Ask Lemmy

Your cops are bad too

France, Germany, and Austria all have a military-industrial complex problem. MIL money might not dominate their politics the same way as the US, but there is a problem there.

Even with their post-WW2 defensive militaries, Germany and Austria are perfectly ready to sell military hardware to anyone with the cash. H&K, Glock, and Steyr all hail from those two.

France sold off the Exocet anti-ship missile to just about anyone. As far as I can tell, it has only been fired in anger at the boats of other NATO members. Thanks, France!

Not Eurpoe specifically but I shared a rather basic comment on YouTube joking about Great Britain causing famines in India but its okay because they brought trains and the result is a mile long thread of pissed off UK suckers telling me I'm wrong, that there was no fammine, the Wikipedia article and its 300 sources are fake, and that the British empire totally went around modernizing civilization for the benefit of humanity. (Was a post about Irish complaining about a very crappy Irish History book made by a British author)

So I guess for any of those people, no GB was just a colonist empire racing to exploit the hell out of resources faster than France, Spain, and Portugal. The technology they brought was used almost exclusively in their conquest operations (Trains used to transport goods and resources) and they actively supported and supplied opposition groups to destabilize and overthrow governments similar to what the USA does today.

I mean seriously, they held immense power over China via opium and are responsible for practically every shill state in the middle east because they provided weapons to overthrow the Ottaman empire.

The iconic pan arab flag is actually a British designed flag given to all the opposition groups they funded to break up Ottaman power.

They fell apart after exhausting their power in WWII and the USA came in to save them so now they gleefully cheer about how they carried in WWII with intelligence services as if Germany couldn't have easily invaded the entire nation overnight had Hitler not been an incompetent moron.

Thankfully, after exploiting half the world, they totally didn't spend the last of their power screwing over every former colony into some long term problem that they could exploit without the need for military power.

EU collaboration and integration is a joke. Politically, the EU is divided and bizarrely complex. There are movements to improve this but they are not as popular as the sloganistic alt right that essentially just want to give up and go back to separate countries

Many of us I the US want to come there, and we're willing to contribute, but the barriers of entry are too high. I likely won't be able to until after retirement and that probably won't be until I'm too old to move. And I have a lot to contribute if I could find a way to get on my feet. The US doesn't allow for building enough wealth to start a business right out of the gate, unless you're already born wealthy or get lucky and are willing to be exploitative, and in that case I could use a different visa to get in. Immigration isn't all welfare cases and even with those who do need that help having a system in place to allow then to contribute while they get on their feet would benefit everyone. Dump the idea that you need to be extreme capitalists like the US and start embracing the people who need help to get started and most of them will contribute significantly as they will be so prideful of the place that took them in.

Youtube always shows off all the progressive and positive aspects of Europe. Bike lanes, relable trains. Was so jealous. Then heard that my game buddy is off to manditory milatary service.

The idea that the government can take away a year of your life, and thats normal is still a tough pill to swallow.

Apparently soccer is offensive even though I grew up in AYSO. i got in the habit of calling them association football and gridiron football, respectively.

I thought the corruption of the leagues and the fanatcism of the US is bad and scary. Then I learned about FIFA. i had no idea.

Many of your economies strive cause they stolen loads of values from us.

That Europe is not ready for many future challenges.

It's aluminum. Y'all just changed it to aluminium so it sounded like other elements. Which is even funnier because not all elements end with ium despite that being the main reason for the change.

Well for one thing, there is that one obvious thing which Americans and everyone else are also unready to hear: You need to give up fossil fuels. No more coal, no more gas, no more petrol, no more diesel. Some parts of Europe like to think they're well on the way to that goal but even there for the most part you've barely begun and are moving too slowly or in the wrong direction (e.g. biofuels). The hard part cannot be put off for much longer.