I'd trade "not being able to access Cloudflare-websites for some hours per week" over "My neighbors can't afford healthcare, there is no public transport for anyone nor can I walk to a cafe on the other side of town", but we all have different priorities :)

Don't get me wrong, it sucks, makes no sense and I hate the responsible people for it, but in the grand scheme of things, Spain does have a higher quality of life than so many other places out in the world, most important, way higher than the country you're comparing it to, on almost any useful metric.

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bot403 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or you can have all of those things but also not block cloudflare. Because blocking cloudflare is in the interest of just a few company's profits and is unrelated to everything else you mentioned.

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embedding-shape 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, sure, as mentioned, I agree with that it's fucking stupid, but when someone complains about that, while referring to "quality of life" in a place which more depends on other things, it's worth to zoom out a bit and gain some perspective, which was frankly missing in the comment I was responding to.

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nradov 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Nah, I didn't miss anything. I've spent enough time in the EU (including the poorer parts that most tourists don't visit) to have a crystal clear perspective on the real situation.

	▲	embedding-shape 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, no sure, generalizing "the reality of living and working under an oppressive bureaucratic state" across the EU because specifically Cloudflare being unavailable in Spain for couple of hours a week is totally a nuanced, measured and accurate take and representation of how it is to live and work in the EU in 2026.

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bluecalm 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think Spain has such amazing quality of life if you are not already set. It's very tough for young people. It doesn't reward hard work and education. If you have your nice house in a nice place and a good government job it's a happy place but from what I see around people, especially young productive people are not in good place here.

Spain is lucky that it gets around 20% of its economy because of nice weather (tourism + foreign real estate buyers) but I don't think it's enough to sustain the quality of life if there are no reforms.

	▲	embedding-shape 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I don't think Spain has such amazing quality of life if you are not already set. It's very tough for young people. It doesn't reward hard work and education When I first came here I literally spent 2 days sleeping outside as I couldn't afford housing, and had very rough 4-5 years before I even got my first programming job. Today I'm financially independent though, and it's probably all thanks the type of environment Spain has fostered together with my own willpower, compared to the environment in the country I'm from where it'd be short of impossible to do what I did, with zero education. I think it depends on what you compare it to. Plenty of places are way worse, and many other places are surely better. It's definitively possible to achieve amazing quality of life even if you aren't "already set", even outside of government jobs (that don't even pay that well anyways).
	▲	joquarky 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> It's very tough for young people. It doesn't reward hard work and education. Isn't this applicable to pretty much everywhere now?
	▲	anthk 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If you think Spain it's Andalucia, Murcia and Valencia (and the archipelagos) I have bad news for you.

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tracker1 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're welcome to walk to the cafe on the other side of town... however, if you're in a larger city in the southwest, you can expect that walk to take several hours. Just driving from one edge of the Phoenix metro area to the other corner can take upwards of over an hour and a half, and our traffic isn't nearly as bad as other cities.

As for healthcare... that's a mixed bag... you can go to the ER and you will be treated, but the bill afterwards may or may not be impactful... There have been some improvements, but the healthcare lobby is massive, and pretty much stops most reasonable and some unreasonable improvements.

On public transportation, it varies... you need to realize that the main part of the US is by itself about the size of Europe... I would assume there are plenty of areas of Europe where public transit is likely limited. Not even getting into Alaska, which is by itself massive and largely unpopulated. It's probably better to compare individual US States to EU nations in terms of transit.

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svachalek 5 hours ago | parent [-]

My last ER trip ended up over $1,000,000. Fortunately after out-of-pocket maximum it was all covered by insurance but this kind of debt would be life ending to the uninsured.

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tracker1 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I get it... I had an ER trip, pre ACA (Obamacare) where my health insurance max was 500k, and my bill was like $370k after all was said and done... I worked a lot the next 7 years to pay off/down what I could, then at that point, I just stopped as it was off my credit score, and everyone that took reasonable payment arrangements or settled for an amount that fit in my tax return, bonus, etc.. had been paid.

I definitely couldn't handle working that much today. I've also got some serious health issues that aren't being addressed. That said, I don't feel that the US can handle socialized medicine well, and the best that we could do is take the spend that is already in place with the govt and establish a first party option to compete with commercial providers that anyone can buy a plan from. I also think that there are single-payer approaches and fiduciary requirements for insurance carriers could go a long way combined with such an approach as opposed to a whole sale socialist takeover.

	▲	pessimizer 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just what we need, another Rube Goldberg machine to lay over the current Rube Goldberg machine in order to avoid "socialism." Somehow a socialist army, police, and fire department work, but not healthcare, because it is special.

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pembrook 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No it wouldn't be. If you were uninsured, the price would magically drop to $50,000. And if you couldn't pay it you'd simply file for bankruptcy and it would be socialized onto the rest of us that way. Worst case scenario, post-bankruptcy you'd have to rent a home for 7 years instead of getting a mortgage until your credit resets. But even people who have gone through bankruptcies can still get mortgages.

Yes, the US healthcare system is insane/dumb. But the stupidity of it can just be stated matter-of-factly without inventing falsehoods like "life ending $1,000,000 debt for the uninsured."