German industry is also very lazy with any kind of R&D and even minimal risk-taking, to the point of requiring research subsidies to look into anything new. Ger

German industry is also very lazy with any kind of R&D and even minimal risk-taking, to the point of requiring research subsidies to look into anything new. German car makers started looking into EVs and hydrogen powered cars 30 years ago, but only because of the government paying them to do so, consistently and repeatedly. When the money dried up because the programs ended, research stopped. A few years later, Tesla ate their lunch and half their dinner, because the car industry just wasn't interested if it wasn't subsidized. The overall level of subsidy-dependence in the economy is so large that no new undertaking will be done without a corresponding subsidy of some kind. Where an American might look for venture capital, a European (and especially a German) will look for a government subsidy program. Any industry that doesn't look for and mold itself along those subsidies will be leaving money on the table, therefore becoming uncompetitive. That means that all our industry will always be shaped by political programs and will always lag years behind the rest of the world. The chain will always be: foreign company does new thing X -> X looks good -> EU/German politician envies X -> subsidies for X -> EU/German industry does X in the exact size and amount of the subsidies. And of course each of those arrows will be a year or more.