7 ms·

The UK has a long intellectual tradition which creates a steady stream of creative and capable engineers. Capital however is predominately held via inherited we

by msy 3y ago

The UK has a long intellectual tradition which creates a steady stream of creative and capable engineers. Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low risk. As a consequence there is low appetite for risky new ventures and those that want to undertake them mostly migrate elsewhere. What's left is a stock market dominated by octogenarian+ dianosaurs, a decaying rump of manufacturing, a finance sector that mostly makes its bread laundering the capital of the world's corrupt and corruptors and a tiny creative industry that clings on despite suffering through waves of either government neglect, or worse yet, government interest.

pipo234 3y ago
> a stock market dominated by octogenarian+ dinosaurs, a decaying rump of manufacturing, a finance sector that mostly makes its bread laundering the capital of the world's corrupt and corruptors Ah! Now I get it. That rhymes with companies like Shell and Unilever leaving the EU in favour of UK after brexit. (Not that Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam or Paris are known to be heavy investors in tech innovation, btw.)
- Lio 3y ago
  Well Shell (and BP) are really likely to get sweetheart deals on North Sea oil from Rishi Sunak which might have swayed them. Now, I know what you're thinking, that that's just because both firms coincidentally signed multi-billion dollar deals coincidentally with Sunak's family business, Infosys, to coincidentally outsource all their IT jobs but I assure you that's a mere coincidence.... probably. :P
deskamess 3y ago
Canada has many similarities. The inherited wealth is essentially banks and oligarchs. You pretty much have to be risk free to get any funding. Lots of window dressing and marketing to make Canada look good. If it were not for US companies (Cisco, Google, etc) the Canadian tech salary would be closer to Europe. Once you start living here you realize the truth about how much they value tech, protectionism, the incompetence of the telecom sector, stodgy banking and finance, poor education, unaffordable housing, and declining access to health (Ontario and stories from the Maritimes since health is provincial - cannot speak of Alberta/BC/etc). All subpar but the marketing and virtue signaling is great. A lot of 'make Canada look good' comes at the expense of Canadians.
- speed_spread 3y ago
  Quebec has had a few wins over the years with massive indirect subsidies toward strategic industries, notably gaming and AI. Public money is spent to attract big players which hire a critical mass of talent which leads to more players moving in and eventually some private risk capital becoming available for startups pending to the needs of the big guys. Nothing comparable to the American VC system though.
  - ckdarby 3y ago
    I live in Quebec. It's all for show to prop Quebec up as a place to even do business in. There's nothing in the tech space that is worth even looking at twice in this province that isn't headquartered elsewhere. Most larger companies open up here just to tap into the potential talent that don't want to leave their home province and a lot of companies aren't willing to put in the effort of dealing with Quebec being the exception to everything. If you want to understand Quebec it really boils down to three points: - Protect French language - Protect culture - Have more children. This achieves 1 & 2 in a cycle. Things that are going well for the province, cheaper car insurance, cheaper housing, cheaper electricity, and subsidize daycare. Oh! This all ties back into our 3 rules. All these advantages come at the cost of higher taxes, but that is apart of the strategy. Don't build wealth, but just provide enough for hope, dreams of having a family and rope as many into this to fulfil the 3 points.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    > Quebec has had a few wins over the years with massive indirect subsidies toward strategic industries, notably gaming and AI And aviation. The Bombardier C-Series is a very advanced plane, and the first modern plane developed outside of Boeing or Airbus (outside of the smaller regional Embraer). Sadly American protectionism was the final nail in the coffin for the programme, but Airbus is comitted to the Mirabel site and assembly line, so Quebec still is one of the top aviation hubs in the world.
Fluorescence 3y ago
> Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth Curious to see you prove that beyond an imagined stereotype. It's not as though we are in the first generation of US entrepreneurship and there is not a huge quantity of US inherited wealth in those VC funds. The founders of Intel, Apple, Walmart, Standard Oil etc. have all passed on. And on the other side, it's not like there haven't been a dozen generations since Norman lords chopping up all the land wealth. I think only one British billionaire is an aristo, the rest are business folk. People underestimate the effect of how wealth attracts wealth in terms of commercial hubs - money chases opportunity and opportunities chase money and they end up in the same place for all sorts of reasons. It's just a system effect rather than a consequence of higher virtues that some love grant themselves.
- hnhg 3y ago
  I cannot prove it, and this is entirely anecdotal, but my friends and I have observed it first-hand from VC dealings and friends in the right UK circles. Inherited generational wealth and class in my experience powers UK investment, particularly in the start-up scene, much more than in the USA. Of course, there are some exceptions I can think of in the UK but it is very much tied up with the class system there and understanding this makes life easier. The same situation affects other European countries to some degree, and many people I know have had to go to US VC firms to get funding. I have spent a lot of time working in all of these countries to some extent and the UK class system seems to be increasingly stifling. YMMV though.
  - scrlk 3y ago
    So I need the correct "old boys" school tie and a pair of red trousers to get funded by UK investors? :^)
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      Make that knee-high grey shorts, a graze on your knee, and a Prefect following closely behind you with some implement of abuse.
bartread 3y ago
> want rentier incomes with low risk. I don't know if I buy your point about inherited wealth but there is what I'd describe as a stifling culture of rentseeking that, if not actively encouraged is certainly tolerated and overlooked, at many levels of society, and across both businesses and public organisations. And once you become aware of it you start to realise how obnoxious and oppressive it is. We certainly don't lack for talent, but we're very good at suppressing or wasting it.
- truckerbill 3y ago
  You don't buy the point about a country with royal family that owns vast swathes of land?
  - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
    No such point was made (regarding a royal family). Incidentally, the Royal Family themselves privately own 1/250th of the UK's land, and it is mostly not particularly valuable. Only about £15bn. As a proportion this is only four times what the richest private landowner (the Emmersons) in the USA owns of the USA. And the Emmersons have come by their share pretty quickly by comparison, wouldn't you say? The Duke of Westminster (not a member of the royal family) has a physically much smaller (private) estate that is worth more than half of the royal estate. What the royal family own privately should not be confused with what the "Crown" owns. The Crown estate is basically owned and operated by the state.
    - cjrp 3y ago
      > As a proportion this is only four times what the richest private landowner (the Emmersons) in the USA owns of the USA. And the Emmersons have come by their share pretty quickly by comparison, wouldn't you say? If anything, I feel like the speed (or how recently the land was acquired) is actually in the Emmersons favour here. A generation or two ago somebody got wildly successful, vs. land being inherited because your 30x great-grandfather was Henry VIII.
      - 3y ago
ur-whale 3y ago
> Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low risk You just described the capital markets in the entire western Europe, not just the brits.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  But also the USA, probably. If you look past the tech bubble economies where the "new money" owners are, and into the world of physical assets, what you find is a constellation of families concentrating wealth, swirling around the central families of the 21st Century -- the Waltons, the Mars family, the Kochs, and so on down -- a power series of family wealth that has ordinary investors in the long tail. The USA is easily distracted by the vibrancy of the market-driven tech economy, and hoodwinked into ignoring the astonishing growth of private equity controlled by inherited wealth.
bemusedthrow75 3y ago
Though even the rent-seekers ought to see some value in ARM.
bhewes 3y ago
But then they did Brexit and the island has to work again.

