11 ms·

> The DAX is only 40 companies, most of which make real products rather than advertising mechanisms This, as the kids say, is just cope. American big tech make

by gizmo 2y ago

> The DAX is only 40 companies, most of which make real products rather than advertising mechanisms This, as the kids say, is just cope. American big tech makes real products. Google is not just ads. Apple is not. Amazon is not. Tesla is not. NVidia is not. Netflix is not. NVidia might be overvalued because of the current AI hype but that does not diminish their real accomplishments! Europe has almost no real tech companies. There is one exception, founded in 1984. Not exactly a spring chicken. How can a wealthy continent with 750 million people produce no big tech companies? It's a big problem.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>How can a wealthy continent with 750 million people produce no big tech companies? It's a big problem. Much more difficult to scale a product across 26 different countries and nearly as many languages and regulatory jurisdictions. US is one country, not a collection of countries fighting each other, meaning your product is instantly available to 300M people speaking the same language under (nearly) the same regulations.
- pell 2y ago
  Language aside, the entire point of the EU is the single market so you don’t have 26 different rule sets. (There are some exceptions such as health care but that is no different in the US.)
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Except you do have 26 different rules. It's a single market on paper as the eu only mandates a small subset of common rules and regulations such as removing tarrifs or freedom of movement, but have you ever tried in practice to launch your company from Belgium to France or from Netherlands to Belgium or from Austria to Germany, or from Romania to Italy? It's much more difficult when the rubber hits the road as every country has various extra laws and protectionist measures in place to protect it's domestic players from outsiders even if they came from within the EU. And that's besides the language barrier which means added costs. This is much less efficient than the US market. EU countries and voters still value their national sovereignty and culture (both with the upsides and downsides) above a united EU under the same laws and language for everyone, ruled from outside their country's borders. See what happened with Brexit and the constant internal squabbling and sabotaging over critical EU issues that affect us all like the war in Ukraine or illegal mass migration. An US style unification just won't work here since every little country wants to be it's own king while having its cake and eating it too.
    - gizmo 2y ago
      Europe is a single market with regards to imports and exports, and that's what matters most for a business. Low wages more than compensate for regulatory annoyances. No shortage of subsidies either. California has more burdensome regulations and higher taxes than other states and yet it's home to silicon valley.
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        >Europe is a single market with regards to imports and exports, and that's what matters most for a business. We're talking about scaling internal companies across EU, not about imports and exports. And scaling local start-up across the EU is a regulatory and legal nightmare for small companies. Shipping and selling imports and exports of commodities are a solved problem for decades, but scaling a on-line notary service for instance, that works both in Germany and in Italy, isn't. The EU doesn't help much with that as they only say you should have no tariffs between each other, not that you shouldn't have various legal, cultural and bureaucratic protectionism idiosyncrasies in place. The EU won't and can't force countries to improve that to make doing business easier for cross-country start-ups. EU countries have a lot more roadblocks between each others than US states do when ti comes to scaling businesses.
  - dukeyukey 2y ago
    Yes, and it's doing a mediocre-at-best job of it. You can remove tariffs and harmonise regulations, but the EU is trying to unite countries with cultural borders older than Christianity.
    - pell 2y ago
