603 karma · joined October 21, 2025
Reddit level argument ignoring the fact that the US's goal there wasn't to win anything since there's nothing of value there, it was to funnel taxpayer money to the military industrial complex for 15 years.
Pretty sure the US could have glassed Afghanistan off the map if they really wanted but probably wouldn't have been very popular decision.
THen there's no trickle down happening.
>Desire to invest in USA has gone down because of Trump
Not true. Nokia just announced closing of its Infinera Munich HQ and relocating those activities to the US.
Care to detail? Like I'm sure defense stocks and some arms manufacturing is up, but where I live I don't see the tech jobs market being boosted by defense spending.
And they don't give a damn about attracting eyeballs since the surveillance will be mandated by law and done legally by the book, and it will be done "for your own safety and protection against the boogieman", so that people will accept it.
Where do you see the negativity?
I don't believe labeling healthy skepticism and criticism as negativity to farm artificial sympathy in retaliation, does any good to anyone.
Humans have pattern recognition capabilities for a reason, and if a company is triggering that in them, then it's best expressed why(probably because they saw this MO before and got burned) instead of just cheerleading the unknown for fake positivity.
How? Governments have the monopoly on violence through their control of the police and military, and corporations bribe the governments in power to do their bidding and also control the media apparatus via which the voting population makes their democratic decisions, so you get this corrupt symbiotic relationship between the first and second estate (the government and wealthy elite private sector) to keep the third estate (common population) oppressed.
So how do you actually coordinate hundreds of millions of people towards a single goal to "fight" against and apparatus of oppression with an order of magnitude more kinetic strike, intelligence gathering and propaganda capabilities than the common folk?
People keep fantasizing about the French revolution and guillotines, but King Louis XVI didn't have Air Force One, doomsday bunkers in New Zeeland, AC-130s, Predator, Reaper and Anduril drones to protect him. The force disparity between the ruling elite and peasantry is now like that meme of hydrogen bomb versus coughing baby.
The difference between someone being paranoid and someone being right, is time.
I think he's just trying to be proactive with an insurance policy to cushion the blow since societal ageism is completely out of your control.
You might not believe in ageism being real, but if the job market does, then you're shit out of luck, so might as well start prepping for it.
>But society will eventually become less ageist as it ages more and more.
I doubt it. Employers will just demand more immigration that's more youthful and more exploitable or just offshore more.
Where I live in EU, there really isn't a huge market for white collar workers over 50 despite society already skewing quiet old. One compounding issue is that in my country once you hit 50 you get firing protections so nobody wants to hire someone they won't be able to fire, especially if the industry is full of ambitious young blood like in SW.
Building any kind of meaningful wealth for early retirement, is out of reach most people.
At 40 you're barely at the halfway point of your career since we're gonna have to work till our 70's anyway, so buckle up for another 30+ years.
Because statements like the original I was replying to of "no time for gatekeeping" are simply not true, but more like the poster doesn't notice it because he (or his kids) are not affected by that gatekeeping.
But good luck reaching proficient fluency in a foreign language in your 30s where you'll face a lot more gatekeeping especially on the jobs market. Many western nations still gate-keep careers and opportunities based on regional accents alone, let alone not being a native speaker.
And before I get assaulted in the comments with the "umm acksually I could do it just fine it never was a problem for me exceptions, YES I know it's possible, it's just much much harder, especially when you've got a full time job and adult responsibilities, compared to doing it when you're 5-15 on the school playground, playing videogames with mates or watching cartoons.
That wasn't the case 20+ years ago. Nokia phones were designed and assembled in Finland. Siemens designed and made CPUs and RAM.
How come they gave up and didn't push to remain world leaders?
And the EU pharma companies package it, slap their logos on it and make mega profits selling domestically.
>EU member states simply does not do the same for electronics.
Why do you think that is? Surely with a war next door and China not guaranteed be a cooperator all the time, that would be a priority.
