[HN Gopher] Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind
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Europe is trying to leave Starlink behind
Author : rekovacs
Score : 45 points
Date : 2025-04-13 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Global adoption of Starlink sure seems like it will be another
| likely casualty of the current Elon Musk political era. Why do
| any of this?
| kranke155 wrote:
| Why? Because Elon like many people is extremely smart on narrow
| fields, he is not generally smart (he can't fight for example,
| which is a form of intelligence. He also struggles with being
| honest, demonstrating potentially low EQ).
|
| That's not to say he's dumb - it's just that there is no one
| (!) who is generally smart - there is no generally applicable
| intelligence, experience always matters, and you always learn
| by doing.
|
| It's an illusion of the high IQ crowd that high IQ will means
| you will always succeed.
|
| He is also always taking high risk bets. The X/politics/Trump
| bet paid off, in a way, but it also has its blowback.
|
| _edit_ also having said all this, it's extremely unlikely that
| Europe will be successful at this. The future is US-China
| dominated.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > ...it's extremely unlikely that Europe will be successful
| at this. The future is US-China dominated.
|
| I think the events of the last few weeks have been a wake-up
| call to many people around the globe who now see the value of
| not having their entire economy (or telecommunications &etc)
| be vulnerable to the whims of one person, be that the richest
| person in the world or a president nobody in Europe voted
| for.
|
| I suspect there's a lot of really smart people who were
| previously happily living/working in the US who are now
| looking to emigrate to other lands, Europe could easily allow
| them to go over there and practice their skills on a _Europe
| First_ initiative. Could also rope in the Chinese to help as
| they also aren 't too happy with the current state of
| affairs.
| bslanej wrote:
| > or a president nobody in Europe voted for.
|
| Are you talking about the European Commission, which we
| didn't vote for?
| debugnik wrote:
| Your head of government appointed a member of that
| commission, though. For better or worse, it's similar to
| that same head of government being appointed by the
| people you actually voted for in a parliamentary system
| (but two steps removed).
| kranke155 wrote:
| Sure I'm just saying Europe is not a place. Europe is not a
| giant coordinated economy. I'm "European" and I know how
| hard coordination problems are in the continent, since I've
| lived through its mismanagement my entire adult life.
| arandomusername wrote:
| > the value of not having their entire economy (or
| telecommunications &etc) be vulnerable to the whims of one
| person, be that the richest person in the world or a
| president nobody in Europe voted for.
|
| .
|
| > Could also rope in the Chinese to help
|
| This is pretty funny. That's just switching who you rely
| on.
|
| > Europe could easily allow them to go over there and
| practice their skills on a Europe First initiative
|
| In Europe we prefer unskilled labour from third world
| countries so that they can do uber eats for cheap
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| He's surrounded himself with idiot sycophants. It's a well-
| known failure mode of the rich and powerful that he should
| have seen coming ten years away.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| He had little choice but to defect to Trump's side. If Harris
| had won, the damage due to supporting Trump would have been
| finite and likely fixable. However, a Trump victory would
| wreck essentially all of his companies if he'd gone all-in
| for Harris. They have massive dependencies on Federal
| government support.
|
| No way to hand-wave the Nazi salutes away with game theory,
| though. Those were just stupid. Safe to say that nobody
| including Trump expected him to go that far.
| hedora wrote:
| I hope they offer this in the US (it wouldn't cost them any
| extra satellites). I'm looking for a starlink alternative.
| Ideally they could terminate my connection over there and I'd
| get gdpr protection too.
| mikrl wrote:
| There is already a Canadian company, Telesat, that's been
| doing comms since 1969.
|
| Unfortunately, like most things from Canada, there was never
| enough market for it to catch on. Maybe that will change now
| the US has unlocked the demand.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesat
| hmmokidk wrote:
| Everything musk owns is being affected.
| e44858 wrote:
| https://archive.is/Fc4S4
| uncomplexity_ wrote:
| europe is a classic example of design by committee
|
| they try to please everyone to the point of pleasing no one
| angra_mainyu wrote:
| I honestly would not be surprised if we ended up returning to a
| more fragmented EU, it's becoming quite a mess.
|
| Personally, I absolutely love if we could have something
| looser, like a "Common European Area": freedom to travel,
| freedom to study, freedom to live, freedom to work. That's it.
| No EC/EP or anything like that.
| izacus wrote:
| Why would you want to destroy your economy and quality of
| life like that?
| fifilura wrote:
| This is what the orange guy dreams about as well. That he can
| strike individual "deals" with each small country so he can
| win on size like a sumo wrestler against a featherweight
| wrestler.
|
| It is pretty obvious that the common foreign policy is more
| important than ever. Sadly it is too late to include Canada,
| South Korea, Australia and Japan into that umbrella, at least
| this time around.
|
| And people here in Sweden are talking about that next we will
| need to give up our currency and use the Euro since that is
| what T will weaponize next, going after the smaller
| currencies.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| This was something that came up during Brexit of course but
| it seems difficult when you start getting into the details.
|
| The idea is that (completely reasonably) if you have a
| "single market" as you describe, you need harmonised
| regulation so everybody is on a level playing field; once you
| have done that then you need some form of democratic
| governance.
|
| Everyone basically ends up designing the EU when they do
| this.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| Usual American propaganda about Europe.
|
| The truth is the normative push has been working very well. The
| EU is a very successful market. The poorer parts are getting
| richer far faster as soon as they join and the whole union is
| peaceful, something which was thought impossible sixty years
| ago.
|
| The only people who would like the EU to disband are its
| ennemies and I include the US amongst them.
| Spivak wrote:
| It's so funny when anyone in the US makes fun of the EU
| because we're literally the EU with an even stronger
| overbearing central government, more infighting, and you're
| not allowed to leave.
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