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> Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought: in fact, the productivity gap between the EU an

> Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought: in fact, the productivity gap between the EU and the US is largely explained by the tech sector. The EU is weak in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth. Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European. > Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies rising up to disrupt existing industries or develop new growth engines. In fact, there is no EU company with a market capitalisation over EUR 100 billion that has been set up from scratch in the last fifty years, while all six US companies with a valuation above EUR 1 trillion have been created in this period. > The problem is not that Europe lacks ideas or ambition. We have many talented researchers and entrepreneurs filing patents. But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation, and innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations. > For example, we claim to favour innovation, but we continue to add regulatory burdens onto European companies, which are especially costly for SMEs and self-defeating for those in the digital sectors. More than half of SMEs in Europe flag regulatory obstacles and the administrative burden as their greatest challenge. Worth a read. Probably not what the self patting EU clowns were expecting. The disconnect between the introduction and the actual report is especially hilarious.

Mistletoe 2y ago
The thing is though that I want to move to Europe precisely for all these same reasons. And I want to do it with my USA dollars and wealth that enabled it, so I do recognize the dissonance there. Are Europeans happier due to all of the reasons you listed? Do you enable wealth to grow at the expense of the happiness of its residents if you implement the reforms needed to “move fast and break things”? Are Americans happier due to this wealth and entrepreneurship? I don’t think so, they seem pretty miserable right now. Overconsumption and having too much has made this generation have a lower life expectancy than the last, a stunning result. It would be unwise to pass these changes and enrich a few wealthy Europeans at the top and instill serfdom again and wealth inequality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
- moi2388 2y ago
  I suppose the truth/ideal situation would be somewhere in the middle. But the inability to capitalise on the tech sector, difficult regulations as barrier to entry, and a lot of changing rules regarding innovation, making things “green” and environmental and consumer safety does give a high burden to industry when competing with entities like China and the USA which do not have these restrictions. I think a long-term plan regarding regulations which are clear upfront and don’t constantly change, as well as massive tax benefits to new corporations could provide an economical boost. Having said that, I am not an economist, so I’d love someone with more knowledge to give their 2 cents. (Tax free, of course)
  - izacus 2y ago
    My two cents are that EU needs to follow USA with aggressive protectionism to offset the regulation.
    - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
      Follow? The EU has been more more protectionist for decades in everything from agriculture to cars. If you look at the WTO’s published data, the mean tariffs in the EU are 5.0% while even now, the US is at just 3.2%. https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/tariff_profiles_list_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/tariff_profiles_l...
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    It's a shame that the EU is painted as a failure unless they have low taxes and industrious go-getters trashing their system. Their awesomeness doesn't show on a balance sheet so it might as well not exist.
    - throwaway48540 2y ago
      I live in EU. What awesomeness? There are places with better social and health services while having less taxes and regulations. The regulations are making actual day to day life hard for everyone, directly as well as indirectly. EU is surviving, but I definitely wouldn't - and don't know anyone who would - say it's thriving. Most of my friends who work in software and other hitech are planning their move to US.
the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
> Probably not what the self patting EU clowns were expecting. I don't know who you have in mind with "self petting EU clowns" but in general people are very aware of what's going on. A lot of companies have been giving this feedback for a long time.
- frankjr 2y ago
  > I don't know who you have in mind with "self petting EU clowns" The politicians. > A lot of companies have been giving this feedback for a long time. Yeah, still got ignored as the report suggests.
  - RandomLensman 2y ago
    And who elects those politicians? Does the median voter in the EU want high growth or rather something more like museum?
    - frankjr 2y ago
      > And who elects those politicians? For the most part other politicians. A vote of a constituent every few years means very little, you don't even know for sure who gets to be a MEP, you give a "preference". For the remaining time EU politicians do whatever they want and you are just expected to take it. And if your country doesn't want to, they give you a penalty.
      - RandomLensman 2y ago
        And that differs how from some national systems? How can the Commission do whatever it takes when the Council is the senior part of the executive when it comes to outlining policies and countries enjoy veto rights on a variety of things there (and can even leave the EU)?
        Aerroon 2y ago
        The way the EU differs from national systems in that the EU is compartmentalized. The different languages and cultures mean that ideas, information, and politics doesn't flow freely. If you care about a specific policy then not only do you have to convince all the voters in your country, but you'll have to convince people in a dozen other countries that speak entirely different languages too. Compartmentalization like this also allows some influence to spread more than it would in a unified information space. It's possible for a larger country to convince a smaller one to side with them on an EU level issue, while "paying" for it on a national level. I think that because of these barriers it makes sense that a lot of European voters feel entirely disconnected from EU level politics. It's preteen met with an attitude of "Brussels decided that we must jump, so we jump." It's reminiscent of the Soviet times with "Moscow decided". (Not in the decisions itself, but people's attitudes.)
MangoCoffee 2y ago
Another point to consider: what happened to Telegram's CEO? Pavel Durov was arrested because he didn't police his platform sufficiently or whatever, or so France claims. That alone is unsettling. It's been discussed among techies on Twitter. Why would anyone smart enough to create something want to start a company in the EU? Why risk your neck to start a startup in such an environment?
- gwervc 2y ago
  This is in addition to the world most expensive taxation (France), so assuming you can manage to be a least ramen profitable you can't expect to cash-in more than ~40-45% of the end profits in your pocket.
- mlinhares 2y ago
  If your platform is a cesspool of CSAM and you loudly say you'll do nothing about it, countries not holding you accountable are the problem. None of the other large social platforms have behaved like this because they know where it ends.
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    There's more CSAM per capita (at least 10x likely more like 100x) on a platforms which "purports to police CSAM" like Civit.ai. No one does anything about it though. Oh you don't believe me? This is one of the most popular models on their whole site: https://civitai.com/models/402667/age-slider-lora-or-ponyxl-sdxl https://civitai.com/models/402667/age-slider-lora-or-ponyxl-... Stable Diffusion 1.5 was trained on at least thousands of images of this stuff and no one has tried to get that model taken down, mostly because training on sufficiently large datasets almost guarantees that you'll have illegal content included within it. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/20/24009418/generative-ai-image-laion-csam-google-stability-stanford https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/20/24009418/generative-ai-i... I'm also shocked for related reasons that the 3 and 4 letters haven't been more upset about LLMs, since there's almost certainly a ton of classified info just sitting on the internet that LLMs have ingested into their training data. (don't believe me? https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2024/03/26/another-airman-probed-by-fbi-for-allegedly-leaking-intel-on-discord/ https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2024/03/26...)
pokerface_86 2y ago
>No EU company with market cap >100b EURO am i dumb? does this not include nordo novisk?

