Saw this post on Reddit and thought it was interesting to see someone’s experience.
I’ve been trying for a few months to get rid of any stuff made out of EU (even before it was mainstream lol), and here are my conclusions at the moment:
Groceries: It’s pretty easy. I try to go to local stores, but if I need to go to a supermarket, I go to Carrefour, Mercadona or Froiz, all european, and I’ve reached to the point that EVERYTHING I buy is european (mostly spanish, portuguese, french or italian).
Clothes: This has been tricky. To buy sneakers has been more dificult than I thought it would be. There are a lot of european brands that actually make it’s products in China, Bangladesh, etc., so I had to look very close. Finally, I buyed Victoria sneakers and I’m very happy with them. For shoes and boots, Pikolinos is a very good brand also. Miguel Bellido shirts are very good as well.
Furniture: Well, Ikea is the obvious choice, but I do preffer to buy on spanish and portuguese stores that also have prety good quality for a good price, like Lufe.
Sports: Only sport that I play is climbing, and my last pair of climbing shoes are Tenaya Ra, and I couldn’t be happier with them. La Sportiva has amazing products also, being italian and as far as I know, still manufacture in Italy.
Technology: Oh man, this is a pain… I don’t want to throw away my iPhone 13 mini until it’s done, but when the time comes, I don’t know if there are going to be any alternatives. Fairphone, probably, but the components are also from China, right? And anyway, I will struggle with a big phone, which I hate. In PC I can move from Windows to Linux, but the mayority of the PC parts would be made in USA.
Good news is that the only USA page that I actually visit is Reddit, as I don’t have Instagram, facebook or any other social media. Bad news is that it will be virtually impossible to leave Whatsapp.
Well, this is it, I guess that all of you are struggling with the same, being the technology the real issue, cause the rest is pretty easy to find alternatives even better.
My faith in Europe has risen since few months back, and I hope it’s not too late for us to being able to compete in this new world that is emerging, where if you depend on any way on USA or China, you’re lost.
A hug from Spain to all of you, european brothers. And sorry for my poor english.
Majority of computer parts are made in China and Taiwan, I guess. On behalf of US companies. And there we’re real in bad place to go local. EU would have to invest an insane amount of resources to get self sustained to a certain degree. Interestingly, the other way round is also present through ASML, a Dutch manufacturer that is the only one in the world creating tools for producing bleeding edge chips. 🤷♂️
Yeah, it’ll take a long time and lots of investment. I think it’s possible though, and, as you said, ASML is a proof of concept for EU-based manufacturing of high-level tech.
We have the means to do it, but I think we lack the market and the necessary demand. There are already 2 initiatives from the EU under the EPI, for 2 chips. One is a general data-center CPU based on the ARM arch, called RHEA 1: https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/general-purpose-processor and the other, EPAC, based on the RISC-V arch, is a fusion of accelerators which can be used for specialized tasks like AI training etc: https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/european-processor-initiative-announces-the-successful-bring-up-of-the-epac1-5-acceleration-chip Despite the initial funding and the goodwill, not a single unit has been produced from the RHEA1, while they have already a design for RHEA2. The EPAC has had sample shipped which can boot Linux. Overall on the consumer side we have nothing to compete. The EU ceded any kind of consumer silicone tech to the US, which now can use it as a bargaining chip to their benefit.
bargaining chip
heh
Just wanted to address the point about Fairphone -I’m not affiliated with them, just proud to purchase from them.
The company’s ethos is to be fair to consumers and their suppliers, to avoid conflict minerals, fair wages & working conditions, etc.
It’s this that I look for. Not the nation that mined the metal, aasembled it, wrote the OS, etc.
It’s a Dutch company with a - fair - global supply chain
Unfortunately, not every component is open source, they publish anything that they legally can. But key components are closed source e.g. camera app. Google makes sure you cannot just use your own android ROM, so software-wise, practically, they are just as bad as a Samsung.
hardware-wise: big, expensive, but easy to repair. Hoping to see a new wide cam, because the actual is horrible.
I have a similar experience with groceries, shoes and clothes were pretty easy for me because you can find a lot of good Czech brands.
Other things like tools, car and appliances can easily be traced back to the EU, but tech is hard, we have in CZ a phone brand called Aligator but that’s a last resort thing and anyway it’s probably made in China.
As for apps, I can’t ditch WhatsApp, that would cut me off from most of my family (convince grandma to move to Signal… Yeah… Though so…).
(convince grandma to move to Signal… Yeah… Though so…)
My grandma can barely type a message…
Doesn’t Ikea manufacture in the usual other countries too?
Depends on the product, I know that they make so furniture in Romania, glass in Bulgaria and Italy but I’ve seen quite a lot of IKEA things made in Mexico. Overall I consider them “EU safe”, but you need to check the label.
They do shady stuff with Romania‘s forests for their lumber. I am boycotting them since a few years ago when I say a documentary on DW.
I’m on a similar journey. Tech is indeed very difficult. As for whatsapp, I did leave it some weeks ago. I managed to migrate family and close friends to signal. For people who don’t want to install a second messaging app, I use SMS. Fortunately they are from the same country and SMS are free. You can do it!
Signal is better than WPP, I’d say, but it is still an American company.
I’ve been trying out XMPP recently, and I think that might be the way to go. Decentralized, safe, universal… There’s plenty of apps too. I think it might be the way to go.
Signal is honestly the best solution for a lot of people. It’s a non-profit and is Open Source. It perfectly resembles whatsapp, already has a large userbase, and is easy to use.
I get XMPP might be more perfect since it’s decentralised (though it comes with drawbacks too like Encryption not being there by default), but I urge anyone reading this, do not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Switching from whatsapp to signal is already amazing for your privacy and ethics. Remember that switching messengers not only means you have to switch yourself, but also convince your friends and family to switch. It’ll be an uphill battle, so don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
XMPP Rocks
I don’t want to discourage people from using XMPP, the goal of my comment is more for people who might get trapped in a sort of situation like: thinking of switching to signal and then giving up because “it’s not good enough I need to switch to XMPP” and then realising “no one I know uses XMPP” or “XMPP is too complicated”, and then ultimately just staying with Whatsapp.
Signal is on the long list of US surveillanced apps leaked by 404 Media.
