The centrality of coffee

In India, it is now “cool” to eat without a waiter’s many attentions. Because McD has arrived and local consumers visualize themselves as young Americans, eating and drinking the American way. (Only the upper middle class in India can afford McDonalds, it’s a status symbol for the middle class to be seen at a McD.) So self-service is now ‘civilized’in India, though at homes, “servants” still wash, clean and fetch water for the affluent. It is a marketing miracle.

Civilised nations have now moved on to tea.

Ironic that Islam brought coffee to Europe along with proper maths, hospitals and culture during the so-called dark ages, and nowadays the further you are away from a source of real ristretto the less civilised society becomes (UK being the most Starbucks-friendly European state).

I make a point of carrying my own Dzezva (Turkish-coffee-pot) when travelling to the USA. You can’t be too careful, can you ;-)

At least where I live (Starbucks’ home town of Seattle) most people seem to go to starbucks not for coffee, but for the funky fruity/whipped cream/tea drinks and the pastries (which are really freightening).
For coffee, Seattlites visit local shops that roast their own coffee.
I just skip coffee all together myself.

Very odd that Judt would use coffee of all things as an example of divergence.

Nearly the only problem I had with Judt’s article is the idea that coffee is more expensive in Europe. Last spring un café was basically €1 in Paris or Madrid. In sunny southern California (now 20-25°C, after being thoroughly drenched) a double espresso runs $1.50 to $2.00.

Selling something at a whopping markup because you’ve managed to brand it as aesthetic rather than utilitarian suggests keen knowledge of the consumer and close attention to the market.

Doug, I read this part slightly differently. I think Judt would agree with you on this. When he wrote that the Italian espresso “suggest[s] indifference to the consumer and ignorance of the market,” I assumed that he was briefly slipping into the voice of American free-market orthodoxy for parodic purposes. If the tenets of that orthodoxy (at their most simplistic) are to be believed, Starbucks would presumably have bulldozed its way across the European continent by now, leaving thousands of shuttered cafes in its wake. And yet…it hasn’t worked out that way.

I had the privilege & pleasure of taking a 20th-century French history course under Prof. Judt back in the late 80s. I found him brilliant, so maybe I was predisposed to like the NYRB piece too…I thought it was excellent.

Uncle Kvetch.
Starbucks hasn’t decimated a market anywhere; it created a market in the USA and thousands of competitors have sprung up in its shadow. And in fact Sbux is expanding very rapidly in Europe. Or do you — like Judt — have information to the contrary?

Doug M.
No it is not just you.

Uncle Kvetch.
You come right to the heart of the issue: on what basis did Judt write that sentence i.e. about Starbucks encountering resistance? (That would be a “material fact” in securities law and of great interest to investors.)

As I follow the “third place” beat in my own City Comforts blog I am intensely interested in Starbucks and other public gathering spots and the changes (if any) they indicate in American society.

So I wrote to Judt asking about the basis for such a pregnant statement. We have exchanged several emails. But I don’t feel right about quoting him at this point. I am hoping for clarification today.

UK.
I don’t think those articles support Judt’s claim of “resistance” but merely outline the difficulties which Starbucks faces. And it is a question whether Judt used such sources as you offer. (But that’s good reasearching on your part; I also Googled but I didn’t hit anything even remotely on point.)

The larger issue is still the odd use of a cup of coffee as an example of divergence between the USA and Europe. As I write on my blog, I would think that the cup of coffee is, if anything, a tremendous example of cultural convergence….the spread of daytime (somehat) non-alcoholic “third places” throughout the USA as Europe (at least France and Italy) has had for generations.

As I write on my blog, I would think that the cup of coffee is, if anything, a tremendous example of cultural convergence….the spread of daytime (somehat) non-alcoholic “third places” throughout the USA as Europe (at least France and Italy) has had for generations.

Very true. But I think one of Judt’s points is that, according to most American commentators, convergence was supposed to be more or less a one-way street: we innovate, they adopt. The adoption of coffeehouse culture in the US challenges that view right off the bat.