Mistletoe 2y ago

The thing is though that I want to move to Europe precisely for all these same reasons. And I want to do it with my USA dollars and wealth that enabled it, so I do recognize the dissonance there. Are Europeans happier due to all of the reasons you listed? Do you enable wealth to grow at the expense of the happiness of its residents if you implement the reforms needed to “move fast and break things”? Are Americans happier due to this wealth and entrepreneurship? I don’t think so, they seem pretty miserable right now. Overconsumption and having too much has made this generation have a lower life expectancy than the last, a stunning result. It would be unwise to pass these changes and enrich a few wealthy Europeans at the top and instill serfdom again and wealth inequality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

moi2388 2y ago
I suppose the truth/ideal situation would be somewhere in the middle. But the inability to capitalise on the tech sector, difficult regulations as barrier to entry, and a lot of changing rules regarding innovation, making things “green” and environmental and consumer safety does give a high burden to industry when competing with entities like China and the USA which do not have these restrictions. I think a long-term plan regarding regulations which are clear upfront and don’t constantly change, as well as massive tax benefits to new corporations could provide an economical boost. Having said that, I am not an economist, so I’d love someone with more knowledge to give their 2 cents. (Tax free, of course)
- izacus 2y ago
  My two cents are that EU needs to follow USA with aggressive protectionism to offset the regulation.
  - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
    Follow? The EU has been more more protectionist for decades in everything from agriculture to cars. If you look at the WTO’s published data, the mean tariffs in the EU are 5.0% while even now, the US is at just 3.2%. https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/tariff_profiles_list_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/tariff_profiles_l...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  It's a shame that the EU is painted as a failure unless they have low taxes and industrious go-getters trashing their system. Their awesomeness doesn't show on a balance sheet so it might as well not exist.
  - throwaway48540 2y ago
    I live in EU. What awesomeness? There are places with better social and health services while having less taxes and regulations. The regulations are making actual day to day life hard for everyone, directly as well as indirectly. EU is surviving, but I definitely wouldn't - and don't know anyone who would - say it's thriving. Most of my friends who work in software and other hitech are planning their move to US.

