You're making an argument about why Silicon Valley isn't in Europe based on your understanding of Europe today, when Silicon Valley isn't emerging in Californi

You're making an argument about why Silicon Valley isn't in Europe based on your understanding of Europe today, when Silicon Valley isn't emerging in California today, it emerged in 1970. Let's take Intel as an example: Intel was founded in 1968 by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. Why do you think there's no European equivalent of those two people? Very possibly because Herr Moore and Monsieur Noyce would have died in WW2 or fled to America. If they had survived and started up a semi-conductor company they would've quickly found themselves unable to compete with the American companies who had the advantage of a massive military budget to win contracts and engineers from. Your point also don't address the situation in which SV emerged in the US. High taxes? Denmark has 22% corp tax and 52% income tax. Income tax when silicon valley emerged was over 70%.