13 ms·

>How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Why do you make it sound like they don't? The EU invests

by axlee 5y ago

>How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Why do you make it sound like they don't? The EU invests massive amounts in technology (in regards to its paltry investment budget, but that's another debate). One does not prevent the other. And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless bureaucracy" is insidious at best.

YorkshireSeason 5y ago
> EU invests massive amounts in technology An interesting question is: what's the ROI of this investment. Anecdotally, the over the last 50 years the EU has been loosing their leadership in field after field. First to the US, then Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, now China. With the loss of the UK Arm is no longer an EU company. Have you looked into Linux commits recently [1], or where papers come from in the top CS conferences? [1] https://news.itsfoss.com/huawei-kernel-contribution/ https://news.itsfoss.com/huawei-kernel-contribution/
- flexie 5y ago
  Well, Arm is not a UK company much longer either: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in-arm-as-regulators-threaten-nvidia-deal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in...
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    The link says "as regulators threaten to block"
    - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
      That's in reference to nVidia buying ARM from SoftBank Group, the Japanese holding company that bought ARM in 2016. Here's the relevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Changes_of_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Changes_of_ownership
Silhouette 5y ago
And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless democracy" is insidious at best. Well, GP wrote "endless bureaucracy" not "endless democracy", unless the comment has been edited. And that, IMNSHO as someone who has founded tech businesses here, is entirely fair criticism. The environment created by all those regulations is insanely hostile to tech entrepreneurship, and it's not as if many of those regulations are well considered or effective at protecting vulnerable groups anyway. The worst part is, I'm not convinced anyone deep inside the EU corridors of power even realises this is what they are doing. If the first step in solving a problem is understanding that it exists, the EU is still at step 0.
- varispeed 5y ago
  You have companies that specialise in creating "start ups" that get tax payer funding, ride the money wave out and then close. Usually they put homeless people in suits to act as CEOs. One business folds, they create another one. Then governments complain the public purse is shrinking and there is no economic growth.
  - rusk 5y ago
    Please add some details or citation to this. It’s a fascinating idea and I’d like to know more. I mean YC is literally in the business of startup businesses but your whole remark about the homeless guys has thrown me perhaps it needs \/s?
  - Silhouette 5y ago
    IMHO, the taxpayer funding aspect is a red herring anyway. There is no reason that a small team of founders or even a solo founder should not be able to start and grow a tech/software business well. The natural barriers to entry are very low in this industry. If you have a useful idea, the technical skills to implement it, and the willingness to try, you should never need lots of external help to build a viable business. Obviously there are advantages to taking substantial external investment or other funding, and doing so usually also comes with strings attached. You have to weigh up whether the cost/benefit is favourable. But in a tech/software business, this should primarily be useful for accelerating the success of a business already destined to be successful. We're not talking about manufacturing where you need to pay for factory facilities and supply chains of physical materials and other big up-front costs before you can start creating value yourself that you can charge for. The reason it is increasingly difficult for any small founding team to actually do that in much of Europe has a lot more to do with regulatory barriers and red tape than lack of funding. No startup is going to perform well if someone keeps distracting the people building it and making them do things that aren't directly adding value.
throwaway12509 5y ago
I believe the EU would be better off if it just deleted its technology funding apparatus and tried to rebuild something like DARPA, while focusing on procurement like the poster suggested. There is a huge amount of money available, but it's locked behind layers and layers of bureaucracy. It is a huge waste of time on both sides, for some anecdotal I'm procrastinating from an application as I type. I should be coding or doing something otherwise useful. The situation has devolved to where startups treat public funding as though it were revenue and have dedicated teams to chase it. The Economist had an article here a few days ago lamenting that Europe fails to produce IPOs, which is where the actual problem lies. If ExpectedValue[European Startup] = ExpectedValue[Startup] | No IPO, then it's no wonder European startups are valued at 10% of their US counterparts. The EU needs to get out of the way and end its Lots of Little Winners policy, because without winners you just wind up with Lots of Little Losers in a globalised economy.
- danaris 5y ago
  But why is a high stock value the ultimate goal? Shouldn't the goal be producing tech that's beneficial?
  - throwaway12509 5y ago
    Because high future valuations allow companies to raise capital and do useful work in society.
    - layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
      [citation needed]
      - viro 5y ago
        AMC
  - sidlls 5y ago
    Beneficial to whom?
varispeed 5y ago
> The EU invests massive amounts in technology (in regards to its paltry investment budget, but that's another debate) The problem is that the EU invests. Small businesses are taxed to death and swamped with bureaucracy. From that you can clearly see where this is going.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  IMO the issue isn't so much the taxation, although this has a big impact on hiring since you need to be very certain about anyone you keep past their trial period. The bigger issue is that the US has a massive advantage, in that a US tech company can launch in one language (their native language) to 300+ million potential customers, and hire from the same pool with minimal bureaucracy (the laws are largely the same, and at least written in the same language, ID and visa requirements are the same, payment providers are mostly the same, etc.) In Europe on the other hand, to launch even to other countries in the EU involves a lot of translation work. Then taxation varies a lot, and the laws are in different languages so you'll need local lawyers and a local tax office to hire employees there, etc. - on the employee side, the ID and visa requirements vary a lot too, so you'll need local specialists / relocation companies to help with that. The payment providers also differ a lot, e.g. with Sofort-überweisung in Germany and the lack of online card payment options there (until recently), etc. And then there's the extra EU regulations - the GDPR, cookie consent laws, age verification laws for video content, link tax for aggregation services, etc. But I still think the best solution in the short-term is protectionism. Give European companies a bigger advantage in Europe by not sourcing from foreign corporations (especially for critical infrastructure like public services), and invest in FOSS and development companies around that (where smaller companies could work together on FOSS projects). Otherwise the US companies just dominate, and then use their dominant position to get a monopoly through bribes and threats (see Microsoft in Hungary and Munich for example). Then they pay no taxes in the EU, take all the profit back to the US and use that to crush EU industry even further - just like how in the past natural resources were plundered from colonies, but all the skilled industry was kept in the coloniser countries.
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    Reality is different. The EU just loves to talk to Amazon. The politicians are in awe of anyone from big tech. Star struck. It’s disturbing to have seen this from up close
dalbasal 5y ago
Calling it bureaucracy, whatever the implications, is perfectly fair... assuming we're talking about the subject of this article. This is about 27 separate national governments to apply separate regulatory procedures, rather than just having Ireland's current gdpr enforcement. That's not necessarily bad, but it is more bureaucracy.
- nr2x 5y ago
  A major goal of GDPR was to streamline enforcement and reduce compliance cost. Then people thought they could use Ireland to just avoid it, and instead they now have to worry about 27 DPAs, so it utterly backfired. Same dynamic in USA: they blocked national level privacy laws for decades and now they’ll have to deal with 50 state laws instead, which is much more onerous.
  - foobiekr 5y ago
    US states will not have the same issues that GDPR had. The bounds of enforcement will be much more clear and the US has a much clearer way of dealing with vagueness in laws in general. Despite assurances, US companies do not like the “the statute documents the intent but not all of the specifics” approach the EU uses.
Chris2048 5y ago
> calling regulations against clear abuse "endless bureaucracy" is insidious at best It's insidious, yes, but also what if foreign competitors gain a competitive advantage due to fewer regulations? They will still need to follow EU regulations, but they gain R&D momentum locally. The only solution I see is to bar foreign companies that do not adopt EU regulations locally too - e.g. a self-driving car developer that does not need to follow safety regulation as strictly locally.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Instead of funding they should just get out of the way
jdasdf 5y ago
It really doesn't. The EU invests massive amounts of money into bureaucracy and companies that go through it. But we don't need companies sucking of the EU teat, we need tech companies.

