European vs. American views on capitalism, free speech

How differences in culture affects reaction towards commercial presence on-line

Published on November 23, 2003 By Draginol In Current Events

As shocking as this may be to hear, I have detractors. No really, there are actually people out there that don't like me. Actually, there are people out there that hate me. The reasons are many fold and this article will only talk about a particular group since it would take a lot of time to cover all the different types of people who find me reprehensible.

The type of detractor I'm talking about for the purposes of this article are the people who dislike me and my employer Stardock largely because of our on-line "marketing" presence. And admittedly we are unusual in how we interact with customers. Here are the 3 primary things I do that tick these people off:

1) I (and our company) create desktop enhancement software that isn't free.

2) I (and other people in our company) interact extensively in on-line communities. When someone says "How would I add a roll-up button to my Windows title bar?" one of us is usually nearby to say "You can do it with WindowBlinds. Download it at http://www.windowblinds.net."

3) When someone criticizes our software or our company, one of us (usually me) will vigorously defend ourselves or our company. And because we do it so often and have done so for such a long time, we're pretty good at it. Usually, people who criticize us or our software don't know what they're talking about. "Beware, using DesktopX will fry your LCD monitor." We won't let that kind of thing pass. We also won't let the "I don't like WindowBlinds, it's a pig" when we know for a fact that WindowBlinds is significantly (i.e. not just in benchmarks but visually on screen on any reasonable graphics card) faster than using the built in Windows XP styles.

You add those 3 things together, over time, and you will create detractors. It's bad enough we're charging money for software that "should be" free. I've never found the master guide that determines which software it's okay to charge for and which software "should be" free but apparently some people have access to this mythical guide of software value. And it sure doesn't help things that we're all over forums "plugging" our software at every opportune. But if you make even the mildest criticism and we're all over the poor guy asking him to back up his assertions.

Because of my statistical...obsession, I've logged the people who are the most vocal detractors. There are two broad categories for them:

Superficial Detractors. These are people who just pop in from time to time to rip on us in some way. But are just as likely to say, in their next post that "Coca Cola sucks!" Superficial detractors rarely go beyond the "X sucks" comments.
Dedicated Detractors. These are the people who consider it their personal mission to educate the world on our evil and more specifically my evil in particular. Their focus is on the above 3 issues.

It's these dedicated detractors I find interesting because there is a huge geographic bent to them -- out of the two dozen or so that I've looked into over the years, about two thirds of them are from Europe. I've known this for a long time and have thought about it from time to time. Why it is that the 3 issues I mentioned above affect Europeans negatively so much more so than Americans?

I have a theory, for what it's worth:

First, I think that Europeans are, as a whole, generally more hostile towards capitalism and in particular entrepreneurs. While the word, entrepreneur, is French, it seems to me, based on what I've seen, that it is Americans that have really embraced it. There seems to be an open distaste for "merchants". I have read of a few European leaders refer to Americans as either a nation of "merchants" or a nation of "cowboys". Both terms, ironically, are ones Americans will happily agree with but not see it as a epithet.

Secondly, I think Europeans are more likely to feel discomfort if not open hostility to seeing commercially interested parties challenging private persons over their views. In Germany, for example, it is apparently illegal to run comparison ads. In the United States, this is standard procedure. Americans are used to no holds barred debating. We take our freedom of speech seriously and to the full extent - we believe you can say whatever you want, but you better be ready to back it up when challenged. Americans seem more interested in being right than being polite. I think some Europeans find this off-putting. That it is somehow, distasteful, for people who are making money on the very topic they're talking about to be openly challenging their critics.

Whereas an American would love to see Bill Gates in the trenches on some forum hashing it out with hits critics, I think many Europeans would find such a thing distasteful and sensational. Bad enough that these merchants are selling their wares, now they're invading our private forums, intruding on our right to talk about their wares in peace.

It's just a theory, mind you, but I cannot think of another reason why, statistically, so many of the people who are openly hostile to our company (and me) are from Europe when it comes to issues that relate to my day job.

