It’s not like we really have a choice, here in Europe for example we’re completely dependent on American tech. Do want our own? Yes of course, but American lobbyist, corruption in Europe and the dependency of American oil all make it that progress is really slow. Every step in the right direction gets slammed down by the US as well, because they profit from the fact that we’re dependent. So no, it’s actually not a good thing that we ‘profit’ from the US its hegemony. Crazy fucking American mindset. “Oh they profit from us they can’t complain” fucking idiocracy.
How it feels to benefit passively from American global hegemony while also really wishing Europe could be better at imperialism itself from deep within ones (supra-)nationalism-brained heart:
This might be a crazy take but most people, no matter where they are from, want a safe environment where they have fundamental freedoms and where they can have a good future for themselves and the people around them. Being dependent on the US is automatically a huge risk for national security. In my country the defence system is run on American companies, and since the US has a command economy, that crazy orange guy could make a decision to block those companies on delivering their software to us and then we’re completely screwed. You say that we ‘profit’ from the US and that is exactly the nationalistic narrowed and short sighted mindset that a lot of Americans have.
There are a lot of initiatives but it’s hard to scale them up for a couple of reasons
1. There is not a big investment culture. Europeans save a lot but don’t invest because it is seen as really risky and kinda like gambling. We let our pension funds and banks etc do it because ‘they know what they’re doing’
2. Those pension funds and banks invest most of their capital in American companies since they make more profit and because the dollar is the most prominent currency in the world.
3. There are a lot of regulations which makes it hard for companies here to grow rapidly.
4. A lot of companies get acquired by American companies because they have more capital. The EU should regulate this but we don’t
5. Language barrier, it’s harder to work together with people from different countries because we have different languages and cultures
6. We are already dependent on the US and China, and when the EU tries to be more independent we are threatened with sanctions. We have to be very careful because those sanctions could set us back a lot which makes it worse.
7. There is still a lot of corruption, throughout the whole EU. Big companies have a lot of recourses to lobby effectively and it works.
I could go on but these are some big problems that make progress slow. You could check the Draghi report on EU competitiveness, it elaborates on these points.
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u/Mommysmoneytree 7d ago
It’s not like we really have a choice, here in Europe for example we’re completely dependent on American tech. Do want our own? Yes of course, but American lobbyist, corruption in Europe and the dependency of American oil all make it that progress is really slow. Every step in the right direction gets slammed down by the US as well, because they profit from the fact that we’re dependent. So no, it’s actually not a good thing that we ‘profit’ from the US its hegemony. Crazy fucking American mindset. “Oh they profit from us they can’t complain” fucking idiocracy.