      I would argue that the EU is quite a successful organization given the task of setting up general market rules for 26 countries. Obviously there is a lot to criticize about the EU and I can offer you a gigantic list there too. However, I do not see any clear failure of the EU’s approach as a single market so far. Additionally part of the philosophy was establishing peace in a region that was torn up by wars for a lot longer than Christianity exists. I would argue the EU was quite successful there too.
      - dukeyukey 2y ago
        It's definitely successful, and I was probably too harsh there. But I genuinely think the barriers that are left are damn near insurmountable. An awful lot has to change before a Greek tech workers can move to Sweden as easily as a Virginian can move to California.
        pell 2y ago
        What would you change if you could? The EU already offers freedom of movement to EU citizens. Of course the US being a country instead of a connection of countries offers a more streamlined experience and surely the shared language plays a huge role too. But when I want to come up with examples such as a Greek person having completely different retirement, health care and legal schemes in Sweden compared to Greece, it seems the US is not so dissimilar there either given that states sometimes have very different approaches to health care, taxes, labor laws, etc.
        dukeyukey 2y ago
        Mostly stuff you can't really change. Like, the cultural difference between Sweden and Greece is _way_ bigger than between California and Virginia. You've got the language barrier too. This isn't gonna be fixed, maybe ever, but will continue to cause friction.
- qeternity 2y ago
  >US is one country, not a collection of countries fighting each other The US is a republic of 50 states. Each state has a huge amount of sovereignty and autonomy. There are 50 state-level regulatory jurisdictions. Not to mention the local-level of government. But in spite of this, the US does not over-regulate. This is the big difference to Europe (I say this as an American expat living in Europe).
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Have you tried launching a product in your new EU country and then taking abroad to another EU country? You'll find out it's not exactly like doing the same thing between US states. And I'm not even talking about the language barrier.
  - dukeyukey 2y ago
    American states have generally less autonomy than Canadian provinces do. Federalism is common worldwide, it's far from an American thing. EU countries are _vastly_ more independent than American states, and when you throw in the cultural differences, it grows hugely again.
jononor 2y ago
Why is producing big companies a goal? High standards of living for all seems to a much better goal. And that can be done with small or big companies - so long as economic production is high enough and distributed well enough.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Because that famous EU welfare is funded via taxes. Having well performing companies funds your welfare system. Currently EU welfare systems are under massive strain and huge waiting lists due to ageing population and economy that hasn't kept up to fund it. There's no free lunch here. You need big companies with scale that pay huge wages as those mean a lot more tax revenue. Saying no to that kind money out of some made up idealism is just silly copium. The EU income taxes paid by a single FANG salary employee would be the equivalent of the taxes paid by ~10 average workers. Pretty sure Germany and every other EU country would like to have such taxpayers contributing into the welfare system and not say no to it. Europe's share of global GDP gas been on a constant decline at the expense of US and Chinese growth. Yeah it's nice to have a better welfare system than China or the US, but how will you fund it in the future if you keep having less money? Political idealism doesn't pay your food and rent.
  - lycopodiopsida 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - lycopodiopsida 2y ago
        Stop trolling and throwing around wild accusations. Here are your words: >You need big companies with scale that pay huge wages as those mean a lot more tax revenue. Now provide proofs that we need some big corps dodging taxes, including FAANG, and not more small and middle-sized business.
CapeTheory 2y ago
