Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdog | Hacker News Reader

European commissioners should read a couple of Paul Graham's essays. No wonder the EU doesn't have the equivalent of a Silicon Valley.

"How to Be Silicon Valley": http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

"Why Startups Condense In America": http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html

View on HN

In return EU have healthy job market with ~40hr work week and proper healthcare. Most of EU companies are not trying to keep me as developer in a golden cage, offering me everything so I wouldn't have to go home anymore. There are many healthy business hubs here in Europe (London, Cardiff-Bristol-Bath, Berlin and many others), maybe they do not have that superstar status as SV but they are still good places to be. Sometimes I wonder if people living in SV bubble thinks that there is no serious tech companies outside SV.

> have healthy job market

Reminder: the EU's unemployment rate is twice as high as the US'.

The US might have a better job market (by some cherry-picked metrics), but the EU doesn't have a bad one (I'll grant that there are notable exceptions, but then you'll have to grant me the same for certain US states).

The point is that you're playing with words.

Moreover, you have to factor in things like healthcare, life expectancy, literacy rates, access to education, danger involved in unemployment, crime rates, unemployment pensions, etc if you want to make a useful decision as to which of the two systems is more dysfunctional than the other.

-=EDIT=- : viz "cherry-picked metrics", the quality of a job market is more than just the proportion of people employed. Let's not forget other relevant factors:

- job stability

- employee protection

- workplace hazards & injury compensation

- vacation & sick leave

- retirement pensions

- mandated employee benefits (transportation, remote-work assistance, etc.)

- maternity / paternity leave

- etc

...and the negative externalities: per-capita imprisonment rates, people killed in other countries through war and other means, people killed in the same country, energy usage, waste output, pollution and carbon footprint...

Hell some people have as many as three jobs in the states! We got way more jobs than you!

Maybe because being unemployed in EU is much less dangerous than in the US?

lol that's not why we're unemployed in Spain.

Do you include jobs which does not pay a livable wage in that comparison?

From what I've seen, salaries in EU tech hubs are significantly lower than in provincial markets in the US - where weeks are close to 40 hours and managers would laugh at paying for lunch or putting in cots so you can spend the night. Most Americans don't work in the tech hubs, yet still earn significantly more on average. FYI, anyone with a decent job in the US has access to some of the best health care in the world. The US with a far more diverse and unwell population has better outcomes for the cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

> FYI, anyone with a decent job in the US has access to some of the best health care in the world.

And have the possibility of seeing their life savings evaporate and facing financial ruin when paying for this health care.

You must not be familiar with us health care. Max out of pockets are usually reasonable and certainly not life altering. Try looking up when the crappy plans in the aca.

Example.

Old articles, but I don't imagine it has changed all that much;

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/costs-of-delivering-babies-va...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31052665

That does not seem reasonable to me.

What seems reasonable for maternity stay is it being totally free.

Lower wages are result or bigger social benefits. As mentioned above, it's less dangerous to go unemployed in EU. It's also harder to be kicked out from your job "just because". Health care probably is one of the best in the world but health insurance isn't. I've never heard from any EU citizen that they had to consider either is it worth to call ambulance, I read about situations like that happening in US. If I would get seriously sick in US I could be eaten by my insurer. Health care in EU is also on very high level, even countries that you are usually do not think that much about, like Poland, are arguably leaders in some healthcare fields (Poland have world class specialists in hearth and limbs transplants)

>FYI, anyone with a decent job in the US has access to some of the best health care in the world

This is so funny. IIRC what Republicans in the USA are arguing is that the new health care plan that they want to pass gives "access" to healthcare to everyone, as long as they are "willing" to pay for it.

I have access to a space flight sure, the only thing stopping me is money.

Yeah if you want access to peoples' time they need to get paid. So yeah you can pay for it. The alternative is government healthcare which the U.S. provides for veterans who often die on waiting lists when the administrators shred requests for services. It's unlikely normal people will get tested better by our government.

the only "healthy" in the EU is the EU-Socialism

And the fact that laws are proposed and made by unelected officials in private. Is that the future?

Unless something changed very recently, EU laws are reviewed and adopted by the European Council (Heads of State for each member state) and the European Parliament which consists of elected MEPs

Does the U.S., with its Electoral College, really want to go there? This strikes me as throwing stones from a glass McMansion.

</presumption alert>

More to the point: unhindered, direct-democracy is rarely a good system as it tends to devolve into "majority rule". The case for appointed officials is neither new nor in and of itself undemocratic.

Did you consider that maybe EU really doesn't want to have a "Silicon Valley" if the cost is infringement of consumer rights and exploitation of the free market?

Can the EU legitimately complain that tech companies prefer to operate outside then?

They can operate outside of the EU all they want but if they want to do business here then they have to follow the rules. Its funny to see how the EU protectionism case is being played here and people jump on it being a USA vs EU thing, when really it is google abusing a monopoly position regardless of geographic location.

Outside the law? Yes, they can and should.

http://tech.eu/features/186/ignorance-is-remiss/

> tech companies prefer to operate outside

Any examples please?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_informatio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Internet_compa...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_software_c...

I'm not economist but I suspect that such concentration of tech companies in US is due to the fact that it was their home market from where they started. I think that the question was more along the lines: Is there any example of a company that started in EU and moved they main operations to US?

Most companies that are on those lists have also strong EU presence.

The company that powers search for this very Website:

http://www.impact-north-america.com/french-search-api-startu...

Probably not - they should however complain about how things are run elsewhere, because it's hurting them and everyone else.

It's natural for companies to be drawn towards places that have less restrictions on businesses. It's to be expected, but that doesn't mean less restrictions is good for the society.

I think these articles make really good points. But they seem completely off-topic. Nothing in there makes the connection between antitrust laws and a Silicon Valley economy.

Not from the US so correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the US had (and exercised) solid antitrust laws way before Silicon Valley developed? The case of Standard Oil in the early 20th century comes to mind.

Neither an historian nor an economist.

But yes, they certainly did.

Appart from Standard Oil AT&T and - in theory - Microsoft come to mind.

Now US antitrust efforts seem to be pretty much non-existent, even though they may be needed more than ever. I don't see that happening anytime soon in the current climate.

So, the EU hiting companies, which behave badly regardless where such companies are located is a very good thing in my book.

What good are those laws when concerted lobbying and corruption means they never get enforced?

Are you trying to argue that Standard Oil didn't have much lobbying power? Or that politicians/courts were less corrupt back then?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com