There is no Europe. When push comes to shove its all petty squabbles. That's the problem. This whole talk of sovereign European access is dead from the start because each Euro state has conflicting interests and no motivation to work together. They refused to go full US of Europe and now we have the worst of both worlds. China is gonna eat us for brekky.

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embedding-shape 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> no motivation to work together.

You have to be absolutely blind if you can't even read history going back just a few decades, which makes it evidently clear that we have more motivation to work together than pretty much any continent out there. Doesn't help that we all know that the two world wars we've had so far, has come from our continent, so yes, we have a lot of motivation to work together.

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nolok an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh hard disagree there, the way I see it there is no more squabble between France and Poland than there is between Texas and California or between Spain and Romania compared to New york and Virginia. In fact, I would say we have LESS of it.

The only thing we need is to actually stop ignoring the forest for the tree and see that the world moved on beyond our petty local borders and we're lucky enough to have found a system where we're stronger together, to the point where we matter in the world and can't be ignored or pushed aside, while also protecting the core of each of our own cultural societies (langugage, history, ...), and only fools would let that go because they're too close minded to see it.

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3938848484 an hour ago | parent [-]

I interned for one of the delegations in the European parliament and I've also worked in the public sector California. The US is a country, the EU is a bunch of cats fighting under a blanket.

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nolok 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The European parliament and US congress are both just as united and fragmented.

We disagree internally until we find a common posture that we adopt.

I'm not sure why you talk California public sector instead of something involving multiple states that have differing views, that makes your comparison useless, that's why I say US congress.

Note that your misunderstanding of the situation and lack of knowledge about it is not rare per se, to give an exemple that's why a fair amount of brexiter politician were surprised the EU didn't break itself in internal fight over the UK deal (while they were used to the inside squabble when they were a member, and they failed to notice the similarity with their own parliament compared to their country).

	▲	inglor_cz 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The EU-related structures in Brussels are about as united/fragmented as the US Congress, indeed. But the national governments are nothing like US state governments. A lot more political fragmentation, plus they still consider themselves executives of sovereign nations with various vital interests and also historic resentments. Few Californian politicians will base their programs on suspicions towards New Mexico. In Poland, "don't kowtow to the Germans" is still a living idea and current PM Tusk is regularly accused of doing precisely that.

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embedding-shape 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Must be incredibly humbling experience to not realize EU is a union of independent countries and the US is a federation of states until you work for one of the delegations, wasn't it? Most of us pick up on that even without professional experience about it.

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3938848484 21 minutes ago | parent [-]

See the thing is when we studied law in Europe a long time ago we were sold on this dream that Europe would become like the United States and we'd a abandon our national prejudices kind of like how people sometimes talk about it in these threads.

Then you get there all bright eyed and it's just a bunch of boomers squabbling to fuck each other over to get 0.03% tax advantages on peach liquor exports for their region. Or just completely delusional people living in a kumbaya fantasy world and just throwing money at the wall for vanity projects that will never be implemented because there's five layers of separation between them and the ground.

It really takes the soul out of you. The way people work in the US and China is completely different. They DO things. Europeans just talk about doing things, and then talk behind each others backs.

Sorry if this is not cogent Im hangover

	▲	embedding-shape 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> See the thing is when we studied law in Europe a long time ago we were sold on this dream that Europe would become like the United States Eeh, what school was this? I think most public schools (at least those me and people near me) attended, it was taught that EU is nothing like the US, as we're all individual countries and everyone wants to remain as such, but we still want to collaborate although we're somewhat different from each other, and been killing each other since forever. I guess that's why second world war and similar things are such a big part of our history lessons, rather than diving deep into the history of US or Australia or whatever. > It really takes the soul out of you. The way people work in the US and China is completely different. They DO things. Europeans just talk about doing things, and then talk behind each others backs. For me the difference is between politicians and people actually doing the work. And my personally experience points towards this split existing equally everywhere, in China, in the US, in Europe and everywhere else I've been. The higher up the political ranks you get, the more people like to talk, the less they like doing. I feel like this is very evident in the US too, looking at how productive and efficient companies are vs research labs living on grants vs federal government vs local governments, the scale is completely different, and same goes in Europe as well, at least from what I can tell. Evidentially, in the high ranks of the European Parliament, things are exactly the same as higher ranking politicians everywhere, they just like to talk and grandstand and pretend to know what they're talking about. But I think this is true in the US too, or in China, these sort of people just like talking and discussing things forever, for better or worse.
	▲	2III7 8 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Then you get there all bright eyed and it's just a bunch of boomers squabbling to fuck each other over to get 0.03% tax advantages on peach liquor exports for their region. Congratulations, you summed up how politics work in all regions of the world.

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frikskit 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

That was not a useful metaphor, but by all means try again (if you want) and teach us something interesting (and concrete) based on your unique experience.