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Comment by 88840-8855 | Hacker News Reader

I like your points and agree on your conclusion.

Further, I would like to add a few ideas:

- innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe, including one common language, one common jurisdiction and law framework. Localization is just too expensive in Europe and hinders scaling.

- a certain degree of protectionism is good. I am a big fan of how China made it. They have a really fantastic digital landscape that is superior in so many areas compared to Europe (if you exclude the data privacy issue)

- reliance on the old economy is bad and this is a political decision.

- too many people are too scared of new technologies and want things "how they used to be". This is bad and is typical for many Europeans, especially here in Germany. Cultural change must happen but you cannot force it.

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innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe, including one common language, one common jurisdiction and law framework. Localization is just too expensive in Europe and hinders scaling.

Obviously we already have English, nearly universally spoken as a second or third language in the EU. So I assume you mean English, or some other language as the first language.

Which I think means all other languages would after a few generations become nearly extinct. Like Latin these days.

But despite how much I wish we had more innovation, I don't think losing all languages is worth it.

If English becomes national language, you could forget about innovation. A big reason why China and SK are successful is language barrier. It effectively stops brain drain and thus, increase innovation. All countries with either main language or secondary language as English has already lost tech market.

Just look at foreign competitors of Amazon, Google, Facebook etc. Even Russia like country have major tech companies while being poorer than western European countries.

> A big reason why China and SK are successful is language barrier. It effectively stops brain drain and thus, increase innovation.

This is BS. There will always be a loss of brain power to the lingua franca nation(s), regardless what that language happens to be. The research opportunities will (almost?) always be better.

That said, many people stay in China or return to China because they like it there, even if they speak English at a high level and have the option to stay in an English-speaking country. This has been true in my circle of friends and professional acquaintances since the 90s.

It might be the case that China is large enough to create its own large opportunities, so emigrating from China to an English-speaking country may not be particularly compelling. That said, I think it’s an apple-and-oranges comparison — the opportunities largely seem to be simply different from where I sit.

What Russian tech have you ever used?

GLONASS?

Klashnikov (very indirectly)?

I don't agree that centralization in Europe is the answer, that's exactly how you end up relying on others manufacturing capacity. Decentralize more so when the political winds change you are not at the mercy of other countries if your own nation has no manufacturing capacity to speak of.

If those countries are small, you're not at their mercy, they are at yours. See Germany - Eastern Europe ;-)

If you rely on a superpower, then that's your own damn fault :-))

What could the one common language be? English would seem to be the logical choice, but there is no way France would agree to that.

The EU doesn’t even agree on which alphabet to use, Latin is the most common one but the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets are also official in the union.

English is my second language, and while I wouldn’t mind changing the official language of my country, I can’t see that ever happening, there’s just so much culture attached to the language, that would be forgotten together with our language.

Yep. A common European first language would start a process which would result in a terrible loss of local cultural tradition. Cultural suicude for the common good has been suggested before, but I can't imagine that there would be a lot of people who'd agree with it.

I disagree, I live in Denmark where the majority speaks very good English. There's no shortage of Danish media.

On the other hand, economic suicide is assured by insisting on a high standard of living while doing everything possible to prevent innovation.

As a Swedish-speaking Finn, I can confirm that a culture can end up on the decline even if there's powerful legal backing to preserving it (including forcing the remaining ~90% of the population to learning Swedish in school). Incidentally, I'd say there's a large correlation with English being more and more accepted in Finnish society, but I suspect the actual root cause simply is that cultural production is mainly taking place in the first language (Finnish) and that it leaves less for the others.

The same would happen if you managed to get the entire EU to agree to switch to one single language (remember, it's likely that it would be French or German instead of English). As a result of pushing adoption of the new first language, it would mean increased cultural output in that language, and a reduced output for the others. After a while, the differences will start showing.

I've lived in Denmark for quite a few years and I agree that people in Copenhagen and the other larger cities wouldn't notice that much of a difference to begin with, but remember that this would mean a cultural shift that will take multiple generations. Ask the German speakers in southern Jutland in another 24 years, and compare how their culture thrives compared to how they did before the war and you will probably have a pretty decent view on how the situation would be for many, many of EU's minorities 100 years after the switch to a single European first language.

I'm sure that some wouldn't mind other's cultural suicide, however.

Definitely not. There's probably no shortage of people promiting their own culture's demise either.

