Why Europe Wins
foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com
Extreme poverty, extreme wealth.
Europe, as a whole, seems to do better with a wider range of middle class.
Personally I lament that we have very little tech industry. No Google’s or Apples- but at the same time the majority of the people living and working here seem better off than their contemporaries in the US. So it’s mostly selfish of me to lament the lack of tech.
Eventually though I guess, the tremendous wealth generated by US tech industries will enrich everyone’s lives in the USA, but, that hasn’t happened historically. So I guess we’ll see.
Of course, Europe can't "compete" in exactly that without loosening the shackles in the same way, but that's not something I, for one, would want.
In Australia (outside of a small enclave in Sydney) the only thing that investors know about and want to invest in is Mining (or occasionally Agriculture).
I can see the same situation in Germany: investors want to invest in what they know, and very few of them know about tech products. There's little pockets of tech-savvy investors around Europe, but on the whole there's not that many.
But California has an abundance of investors who know tech and are willing to invest in it. So it's easy to see why a Euro tech company that wants funding would migrate there.
Yes i think that's it, i can make a bet that more Windows Servers run in Europe than in the US, Europe is in that field (the mindset) at least 6 years behind the US and China, but some exceptions exists like Estonia.
I think it turned to be a net negative, but it was a seminal change.
Facebook pays teens to download VPN to measure app usage on a users device: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/
Facebook backdoor testing after their VPN was removed from the app store: https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/30/facebook-research/
Facebook won already in like 2012 or something. What was before that - MySpace? - it just sucked compared to Facebook. Terrible UI. Completely useless, siloed without the "real name" policy.
Facebook was a genuine innovation, both in terms of UI, and in terms of marketing (targeting elite schools first was genius, but hardly non-competitive, anyone could have done it).
They both got to the size that they got by data mining PII and selling it to the highest bidder in various forms.
Yes, they were better than the competition. Especially Google Search (I remember Altavista et al). However the major innovation is that the user is is the product. (sidenote: ever had to contact Google customer support while being the product?)
If Zuckerberg started Facebook on Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TUE) today he would need to abide by GDPR. Means he can't just start a student DB without consent.
What you really mean is that Zuckerberg would not have started Facebook if he would've been in Europe today. Would the world have been better off? Facebook does seem to offer quite a lot of value to millions of people.
The two of us are unable to reach consensus on genuine offering value versus the importance of business ethics. I believe we can better cease this discussion.
How do you regulate Google buying something like youtube when youtube was a loss maker at the time, they grew it into a titan. Same with android, smartphones in the form of the iphone were brand new, who was to say at the time that Google would win with all the other companies building smartphones at that time.
The thing that changed, is that some tech companies can scale faster than any other industry before it (rail roads takes a long time to build).
That said, we're at the edge of history, 150 years ago it looked as if the railroad tycoons would own the future.
Even without regulation, railroad tycoons would not be dominating our economy today..
Case in point: takeaway.com
Edit: it's also an ongoing cost, so the earliest you start to support additional locales the more expensive your general product development becomes. Once start to translate your UI you now have to keep it up-to-date all the time. The more translations you have the more expensive that process is when developing new features, both in actual time/energy to be sure that your UI/UX work well in your supported locales, and expenses for translators.
But that's it. Local languages are dominant for any other situation. And while English is the main language used for business, the majority of people don't speak it fluently.
That varies a lot per country, for example Sweden and Norway are really good at teaching English, Austria, Germany and Belgium are ok, France, Spain, and Italy are bad.
You can see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index for some comparison between countries.
It'll be interesting to see what happens after Brexit. My guess is that English will remain as the common language in Europe. It's too entrenched now. And the Irish still speak it (for now).
In fact my personal wish would be the standardization on European English, at the same level as UK English, US English, Indian English, etc. and define it as our common EU language, bound to the pan-EU identity.
But I’m dreaming :)
Doesn't European English as a separate dialect have a lot of problems?
The English that Europe uses is so mangled that English speakers can't understand it. It often means the exact opposite of what is intended, sometimes dangerously so (see 'so-called' for example.) This leads to less understanding, rather than more.
https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG...
A US or UK English speaker will face issues when talking with a Indian English speaker, or an Australian English speaker.
In practice we already use EU English, both in official documents and communications, and in casual exchanges. We just don't recognize it officially.
The document you share is using UK English as the standard to follow, which explain why there are some differences.
> This leads to less understanding, rather than more.
That leads to a common language WITHIN the EU, which is what we don't have currently. I mean, again, we do have European English, we just don't recognize it, and it isn't as spread as it could be. The differences with other forms of English are small enough to increase the general communication between EU citizens and other English speakers in the world, but as you said also comes with a few differences that can cause misunderstanding. I work in international environments with people from all over the world, we already face those issues and they aren't a big deal.