> Google is not just ads. Bad example given how aggressively they terminate products which don't generate the same revenue as ads. > Apple is not. Best example, they have done a fantastic job of being both a tech company and pseudo-fashion company. > Amazon is not. They don't make anything (at least nothing people want to buy) and have ad revenue as an increase slice of their pie. > Tesla is not. Even bigger hype/speculation vehicle than Nvidia. > NVidia is not. Nvidia of 5 years ago would not have appeared on this list, being too much of a niche tech company. Good at what they do, but hugely hype-fuelled. > Netflix is not. Running out of growth potential with their current business model, starting to introduce ads!
- Certhas 2y ago
  Nvidia's valuation is in part driven by the fact that their chips potentially disrupt the vehicle for ad revenue that is search. For all his insanity, the one thing I respect Musk for, is that he actually started successful companies that make stuff. Creating a new car manufacturer of the scale of BMW out of nothing was widely considered impossible before. Of course he did this from a position of extreme wealth, but none of his peers managed to do that. Everyone else is just seeking rent by trying to be first to implement some tech transition that is coming anyway. And that might be a lot more valuable to society if it was managed differently...
- erulabs 2y ago
  Amazon doesn’t make anything anyone wants to buy? Not to be snarky, but if AWS counts as “nothing” I’d sure like a slice of nothing please.
  - CapeTheory 2y ago
    AWS is a (collection of) service(s) which can scale and have low marginal cost of reproduction. Fire Tablets are a real thing you can buy, but they are shit so nobody does.
    - erulabs 2y ago
      Sorry, are you suggesting AWS Services "aren't real things"? If I pay for a database server in Virginia, how is that not real?
dukeyukey 2y ago
> Europe has almost no real tech companies How do you define "tech"? Europe's domestic markets are jam-packed full of local tech companies.
- gizmo 2y ago
  The grandparent claimed that the DAX 40 has real businesses that make things as opposed to American tech businesses that just serve the attention economy. Clearly not true. European businesses run on American technology. American businesses do not run on European technology. Europe has many small and not very profitable tech companies. Almost no large and profitable ones. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNDtCtTXcAAiwFk?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNDtCtTXcAAiwFk?format=jpg&name=...
leonardovida 2y ago
> There is one exception, founded in 1984 Europe clearly has many problems stimulating investments and creating a competitive environment for startups and tech companies. But you can't say ASML is the only one "real" tech company. What about Adyen, Spotify, Klarna, N26, Revolut, etc?
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Most of those companies you mentioned aren't anywhere near as wealthy or as high market caps as US big-tech. Most of them are just payment middlemen not some innovative product nobody else can do, and Spotify survives on monopolizing and squeezing artists, not some innovative product. Kind of like Netflix except Netflix has some cutting edge streaming tech as a product not just IP licenses. ASML is the only product innovator there except their innovative EUV lightsources are licensed from Sandia labs in the US and made by Cymer in the US which ASML bought and licensed to not seel to China. So an US invention at the end of the day.
  - dukeyukey 2y ago
    We aren't exclusively talking about big tech here, just tech. Companies like Monzo dominate the local markets because they executed on ideas no-one else tried before. We forgot that huge, international tech companies are pretty much an exclusive American phenomenon, they don't really exist anywhere else.
- qeternity 2y ago
  N26, Klarna and Revolut are not tech companies. Neobanks are still banks. And Klarna is just modern store credit cards. These have been around for decades. Adyen is very underrated, and Spotify is definitely tech. Stripe should be on the list. DeepMind at one point.
  - gizmo 2y ago
    Stripe was founded in California. It's an American business that focused exclusively on the American domestic market in their first years of operation. Many tech companies in the US are founded by immigrants from Europe and elsewhere. That the Collisons chose to start their business in the States is no coincidence.