by msy 3y ago

pipo234 3y ago

> a stock market dominated by octogenarian+ dinosaurs, a decaying rump of manufacturing, a finance sector that mostly makes its bread laundering the capital of the world's corrupt and corruptors Ah! Now I get it. That rhymes with companies like Shell and Unilever leaving the EU in favour of UK after brexit. (Not that Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam or Paris are known to be heavy investors in tech innovation, btw.)

Lio 3y ago
Well Shell (and BP) are really likely to get sweetheart deals on North Sea oil from Rishi Sunak which might have swayed them. Now, I know what you're thinking, that that's just because both firms coincidentally signed multi-billion dollar deals coincidentally with Sunak's family business, Infosys, to coincidentally outsource all their IT jobs but I assure you that's a mere coincidence.... probably. :P

deskamess 3y ago

Canada has many similarities. The inherited wealth is essentially banks and oligarchs. You pretty much have to be risk free to get any funding. Lots of window dressing and marketing to make Canada look good. If it were not for US companies (Cisco, Google, etc) the Canadian tech salary would be closer to Europe. Once you start living here you realize the truth about how much they value tech, protectionism, the incompetence of the telecom sector, stodgy banking and finance, poor education, unaffordable housing, and declining access to health (Ontario and stories from the Maritimes since health is provincial - cannot speak of Alberta/BC/etc). All subpar but the marketing and virtue signaling is great. A lot of 'make Canada look good' comes at the expense of Canadians.