I think you're being very generous there in painting it as some kind of naturally occurring dialect of a culture.
> The document you share is using UK English as the standard to follow
Incorrect. It refers to and compares against Irish English and US English as well, as people would in fact normally understand it. It's not academic or prescriptive.
> In practice we already use EU English, both in official documents and communications, and in casual exchanges.
You can't convince me people are using contorted jargon like 'financial envelope' in casual exchanges with anyone.
These are the problems in practice:
> the European institutions also need to communicate with the outside world and our documents need to be translated – both tasks that are not facilitated by the use of terminology that is unknown to native speakers and either does not appear in dictionaries or is shown in them with a different meaning
It's not just a case of 'not recognising it officially' - nobody understands it and dictionaries (of any dialect) don't help.
What is the point of a dialect that only people writing reports, not reading them (the actual people they're governing), understands?
I'm talking about the way the language is used by European citizens.
An example of some common differences can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English.
Some of theme are quite funny if you're familiar with European languages :)
No we mean the same thing. The Wikipedia article you posted even links to the report I posted as a reference for what they mean!
That’s an EU report, by the way, criticising EU English as confusing and not understandable by citizens of any country unless they’re EU officials. That’s not a useful shared dialect!
The reason to standardize European English would be to give the 400+ millions people living in the EU a common, shared language they could identify with. These people already use in their daily life a form of English that doesn't follow US or UK standards. It is obviously understandable by citizens, otherwise they wouldn't be able to use it. They are right now using this weird, bastardized version of English to do business, communicate with friends, with their families, etc. This European English is already a de-facto language used for communication between EU citizens. Instead of telling them to correct their use of the language because it fails to follow British standards, I would like this distinct form of English, as it is practiced, to be recognized.
And if that offenses British English speakers, then that's fine, they will adapt the same way they already do.
Not consider? You linked to the Wikipedia article on it saying that this is what you were talking about.
Don't forget that English is indeed a secondary language in the Republic of Ireland - their first official language is Irish. So what they said still holds true including the Republic of Ireland.
While I can speak English mostly without any special effort, it sometimes surprises me that I need time (up to 2 seconds maybe) to switch, when someone is asking me something. As in at first it doesn't even register as English, more like thinking what was that?. Then, delayed I suddenly understand. Of course it depends on the situation (environment, other sounds, other speakers, and so on, too) and the accent/dialect of the speaker. In other cases no problem at all, like instant switching without any hassle/thinking about it.
It depends/varies in strange ways :)
I think of it like this: we have an interpretation subsystem to interpret messages carried in sound (in whichever language). It's a soft real-time system. Typically it succeeds in interpreting good inputs, making its deadline, and it decisively rejects invalid inputs (on account of mumbling, overwhelming background noise, etc), also within the deadline. Occasionally it succeeds in interpreting a sound signal but misses its deadline.
There's also a request-repeat subsystem, which may fire any time after the interpretation subsystem has either rejected an input as invalid, or missed a deadline. When it fires, we say something like What was that? to request retransmission of the previous message.
When the interpretation subsystem misses a deadline but then succeeds, it races the request-repeat subsystem, so there's a chance of a What was that? being uttered immediately before successful interpretation of the previous message.
:)
One thing that the US is really good at is commercial innovation. Case in point: Silicon Valley. And in addition to that all the innovative companies outside of SV, which are quite a few.
It would be amazing if we in Europe could increase our innovation without creating the same economical divide as in the US.
And some more European tech companies wouldn’t hurt :)
For example banking, finance and insurance is more advanced and innovative in Europe than in US
Other fields of innovation where Europe leads are: green economy and energy production, small and medium sized businesses development, education, human resources, pharmaceutical products (mainly drug development, especially smart drugs as they are called)
They are not equally capitalized as US tech giants, but that just mean that investment in Europe is more widespread than centralised and many smaller companies receive funding instead of a few very big ones
I agree with you, but going on a tangent, I question if it really "works best".
I'm not an economist nor sociologist, but I know there's some evidence/argument that inequality also hurts the obscenely wealthy. As two examples, inequality is linked to crime and terror and lower rates of innovation (e.g., not having a vaccine for Ebola) - both of which can be blind to someone's AMEX limit.
There's also the fact that all people in countries with high inequality are less happy (1), which could be linked with the fact that they are less compassionate (2).
(1) https://hbr.org/2016/01/income-inequality-makes-whole-countr...
(2) https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_inequality...
imo the apple has gone bad.
Ironically, today, the integrity of the institution only seems to be enhanced by the less than savoury reputations and agendas of many of its detractors.
Yes, the EU has a lot of work to do to improve their communication. EU communication within country members is almost non-existent. People in France have often zero idea what is being done in Brussels, don't know that their neighborhood new bike lanes and kindergarten have been financed by European funds.