by gizmo 2y ago

Rinzler89 2y ago

>How can a wealthy continent with 750 million people produce no big tech companies? It's a big problem. Much more difficult to scale a product across 26 different countries and nearly as many languages and regulatory jurisdictions. US is one country, not a collection of countries fighting each other, meaning your product is instantly available to 300M people speaking the same language under (nearly) the same regulations.

pell 2y ago
Language aside, the entire point of the EU is the single market so you don’t have 26 different rule sets. (There are some exceptions such as health care but that is no different in the US.)
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Except you do have 26 different rules. It's a single market on paper as the eu only mandates a small subset of common rules and regulations such as removing tarrifs or freedom of movement, but have you ever tried in practice to launch your company from Belgium to France or from Netherlands to Belgium or from Austria to Germany, or from Romania to Italy? It's much more difficult when the rubber hits the road as every country has various extra laws and protectionist measures in place to protect it's domestic players from outsiders even if they came from within the EU. And that's besides the language barrier which means added costs. This is much less efficient than the US market. EU countries and voters still value their national sovereignty and culture (both with the upsides and downsides) above a united EU under the same laws and language for everyone, ruled from outside their country's borders. See what happened with Brexit and the constant internal squabbling and sabotaging over critical EU issues that affect us all like the war in Ukraine or illegal mass migration. An US style unification just won't work here since every little country wants to be it's own king while having its cake and eating it too.
  - gizmo 2y ago
    Europe is a single market with regards to imports and exports, and that's what matters most for a business. Low wages more than compensate for regulatory annoyances. No shortage of subsidies either. California has more burdensome regulations and higher taxes than other states and yet it's home to silicon valley.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      >Europe is a single market with regards to imports and exports, and that's what matters most for a business. We're talking about scaling internal companies across EU, not about imports and exports. And scaling local start-up across the EU is a regulatory and legal nightmare for small companies. Shipping and selling imports and exports of commodities are a solved problem for decades, but scaling a on-line notary service for instance, that works both in Germany and in Italy, isn't. The EU doesn't help much with that as they only say you should have no tariffs between each other, not that you shouldn't have various legal, cultural and bureaucratic protectionism idiosyncrasies in place. The EU won't and can't force countries to improve that to make doing business easier for cross-country start-ups. EU countries have a lot more roadblocks between each others than US states do when ti comes to scaling businesses.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  Yes, and it's doing a mediocre-at-best job of it. You can remove tariffs and harmonise regulations, but the EU is trying to unite countries with cultural borders older than Christianity.
  - pell 2y ago
    I would argue that the EU is quite a successful organization given the task of setting up general market rules for 26 countries. Obviously there is a lot to criticize about the EU and I can offer you a gigantic list there too. However, I do not see any clear failure of the EU’s approach as a single market so far. Additionally part of the philosophy was establishing peace in a region that was torn up by wars for a lot longer than Christianity exists. I would argue the EU was quite successful there too.
    - dukeyukey 2y ago
      It's definitely successful, and I was probably too harsh there. But I genuinely think the barriers that are left are damn near insurmountable. An awful lot has to change before a Greek tech workers can move to Sweden as easily as a Virginian can move to California.
      - pell 2y ago
        What would you change if you could? The EU already offers freedom of movement to EU citizens. Of course the US being a country instead of a connection of countries offers a more streamlined experience and surely the shared language plays a huge role too. But when I want to come up with examples such as a Greek person having completely different retirement, health care and legal schemes in Sweden compared to Greece, it seems the US is not so dissimilar there either given that states sometimes have very different approaches to health care, taxes, labor laws, etc.
        dukeyukey 2y ago
        Mostly stuff you can't really change. Like, the cultural difference between Sweden and Greece is _way_ bigger than between California and Virginia. You've got the language barrier too. This isn't gonna be fixed, maybe ever, but will continue to cause friction.
qeternity 2y ago
>US is one country, not a collection of countries fighting each other The US is a republic of 50 states. Each state has a huge amount of sovereignty and autonomy. There are 50 state-level regulatory jurisdictions. Not to mention the local-level of government. But in spite of this, the US does not over-regulate. This is the big difference to Europe (I say this as an American expat living in Europe).
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Have you tried launching a product in your new EU country and then taking abroad to another EU country? You'll find out it's not exactly like doing the same thing between US states. And I'm not even talking about the language barrier.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  American states have generally less autonomy than Canadian provinces do. Federalism is common worldwide, it's far from an American thing. EU countries are _vastly_ more independent than American states, and when you throw in the cultural differences, it grows hugely again.

jononor 2y ago

Why is producing big companies a goal? High standards of living for all seems to a much better goal. And that can be done with small or big companies - so long as economic production is high enough and distributed well enough.

Rinzler89 2y ago
Because that famous EU welfare is funded via taxes. Having well performing companies funds your welfare system. Currently EU welfare systems are under massive strain and huge waiting lists due to ageing population and economy that hasn't kept up to fund it. There's no free lunch here. You need big companies with scale that pay huge wages as those mean a lot more tax revenue. Saying no to that kind money out of some made up idealism is just silly copium. The EU income taxes paid by a single FANG salary employee would be the equivalent of the taxes paid by ~10 average workers. Pretty sure Germany and every other EU country would like to have such taxpayers contributing into the welfare system and not say no to it. Europe's share of global GDP gas been on a constant decline at the expense of US and Chinese growth. Yeah it's nice to have a better welfare system than China or the US, but how will you fund it in the future if you keep having less money? Political idealism doesn't pay your food and rent.
- lycopodiopsida 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lycopodiopsida 2y ago
      Stop trolling and throwing around wild accusations. Here are your words: >You need big companies with scale that pay huge wages as those mean a lot more tax revenue. Now provide proofs that we need some big corps dodging taxes, including FAANG, and not more small and middle-sized business.

