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This is so sad. As a European I would love to see some Internet giants created. Everybody says it's because we don't have homogenous market and so on. But my hu
by baxtr 6y ago
This is so sad. As a European I would love to see some Internet giants created. Everybody says it's because we don't have homogenous market and so on. But my hunch is it is something different: Existing European companies are much more protected than their US counterparts, or even their UK counterparts. Think ThomasCook - would have been definitely been "saved" like TUI in Germany. That doesn't happen that much in the US I believe. Instead new comers are generated at a higher rate creating completely new markets, think Tesla, Facebook, amazon etc. That entire life cycle of companies dying and being newly born seems somewhat skewed over here.
- brmgb 6y ago> Existing European companies are much more protected than their US counterparts That's a complete myth. The USA affords a lot of direct and indirect protection to its companies, far more than Europe does usually. You have things like the "Buy American Act" ensuring US companies don't face external competition for public markets, a different system of measures and crucially norms slowing the entry of external actors and a strong cultural emphasis amongst the population on economic patriotism and buying American which mostly doesn't exist in Europe.
- iagovar 6y ago> Existing European companies are much more protected than their US counterparts I'm sorry but that's not even remotely true. You have several instances of EU companies acquired by foreign capital.
- eythian 6y agoDo we need internet giants though? Are they a good thing for people? Perhaps a system that encourages a handful of really big companies in de facto control of large swaths of our communications infrastructure is not something that's actually good for the world.