> Yeah, but do you control international banking the way they do?
This is why Europe needs to detach itself from the American banking system.
It used to be very practical to use it. Countries renounced to some sovereignty in exchange for ease of doing business. The USA had an advantage but it didn't abuse it too much.
The current situation is that the USA is asking to forfeit sovereignty and to control business in an ideological basis. There is a strong incentive to leave that system as the alternative is become a colony of the USA. And the push for colonization is not subtle as the president takes over other countries resources like Venezuela's oil or tries to take control of the straight of Hormuz (None part of the USA at this moment)
At the moment Europe is getting more reliant on the US. There are new non-Us payment systems but the end user devices are Apple or Google controlled. Governments and banks are very eager to get rid of cash, to introduce digital ID etc. That all relies on American platforms.
Totally true. The EU needs its own platforms, I hope that better regulated than their USA counterparts. Linux started in Europe, it should have been promoted more for internal usage. But privatization of state-owned companies made it ideologically impossible to push for it. Public good was seen as "bad" and "against business", I hope that the obvious failure of that policy makes it now a possibility to use Linux.
We used to. Contactless payments from my phone didn't require Google Wallet a few years ago, but now they do. My bank passes suddenly say VISA and have credit card numbers on them which they didn't have a few years ago. European banks are going in the completely wrong direction and need to reverse.
Your bank pass may support multiple systems. I think a lot of European cards (not all) are EC-Karten as well as one of the major credit card brands, and when you use it in an ATM, it uses neither system but directly contacts your bank.
I love how Europeans get pumped up on anti-American rhetoric when they are far more submissive to the US than even a Ukraine or a South Korea is. I'm starting to think the rhetoric (always about what they're about to do, something about Trump, something about Musk) is being pumped to them by US admin think tanks.
The US is going to be at peace with Russia, and still pumping anti-Russian rhetoric into Europe to keep them buying US LNG. The big difference will be that they'll start mixing more Trump-Russia rhetoric in - but the result is that they'll be more dependent on the US. The anti-China rhetoric is working great, too.
The best thing for a Europe that wants to separate from the US is to completely isolate themselves from any possible energy or trade replacement for the US./s
That being said, in Europe it's a small elite class (that is still fairly firmly in control of everything) that pushes this (on direct orders and direct payments from US masters.) The rising degree of control of speech and association they have to exert, and the direct election interference they've had to engage in is very disturbing to a plurality of the European population. And that normally politically disengaged plurality is becoming politically active as their living standards drop.
I think what you're missing is that for many Western European countries, like Germany, suddenly gaining a direct border with Russia is a genuine concern. It's not just rhetoric; it's the real world.
It's easy for Americans, who are essentially uninvadable, to discount this as just people saying stuff, but in Europe, we actually have to live with Russia's direct military threat.
If you mean EU borders - it's had direct border with Russia since 1995.
If you mean in the sense of placing NATO troups on border with Russia, that is indeed recent, and definitely a concern, but - those west-European countries have gone along with expanding NATO eastwards.
If you mean the supposed fear of Russia conquering Poland - then that is not really serious.
> we actually have to live with Russia's direct military threat.
So far in this war, it is German and other European & NATO member state weapons being intentionally fired into Russia, not the other way around.
Of course, if you look further back, Russia has invaded westwards multiple times over the centuries, and European powers have indaded Russia multiple times: Sweden, France, Germany. But mutual perception as threats is something almost any pair of European states can be said to have in their past. And the distances are even closer than Russia and Germany.
It would be great to have a direct border with Russia, and finally get rid of US troops in Europe. Would solve lots of issues and drastically increase prosperity and well-being. There's never been a Russian threat in the first place. The sustained militarization of post-WW2 Europe, i.e. NATO, the arms race and the Cold War and its world-wide proxy wars, is the result of Britain and the US pursueing their strategy of tension. At every single step it was the US who escalated, divided and militarized Europe. This is a patently obvious fact of history. And it includes the current war using the Ukraine as ram against Russia.
> There's never been a Russian threat in the first place.
Have you really had your head in the sand, or are you just desperately trying to sell a transparent lie here? The Putin is not exactly careful about his threats.
> The US is going to be at peace with Russia, and still pumping anti-Russian rhetoric into Europe to keep them buying US LNG.
The US isn't really a source of anti-Russia rhetoric. In fact, the US may be the biggest source of pro-Russia rhetoric, with Trump constantly sucking up to Putin and repeating Kremlin talking points.