CapeTheory 2y ago

> Google is not just ads. Bad example given how aggressively they terminate products which don't generate the same revenue as ads. > Apple is not. Best example, they have done a fantastic job of being both a tech company and pseudo-fashion company. > Amazon is not. They don't make anything (at least nothing people want to buy) and have ad revenue as an increase slice of their pie. > Tesla is not. Even bigger hype/speculation vehicle than Nvidia. > NVidia is not. Nvidia of 5 years ago would not have appeared on this list, being too much of a niche tech company. Good at what they do, but hugely hype-fuelled. > Netflix is not. Running out of growth potential with their current business model, starting to introduce ads!

Certhas 2y ago
Nvidia's valuation is in part driven by the fact that their chips potentially disrupt the vehicle for ad revenue that is search. For all his insanity, the one thing I respect Musk for, is that he actually started successful companies that make stuff. Creating a new car manufacturer of the scale of BMW out of nothing was widely considered impossible before. Of course he did this from a position of extreme wealth, but none of his peers managed to do that. Everyone else is just seeking rent by trying to be first to implement some tech transition that is coming anyway. And that might be a lot more valuable to society if it was managed differently...
erulabs 2y ago
Amazon doesn’t make anything anyone wants to buy? Not to be snarky, but if AWS counts as “nothing” I’d sure like a slice of nothing please.
- CapeTheory 2y ago
  AWS is a (collection of) service(s) which can scale and have low marginal cost of reproduction. Fire Tablets are a real thing you can buy, but they are shit so nobody does.
  - erulabs 2y ago
    Sorry, are you suggesting AWS Services "aren't real things"? If I pay for a database server in Virginia, how is that not real?

dukeyukey 2y ago

> Europe has almost no real tech companies How do you define "tech"? Europe's domestic markets are jam-packed full of local tech companies.

gizmo 2y ago
The grandparent claimed that the DAX 40 has real businesses that make things as opposed to American tech businesses that just serve the attention economy. Clearly not true. European businesses run on American technology. American businesses do not run on European technology. Europe has many small and not very profitable tech companies. Almost no large and profitable ones. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNDtCtTXcAAiwFk?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNDtCtTXcAAiwFk?format=jpg&name=...

leonardovida 2y ago

> There is one exception, founded in 1984 Europe clearly has many problems stimulating investments and creating a competitive environment for startups and tech companies. But you can't say ASML is the only one "real" tech company. What about Adyen, Spotify, Klarna, N26, Revolut, etc?

Rinzler89 2y ago
Most of those companies you mentioned aren't anywhere near as wealthy or as high market caps as US big-tech. Most of them are just payment middlemen not some innovative product nobody else can do, and Spotify survives on monopolizing and squeezing artists, not some innovative product. Kind of like Netflix except Netflix has some cutting edge streaming tech as a product not just IP licenses. ASML is the only product innovator there except their innovative EUV lightsources are licensed from Sandia labs in the US and made by Cymer in the US which ASML bought and licensed to not seel to China. So an US invention at the end of the day.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  We aren't exclusively talking about big tech here, just tech. Companies like Monzo dominate the local markets because they executed on ideas no-one else tried before. We forgot that huge, international tech companies are pretty much an exclusive American phenomenon, they don't really exist anywhere else.
qeternity 2y ago
N26, Klarna and Revolut are not tech companies. Neobanks are still banks. And Klarna is just modern store credit cards. These have been around for decades. Adyen is very underrated, and Spotify is definitely tech. Stripe should be on the list. DeepMind at one point.
- gizmo 2y ago
  Stripe was founded in California. It's an American business that focused exclusively on the American domestic market in their first years of operation. Many tech companies in the US are founded by immigrants from Europe and elsewhere. That the Collisons chose to start their business in the States is no coincidence.