|
Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
|
 |
Europe meets the Internet - 2Some months ago we compared the real estate sites in Europe with those in the United States. The result wasn't very flattering for the Old Continent realtors, both in terms of the quantity and the quality of their web sites. Now we continue our journey throughout the European Internet, trying to explain why some of its sites are real masterpieces and why some others deserve nothing more than our total indifference. But first let's have a little history background. In the late 40's the chief responsible for the ideology in the former Soviet Union, the comrade Zhdanov, had a brilliant idea. He supposed that in fact the technology is influenced by the ideological split between the West and the communist East, that there was socialist and capitalist biology, two physics, two chemistries, you name it. Why he did it? Elementary, Watson! By declaring that the universal science as such is nothing more than illusion, Zhdanov wanted to minimize every scientific and technological success of the Western societies. Going deep into the European Internet we understand that sometimes only the name "Internet" puts them together with its American counterpart. As if there are two different Internets, one in America and other in Europe. Last time we just mentioned that fact that the European sites are poorer than the American, now we'll try to explain why some of them are poorer and some of them aren't. Let's look at our point in our previous article, when we observed lack of local links and lack of any area representation. What we find after additional research is that this applies mainly to the privately owned sites. They don't put inside links to other sites, perhaps fearing that they could become future market competitors. Completely different story is when we look at the state, region, city or other public authority sites. In general they include some business directories, brief or longer stories about the history of the territory, many tips and useful links for the tourists as well as for the local population. Why the governments in Europe, big and small, are so keen to show their beauties while the private sector is so reluctant to give some extra money? It's perhaps a widespread European illness for the private sector to hide itself behind the back of the state each time when the public interests are at stake. The German economy motto after the World War II has been: "The state intervention as much as possible, the private initiative as little as necessary!" With such way of thinking it's not surprising why the private sector shows so little enthusiasm defending something considered to be of public order. So far I never saw anywhere, just one time, European realtor declaring "I sell Paris!" or "We sell Saxony!" In the United States there are hundreds of realtors pretending to sell either California or Washington D.C. In fact some of the biggest European companies are doing exactly this, but the word "We sell (the name of territory)" just can't be pronounced in many European languages because it means: "We sell our country to some foreign government, we are traitors". That's why in the eyes of the public in Europe only the legitimate government can worry about the image of the state or the region, and that no particular company can't bring any good to the country as a whole. So its role should be limited to its immediate tasks, selling houses or businesses. It's thus not surprising that most of the European realtors are doing exactly as told, they are concerned as little as possible with the public matters and concentrate only on their prime task. Two cultures, two Internets.
--------------------
See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Europe.
|
See also:
