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Comment by briga | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps it's a losing game for Europe because Europe isn't really a free market. European powers have constantly been imposing all sorts of taxes, restrictions, and sanctions on tech companies that make it an inhospitable place for tech companies to start out. Its telling that many of the European countries that have managed to produce successful startups are those which had to rebuild from scratch after WWII or after the USSR fell. Elsewhere government is too big for its own good and just seems to stifle innovation. America was successful in the 20th century largely because it was so far removed from large and stagnant European governments. Likewise, west coast tech companies are arguably successful today in part because of their distance from an increasingly bloated Washington. Regulations kill innovation.

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I'd like to point out that post-WW2 the US had about half of the world's wealth and a ton of labour to produce for the greater world. Regulations or not, they would have dominated either way. The US's success, I'd argue, is more about their position in the world at that point in time rather than some ideological "regulations vs innovation" battle.

Not to mention the other half of the wealth was battered, war torn, and bombed to shit.

The US got to take their wealth and invest it in innovation and growth. Europe had to beg, borrow and steal just to rebuild what it had a couple of decades earlier.

A helluva lot of post-WWII "investment in innovation and growth" was spent in Europe. You're welcome.

You’re not wrong. Something that the US has reaped the benefits of ever since, in the form of a huge market to trade with, and join it in its various wars.

It certainly wasn’t charity, and most of it was via loans that were repaid. So yes, thank you, but equally don’t get too big for your boots, it was driven by only shrewd self-interest.

Yet, post-WW2, it was Germany that saw an economic miracle of strong growth despite being practically dismantled after the war.

So why Germany and not say France or the UK? Countries that saw much less destruction than Germany?

I think a big factor you're missing here is that many of the regulations in Europe are around the public's (and workers) rights, health and wellbeing.

For example it's difficult to create a startup in France because it's very difficult to discipline or fire anyone, and tech workers are used to clocking off at 5pm and having 35+ holiday days per year.

This means that no one's creating these epic billion dollar companies in a hurry, but at the same time the populous is defended, healthy, and not overworked. As opposed to the US where often a company's rise comes at the cost of a wealth of underpaid and mistreated workers (Amazon, Uber, we could go on).

To use an intentionally extreme analogy, your argument feels like sitting around watching the US build lovely tall pyramids with slave labour, saying that Europe's regulations get in the way of it building such tall pyramids. Well, yes, of course, the US is better, if all you're measuring is the height of the pyramids. (nevermind that the US is the easily the biggest user of slave (penal) labour outside of China)

It seems like US workers and the US public lose out on almost every other measurement.

These are definitely important factors, and Europe would be in much better shape if it did things right. But I think the geographical features are more important. An American company can grow big locally and then wash over the European market when it's reached maturity. In the meantime, European startups start off in their tiny local market, perhaps 10M, unable to compete in the US, but not big enough to easily expand to the rest of Europe. If for some reason you still succeed, now you have to recruit tens of thousands of people to move to your tiny little country, with a different culture and language. It's not easy to recruit people to move to Stockholm to work for Spotify, not only because of the weather, but also because who wants to spend the energy to learn Swedish for a single job? The alternative is to never really integrate into society.

I've been working for startups in Copenhagen ("the most livable city in the world") for a few years now, and every young tech company I know of have extremely diverse developer teams (it's not uncommon to be in the minority as a local). People absolutely do want to move here, including Americans. As for the language, the working language is English, and for better or worse people do live here for years without learning the language.

> to your tiny little country

Well China would like to have a word with about your "tiny little" country. A world exists outside of the borders of the USA.

There"s always someone bigger than you so "tiny little" is usually not a good platform for an argument.

> If for some reason you still succeed, now you have to recruit tens of thousands of people to move to your tiny little country

Further, the idea that all employees of one company must work in one country is clearly not the case. Or did globalisation not happen?

> but also because who wants to spend the energy to learn Swedish for a single job

Whilst not in huge numbers, generalisations such as this also do not help your argument.

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