For universities, they're admittedly the best by several objective measures too, but the willingness for self-promotion helps :)
I hope I won't offend anyone here but there's a story that seems quite appropriate:
When I was still living in the US, an acquaintance of mine once asked me, "So don't you think the United States are the best country in the world?" I was absolutely baffled. Putting aside for a moment that the US clearly did not rank "best" on so many scales, the question (to me, as a European) didn't even make much sense in the first place: What metric are we talking about? And what's the point of comparing countries on an absolute scale in the first place? No matter what metric we choose, it will never convey the full picture.
Sure, I enjoyed living in the US. But I've also come to enjoy living in other countries over the years and I know there are many more that I would absolutely love to live in. In any case, I don't think it would even occur to a European to call their country "the best". Our continent's history is so complicated and riddled with grave mistakes, wars and crimes, that a claim that one country were "better" than the other would just seem… strange. Everyone here knows that their neighboring countries are at least as beautiful as their own and every place and every mentality has its pros and cons.
Anyway, I ended up explaining my POV to said acquantaince and also said that, if he so insists on ranking countries in a such an absolute manner, then we would also have to talk about all those things in the US where there's still… room for improvement. We ended up having a long and fruitful discussion and he started agreeing with me (or so I thought) that the question might not make that much sense after all. Still, after an hour of discussing all this, he goes, in a very matter-of-fact way: "Everything you said is certainly correct. But I still think the US are the best country in the world."
At this point the only explanation I had left was that he must have been brainwashed properly in school, pledging allegiance to the flag and so on.
To the Americans reading this: Where do you think does this sense of "living in the best country in the world" come from? Where did you "learn" it? I'd really be interested in understanding this phenomenon better.
Now, that said, many Americans have a totally unhealthy level of self-esteem that turns into nationalism, white supremacy or near-fascism. TBH I don't know how to deal with those people, but by my logic above it might be more successful to help them consider the impact of their beliefs rather than why their beliefs are wrong.
But also, America is the best:
1. American Breakfast
2. American Coffee
3. McDonald's
4. Best Movies
5. Most Jacked
I could go on and on.
What I find interesting is that Americans are most proud of their culture at home, and when overseas that tends to be moderated. Whereas some immigrants always say their native country has 'the best X'. I'm thinking in particular about some Greek immigrants I've known, but then in the next breath they'll tell you about corruption back home.
Have you travelled much outside the US? It’s seems so weird to hear “USA the best because breakfast, coffee, and McDonald’s”, it sounds like a cliche.
What do you mean by jacked?
If we forget that the US has more people, they are the best at many things. Science, GDP, sports, and so on. That's probably what he means when he says "best".
It'd be like calling Google or Apple the "best" tech companies even though you can make more money at some small startups. It's true in some sense (they're the biggest, dominant, etc), not necessarily true in the per-capita sense (I might have a better time somewhere else).
I went to an undergraduate university that would be wouldn't be considered highly ranked, but was nationally known in one subfield. I remember being surprised at one point to see a number of articles in major science media sources from MIT about a 'breakthrough'. I read the articles and they were 100% describing something that we did on a regular basis in undergraduate labs. I read the underlying press release and the underlying paper and was decidedly meh but man did it catch a news wave. I've always attributed it to being from MIT more so than truly novel. Not a shot against them...just an observation of the power of self-perpetuating narratives.
I now work at a different internationally ranked 'best researchy type' university. The research is better for a lot of reasons. The ability to attract the best people helps, but that comes from the reputation of having the best people and the resources to attract the best people. That is intermingled with the resources to have support, PR, media relations, and the brand name attraction for grad students.
We have pretty much the same distribution of undergrad intellect as other engineering schools I have worked with. It skew more academic and less practical...I'll be honest if I was a VC I would look at other universities for the next founder types. But the resources and money available for students to pursue entrepreneurship are outsized compared to the talent.
But the myths about our excellence are pervasive - and drive behaviors from people who have no basis for actual evidence. It means we get students brand shopping and not wanting to do the work (we literally had a case of an international student being expelled for the person in classes not actually being the enrolled student).
I don't think this article is wrong per se but the virtuous circle argument is inseparable from the self-perpetuating circle one. And I am unsurprised that the American Economic Association isn't talking about that piece. Objective functions are great, feedback loops are also an element of a control system.
It's a bit like an article circa 2006 about the awesome strength of the US stock market.
The recent trips to Europe I have been so intrigued by how different the apps people use for many common commercial tasks are to the ones I use at home. I'm assuming there are logistical, cultural, or compliance reasons at play but I can't speak to it.
Don't waste your time looking, there are none or almost none.