by axlee 5y ago

YorkshireSeason 5y ago

> EU invests massive amounts in technology An interesting question is: what's the ROI of this investment. Anecdotally, the over the last 50 years the EU has been loosing their leadership in field after field. First to the US, then Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, now China. With the loss of the UK Arm is no longer an EU company. Have you looked into Linux commits recently [1], or where papers come from in the top CS conferences? [1] https://news.itsfoss.com/huawei-kernel-contribution/ https://news.itsfoss.com/huawei-kernel-contribution/

flexie 5y ago
Well, Arm is not a UK company much longer either: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in-arm-as-regulators-threaten-nvidia-deal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in...
- Chris2048 5y ago
  The link says "as regulators threaten to block"
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    That's in reference to nVidia buying ARM from SoftBank Group, the Japanese holding company that bought ARM in 2016. Here's the relevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Changes_of_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Changes_of_ownership

Silhouette 5y ago

And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless democracy" is insidious at best. Well, GP wrote "endless bureaucracy" not "endless democracy", unless the comment has been edited. And that, IMNSHO as someone who has founded tech businesses here, is entirely fair criticism. The environment created by all those regulations is insanely hostile to tech entrepreneurship, and it's not as if many of those regulations are well considered or effective at protecting vulnerable groups anyway. The worst part is, I'm not convinced anyone deep inside the EU corridors of power even realises this is what they are doing. If the first step in solving a problem is understanding that it exists, the EU is still at step 0.

varispeed 5y ago
You have companies that specialise in creating "start ups" that get tax payer funding, ride the money wave out and then close. Usually they put homeless people in suits to act as CEOs. One business folds, they create another one. Then governments complain the public purse is shrinking and there is no economic growth.
- rusk 5y ago
  Please add some details or citation to this. It’s a fascinating idea and I’d like to know more. I mean YC is literally in the business of startup businesses but your whole remark about the homeless guys has thrown me perhaps it needs \/s?
- Silhouette 5y ago
  IMHO, the taxpayer funding aspect is a red herring anyway. There is no reason that a small team of founders or even a solo founder should not be able to start and grow a tech/software business well. The natural barriers to entry are very low in this industry. If you have a useful idea, the technical skills to implement it, and the willingness to try, you should never need lots of external help to build a viable business. Obviously there are advantages to taking substantial external investment or other funding, and doing so usually also comes with strings attached. You have to weigh up whether the cost/benefit is favourable. But in a tech/software business, this should primarily be useful for accelerating the success of a business already destined to be successful. We're not talking about manufacturing where you need to pay for factory facilities and supply chains of physical materials and other big up-front costs before you can start creating value yourself that you can charge for. The reason it is increasingly difficult for any small founding team to actually do that in much of Europe has a lot more to do with regulatory barriers and red tape than lack of funding. No startup is going to perform well if someone keeps distracting the people building it and making them do things that aren't directly adding value.

