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I think you're misreading the source of the defeatism. It's clear what European leaders should do if they want to compete with US big tech. They should sit down

I think you're misreading the source of the defeatism. It's clear what European leaders should do if they want to compete with US big tech. They should sit down with corporate leaders at Spotify, Ericsson, ASML, etc. and talk though what reforms are necessary for Europe to start minting unicorns as rapidly as the Americans can. But European leaders haven't been willing to do this, perceiving (I think correctly) that European citizens won't tolerate the idea of asking rich CEOs for regulatory advice or making the creation of billionaires a policy goal. So instead they focus on the kind of pointless efforts described in the source article, where government agencies endlessly chase their tails on standards and objectives. To the eternal frustration of governments and advocates around the world, there's no argument for why you should use domestic products that can adequately substitute for high-quality domestic products people want to use.

api 10mo ago
The answer is simple: simplify and streamline all the bureaucracy. Complexity is a regressive tax. It disproportionately penalizes small ventures and entrepreneurs who don’t have whole departments of people to deal with it. The effect is to prevent the formation of new companies. Large incumbents are able to deal with it, so it actually protects them.
- f30e3dfed1c9 9mo ago
  "The answer is simple: simplify and streamline all the bureaucracy." Well, that sounds easy! I wonder why no one else ever thought of it. Good thing there are geniuses like you around.
  - api 9mo ago
    People think of it all the time. But there’s a giant system full of people whose careers and incomes are linked to the complexity, not just government bureaucrats but also lawyers, accounting firms, expensive consultancies, etc. It’s a hard sell because it would decimate whole industries that revolving around servicing the complexity. But it’s one of the thing the EU could do to win in new industries. Honestly if the EU became more innovation and entrepreneur friendly I think they’d kick America’s ass. Tons of smart people, and the positive side of the social safely net is that it derisks entrepreneurship. America is full of would be founders who can’t afford to take the leap since they could lose their health care, etc.
smsm42 10mo ago
If Europe were capable of doing this, Europe would not need to do this. They'd already have active and vibrant tech scene compared to US one - EU is bigger than US by population, and certainly not less smart - in fact, a lot of people live in EU and work for US tech companies. So why US has "big tech" and Europe does not? They decided their political model must work differently, even at the cost of not having big tech. So now they don't have big tech. And no amount of committee meetings is going to change that, even if all governments would want it really, really hard.
- sarchertech 10mo ago
  It’s not really comparable though. The EU isn’t a unified single language market, and its GDP and per capita GDP are much smaller.
  - smsm42 10mo ago
    Language is not a huge deal - if the French and the Spanish and the Dutch can use Facebook, they could use Eurobook if that existed, as well. The problem of course would be, if they made a committee to build Eurobook, they'd spend 5 years in meetings to ensure every country and every language is absolutely equally represented and then would build something that no speaker of any language would use. As for GDP, EU overall GDP is only slightly less than US GDP, so it could very well sustain the industry of comparable size. Per capita GDP is indeed lower, but I'm not sure how that precludes creation of something like Eurobook.
    - com 9mo ago
      There were Eurobooks and they were pretty well bought out by Facebook. Hyves and so on. The online CV networks were bought by LinkedIn.
    - sarchertech 9mo ago
      EU GDP is about 2/3 US GDP. That’s a very significant difference. Per capita income is probably less important than average and median disposable income, which is much higher in the US and has an obvious impact on B2C companies. FB was incubated in a single unified market before it really spread to the EU. It’s harder for companies to take off and reach tech giant reach with the much smaller individual markets in the EU. It’s much harder to build a product that appeals to everyone from the Irish to the Bulgarians, and to advertise to them than it is to do the same for everyone in the US. And it’s not just the tech companies, the individual content creators on the platform have the same comparative problems.
Intralexical 10mo ago
> They should sit down with corporate leaders at Spotify, Ericsson, ASML, etc. and talk though what reforms are necessary for Europe to start minting unicorns as rapidly as the Americans can. The EU should ask established incumbents how to best create lots of new upstarts, some of which will no doubt end up competing with them or disrupting their business models?
- SpicyLemonZest 10mo ago
  Yes. They shouldn't take their words as gospel, of course, they'd want to find some current upstarts as well. But the idea that successful businesspeople are just snatching pieces of the pie and have nothing useful to say is exactly the attitude that's incompatible with an innovative tech sector.
mmooss 10mo ago
> making the creation of billionaires a policy goal Concentrating wealth to the degree of the US is not at all necessary for innovation. As an extreme example, Bezos would have done the same thing for a tenth or less of the current lifetime income. In fact, when many leading entrepeneurs started, the wealth concentration wasn't nearly as high, yet they were still motivated. Now with wealth concentration much higher, my impression is less motivation and opportunity for startups, innovation, starting a business in your garage, etc. In more economic terms, I think it's well-established that such high concentration of wealth reduces economic mobility.
- SpicyLemonZest 10mo ago
  The causation is in the other direction. Innovative entrepreneurs cause wealth to become highly concentrated, and cause their companies to distort the societies they're embedded in, by the act of producing goods and services that a large number of people want to buy. Bezos is actually a great example, because he made almost his entire US$250B fortune from unrealized stock appreciation rather than salary or new awards. Even the most extreme wealth tax proposals I've seen wouldn't get him down to US$25B. The US could only have achieved that target by restricting how much Amazon is allowed to innovate and grow.
  - IrishTechie 9mo ago
    I disagree. They could for example make it mandatory to grant more stock options to employees so the wealth they are generating is more broadly spread beyond the founder/CEO. I’m sure there are plenty of other approaches that would still handsomely reward innovation and growth but prevent where we ended up today.
wolvoleo 9mo ago
No, the last thing we should do is transform Europe into a neoliberal stronghold like America. It's not all about making money. It's about creating a civilisation for citizens, not business. Business is just a means to an end. The current polarisation in America is a direct result of billionaires controlling policy, and the anger of a huge disadvantaged minority being taken advantage of by populists (which ironically are mostly oligarchs)

api 10mo ago

The answer is simple: simplify and streamline all the bureaucracy. Complexity is a regressive tax. It disproportionately penalizes small ventures and entrepreneurs who don’t have whole departments of people to deal with it. The effect is to prevent the formation of new companies. Large incumbents are able to deal with it, so it actually protects them.

