- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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See, this could do something, far beyond what a grassroots boycott can.
However, I have low trust that the way forward on this is dumping money on local competitors. The reality of it is you can’t build a new Amazon where Amazon already exists, you need to remove the anticompetitive foreign agents before you can prop up homegrown ones. There WERE Facebook-like European competitors before Facebook wrecked them. There ARE Amazon alternatives that work just as well in places where Amazon hasn’t encroached its insane web of fully owned logistics.
You want to create a European tech alternative? Start enforcing digital antitrust. Not fines, break-ups and forced sales of local branches. If the US can do it to Tiktok the EU can do it to Meta, Amazon, Google and the like.
You want to create a European tech alternative? Start enforcing digital antitrust. Not fines, break-ups and forced sales of local branches. If the US can do it to Tiktok the EU can do it to Meta, Amazon, Google and the like.
100%.
Thx for saying it. And that’s so much not limited to tech…
Everyday, I look at our French ‘exception culturelle’ with some kind of respect. It’s a law that make it so small bookshops have not been destroyed by Amazon (Amazon is forced to sell books at the exact same price as your local shop) and which, among many other things, make it so it’s mandatory to have 30% or so of local/French content in main media. That’s a great law and because it’s a great law, I wonder for how much longer it will hold against the US endless appetite and against the voracity of many here in the EU too that are more than willing to fill their pockets in the process of killing and burying local cultural productions.
This is long overdue. Why Europeans were so happy to just hop on US services with horrible privacy and abusive practices is beyond me. Had the EU prioritized European alternatives and innovation, much pain would have been avoided.
Maybe because we’ve hopped on US for absolutely everything else? Defense, culture, education, societal values (and priorities/focuses). Even for food (posting that from France, surrounded by fast-foods ;)).
Alas.
Indeed. But for the last 30 or 40 years anyone trying to raise awareness about that was disqualified in one way or another. It was as painful as when people tried to discuss the necessity of, you know, not delegate EU defense to the USA.
Now, the damage has been done and it’s deep. It will be much more difficult and so, so much more costly to try to get out of that situation… without any assurance we will succeed.
Yeah, I want my cafes and restaurants back here in France 🥲
yes. SO much so!
Here in Paris, we still have the choice to go to real nice places (less and less so, mind you or at absurdly fancy prices). I noticed how many restaurants have been replaced or have turned themselves into, well, not restaurants. I mean, not just in those touristic spots where, well, they open to do business with one time customers. I’m talking even in those places where actual Parisians do live and where they want to go eat/have a drink.
There has been a huge shift I don’t know how it happened but I can see the result: many now sell microwaved and over-processed industrial junk food as if it was something real cooking. The same with bakeries btw, which is so effing sad. Many are now nothing more than selling points for bread/pastries that is industrially processed and delivered to their door ready to be heated if not already to be sold. That’s shit.
At the corner of our street, we have that bakery where the owner and his apprentices are still doing every single thing they sell by hand. They work hard, they struggle and, yeah, they’re more expensive than the many non-bakeries everywhere but they’re so fucking tasty and they’re not machines. The guys is doing fine but many like him are not, and they’re forced to close. And then it’s too often one of those ‘bread selling points’ (I refuse to call those a bakery) that is replacing them.
I lived in Paris around 2000-2010 and it was fantastic. At lunch there were so many good restaurants it was crazy.
I live in Bordeaux since 2016 and all the good (seriously best ever) restaurants has all gone away, get bought by some less talented people or just closed. Prices have skyrocketed too so I’m perfectioning my cooking instead and living off memories of old times :-)
Exactly like we did, my spouse and I also cook and we love that. Alas, it doesn’t change what’s happening (a boost in shit restaurants that are nothing but pretentious fast-food with a fancy name), it make us (and you) less impacted by it, which is nice ;)
What’s sad is that it’s happening everywhere. Not just with restaurants, I mean.
I see the same trend of restaurants becoming fast-foods everywhere. It’s also happening with newspapers or media in general, morphing from news outlets trying to inform people (with a few real turd exceptions) into dedicated and obsessed clickwhores who can’t be bothered to inform and with journalists whose sole worry is to grow their career (with a few real quality exceptions). And it’s also in our education system. And almost everywhere else. More and more, people are settling on crap. They’re ok with eating crap, wearing crap, thinking crap, doing crap, telling crap, and so on. Heck we’re even ok with turning the entire planet into a huge pile of crap. The issue being that crap is bad for health.
With restaurants, it’s kinda sad but OK it’s also not the end of the world as we can go eat elsewhere or, like you said, we can learn to cook.
But when considering the media and the education? What can one do? At least here in France, but as far as I can judge it’s the same in the USA, it’s a real tragedy and a systemic failure at teaching kids anything. Even basic reading skills and math. There are still many bright kids, good schools and good teachers, that’s no question. I’m referring to what kids are being taught in schools on average, and how. Which is what should matter in a functional democracy (rich people will always be able to get their kids the best education possible, they have the money for that). As it is right now, public education is nothing but a systemic failure that not many seem to care about, save regarding its cost. Too bad, as in the very short term it’s those kids themselves that will have to pay dear price for their lack of education, by not being qualified and educated enough. On the longer term, it’s the entire society that will pay a very expensive price, most probably too expensive a price, as one don’t build a bright future when one’s kids can barely read.
Well, that was quite off-topic, I’m sorry for that. It’s just… I worry so much about what I see happening, I worry more about that lack of education than I worry about all the braindead fearmongering talks happening around that orange racist & illiterate clown USA choose to reelect—another sure sign of the catastrophic situation a failed education system can produce: the USA may not realize it yet but as a country and as a super-power they’re broken, deeply. And if they were to fight China tomorrow morning (it should not happen, at least not before they take some time recover from the kick in the nuts they just received from Russia), I would not bet as blindly on them winning like I would have bet on them anytime in the last century or so. I think we’re on a very similar path here in France/EU, a path of extremely extremely proud idiocy and failure, but I want to think we’re not that deep in that shithole yet, that we still could escape such a sad situation. I may be mistaken, somewhere.
Once again, sorry for the rant. I hope you enjoy cooking your meals as much as we enjoy cooking ours ;)
Miss them too…
I was thinking about this last night. In wars we often issue war bonds and people go around asking everyone to contribute what they can. Why not reinvent this but concepts including co-operatives, employee councils, kickstarter, social awareness, community awareness, inclusion of minorities and socially disadvantaged people, etc.
How about a technology investment bond, or a direct investment fund into new enterprises to build these up.
Shame the rich to invest into them instead but we know that won’t work so let’s all invest so we don’t have to rely on them.
I know it’s politically challenging but I would happily invest my pension pot into companies to improve our European tech in a socially aware and fair system, than the current US stock market it’s half made up of (I will change this!). Hell, just give grants to the open source community to develop things and let everyone in the world benefit