EU is simply not geared (anymore) for this type of endeavor to succeed:
- finance infrastructure for this is non-existent (VCs are a joke in Europe, both in terms of size and in terms of the type of stuff they invest in)
- risk-taking is simply not a cultural value anymore
- administrative burdens (taxes, labor laws, cost of labor, hyper-restrictive regulations, etc ...) are such a gigantic drag that most people potentially potentially capable of starting such things either walk away, or move to a place where they can actually conduct business (historically, the US, although it's not as good as it was).
- at least in Western Europe, (Germany, France), people are so very comfy in their social cocoon (social security, retirement, social programs), the whole notion of "making it" (e.g becoming truly financially independent) is *very* hard for them to even understand. Net effect: no motivation, no GOOG/FB/AMZN/TESLA/SpaceX
- the US has a "let the tree grow first, we'll regulate once it bears fruits" attitude towards emerging and potentially disruptive tech. The EU on the other hand has a "oh, my god, this is potentially very disruptive, someone ought to legislate, and quick".
There is no true independence in any society, apart from autocracy, and externalities always exist.
There doesn't seem to be much value attributed to 'having a lot of money' etc, for a lot of people, having a fulfilling job, family and life is enough, and having the security of knowing that you can get sick and go to the hospital without being bankrupted, or knowing that you will be able to provide for your family directly or indirectly in almost all scenarios makes this whole "I need to be a billionaire to live" notion very non-existent here.
You don't need a VC to be happy, you don't need to create a startup and you don't need to take a lot of risk to create value. This is of course directly related to the social cocoon; and knowing the value of that makes for very little need to take big risks for a chance of making things 'better' (whatever 'better' might be...).
That said, there are a lot of self-bootstrapping businesses that function just fine. They don't go public and mostly don't make more than a couple of millions each year, but it is enough, or better: it is plenty. There is no rat race, you have plenty of vacation, you can travel the world, and if something goes wrong there are buffers to catch you. (but those aren't comfortable enough to just slack off in to and 'do nothing', but that'd be unfulfilling for most people anyawy).
There is no value in risk in itself.
For example, taking a high risk of attempting to create a unicorn startup for the low reward of having more money isn't really worth it here. That's because the barrier at which point 'more money' makes your life 'better' is much lower. Same goes for prestige, it doesn't really get you all that much here.
Together, that means that taking larger risks doesn't really have a lot of benefits in general, unless you personally enjoy it.
This is different form the need to have a 'big' change requiring a 'big' risk in order to make your life measurably better (monetarily, prestige, perceived power, or otherwise).
There are endeavours that pose significant risk, but have a significant reward to match; think ITER and CERN; it is a considerable effort and monetary investment without knowing what the true outcome will be. All you know ahead of time is that something will come out of it. (while those two aren't exactly comparable; a single-purpose project vs. an organisation with multiple projects; it's about the concept of risk, investment and possible outcomes or returns)
Say a particle accelerator take a lot of time, labour and money and can be used to make discoveries, but you don't know what discoveries. That means you have a huge investment but no guarantee that you will be able to produce something that has the value of the investment (or more). But there is the chance of significant scientific discovery, which makes it a project that countries are willing to take the risk for.
Expanding on my own word salad: perhaps personally I'd say that in my environment collecting money or 'stuff' in itself isn't seen as valuable, but being able to maintain a good life and have a fulfilling life is. At the same time, in a larger context, things like discovery, exploration and research are valued as well, but boasting or broadcasting about it isn't seen as very valuable. I suppose that also makes for an environment where space exploration is seen as a good thing but ironically without a big PR machine it can't be funded. It's like having a goal without the means.
I ask because, without heavy, heavy, megatron like heavy, investment from the government none of the technologies that now feed this ecosystem would have been developed (semiconductors, internet, etc, there's more, probably even in seemingness fields). Do you imagine any entrepreneur in the USA would have gone "yeah let's just feed this tree some millions to grow the internet"? Or many other industries.
Then there's some other things. Google tried to sell itself for what, 1M at the time? To Yahoo (if I'm not mistaken). They were a search engine. If their proposal would have been accepted there wouldn't have been any google as we know (probably). And we could say that all other examples are heavily, government invested, under or over the covers.
I ask because I'm tired of hearing narratives that leave out of the equation so many important details as to not have any semblance to reality.
Because I could come up with a big list of reasons why the US would be a bad place to start a company with. It is a good place to start, but even then most of the top high-earners companies are located into 2 or 3 very small geographical areas in the whole US.
China has many more impediments/bureaucracy than the EU (though maybe in different areas) but they have $$$ so problem solved.
Also Americans are very blind to what happens "on the other side of the pond" especially the non-English world. Mojang was bought for $2.5B JustEat/Takeaway is $13B Marketing Cap
Over-emphasis is definitely and American trait and it leave precious little room in the language to aptly describe the really good stuff
Likewise, Europeans may seem standoffish and aloof to new world types -- people outside their social circle -- because they are! Don't expect work and social circles to mesh.
You might like to read: https://erinmeyer.com/books/the-culture-map/