"What happened to our right to have an opinion?" says the angry European. "You have a right to your own opinion," responds the American merchant. "You just don't have a right to your own facts."

Obviously not all Europeans feel this way. Not even a majority of them feel this way I suspect. We're talking a relatively small fraction overall. But it does seem to show a cultural divide on feeling towards capitalism and free speech.

Comments (Page 2)

dave

on Nov 25, 2003

What Jon Dean doesn't seem to understand is that Socialism and Communism are artificial creations. Nobody is equal...everybody is different. I agree that we are equal as in we are human beings, we have souls, minds, etc. The misconception is that people equate capitalism as some evil to be eradicated. Being an individual is a good thing. In the real world, the playing pitch isn't flat. The people who can navigate around the field should be rewarded for that.

dave

on Nov 25, 2003

sorry to post twice...I wanted to reply to JEPEL's comments. JEPEL is right to an extent. Americans have their misconceptions about Europeans and likewise for Europeans. The European experience has been very different. Another poster commented about how America was populated originally with Europeans. True, they were Europeans who generally disliked the course Europe was taking or were cast-offs, deviants of European society. They wanted something different. Consequently, the divide b/w Europe and America began. This divide is hardly new.
It's strange how a blog for techies became a soapbox for politicos.

Keith Hancock

on Jan 12, 2004

This article was fascinating to a non political midleclass former European like me. I am amazed at the pro-Israel slant of so much of the western media. Has anyone an explanation?

Notwithstanding the fact the Israelis have, in just 50 years, established more democracy, enfranchisement, well structured governance, health care, education, agriculture, science, arts, warfare, social welfare, economics, justice and human rights than the Palestinians have done in thousands of years, I still don't get how anyone can justify the right of any group of people to establish themselves as a nation in another country, (by force and terrorism in this case).

Perhaps at the same time someone can explain why present Israelis decry terrorism when Israel was founded on terrorism and their terrorists became well known Israeli politicians, even Israeli prime ministers?

Whatever the dubious legality of the existence of Israel, and you only have to read of the shennanegans at the UN at the time of Israel's establishment to realise just how blatantly dubious Israel's legality really is, surely the root issues are morality and ethics? Israel seems a manifestation of an old fashioned, miscreant, sectarian wilfulness, a paroxysm of western conscience and all round racial bullying from a time long gone in western history.

By any moral or ethical standards known to civilised man the Israelis clearly have no right to occupy Palestine, or anywhere else, (including a part of south America or north western Canada as was mooted as alternatives at the time). Their occupation of Palestine seems in direct denial of every standard the west has developed for legality, decency, honesty, principle, and right. As an ordinary, middleclass, a-political , Westerner, steeped by birth in a culture that sustains and frees me to be the self we all seek one way or another, a right fought for by hundreds of thousands of an ancient people, my people, each far better than me, I cannot tell you how resentful, bitter, helpless and ashamed I am by Israel's existence.

On these grounds, can we understand the present exodus of civilised values in Israel, the continuing flight of Israelis and capital, as growing signs of the failure of a state anyway reliant on handouts? Is Israel falling under the weight of its own evil?

I hope readers resist going into the default mode adopted by those defending Jewish honour by catcalling me as anti-Jewish. (I have never understood anti-Jewism, perhaps because I have never met many Jews or don't recognise them as Jews when I do). Anyway, I am making the distinction here between Israeli and Jew.

Regardless, the reality of a misbegotten Jewish homeland in Palestine is all too sadly obvious and disastrous for us all, whether Jew, Israeli, Arab, westerner, southerner, easterner, northerner or whatever...

Even in the unlikely event the Palestinians, Arabs and Moslems ever accept Israel, it is unlikely the rest of human sensibility will allow this assault on civilisation to heal. And where will Israel be anyway when the penny drops with the American people, as it will, because as we know, you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the American people all of the time? What when history weakens or removes the blind support of Israel by the American Empire, or even removes the Empire itself? Sooner or later, now or then, there is no way out for Israel but out.

Surely Israelis should come quickly to whatever terms they can get from the Palestinians, before it becomes impossible to get any at all?

Keith Hancock

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