It's not binary where it either it is or it isn't but there's various levels to it and Pharma gets special privilege over industries like cars, phones or semiconductors, since it deals with people's lives.
> as Asian players in both China and India have largely disrupted the generics
Then why did I never took an Indian or Chinese made paracetamol, but all generics in my EU country I ever took from the pharmacy ware locally made? Meanwhile I can't buy a locally made laptop, smartphone, GPU, it's all Asian made goods.
I never said they weren't a threat, I said they haven't done anything illegal. But with the reasons you gave, then the US is an even bigger threat to my country.
> "Ah, but who's to say anything's illegal really, am I right??"
You still haven't answered my question and are beating it around the bush with silly jokes.
And you know the answer, you just don't like to say it because it's not politically correct. Here, I'll remove your burden and say the uncomfortable truth for you: In war, whatever you can get away with, is legal. Similar to all the warmongering and meddling the US has done in the Middle East, Asia and LATNM. If nobody can hold you accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal. Same with China's actions. When you're too big and too powerful to be held accountable for your actions, nothing that you do can be illegal because legality is an artificial man made construct where the strong enforce their will on the weak, not an irrefutable fact of nature. This has been the US's MO and soon China's.
You might not like that it's like this, but IT IS like this. And you're not doing yourself nor anyone any favors by pretending it isn't like this.
Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like "free market" competition. It's a crazy patent minefield, massive regulatory moat, massive state subsidies and government protectionism plus sometimes backroom deals between pharma and politicians. Nothing remotely similar to commodities like consumer software and hardware.
Not really. If you're an engineer in Asia you're in the top 5% - 10% of local purchasing power. While if you're an engineer in UK, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, etc you're not that wealthy by local standards, you're just average like most other white collar workers, unless you work for a US FANG.
>This is what EU member states like Denmark provide for the biopharma industry
Not just Denmark, but bio/pharma is a protected and state sponsored industry in most EU countries, unlike software, electronics and electrical engineering which has been treated as a race to the bottom industry.
> The issue is, the talent density for large swathes of electronics and computer engineering just doesn't exist in the EU anymore.
"Oh no, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions". This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of shareholder returns with no thought of the future.
Munich is still a strong tech hub for electronics with Apple, Rhode & Schwarz and others developing RF and semiconductors there, but it can't hold a candle to the sci-fi work being done in SV or even Israel.
Then if it's decided it's illegal, who enforces that decision?
Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, as there was no disrespecting anyone there with my comment, and I basically agree with your point.
That doesn't change that people here want those cutting edge manufacturing and job opportunities the US has. They don't want to be stuck competition with China in commodity widgets like cars or low margin 16nm-65nm microcontrollers.
There's a limited market for ASML machines, Siemens gas turbines, and Airbus planes which can't support economic growth of the entire block.
>Nothing stopped European nations like from continuing to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian subsidiaries or JVs.
They're developed outside of Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, etc since private businesses care most about prioritizing shareholder returns, not national sovereignty. And with Western EUs high labor costs, high taxes, high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor protections, etc. Everyone with basic business know-how could have seen this coming but people still thought they could have their cake and eat it too in the globally cutthroat "free market" economy.
Case in point, Nokia just announced it is closing Infinera's Munich office and moving all operations to the US.
Japanese cars would also break down much faster than US made cars in the 1950s, but eventually they figured out reliability and overtook US competition. What are the odds Chinese companies can repat this playbook?
They're also a critical player in supplying small drone parts to both sides in Russia Ukraine war. Maybe not the most reliable parts, but the scale is insane.
Is it wrong for people in Europe to wish for more cutting-edge/high-margin opportunities in their back yard, especially given the currently atrocious state of the job market?
Like you read news how TSMC's cutting edge chips are made in Taiwan and US fabs, then you looks at European fabs and the most cutting edge are 16/12nm.
People are seeing the lag with their own eyes and wish for some change.
What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)? Bombing them in the name of peace?
In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics doesn't go its way and it's not China.