Internet companies are in great part responsible for the phenomenal growth that the US or China are seeing, and I think it is hard to deny that the EU has compl

Internet companies are in great part responsible for the phenomenal growth that the US or China are seeing, and I think it is hard to deny that the EU has completely fallen off the bandwagon in this regard - or didn't even hop on it in the first place. I remember seeing in one of Mary Meeker's recent reports that there was only one European company in the top-30 of global internet companies: Spotify, at number 30. The situation is dire, and I'm not sure there is much to be done. There has been talk of the EU funding AI and cloud-computing superefforts, but I'm skeptical that this will produce results. I also agree with the author's sentiment that perhaps all the technological regulation in the EU may have stifled competition dramatically (Ben Thompson and others have been positing that GDPR for example may have been a boon for incumbents and a disaster for newcomers, as the former can afford to jump through all the hoops while the latter have a much harder time doing so) There may be a good argument in the sentiment that many are repeating in the thread: growth for the sake of growth is not necessarily good, and wealth distribution is also important. But the EU cannot afford to completely neglect growth and its compounding nature over time, or it risks becoming completely sandwiched by the US and China. Maybe the ECSC was born primarily to foster trade between its members and not so much to worry about forming a "bloc" that could stand up to other superpowers, but I think it's hard to deny that this is a legitimate expectation of many EU citizens nowadays. Perhaps the EU should think outside of the box and look for other avenues of growth, and also review existing regulation. I'm cynical on both fronts nonetheless: despite having been staunchly pro-EU all my life, I get the feeling that the weight of its bureaucracy makes innovation and changing laws very difficult. I find it much more akin to a continent drifting millimeters each year, rather than a massive fleet of ships, which would be complex to commandeer, but would still retain its fundamental capabilities for changing course and reorganizing itself.