Every comment here revolves around the question of whether of European
customers may choose to relocate services in the EU as an alternative
to dominant US ones. The background is that the US is now an
"unreliable ally".
I see something else. If Europe has anything to offer (and because we
are technically behind it is neither price nor quality), it must be
based on political values.
The USA is an "ally in distress". What I am wondering about is those
US customers who will now relocate to Europe where democratic values
are better defended. If Europe can demonstrably uphold those values,
given the true democratic spirit of the US people, then I see more
than a "local first" movement for Europe. We can also anticipate an
exodus of US principals in exile taking refuge in EU.
This is begging the question. I would say the US spirit most prevalent on this site is neofeudalist, not democratic. The discourse here has always tended to defend or excuse monopolist behaviour ("it's their app store/OS/device, they should have 100% control over what happens with it") and discourage small or local initiatives ("this will not scale and therefore you shouldn't waste effort on making things better for only these 100,000 people").
Tbh I've never felt the SV culture (or the HN ethos around here) is
representative of the USA generally. They do say "rugged
individualism leads to ragged individuals". My experience of the many
USians I know personally is positively humane albeit they are all too
easily led and prone to go along to get along in a way that is
detrimental to their own interests. I think if they genuinely behaved
as frontier rebels (rather than played at it) they wouldn't tolerate
Trump, Musk, Vance an the like for even a few seconds.
I was just thinking if Firefox made an effort to relocate to EU, where as I understand it they have a lot of devs, they could become the default EU browser.
I see something else. If Europe has anything to offer (and because we are technically behind it is neither price nor quality), it must be based on political values.
The USA is an "ally in distress". What I am wondering about is those US customers who will now relocate to Europe where democratic values are better defended. If Europe can demonstrably uphold those values, given the true democratic spirit of the US people, then I see more than a "local first" movement for Europe. We can also anticipate an exodus of US principals in exile taking refuge in EU.