Latin is tanned, rested and ready.

Proto-indo-european would be a better unity option so as to not show favor to Romance-speaking countries.

PIE lacks the vocabulary for certain modern things like writing.

That's the best part!

Modern languages already have words for things like a mouse, a screen or the Big Bang, but it's all stupid stuff like an analogy to how a computer mouse looks like an animal because of its long cord-tail, a reference to the white screen a projector casts it's projection on, or a vulgar put-down of a theory being like God's orgasm.

If we take a dead language and start adding in vocabulary, we can quietly sweep that all under a rug before we encounter any alien species we have to explain ourselves to.

Alien species: "So you remodeled your language, removing all traces of history and culture from it, because you were worried about the impression you'd make on aliens you didn't know, you didn't even know existed?"

"You're the most pathetic people in the known universe."

I mean, we'll try, but we can only do so much. Even in ancient languages, every word for "tool" is also slang for "penis", and twenty percent of the verbs can also be used to refer to a sex act.

English may be more acceptable once the UK excited, leaving no favored EU state.

The UK has already left the EU (it's in the transition phase now) and Ireland and Malta both have English as an official language.

Ireland and Malta are both small enough that no one would mistake them for a dominant force in the EU.

Quite a few large french companies that are global in nature have switched to English first, but for the broader acceptance and the government to officially support English as the unifying language I share your skepticism

> - innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe, including one common language, one common jurisdiction and law framework. Localization is just too expensive in Europe and hinders scaling.

If that were the cost, then it would not be worth the price. Fortunately, it is completely unnecessary. It suffices to look to when Europe was at her best.

Technology is mere instrument. What you describe is Procrustean cultural destruction to satisfy some metric. Technology is not the end, but a means that has its proper place. The destruction of the various cultures that make the world rich is a recipe for monoculture and thus lack of inspiration. A diverse and decentralized Europe permits the exchange of ideas to occur in an atmosphere of diverse cultures. "Scale" is about de facto standardization and standardization is a double edged sword, not an unalloyed good. If anything, scale is what makes monopolies possible.

The solution is not to create a bland mass of rootless "citizen consumers" crafted out of the corporate pop culture, though, to be honest, Europe is practically there already, wearily drifting along, preferring to keep warm. The solution is a fundamental awakening of Europeans to the deep roots of their civilization and what made it great. That's where the life force is. The EU is in practice a form of managed decline perpetrated by delusional ideologues, petty bureaucrats, and ignorant airheads. It is antithetical to a vibrant Europe so looking for a solution there is like asking a dictator of some banana republic what makes a vibrant country.

Can't overstate how important this is. India is slowly coming to terms with adopting English (instead of Hindi) as the lingua franca - it has been a reliable economic mobility driver for millions of people. More European states might do well by adopting a bilingual/trilingual approach to expand economic opportunities for the population. I think parts of Scandinavia already manage to do this quite well.

> innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe

Interesting, I hadn't seen the term localisation used beyond language. IMO, the major hindrance to European unification is nationalistic reflexes together with too many voluntary projects: EEC vs EU, Schengen, human rights, immigration, the euro... the instigators of such projects thought the success of these projects/goals would encourage more countries to opt in at a later date, which never happened, as a general rule. This resulted in more ways to slice and dice what "Europe" means, instead of contributing to unification.

A frequent occurrence is national politicians pretending they played no part in the council of ministers and blame-shifting towards Europe in order to gain or maintain domestic popularity. This actively undermines belief in EU institutions.

The facts seem to indicate the individual countries want to keep the systems they have in place, which can include vast differences in labour law, bureaucracy, remuneration schemes, pension plans, sick leave regulation and workplace safety, despite a basic common regulatory framework. As far as I'm aware, US states don't have as much variance between them.

As a result, a would-be tech giant has higher startup costs if it wants to employ people throughout Europe. I would say actual language localisation is a much less prohibitive cost.

As a German, do you see greater unification happening any time soon? I'm not sure I do, as one of your smaller neighbours.

This! The EU needs to be more cohesive and create an alternative to the U.S. (with it's increasing anti-intellectualism) or China.

I just want to say you articulated the difficulty with innovating in the European market very well.

There has been a strong movement to more unity in Europe. But, this has not been accompanied by democratisation.

To stay competitive Europe needs unity in the political process, defense and border security for example, and not in regulations in economy, finance, immigration etc, which are excessive already.

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