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TacticalCoder • today at 2:39 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

> Curious, what do you like to make fun of Europe about?

Well I'm european and... That Switzerland (Europe but not EU) has more companies in the Top 70 by market cap than the entire EU (Switzerland has two, the EU only has ASML) is kinda something that warrants making fun of.

That the biggest European software company is SAP, in 71th position is both sad and tragic: it shows how lame and irrelevant Europe is when it comes to software.

So Europe is nowhere in software and friggin nowhere in hardware: sure it's got ASML but ASML now has officially... Zero customer in Europe. Zero is not much.

Then Japan is at least trying to come back into the game with nano imprint litography. Europe is betting it all on AMSL (which anyway is majoritarily US-owned).

So software: nothing. Hardware: nothing besides ASML.

Overall the EU has six companies in the Top 100 by market cap and they're all, besides ASML, near the bottom of the Top 100.

We could also maybe make a bit fun of how the EU destroyed it's car industry (the main industry in Germany, which is the biggest economy of the union) by handing it all to chinese EVs?

Or what about the US warning the EU, years ago, to not become entirely dependent on Russia for energy? And EU not listening and then seeing its energy price skyrocket when the proverbial shit hit the fan? (Russia attacking Ukraine)

And we could, also, at least make a bit of fun of entire streets in cities like Paris and Brussels that used to have luxury shops and fancy restaurants that are all turned into places selling cheap kebabs? What a great success: I'm sure this one makes the komrades happy. It projects an image of grandeur and success: kebabs.

Or the constant attacks on free speech in the EU. Or the surveillance apparatus that's being put into place.

And let's not forget: there were promises made to Russia to never grow the EU to the east. Then the EU started exciting Russia by saying they'd incorporate Ukraine into the EU: I'm not against that but doing that did trigger a war. And now suddenly the EU is waking up and feeling all warmongering, wanting to dedicate a big percentage of its spending to weapons and tanks and missiles.

The warmongering tiny pet that the EU is is kinda laughable too.

At this point it's more like I don't know what is there left to not make fun of about my EU.

For what's going on is just sad, plain sad.


Replies

wafngar • today at 5:32 PM

You are proud of tax evasion? Would be fun to restrict market access for Swiss companies …

umpalumpaaa • today at 3:47 PM

I think you picked the cutoff (70) so that the numbers look worse than they are. If you look at the top 100 it’s 16 (EU) vs 4 (Switzerland).

16 is still not good enough. That being said none of the 4 companies from Switzerland are in software and hardware. ABB is maybe the closest (data center electricity).

Also Switzerland is a very very rich country. Neutral.

Also other countries like Germany has a lot of small companies that are world leaders in their field. That’s part of Germanys resilience.

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i_love_retros • today at 2:43 PM

Bro there's more to life than software and hardware. Try to get outside today :)

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