throwaway12509 5y ago

I believe the EU would be better off if it just deleted its technology funding apparatus and tried to rebuild something like DARPA, while focusing on procurement like the poster suggested. There is a huge amount of money available, but it's locked behind layers and layers of bureaucracy. It is a huge waste of time on both sides, for some anecdotal I'm procrastinating from an application as I type. I should be coding or doing something otherwise useful. The situation has devolved to where startups treat public funding as though it were revenue and have dedicated teams to chase it. The Economist had an article here a few days ago lamenting that Europe fails to produce IPOs, which is where the actual problem lies. If ExpectedValue[European Startup] = ExpectedValue[Startup] | No IPO, then it's no wonder European startups are valued at 10% of their US counterparts. The EU needs to get out of the way and end its Lots of Little Winners policy, because without winners you just wind up with Lots of Little Losers in a globalised economy.

danaris 5y ago
But why is a high stock value the ultimate goal? Shouldn't the goal be producing tech that's beneficial?
- throwaway12509 5y ago
  Because high future valuations allow companies to raise capital and do useful work in society.
  - layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
    [citation needed]
    - viro 5y ago
      AMC
- sidlls 5y ago
  Beneficial to whom?

varispeed 5y ago

> The EU invests massive amounts in technology (in regards to its paltry investment budget, but that's another debate) The problem is that the EU invests. Small businesses are taxed to death and swamped with bureaucracy. From that you can clearly see where this is going.

nivenkos 5y ago
IMO the issue isn't so much the taxation, although this has a big impact on hiring since you need to be very certain about anyone you keep past their trial period. The bigger issue is that the US has a massive advantage, in that a US tech company can launch in one language (their native language) to 300+ million potential customers, and hire from the same pool with minimal bureaucracy (the laws are largely the same, and at least written in the same language, ID and visa requirements are the same, payment providers are mostly the same, etc.) In Europe on the other hand, to launch even to other countries in the EU involves a lot of translation work. Then taxation varies a lot, and the laws are in different languages so you'll need local lawyers and a local tax office to hire employees there, etc. - on the employee side, the ID and visa requirements vary a lot too, so you'll need local specialists / relocation companies to help with that. The payment providers also differ a lot, e.g. with Sofort-überweisung in Germany and the lack of online card payment options there (until recently), etc. And then there's the extra EU regulations - the GDPR, cookie consent laws, age verification laws for video content, link tax for aggregation services, etc. But I still think the best solution in the short-term is protectionism. Give European companies a bigger advantage in Europe by not sourcing from foreign corporations (especially for critical infrastructure like public services), and invest in FOSS and development companies around that (where smaller companies could work together on FOSS projects). Otherwise the US companies just dominate, and then use their dominant position to get a monopoly through bribes and threats (see Microsoft in Hungary and Munich for example). Then they pay no taxes in the EU, take all the profit back to the US and use that to crush EU industry even further - just like how in the past natural resources were plundered from colonies, but all the skilled industry was kept in the coloniser countries.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  Reality is different. The EU just loves to talk to Amazon. The politicians are in awe of anyone from big tech. Star struck. It’s disturbing to have seen this from up close

dalbasal 5y ago

Calling it bureaucracy, whatever the implications, is perfectly fair... assuming we're talking about the subject of this article. This is about 27 separate national governments to apply separate regulatory procedures, rather than just having Ireland's current gdpr enforcement. That's not necessarily bad, but it is more bureaucracy.

nr2x 5y ago
A major goal of GDPR was to streamline enforcement and reduce compliance cost. Then people thought they could use Ireland to just avoid it, and instead they now have to worry about 27 DPAs, so it utterly backfired. Same dynamic in USA: they blocked national level privacy laws for decades and now they’ll have to deal with 50 state laws instead, which is much more onerous.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  US states will not have the same issues that GDPR had. The bounds of enforcement will be much more clear and the US has a much clearer way of dealing with vagueness in laws in general. Despite assurances, US companies do not like the “the statute documents the intent but not all of the specifics” approach the EU uses.

Chris2048 5y ago

> calling regulations against clear abuse "endless bureaucracy" is insidious at best It's insidious, yes, but also what if foreign competitors gain a competitive advantage due to fewer regulations? They will still need to follow EU regulations, but they gain R&D momentum locally. The only solution I see is to bar foreign companies that do not adopt EU regulations locally too - e.g. a self-driving car developer that does not need to follow safety regulation as strictly locally.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

Instead of funding they should just get out of the way

jdasdf 5y ago

It really doesn't. The EU invests massive amounts of money into bureaucracy and companies that go through it. But we don't need companies sucking of the EU teat, we need tech companies.