Europe needs to escape providerism
loeber.substack.com
loeber.substack.com
As a first step in a better direction, I've changed the baity title to a less baity, or at least more obscure, phrase from the article itself.
It's frustrating when some things can't be discussed on HN because they are insta-flagged as a way to silence them. Although this one is a touchy subject the article does raise some interesting points which could be debated.
It wasn't like that when I saw the thread; that's why I posted my comment!
Your milieu is not a whole continent.
I know lots of people who actually make stuff.
Any data supporting this? USA still runs a trade deficit against Europe.
News at 11.
IMO it’s all about simplifying regulation. Simplify tax. Simplify bookkeeping. Simplify hiring and firing.
I’ve lived in various European countries and I always get the impression so much energy is spent on solving every edge case with yet another rule, trying to make the world perfectly fair. It arranges the status quo better but prevents a lot of future change.
Generally speaking, I firmly agree with the analysis of the author. As far as modern tech like computers go, the “providerism” description is spot on.
I find it wrong to call it lack of creating wealth of providerism its neither of those things. Its a fine balance to understand what is best for the entire population
But those taxes will go to IRS, because the best and brightest Europeans will emigrate to US, where there are best opportunities for them.
But you also can't see regulation as a kind of mass, as in "lots of regulation bad". You can make good rules and you can make bad rules, it's not a question of "there's a lot or a little".
Finally, regulation is also a kind of value system. Like a garden, if you have no rules at all, things will grow. If that's all you care about, then you'll be happy with weeds growing all over the paths. In practice, you will care, and you will cut out some of the growth because you don't like it. There are plenty of businesses this has happened to, like tobacco and gambling. Your GDP will be lower than if you just allowed it, but that doesn't make it worse.
The points about poorly structured regulation being the worst of both worlds (all the costs with none of the benefits) is solid, though.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Share_of_manufactu...
https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/CountryRanking?IndicatorCode=1...
Which, honestly, for non oil-producing countries, not bad.
Europe is famous for banning DNA-modified crops under the precautionary principle.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
You might be able to research them there, but you can't actually make them, and the article is about production not theoretical R&D.
It's not like any of the other G20 countries (not to mention the entire rest of the world) have anything close to "a US tech sector" or anything approaching the level of engineering/science/product/manufacturing capability of the US.
California is where the entire world population goes to when they wanna make stuff.
It is precisely the mindset of needing to make "stuff" that is keeping Europe back, because then software doesn't count.
> If you wanted to regulate AI, I think you’d want to regulate somewhere at the production level, not at the consumption level. Why is it that the EU regulators are focusing entirely on the consumption level?
> Well, because they are consumers
> [...]
> I didn’t really get this until I moved to San Francisco. I had never in my life met people who make stuff.
first of all, protection of individuals is the only thing that matters.
yes, the current rules are a patchwork, but i don't see any alternative.
how is setting constraints on the language model going to help protect me from abuse by that model? for example how would such a regulation prevent facial recognition? a more limited model only limits the capacity of a facial recognition system, potentially leading to more false positives which would make things worse.
on the other hand, a rule banning facial recognition provides full protection, as does a ban on using machine algorithms to make decisions that affect a persons life.
AI use is either safe or low risk, or it is dangerous. those dangers need to be averted. as i see it, the EU does not regulate AI at all. it regulates the harmful effects of technology on people. you can build whatever AI tool you want, as long as you use it in a manner that does not hurt people. or is my understanding of the current regulations wrong?
The difference -- why all of this stuff is being regulated now and not 20 years ago -- is that under current techniques, these models are just much more powerful and accurate today. The impetus for regulation is not that a given machine learning application exists, but the fact that it works really well.
The power and sophistication of machine learning models corresponds extremely strongly to the scale of data that it is trained on. If you are pro-regulation, then what you really want to regulate is not the mere existence of a machine learning application, but the scale of data with which it is created.