You regularly see people complaining in national media about EU lack of support for their own country, even when they just received a major financial support. Look for example at Italy, Poland, Hungary, where the anti-EU sentiment has become quite important while they received some of the highest crisis funds that have even been created.
I dont think France has a leading role in the EU, whats the last French initiative that was carried all the way to implementation? Reforming foreign workers rules didn't work, taxing tech giants didn't work.
As for the largest trading bloc, it also comes with so many regulations that a lot of SMB can't even take advantage of it due to costs.
Anyway, my main comment was just on these "financed by the EU" signs that you see everywhere but people don't even understand what it means, its just their own money.
That doesn't imply in any way that any EU funding is a funding by French people money.
I'm not talking about all funding obviously! I'm talking about funding in countries who are net contributors. Of course Poland Hungary and all are getting a great deal.
Based on https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/eu-budget/long-term-eu-bu..., 70% of the EU budget comes from national contributions.
The other 30% come from VAT and duties and levies: https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/eu-budget/long-term-eu-bu...
They must behave like that because they must win their local elections. Who cares about the European elections, anything can happen there. By the way, instant poll: who's the president of the EU Parliament (the Parliamentiis directly elected, the Commission is not) and / or which country s/he's from? Don't google it.
I don't know about the covid consequences in the US at the moment but no one is really happy about what's going on in the EU. Red zones everywhere, closing regions after holidays, event and cultural sectors are ravaged, unemployment is rising up and our government are still all about `investing into the future but cut the spending at the same time`.
I am now convinced no one can really read anything into economic and governance. It's all just tea reading and twisted stories so it fits the worldview of the authors. Who is winning what exactly ? The only constant narrative on both sides of the ocean is that wealthy people are still getting wealthier and the 99% are getting worse. And China bad.
What are state of affairs if the greatest country on earth cannot keep their leader safe six months after the pandemic started. They ought to have some control over the spread at-least in their upper ring.
Every time I read about USA's "high growth", I think of how hollow that "growth" has been. [0] The latter three things are curses rather than advantages. Anyone who is surprised that military activity leads to suffering, has only the vaguest, most abstract understanding of either of the words "military" or "suffering". FP has published plenty by such people, so TFA may be some kind of breakthrough.
i happened across this one from next 2017, where he is proposing we pretend we are in 2027 looking 10 years in the past, back at 2017.
in this view he suggests that Germany right now is the way to act and the people doing it right. some good materials here to consider, a way to look at how the world has been running, and perhaps in line with this article from foreign policy.
But your covid deaths are not really reflecting this rise. Same can be seen in France and Germany. Quite odd actually.
I am talking about my own experiences in my home town.
If you test 10x more people in period B as in period A, and in both periods you have the same infection rate, you'd expect 10x as many confirmed cases. The fact we see only 3x as many daily confirmed cases despite 10x more testing, means the population is actually far less infected now than during the first wave. We simply test more.
Second, the demographics of the infected has massively changed between the first and current wave: https://datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2020-10/nl-heatd-02...
As you can see, most confirmed cases consisted of elderly during the first wave. These are now much more insulated. Young people are now mostly infected, and survive. This translates into far lower mortality and hospitalisation figures per infected. Lastly, even though there is no vaccine yet, most people survive and this requires various treatments, we've seen small improvements in these treatments, but this is mostly a matter of increased throughput due to shorter hospital stays.
In short, there are actually (currently) fewer infected than during the first wave, and a lower infected to hospitalised/mortality rate.
None of this is to argue that things are okay or that the current policy is sufficient. Not at all. But it's entirely not true that the current wave is worse than the first wave, even in terms of the number of infected. And there are very well known and sensible reasons for why the current wave has a lower impact on health or mortality figures.
Otherwise, I am a dutchman and I used to be proud of my country, even though I left it long ago (I like large dense forests and mountains and humid heat; Netherlands very little of any of that), however there is not so much to be proud of anymore. We privatised and sold everything that should not be private or sold, we are less open, less equal, less honest, less direct, the social system is not very social anymore and we are following the USA for pc. Sure there are much worse countries, but they don't pretend to be what they are not (anymore).
I told a friend : there would have been a revolt and mass strikes.
We have remnants of an army, but they have to bring their own equipment.
Which is ofcourse the criticism against public institutions; we still have not figured out how properly to motivate people for efficiency outside money it seems.
No-one votes for the EU president. No-one votes for the membership of the European Commission (which decides all the policies) [0]
I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Seeing the mess that democracy has made in the UK and USA at the moment, it's nice having at least one global power that isn't vulnerable to populist theatrics.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...
