4 ms·

I don't think that's a valid proposition for most international businesses. Europe is too big a market for this.

donatj 3y ago
Their value is largely overstated. Most of continental Europe has very little actual disposable income. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzaiuk8pn7p781.jpg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fz...
- AnnikaL 3y ago
  Western Europe seems to hover around $20,000 to $30,000 in disposable income, which seems like quite a bit. Certainly it's more than Eastern Europe and Asia have, even if it's less than parts of North America and Oceania.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  It looks like they have more disposable income that every country other than the United States.
- chmod775 3y ago
  Disposable income is extremely pointless to compare if you want to figure out how much people will have left to pay for your product. Look at actual spending in whichever category you're interested in. To illustrate, let's subtract some spending categories from that disposable income which tech companies generally don't compete for: Germans spend $13713 + $1604 on housing/lodging vs $22624 for Americans, education $255 vs $1226, food $5706 vs $8289, health $1632 vs $5452. So comparatively Americans are already down $14681 of that disposable income, which definitely won't be spent on whatever some American tech darling produces - food, housing, education, and health spending is generally considered more important than getting a Meta Quest headset. At the end of the day US/Germany spend the same amount of money on entertainment/recreation almost to the dollar. France is similar in that regard and together Germany and France are already a market of close to 150 million people. Numbers are from 2021 using the historic EUR/USD exchange rates. The point is: drill down to some category and compare actual spending in it. You'll be surprised how wildly some things vary even between countries that nominally have the same disposable income. US Data: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm German Data: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkommen-Konsum-Lebensbedingungen/Konsumausgaben-Lebenshaltungskosten/Tabellen/privater-konsum-d-lwr.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkom...
jdminhbg 3y ago
It seems like it depends. If it's just paying fines, like where the EU uses US tech companies as a piggy bank, you can easily compare your revenue to the cost and decide to stay. It's not as much money as it would be otherwise, but with zero-marginal-cost products, it's still worth it. On the other hand, where it would completely break your product, like in the case of installing backdoors into E2EE chat applications, it might not be worth it anymore. Google and Meta survive fine without China, for example.
- sol91949 3y ago
  And then emerging companies and nations will fill the gap. This may benefit everyone except pre-existing hegemons, suffice to say it’s not in a monopolists interest to allow any other significant marketplace to be dominated by another. This is why we the strategy of isolating China rather than competing directly may backfire. Also why China protecting it’s own internal market is net beneficial for the world in aggregate, whilst perhaps not good for dominant powers (hence the geopolitical u-turn from China good to China bad)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Their value is largely overstated. Most of continental Europe has very little actual disposable income. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzaiuk8pn7p781.jpg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fz...

AnnikaL 3y ago
Western Europe seems to hover around $20,000 to $30,000 in disposable income, which seems like quite a bit. Certainly it's more than Eastern Europe and Asia have, even if it's less than parts of North America and Oceania.
bee_rider 3y ago
It looks like they have more disposable income that every country other than the United States.
chmod775 3y ago
Disposable income is extremely pointless to compare if you want to figure out how much people will have left to pay for your product. Look at actual spending in whichever category you're interested in. To illustrate, let's subtract some spending categories from that disposable income which tech companies generally don't compete for: Germans spend $13713 + $1604 on housing/lodging vs $22624 for Americans, education $255 vs $1226, food $5706 vs $8289, health $1632 vs $5452. So comparatively Americans are already down $14681 of that disposable income, which definitely won't be spent on whatever some American tech darling produces - food, housing, education, and health spending is generally considered more important than getting a Meta Quest headset. At the end of the day US/Germany spend the same amount of money on entertainment/recreation almost to the dollar. France is similar in that regard and together Germany and France are already a market of close to 150 million people. Numbers are from 2021 using the historic EUR/USD exchange rates. The point is: drill down to some category and compare actual spending in it. You'll be surprised how wildly some things vary even between countries that nominally have the same disposable income. US Data: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm German Data: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkommen-Konsum-Lebensbedingungen/Konsumausgaben-Lebenshaltungskosten/Tabellen/privater-konsum-d-lwr.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkom...

jdminhbg 3y ago

It seems like it depends. If it's just paying fines, like where the EU uses US tech companies as a piggy bank, you can easily compare your revenue to the cost and decide to stay. It's not as much money as it would be otherwise, but with zero-marginal-cost products, it's still worth it. On the other hand, where it would completely break your product, like in the case of installing backdoors into E2EE chat applications, it might not be worth it anymore. Google and Meta survive fine without China, for example.

sol91949 3y ago
And then emerging companies and nations will fill the gap. This may benefit everyone except pre-existing hegemons, suffice to say it’s not in a monopolists interest to allow any other significant marketplace to be dominated by another. This is why we the strategy of isolating China rather than competing directly may backfire. Also why China protecting it’s own internal market is net beneficial for the world in aggregate, whilst perhaps not good for dominant powers (hence the geopolitical u-turn from China good to China bad)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]