> now mostly stuck with services, tourism and tech

> hard to believe for a lot of people on HN

You generalize a lot. The EU does far more than services, tourism and tech and you can't really know what a lot of people on HN find hard to believe, especially if you then throw up a strawman about their professed beliefs.

But then again services represents 73% of European jobs according to Wikipedia

HN crowd is by large pro tech and "progress" with little to no concern about ethics, culture and other issues, reading this thread is a prime example of it actually

Sure, but 'jobs' are not everything, they are just one measure and if you look at what is listed under 'services' then you'll find that a lot of those services are actually in support of the other 27% of the jobs.

Labor and capital, what else is there?

I would just liket o say that I think that HN is very diverse. I come here to read tech and progress news. But this is also the best site for reading about culture, ethics and other issues that I can find. All newsmedia eg BBC, Guardian, PBS, ABC, New York Times etc., all have an editorial axe to grind. By listening and discussing here with the very people that make 'progress' and in a real sense shape culture I gain very much and am allowed to have an opinion. Most people here are awesome considerate people and the trolls don't usually stick around very long.

RE: 73% jobs - let the machines do the work so people have time to think - and to create culture - and to progress!! Yay HN, yay progress, yay culture!

I have nothing but farm for hours just 10 minutes from house in the EU. There's a lot more than "services, tourism, and tech."

Of course, but with automation and modern mass farming techniques it represents 1% of the jobs it used to, the rest of the population has been pushed out in services &co

If the future Google of lab grown meats comes in the game you'll get even more centralisation, less small/medium exploitations, and most likely 0 local production given the barrier to entry

> Every industry is doomed when developing countries can do the same for half the price... Which is exactly why Europe delocalised a lot of industries in the first place and is now mostly stuck with services, tourism and tech.

This seems false regardless of what % EU farms employed?

are you in eastern europe? for most western europe, europe means western europe unfortunately

Eastern Europe is actually the opposite, lower tourism than the west and higher industry: less offshoring + western countries relocated some industries to the east to benefits from lower wages

https://preview.redd.it/fmpg5f0i9bc31.png?auto=webp&s=96ce53...

that's my point, they have much higher farming and industry than service, so it's not surprising that OP has tons of farms around

???

There is so much agriculture in western europe, look at net food exports by country. Germany, france, netherlands, uk...

Netherlands. Very dense cities surrounded by farm land.

One of my friends is an engineer for food manufacturing equipment. Another for payment processing, and another as a bike mechanic, and another builds gaming rigs (think sim rigs).

I don’t think I know anyone who works in tourism.

are there really hours worth of travel in the netherlands? or perhaps you meant travel by bike

> are there really hours worth of travel in the netherlands?

By car, yeah. By bike? You're crazy -- but totally doable.

If you wanted to hit all the major population centers (Maastricht, Nijmegen, Enschede, Groningen, Amsterdam, Den Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven), you'd be driving for about 10-12 hours ... with lots of boring farmland in between.

I underestimated its size... thought it was much smaller

Maastricht to Groningen is only about 3h20 by car. That's the longest distance I could find between two cities.

There's a good portion on the Autobahn in Germany on that route, so yeah, it would be a pretty short drive.

> I know it's hard to believe for a lot of people on HN but not every country wants to become yet another soulless cog of the globalized world

are you referring to Italy? a country where producers sell products all around the planet? where immigrants are almost 10% of the population? whose economy is tightly integrated into the globalised world?

If we want to leave an habitable planet for future generations we should focus more in lab meat and less in “traditions” not everything traditional is good. HN is mostly a science oriented public which is accustomed to change its views when enough proof is shown, this is the way should be.