovate a lot in spite of it being united for so long? Was it due to the US's federal system? Because the US has also nationalized a lot of issues. Federalization in the US is thus less intense than it was in the past.
FWIW, I compare the EU to a traditionally Christian, much less integrated, much less corrupt, and much wealthier version of what India is for Hindus. Yet in spite of its much lesser integration relative to India, the EU appears to be failing. One would think that the EU could do with even more decentralization and deregulation and more pro-free speech laws, but what else could fix it?
As a side note, does this also apply to Russia? I mean the idea that a state is more innovative and dynamic when it is weak?
I don’t think weakness drives innovation: competition does, between states, universities, whatever; and you need to be able to stand up and oppose whatever the ruling ideology is defending, so it helps to have somewhere you can escape to. That’s why the US, with strong free speech protections and a decentralized state, has been so much more innovative.
Maybe EU member states can embrace free speech and the very same kind of interstate competition that US states have previously embraced, then? I know that labor mobility in the EU, for instance, is much lower than it is in the US, especially if one compares US states to EU member states.
It's hopeless because you combine inefficiency with vassalage: it's not a bug that so many of us Europeans end up in the US, it's a feature of the system
Would you advocate disbanding NATO to break the vassalage, or what?
No, the EU
But the EU allows Europe to achieve much greater economies of scale, similar to the US, China, and India. Is there any way to do this with much less bureaucratization and regulation?
Federalism, a small state (until the 70s), and open to immigrants.
The US is far from perfect, but slightly better than the EU. Maybe the vibe shift will help....
The US also gets more high-quality immigrants relative to the EU.
BTW, you don’t think that the US is much better than the EU? Only slightly better?
Well, maybe "somewhat" rather than "slightly" is more accurate. In order to be "much" better would have to significantly reduce regulations and the size of the federal government, reform our energy policy, and fix housing / zoning at the state level. Not super hopeful.