"anti-Russian rhetoric" Phrasing like this is hilarious when Russia is actually invading Ukraine and randomly bombing civilians in order to permanently steal its land. In this context the objective facts are "anti-Russian"
Which is why efforts by China to stand up independent cross border payment rails are important. You have to cut the US out of any ability to control activities outside of their boundaries.
and Europe. Europe should also decouple itself from the U.S. as much as it is possible, and not repeat the mistake of overreliance with China. not because China is somehow worse, but because you always should be able to say "no", no matter how good your partners are
Unfortunately decoupling payments within the EU is insufficient if the US can just threaten to sanction your bank, and in doing so force the bank to drop you as a customer. Even in the presence of an internal European payments network, those banks still need to transact with the US and other US-sphere countries...
No but then you can have local bank that will not have US interactions but can still serve you. Since the French judge of the IPC was sanctioned, it’s clear that the EU must completely decouple from the US.
> The payment system has to be decoupled first, and then banks can have nothing to fear from US sanctions.
I'm not sure the payment system is most banks primary concern. Being able to buy/sell US securities turns out to be a fairly fundamental part of the modern economy
For now, but not forever. Skate to where the puck is going to be. Decoupling continues, with the target being independence. Quote this comment five years from now.
TBH China is not currently bombing a foreign country for no reason and it is not threatening to invade its allies.
It’s not a particularly high bar, but of the big powers, only China currently meets it.
And I know you will say „but payment networks are not a warfare question, they are an economic question“ but that kind of breaks down when they are used to sanction ICC judges presiding over war crime cases.
China has invaded and conquered other countries before, has occupied territories and clearly plans to invade at least one neighbour id it gets the chance. Its hugely oppressive internally and is wiping out minority cultures by any means required.
Sometimes, yes. In the case of bankings systems combined with payment systems you could end up reliant on both. If the US sanctions you only people using a Chinese OS to make payments through a Chinese payment system will be unaffected and vice-versa. Either will be able to take your economy down.
The BRICS organization is precisely setup to not rely on the single actor, China included. They all have strong disagreements, but they all agree having a single global bully (USA) is bad for all involved parties.
It can be better, if the alternative mechanism is designed with safeguards against hijacking by a single state. Naturally, the threat of sanctions can always bully banks or states into acting one way or another, but at least it would not be through the cutting off of money transfers between willing parties.
Of course, that's an _if_, not something to just take for granted.
What I find wild is that this control over international banking, and the sanctions it enables, is a key benefit of the US-led world order that Trump is trying to dismantle. I’m quite sure he doesn’t understand this, but a key consequence of his efforts to stop the US from getting “ripped off” is that we will soon no longer have the ability to impose these sorts of sanctions as the global economy re-routes around American control.
If that's what you characterize the US government as, I can only imagine what you characterize some of the other governments around the world. Particularly, from the millions of us who migrated to the US legally and willfully and who are very VERY grateful to this country for providing the opportunities people like myself could only dream-of in our former countries.
As Stephen Miller loves to remind us, we had the first net emigration in decades this year. They're rounding up legal immigrants and putting them in concentration camps where they're dying because they're being denied medical care.
Many (most?) governments around the world strike no terror on other countries. They don’t go around invading other countries, nor sanctioning them on the basis of belief, nor using their soft/hard power to exert pressure at a global scale.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful for many things the USA has done, and for the inventiveness and generosity of its people; but let’s not pretend like their government(s) have been the kindest or most terror-free in the past decades.
The USA can be both a good and bad thing. And terrorism, by definition, is a bit of what they do abroad.
A lot of that has to do with the fact that they simply do not need to. Many of these countries rely on allies such as the United States to maintain that aggressive posture for them and offer them the opportunity to remain militarily neutral.
How many of these millions only had to migrate to the US because the US destroyed their countries with war, economic sanctions, covert CIA operations, or other attacks?
I don’t know, how many? You are the one throwing blanket statements.
I’m from Latin America and it’s 100% the fault of some of our own corrupt governments and us people living in those places.
Emphasis on “some,” because countries like Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay and lately Argentina and El Salvador are showing that less government intervention in economic matters and a zero-bullshit policy on crime is how you turn things around to something that reminisces a somewhat livable country.
It really is not the fault of the US that Mexico has drug gangs that kill people at random. It's not the fault that Pakistan and India are nearly at war forever. It's not the US fault that many countries support and require female genital mutilation. The US is not as evil as you think.
> It really is not the fault of the US that Mexico has drug gangs that kill people at random
This is a direct result of the "war on drugs" perpetrated by the US.
The other two are genuinely not the fault of the US, but bringing up two examples where the US wasn't the source of the problem doesn't exactly contradict the original claim.