f30e3dfed1c9 9mo ago
"The answer is simple: simplify and streamline all the bureaucracy." Well, that sounds easy! I wonder why no one else ever thought of it. Good thing there are geniuses like you around.
- api 9mo ago
  People think of it all the time. But there’s a giant system full of people whose careers and incomes are linked to the complexity, not just government bureaucrats but also lawyers, accounting firms, expensive consultancies, etc. It’s a hard sell because it would decimate whole industries that revolving around servicing the complexity. But it’s one of the thing the EU could do to win in new industries. Honestly if the EU became more innovation and entrepreneur friendly I think they’d kick America’s ass. Tons of smart people, and the positive side of the social safely net is that it derisks entrepreneurship. America is full of would be founders who can’t afford to take the leap since they could lose their health care, etc.

smsm42 10mo ago

If Europe were capable of doing this, Europe would not need to do this. They'd already have active and vibrant tech scene compared to US one - EU is bigger than US by population, and certainly not less smart - in fact, a lot of people live in EU and work for US tech companies. So why US has "big tech" and Europe does not? They decided their political model must work differently, even at the cost of not having big tech. So now they don't have big tech. And no amount of committee meetings is going to change that, even if all governments would want it really, really hard.

sarchertech 10mo ago
It’s not really comparable though. The EU isn’t a unified single language market, and its GDP and per capita GDP are much smaller.
- smsm42 10mo ago
  Language is not a huge deal - if the French and the Spanish and the Dutch can use Facebook, they could use Eurobook if that existed, as well. The problem of course would be, if they made a committee to build Eurobook, they'd spend 5 years in meetings to ensure every country and every language is absolutely equally represented and then would build something that no speaker of any language would use. As for GDP, EU overall GDP is only slightly less than US GDP, so it could very well sustain the industry of comparable size. Per capita GDP is indeed lower, but I'm not sure how that precludes creation of something like Eurobook.
  - com 9mo ago
    There were Eurobooks and they were pretty well bought out by Facebook. Hyves and so on. The online CV networks were bought by LinkedIn.
  - sarchertech 9mo ago
    EU GDP is about 2/3 US GDP. That’s a very significant difference. Per capita income is probably less important than average and median disposable income, which is much higher in the US and has an obvious impact on B2C companies. FB was incubated in a single unified market before it really spread to the EU. It’s harder for companies to take off and reach tech giant reach with the much smaller individual markets in the EU. It’s much harder to build a product that appeals to everyone from the Irish to the Bulgarians, and to advertise to them than it is to do the same for everyone in the US. And it’s not just the tech companies, the individual content creators on the platform have the same comparative problems.

Intralexical 10mo ago

> They should sit down with corporate leaders at Spotify, Ericsson, ASML, etc. and talk though what reforms are necessary for Europe to start minting unicorns as rapidly as the Americans can. The EU should ask established incumbents how to best create lots of new upstarts, some of which will no doubt end up competing with them or disrupting their business models?

SpicyLemonZest 10mo ago
Yes. They shouldn't take their words as gospel, of course, they'd want to find some current upstarts as well. But the idea that successful businesspeople are just snatching pieces of the pie and have nothing useful to say is exactly the attitude that's incompatible with an innovative tech sector.

mmooss 10mo ago

> making the creation of billionaires a policy goal Concentrating wealth to the degree of the US is not at all necessary for innovation. As an extreme example, Bezos would have done the same thing for a tenth or less of the current lifetime income. In fact, when many leading entrepeneurs started, the wealth concentration wasn't nearly as high, yet they were still motivated. Now with wealth concentration much higher, my impression is less motivation and opportunity for startups, innovation, starting a business in your garage, etc. In more economic terms, I think it's well-established that such high concentration of wealth reduces economic mobility.

SpicyLemonZest 10mo ago
The causation is in the other direction. Innovative entrepreneurs cause wealth to become highly concentrated, and cause their companies to distort the societies they're embedded in, by the act of producing goods and services that a large number of people want to buy. Bezos is actually a great example, because he made almost his entire US$250B fortune from unrealized stock appreciation rather than salary or new awards. Even the most extreme wealth tax proposals I've seen wouldn't get him down to US$25B. The US could only have achieved that target by restricting how much Amazon is allowed to innovate and grow.
- IrishTechie 9mo ago
  I disagree. They could for example make it mandatory to grant more stock options to employees so the wealth they are generating is more broadly spread beyond the founder/CEO. I’m sure there are plenty of other approaches that would still handsomely reward innovation and growth but prevent where we ended up today.

wolvoleo 9mo ago

No, the last thing we should do is transform Europe into a neoliberal stronghold like America. It's not all about making money. It's about creating a civilisation for citizens, not business. Business is just a means to an end. The current polarisation in America is a direct result of billionaires controlling policy, and the anger of a huge disadvantaged minority being taken advantage of by populists (which ironically are mostly oligarchs)