the_mitsuhiko 2y ago

> Probably not what the self patting EU clowns were expecting. I don't know who you have in mind with "self petting EU clowns" but in general people are very aware of what's going on. A lot of companies have been giving this feedback for a long time.

frankjr 2y ago
> I don't know who you have in mind with "self petting EU clowns" The politicians. > A lot of companies have been giving this feedback for a long time. Yeah, still got ignored as the report suggests.
- RandomLensman 2y ago
  And who elects those politicians? Does the median voter in the EU want high growth or rather something more like museum?
  - frankjr 2y ago
    > And who elects those politicians? For the most part other politicians. A vote of a constituent every few years means very little, you don't even know for sure who gets to be a MEP, you give a "preference". For the remaining time EU politicians do whatever they want and you are just expected to take it. And if your country doesn't want to, they give you a penalty.
    - RandomLensman 2y ago
      And that differs how from some national systems? How can the Commission do whatever it takes when the Council is the senior part of the executive when it comes to outlining policies and countries enjoy veto rights on a variety of things there (and can even leave the EU)?
      - Aerroon 2y ago
        The way the EU differs from national systems in that the EU is compartmentalized. The different languages and cultures mean that ideas, information, and politics doesn't flow freely. If you care about a specific policy then not only do you have to convince all the voters in your country, but you'll have to convince people in a dozen other countries that speak entirely different languages too. Compartmentalization like this also allows some influence to spread more than it would in a unified information space. It's possible for a larger country to convince a smaller one to side with them on an EU level issue, while "paying" for it on a national level. I think that because of these barriers it makes sense that a lot of European voters feel entirely disconnected from EU level politics. It's preteen met with an attitude of "Brussels decided that we must jump, so we jump." It's reminiscent of the Soviet times with "Moscow decided". (Not in the decisions itself, but people's attitudes.)

MangoCoffee 2y ago

Another point to consider: what happened to Telegram's CEO? Pavel Durov was arrested because he didn't police his platform sufficiently or whatever, or so France claims. That alone is unsettling. It's been discussed among techies on Twitter. Why would anyone smart enough to create something want to start a company in the EU? Why risk your neck to start a startup in such an environment?

gwervc 2y ago
This is in addition to the world most expensive taxation (France), so assuming you can manage to be a least ramen profitable you can't expect to cash-in more than ~40-45% of the end profits in your pocket.
mlinhares 2y ago
If your platform is a cesspool of CSAM and you loudly say you'll do nothing about it, countries not holding you accountable are the problem. None of the other large social platforms have behaved like this because they know where it ends.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  There's more CSAM per capita (at least 10x likely more like 100x) on a platforms which "purports to police CSAM" like Civit.ai. No one does anything about it though. Oh you don't believe me? This is one of the most popular models on their whole site: https://civitai.com/models/402667/age-slider-lora-or-ponyxl-sdxl https://civitai.com/models/402667/age-slider-lora-or-ponyxl-... Stable Diffusion 1.5 was trained on at least thousands of images of this stuff and no one has tried to get that model taken down, mostly because training on sufficiently large datasets almost guarantees that you'll have illegal content included within it. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/20/24009418/generative-ai-image-laion-csam-google-stability-stanford https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/20/24009418/generative-ai-i... I'm also shocked for related reasons that the 3 and 4 letters haven't been more upset about LLMs, since there's almost certainly a ton of classified info just sitting on the internet that LLMs have ingested into their training data. (don't believe me? https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2024/03/26/another-airman-probed-by-fbi-for-allegedly-leaking-intel-on-discord/ https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2024/03/26...)

pokerface_86 2y ago

>No EU company with market cap >100b EURO am i dumb? does this not include nordo novisk?