Moreover, while Americans might adopt the European notion of the cafe, they haven’t maintained it in anything like its European form. Instead, Starbucks represents an “Americanization” of that model (efficiency, economies of scale, “more is better,” etc.). If I read Judt correctly, according to a rather simplistic (but still very prevalent) model of “globalization,” we then export our “new & improved” version back to the Europeans, who recognize its superiority (economically speaking, anyway) and adopt it. But it’s turning out to be somewhat less straightforward than that…and that, I think, is the crux of the coffee metaphor.

It’s not about actually making automobiles or anything else, it’s all about marketing stuff.

It’s about convincing you that Nike shoes is what you need to wear – as opposed to sandals; who’s making the Nike shoes and how is not important at all. Anyone can make shoes.

Uncle Kvetch: my favorite grad school seminar was with Paul Kennedy, of _Rise and Decline of Great Powers_ fame. He was a wonderful teacher and a deeply, broadly erudite man, and I learned a tremendous amount from him.

That said, he’s occasionally written some utter tripe. This makes me sad, but I respect the man too much to shut down my critical faculties for his sake.

Also, as noted, there are some skiffy factoids in that article. I don’t say wrong (though there are a couple I’m really dubious about). I do say hand-picked to make a case, and in some instances deliberately misleading.

David: dead on. The idea that Americans innovate, Europeans adopt, is more a straw man than otherwise.

The whole coffee as metaphor thing is a trope that seems clever until you stop and think about it, at which point it falls apart. N.B., this is something that’s very common in the op-ed pages of the NY times — Friedman does it regularly, and so does Brooks — and now it seems to be spreading to the NYT RoB. Go figure.

Doug M.

I respect the man too much to shut down my critical faculties for his sake.

Yeah, that must be it. I’m so blinded by Judtmania that I simply can’t see straight.

Thanks for the condescension, Doug. You might have actually identified and refuted some of those “skiffy factoids” you claim to find in the article, but where’s the fun in that?

Uncle Kvetch: Saying “I wouldn’t do this” != “I think you’re doing this”, and such was not my intent here.

OK.

Factoids: I specifically pointed to two dubious or misleading assertions — Swedish health care, and US vs. European foreign aid. The first one is misleading, because the numbers for Europe generally are higher than for Sweden; he’s picking one of the best countries out of 25, and using it to stand for the group.

I don’t really find this “dubious.” I think the NYRB readership can be credited with enough intelligence to know that Sweden != Europe. In fact, I think this move is rather effective rhetorically, because Sweden typically functions as the archetype of European social democracy in American journalism.

“Each year our atmosphere has to absorb twenty metric tons of carbon dioxide for every American man, woman, and child; but just nine tons for every European.” Yah, but if you adjust for per capita GDP, suddenly it’s more like fifteen tons per European.

And why would you do this, unless your goal was to minimize the American role?

“Americans can hope for something between four and ten” days off per year… hah? I’d love to see a cite for that; holidays alone give five or six, and he’s obviously counting holidays plus paid vacation time too. (Swedes may have generous vacations, but they don’t have 30 national holidays per year.)

OK, I’ll grant that this is a case where he’s somewhat sloppy in his wording–it’s not clear whether he’s talking about vacation time, or national holidays, or what. But the facts are indisputable. I work in a small law firm in NYC and I have exactly 10 days of paid vacation per year, plus 9 official holidays, and that’s it. And this is entirely discretionary; the firm would be perfectly within its rights to reduce both numbers to 0. In France I’d have 5 (or is it 6 now?) weeks of paid vacation guaranteed by law, and, yes, more national holidays than in the US (exactly how many more I don’t know). Nothing about Judt’s use of “skiffy factoids” changes this.

True enough. But (with the notable exception of Ireland) that’s because all of those countries employ a much smaller proportion of their population than the US does. This has a nontrivial effect on productivity figures.

To which I can only respond, so what? Judt is writing against an endless stream of American punditry about those spoiled, pampered Europeans, and how their plush working arrangements are destroying the “work ethic.” In this context, I think it’s perfectly appropriate to point out that they actually produce more than the average American in a given hour of work.

So. I gave two in my original comment, and there are three more. Plus David’s point about European “resistance” to Starbucks — a phenomenon which I have yet to observe here in Europe, I should add.

Doug, I provided two links on the topic of Starbucks above, which I found after about 15 seconds of googling. If you don’t find those articles compelling, that’s fine, but I think they indicate that Judt wasn’t just making shit up.

