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There's a lot of great thinking done here, yet rarely capitalized. My point is not that something in the water lowers IQs but rather that well-intentioned, seem

There's a lot of great thinking done here, yet rarely capitalized. My point is not that something in the water lowers IQs but rather that well-intentioned, seemingly sensible, common sense regulation is drowning entrepreneurs. Even Linus Torvalds left to run Linux, a non profit, from the US. BMW, Mercedes or VW Founded, respectively, in 1916, 1926, and 1937. Those are some great companies but from completely different times. Neither Saint Peter's Basilica nor the Colosseum tell you much about modern Italy. Those are vestiges of glorious (well, usually) past. Facebook, Google, Microsoft are outliers from among American startups and typical by being American. Luckily, the world is interconnected so we can buy their products.

jacquesm 12y ago
Tom Tom was founded in very recent history, the WWW is of the last 3 decades and now powers a substantial amount of the world economy in one way or another (would you have preferred to buy access from a single huge American company, say AOL?), and Team Viewer (which you've probably never even heard of) was a German company until they exited for $1B+. Really, there is a ton going on in Europe, but it just isn't as much cult-of-personality oriented in as in the US, nor does it typically become a world wide brand. Things are slower, but just different, not worse. And if they would be worse then those per-capita-gdp's would be quite different. Another way to look at it is gdp per man/woman hour worked. And on that scale Europe comes out ahead. You can compare these two until the cows come home, in the end the differences are much smaller than the similarities. SV is an outlier for the world, not just for the US.
- spindritf 12y ago
  the WWW is of the last 3 decades and now powers a substantial amount of the world economy in one way or another But it didn't happen here. Great invention and then nothing. Even something as simple as Geocities took off in the US. And TomTom is like 1/60th of Google. This whole company exemplifying European IT success is a side gig for Google. In GDP per hour worked the US also trumps pretty much every European country. Europe as a whole doesn't come close, not to mention ahead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_hour_worked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    > Great invention and then nothing. Right. What a pity that that WWW thing went nowhere.
    - spindritf 12y ago
      That's completely not what I wrote. What I said is that even though the invention was European and wildly successful, it was Americans who capitalized on it with Geocities, Yahoos, Mosaic, Netscape... It was developed in the US, and piles of money were made in the US. And anyway, by your chosen measure EU is clearly doing worse, right?

jacquesm 12y ago

Tom Tom was founded in very recent history, the WWW is of the last 3 decades and now powers a substantial amount of the world economy in one way or another (would you have preferred to buy access from a single huge American company, say AOL?), and Team Viewer (which you've probably never even heard of) was a German company until they exited for $1B+. Really, there is a ton going on in Europe, but it just isn't as much cult-of-personality oriented in as in the US, nor does it typically become a world wide brand. Things are slower, but just different, not worse. And if they would be worse then those per-capita-gdp's would be quite different. Another way to look at it is gdp per man/woman hour worked. And on that scale Europe comes out ahead. You can compare these two until the cows come home, in the end the differences are much smaller than the similarities. SV is an outlier for the world, not just for the US.

spindritf 12y ago
the WWW is of the last 3 decades and now powers a substantial amount of the world economy in one way or another But it didn't happen here. Great invention and then nothing. Even something as simple as Geocities took off in the US. And TomTom is like 1/60th of Google. This whole company exemplifying European IT success is a side gig for Google. In GDP per hour worked the US also trumps pretty much every European country. Europe as a whole doesn't come close, not to mention ahead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_hour_worked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > Great invention and then nothing. Right. What a pity that that WWW thing went nowhere.
  - spindritf 12y ago
    That's completely not what I wrote. What I said is that even though the invention was European and wildly successful, it was Americans who capitalized on it with Geocities, Yahoos, Mosaic, Netscape... It was developed in the US, and piles of money were made in the US. And anyway, by your chosen measure EU is clearly doing worse, right?