„I for one am pleased about this top-down expert-based government regulation to which there are no downsides and which always achieve the desired effect, with no second order effects.“
Second order effects:
„total market capitalization of U.S. tech stocks reached $9.1 trillion, eclipsing that of the entire European market“.
US is a great place if you are born to a very affluent family. But not so great otherwise.
You have much higher probablity of getting a good education if you are born in Europe than in US. US college education is unaffordable to vast majority of people.
And don't even get me started on healthcare, gun violence, etc.
The point of money is to have a good quality of life. And EU is doing much better job than US even without having trillion dollar tech companies. Stay like that EU!
Getting an education for me was easy in The Netherlands. If I look at my family's finances and think about US university prices, I think it would've worked out if we'd be smart about it. But it would definitely not be easy.
It'd be about as difficult as it is to do a second bachelor/master in The Netherlands (1st bachelor = 2K. 2nd bachelor = 9 to 12K, outliers on both ends are 2K and 25K, in euro's).
This is the common trope, and I used to believe this too. However, data shows otherwise. Comparing swedes in Sweden vs swedes in the US, the latter are doing better. US actually has a higher social mobility!
Healthcare is a problem, agreed. I’m not convinced EU style giant-med-bureaucracy is the best solution to this issue, and I hope the US finds a better way.
Look at youth unemployment across the EU, this is most certainly not the utopia you think it is.
Citation needed.
> [Sweden] US actually has a higher social mobility!
Data says otherwise, Sweden is #4, US is #27.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
> EU, this is most certainly not the utopia you think it is.
Citation needed. Who has ever claimed it is a utopia?
"Canada has the most downward mobility while the U.S. has the least, with Sweden in the middle."
Interestingly, upward mobility seems to have a much lower variance.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09275...
> Who has ever claimed it is a utopia?
Everyone who thinks the US is the evil capitalist empire inhabited by armed lunatics, while the EU is a cozy socialist fluffy-zone without drawbacks. The difference in job opportunities, economic dynamics and average income, to those people, is unexplainable. They see no contradiction to think this way while posting on HN, founded by a VC.
They think the only reason one could arrive at certain political and economical opinions is to be an uncaring asshole, while the reality is that the difference stems from another view of how certain beneficial goals are accomplished. The problem is that a lot of the things that work well in practise on nation-level scale are counter-intuitive and thus unpopular, while things that sound good often have disastrous side-effects. I have seen the communist eastern europe after the fall of the iron curtain, it was a horrific sight.
I'd wager that this is because the Swedes that leave Sweden for US, are probably more ambitious than many of their peers back in Sweden.
And what's more, many have reaped the benefits of socialist programs in Sweden BEFORE arriving the USA.
It's like with Norwegians (I'm Norwegian) that make it big in the US, and write about how fantastic the country is. When you do some research, you will of course discover that they left for the states, already with a Master's Degree in their baggage (in probably some industry experience), or studied in the US on next-to-free Norwegian student loans, having endured zero hardships in their comfy middle-class lives over here.
And if they screw up, they could always return home.
In this day and age, you really don't find any native Scandinavians that can just waltz into the US, without having a very good starting point / foundation.
Chances are that you would have a higher chance of getting a tertiary education in the US too.[0]
[0] https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...
Isn't this more the result of a large unified consumer base with a shared language and culture, more so than regulation?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
Unicorns per capita[0], top three:
Estonia
Sweden
Denmark
[0] https://medium.com/quack-ventures/european-startup-ranking-p...
US Tech stocks is in large part a matter of highly-international companies with international revenues, international jobs, flowing to international shareholders, who trade their shares on various worldwide exchanges in an international marketplace, shares of a company which happens to have a US headquarter.
That doesn't at all mean that only the US benefits from this arrangement, or that these tech stocks make Americans uniquely rich, or created massive employment among Americans, or create tax revenues uniquely in the US etc etc. The reality is much more nuanced.
The average American or European isn't directly that much affected by the top tech companies existing in the US or Europe.
The public company markets also say nothing about the private markets. Europe is known to have a large SME base, large family companies, old state-owned enterprises which exist as semi public/private. You can't compare it to a country which has optimized for public companies on that single metric.
Tech companies aren't a great example for this kind of argument. Employee compensation among FAANG is basically unheard of everywhere else except maybe finance. That a lot of the money goes to landlords is, incidentally, a problem of regulation.
If you're looking at manufacturing and the Rust Belt issues, you are correct. You cannot establish free trade, make blue-collar workers compete with China and expect this to have no effect on their quality of life while the profits of lowered costs go to capitalists alone. I believe this to be a major reason why trump got elected.
I mean, I love tech jobs, but FAANGs are already shifting their jobs outside of the US, including into Europe.
So exactly what's so great about makers capitalization of US tech stocks in the pov of regular people?