speed_spread 3y ago
Quebec has had a few wins over the years with massive indirect subsidies toward strategic industries, notably gaming and AI. Public money is spent to attract big players which hire a critical mass of talent which leads to more players moving in and eventually some private risk capital becoming available for startups pending to the needs of the big guys. Nothing comparable to the American VC system though.
- ckdarby 3y ago
  I live in Quebec. It's all for show to prop Quebec up as a place to even do business in. There's nothing in the tech space that is worth even looking at twice in this province that isn't headquartered elsewhere. Most larger companies open up here just to tap into the potential talent that don't want to leave their home province and a lot of companies aren't willing to put in the effort of dealing with Quebec being the exception to everything. If you want to understand Quebec it really boils down to three points: - Protect French language - Protect culture - Have more children. This achieves 1 & 2 in a cycle. Things that are going well for the province, cheaper car insurance, cheaper housing, cheaper electricity, and subsidize daycare. Oh! This all ties back into our 3 rules. All these advantages come at the cost of higher taxes, but that is apart of the strategy. Don't build wealth, but just provide enough for hope, dreams of having a family and rope as many into this to fulfil the 3 points.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > Quebec has had a few wins over the years with massive indirect subsidies toward strategic industries, notably gaming and AI And aviation. The Bombardier C-Series is a very advanced plane, and the first modern plane developed outside of Boeing or Airbus (outside of the smaller regional Embraer). Sadly American protectionism was the final nail in the coffin for the programme, but Airbus is comitted to the Mirabel site and assembly line, so Quebec still is one of the top aviation hubs in the world.

Fluorescence 3y ago

> Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth Curious to see you prove that beyond an imagined stereotype. It's not as though we are in the first generation of US entrepreneurship and there is not a huge quantity of US inherited wealth in those VC funds. The founders of Intel, Apple, Walmart, Standard Oil etc. have all passed on. And on the other side, it's not like there haven't been a dozen generations since Norman lords chopping up all the land wealth. I think only one British billionaire is an aristo, the rest are business folk. People underestimate the effect of how wealth attracts wealth in terms of commercial hubs - money chases opportunity and opportunities chase money and they end up in the same place for all sorts of reasons. It's just a system effect rather than a consequence of higher virtues that some love grant themselves.

hnhg 3y ago
I cannot prove it, and this is entirely anecdotal, but my friends and I have observed it first-hand from VC dealings and friends in the right UK circles. Inherited generational wealth and class in my experience powers UK investment, particularly in the start-up scene, much more than in the USA. Of course, there are some exceptions I can think of in the UK but it is very much tied up with the class system there and understanding this makes life easier. The same situation affects other European countries to some degree, and many people I know have had to go to US VC firms to get funding. I have spent a lot of time working in all of these countries to some extent and the UK class system seems to be increasingly stifling. YMMV though.
- scrlk 3y ago
  So I need the correct "old boys" school tie and a pair of red trousers to get funded by UK investors? :^)
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    Make that knee-high grey shorts, a graze on your knee, and a Prefect following closely behind you with some implement of abuse.

bartread 3y ago

> want rentier incomes with low risk. I don't know if I buy your point about inherited wealth but there is what I'd describe as a stifling culture of rentseeking that, if not actively encouraged is certainly tolerated and overlooked, at many levels of society, and across both businesses and public organisations. And once you become aware of it you start to realise how obnoxious and oppressive it is. We certainly don't lack for talent, but we're very good at suppressing or wasting it.

truckerbill 3y ago
You don't buy the point about a country with royal family that owns vast swathes of land?
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  No such point was made (regarding a royal family). Incidentally, the Royal Family themselves privately own 1/250th of the UK's land, and it is mostly not particularly valuable. Only about £15bn. As a proportion this is only four times what the richest private landowner (the Emmersons) in the USA owns of the USA. And the Emmersons have come by their share pretty quickly by comparison, wouldn't you say? The Duke of Westminster (not a member of the royal family) has a physically much smaller (private) estate that is worth more than half of the royal estate. What the royal family own privately should not be confused with what the "Crown" owns. The Crown estate is basically owned and operated by the state.
  - cjrp 3y ago
    > As a proportion this is only four times what the richest private landowner (the Emmersons) in the USA owns of the USA. And the Emmersons have come by their share pretty quickly by comparison, wouldn't you say? If anything, I feel like the speed (or how recently the land was acquired) is actually in the Emmersons favour here. A generation or two ago somebody got wildly successful, vs. land being inherited because your 30x great-grandfather was Henry VIII.
    - 3y ago

ur-whale 3y ago

> Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth and its controllers want rentier incomes with low risk You just described the capital markets in the entire western Europe, not just the brits.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
But also the USA, probably. If you look past the tech bubble economies where the "new money" owners are, and into the world of physical assets, what you find is a constellation of families concentrating wealth, swirling around the central families of the 21st Century -- the Waltons, the Mars family, the Kochs, and so on down -- a power series of family wealth that has ordinary investors in the long tail. The USA is easily distracted by the vibrancy of the market-driven tech economy, and hoodwinked into ignoring the astonishing growth of private equity controlled by inherited wealth.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago

Though even the rent-seekers ought to see some value in ARM.

bhewes 3y ago

But then they did Brexit and the island has to work again.