The war on drugs definitely didn't cause the drug trade or the murders. If anything it's the fault of leftist US government stance on drugs that weaken border security and allow drugs to get in (and therefore fund more drugs to be produced). And besides all that, the drug trade has been going on for far longer than you know. And including the murders.
> Which is partly or mostly our fault.
It does contradict the original claim because it's 3 examples of things we didn't cause - and he said "mostly our fault". If it takes 3 seconds to think of things we didn't cause, then the world's craziness is not mostly the fault of America. Mostly the US has a hand in stopping communist governments where the citizens are kept as slaves.
> The war on drugs definitely didn't cause the drug trade or the murders.
Have to stop you right there. The “war on drugs” absolutely has created the conditions for the drug trade and the murders. If you criminalize a large part of the economy, then only criminals will profit from it. If we had sane drug policy, there would not be the profit that attracts these criminals. Additionally, the US intelligence services (and other nations) have a long documented role in cultivating the drug trade for diverse reasons: for profit and paying for operations, for control of regions, and to provide a reservoir of violence to disguise or facilitate their work.
The only way to stop it is to regulate it. We’re almost there. Read the history about the war on drugs. David Musto has a great book about it, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. It was never designed to stop it. Its goal from the beginning has been to criminalize “undesirables”
> The war on drugs definitely didn't cause the drug trade or the murders
You should be a lot less confident in your opinions. The war on drugs required violent interventions against drug production in Mexico, which directly created militarized, violent drug cartels.
Example: pressured by the US, Felipe Calderón launched Operation Michoacán in 2006 with U.S. backing and funding. He deployed tens of thousands of federal forces. Mexico has recorded more than 463,000 homicides since that declaration of war on the cartels, a huge increase.
Just look at the data.
> and he said "mostly our fault". If it takes 3 seconds to think of things we didn't cause
He said "mostly" because he knows there are counterexamples, so providing counterexamples doesn't contradict his point.
> Mostly the US has a hand in stopping communist governments where the citizens are kept as slaves.
This is such a genuinely undiscriminating statement that I can't help but categorize it as dumb. I don't usually say this, but you need to stop listening to propaganda and pick up a few actual history books. Until you do, any discussion is pointless, because you're so stuck in your ideology that facts can't penetrate the bubble.
That's really all I have for you. It's up to you to fix yourself.
Has it occurred to you that there are history books that both back what I am saying and what you're saying? Which ones are handed out in a leftist college?
If you don't see an issue with the White House constantly posting straight up Nazi memes then that's on you. There's also plenty immigrants in Europe who vote for fascists, so? Turns out you can't just leave your "former" country behind like an old coat, it's still your upbringing and horizon. You are grateful "to the country", but what does that mean while also shrugging off what the people in "the country" are saying? What is left of "the country"? A bunch of papers, rights and money, opportunities for you; let the goons roam and fill their warehouses, keep children, even infants in despicable conditions, because you (think you) have nothing to fear?
So you neither acknowledge nor disagree with any of that. As if it's nothing. I would if you don't care when it falls to fascism, it's not your home. You gave up your "former" country and you're not being a fellow country person in your new one, either, kinda like you don't really show up to this conversation, but worse. Since what you say has no substance it's as if you didn't say it in the first place. It just took up space and time, for nothing. Does that answer your question?
> whose centre is firmly to the right compared to the rest of the world.
Not really, no. Most of the world is under authoritarian regimes that would be seen as more right leaning. Most democracies are also right leaning. What characterizes the US is being extremely capitalistic and pro-corporations
I would agree that's true for Y Combinator, but my experience in the HN _community_ for almost a decade now has suggested that the heavy anti-American sentiment started right around the start of the current administration.
It's always a bit upsetting to me when people conflate criticism of aspects of a country (like its government) with being against that country. I would rather say that it shows that people are pro that country and want it to do better.
Fair enough. I do have a specific sentiment in mind, though, and it's not the constructive kind, which I very rarely see anymore. I would classify "anti-American sentiment" as sentiment which is against the Western culture that has predominated since the founding of the country.
But it's a slippery slope. If someone love America and wants a revolution to turn it into something historically unrecognizable, does that still make them pro-America? I would say no.
America has the most progressive tax system in the world. There is no other country where the ultra rich pay such percentage of the tax burden. Fuck off with this "Left in the US is center in Europe" bullshit. The EU wishes they were as left as us in a lot of areas.
edit: Because this is HN and a lot of you are learning this for the first time:
US: $60k salary leads to $50k take home pay, then a less than 10% sales tax
Denmark: $60k salary leads to $38k take home pay, then a 25% sales tax
All that money you're losing in Denmark is paying for you shittier healthcare.
Welcome to a small taste of being outside your echo chamber.
