Comment by u_sama | Hacker News Reader

Comment by u_sama | Hacker News Reader

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>There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies.

This is a Danish blindspot, Europeans do not trust their governments in large (France is fractured, Southern Europe has endemic corruption, Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out) and this is in part the source behind the flare up of "far-right" movements in the continent. The infamous EU chat law doesnt help either, and all the abuses of Germany in their misuse of hate speech to punish speech is not a positive development. We do not have real alternatives to most American tech services, and administrations are unwilling to move to Linux based alternatives.

The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.

> The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.

They don't need to though, just require all government software to be released under a free software license, with limited exceptions for national security. The US does very well in software, so the EU should commoditise their complement and focus on free software services. This is both cheaper than the current services, and produces lots of employment for EU based tech people (probably at less money though, unfortunately).

This is basically what China is doing with their open weights models.

> Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out

... and those parties would be even more authoritarian if they got in. Which they might in part because of the reaction. It's possible to get fucked from both ends...

> Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out

Please explain?

The Greens are doing well, and certainly are hetrodox.

Do you mean "keep fascists out"?

Or do you mean something else?

I would not classify Greens as heterodox, because the whole climate policy (and the degrowth movement overall) is forefront in Germany. The move to close nuclear plants and instead replace it with renewables (which are blocked at the local level by boomer Green elected NIMBYs) is not sound, if your objective is to achieve enrgy transition and 0 fossil fuels.

As for the fascists, when one looks deeper into the AfD (not that I like them, more the opposite) they are just the old right + immigration issues. Labelling them as fascist is a dangerous thing because it devalues the value of the word and opens the way for true facsicm to come.

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