I already mentioned a couple in my first post (demographics not being a threat to the welfare state, Islam being Europe’s biggest problem)

Both of which he addresses in his article; he simply doesn’t think they’re evidence of the unsustainability of the European model. You apparently disagree. I think you’re vastly overplaying the importance of these “factoids” to suggest that Judt is somehow playing fast & loose with the facts, and I think that’s unfair. It seems to me that you and he simply draw different conclusions.

Just briefly…

And why would you do this, unless your goal was to minimize the American role?

Because otherwise it’s a meaningless comparison.

Mozambique and Congo produce less than one ton of C02 per person/year. Is this because they’re more environmentally sensitive than Americans or Europeans?

To which I can only respond, so what? Judt is writing against an endless stream of American punditry about those spoiled, pampered Europeans

Opposing badly reasoned and poorly supported argument is no excuse for engaging in badly reasoned and poorly supported argument (though the temptation is surely strong sometimes).

Doug, I provided two links on the topic of Starbucks above, which I found after about 15 seconds of googling. If you don’t find those articles compelling,

I don’t find them relevant, is what I don’t find. They’re about problems of global expansion. Not a word about specifically European “resistance”, whether cultural, commercial, or what have you.

[demographics and Islam]

Both of which he addresses in his article; he simply doesn’t think they’re evidence of the unsustainability of the European model.

Er, no. He mentions demographics in exactly one paragraph, and then dismisses it as “not a threat to the welfare state”. That’s not, IMHO, ‘addressing’ it.

It seems to me that you and he simply draw different conclusions.

Well, that touches a whole ‘nother issue. Even if you think that every single one of Judt’s facts is rock solid, his conclusions aren’t based on them.

Frex, this: “Europe’s true dilemmas lie elsewhere… antagonism and incomprehension between the indigenous local population and a fast-growing minority of Muslims… We are now seeing the emergence of a third generation: in large part unemployed, angry, alienated, and increasingly open to the communitarian appeal of radical Islam.”

Now that is a clear conclusion: Europe’s real dilemma is X. But what, for goodness’ sake, is it based on? Scan the paragraphs above it; where are the facts supporting it?

Or this: “Europeans no longer even think about interstate relations in martial terms. But pace American critics, this makes Europeans and their model more rather than less effective when it comes to addressing international crises.”

Again, that’s a conclusion. And again, it’s completely unsupported by anything but Judt’s say-so.

I should add here that I lived for some years in the former Yugoslavia. 150,000 Europeans died there and another ~1.2 million were forcibly relocated while the EU spent three years holding meetings and passing resolutions. So I’m a bit skeptical of a blanket claim that Europeans are good at solving crises.

For that matter, I have trouble thinking of three international crises that the EU has “addressed” with particular effectiveness in the last few years. The Iranian nuclear program, perhaps. (Judt is correct to say that the Europeans are ahead of the curve on that one.) But I can’t come up with three offhand. Maybe it’s just me.

The whole darn article is like that. Assertion, conclusion, assertion, conclusion — but there’s rarely any connection between this and that; the conclusions mostly float on air, unsupported by anything but wish-it-so.

A final thought on the coffee thing. When I lived in Serbia, I came to love Serbian coffee (which is Turkish coffee, but more so). Then when I visited Zagreb, I discovered that they had inherited the Austrian art of making pastries… except, again, more so. But you couldn’t get Serbian coffee there in Zagreb, nor Austrian pastries in Belgrade. So the ultimate cafe experience was tantalizingly just out of reach.

When I mentioned this to a Bosnian friend, he nodded sadly. “Sarajevo was the one place you could get both,” he said. “That’s why it had to be destroyed.”

Doug M.

Because otherwise it’s a meaningless comparison.

I think it’s less meaningless than the one you suggest. Environmental laws affect the GDP, so why would you want to adjust air pollution for per capita GDP? For example, in Switzerland it’s against the law to air-condition open in-door space, like a shopping center. This means that fewer air-conditioners are produced, less electricity, less maintenance – IOW, less GDP for Switzerland. So, by adjusting for per capita GDP you’ll simply cancel out the cause by effect – that’s meaningless.