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For another way of making the point: consider the phrase you used, "a ban on using machine algorithms to make decisions that affect a persons life". Examine it like an adversarial lawyer: what's the threshold for "affect"? Everything affects a person's life. Does Google Search work under this standard? It uses a machine algorithm to decide what to show, which can affect the user's life. Does Netflix's film recommendation work? Does Spotify's recommendation work? Okay, you want those things to work, but you don't want [insert other purpose]. You're going to find that the lines are blurry everywhere you look, and that makes for really difficult regulation.
and now you are suggesting that if these are to be regulated, they should effectively stop becoming better? what would be the point of that?
Everything affects a person's life
well, yes, so there must be a way to force a company to reverse a change that affects me.
kneecapping models doesn't prevent a company from disabling an electronic lock or closing my account. these are problems that already exist regardless of what caused those changes. google or facebook should not be allowed to terminate users unless they can prove fraud. how they arrived at the decision is quite irrelevant. insurance companies should not be allowed to deny coverage without a human verifying the decision, and also not without a human who is able to reverse a decision. weaker models are not going to enforce that, unless the models are so weak that they become useless. again, what would be the point of that?
until recently those models were not good enough. i read that as: they were useless for serious applications. they were research under development. we have been working on this for decades, and only now we are approaching the point where these tools actually become useful.
but the impetus for regulation is that these models are being used and yet still do not work well enough. they do make mistakes, and those mistakes need to be supervised and fixed if needed. if they would work perfectly to the point that an affected person can get them to reverse decisions, then this would be less of an issue.
i agree with you that the current regulations are difficult, but i do not see the benefit in regulating how those models are built instead. the damage happens at the interface between human and machine, and to prevent humans from getting hurt that interface is what needs to be regulated.
what you are suggesting sounds to me like proposing that knives made from steel are to dangerous, because a steel blade doesn't become dull fast enough. so we should instead only make knives from wood to make them weaker. but a wooden blade can still kill. so really what needs to be regulated is how the knives are used, not how they are made.
How do rest of EU ensure exports > imports?
Or is it all piggy backing of the big producers like Germany that the Euro is kept strong?
What is the incentive for European countries to product more if someone else is doing it for them?
Not that the various European nations don't have things to offer or aren't doing novel things. There's plenty that they do, but the sheer volume that the US produces across the spectrum including novel things is unmatched by a long shot.
Perhaps you meant GDP per capita, which would make you correct, but your post certainly wasn't phrased that way.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
The actual roots of the malaise are ideological, which is why they are so intractable to solve. In particular a lot of it traces back to the EU (often conflated with Europe), which is [still] seen by many people (and nearly all the political elites) as a grand unifying project; the continent's manifest destiny. The EU sells itself as the Final Solution to the Final Solution, an overriding mission to eliminate any chance of war in Europe ever again through infinite unification. And yet the EU is not a dream but a set of institutions and treaties. It's run by people who justify their existence with reference to glorious ideals like peace and fraternity, but who spend their day to day lives on a relatively limited set of "competences", areas where the EU is delegated power.
And this is at the root of many of the problems. Despite the superficial appearance of being merely a technocratic bureaucracy, the Commission is deeply ideological and lately has had Presidents who demand it become even moreso. Its explicitly stated goal is to duplicate or even exceed the cultural and economic unity of the USA without also duplicating the cultural and constitutional aspects. How to achieve this? By wielding the primary tools at its command, namely rules and grants.
And so the EU pours forth an endless array of rules and grants. Are they important? Do they matter to voters? Are they clearly drafted? Does the problem they purport to address even exist at all? These questions don't matter. In democratic western governments specific laws are the means to specific ends (hopefully pleasing voters by solving some specific problem), but in the EU, laws are the end in and of themselves. The passing of them is what matters, the impact is secondary.
This leads directly to the EU's supporters adopting whatever random treaty-competence-driven legislative agenda the EU adopts as automatically morally good. It can be seen in the flood of HN comments of the form, "As an EU citizen, I am proud to be protected by my benevolent government". The EU doesn't grant citizenship and the protection benefits of cookie banners are debatable, but if you believe the EU creates benevolence merely by existing then there's a powerful incentive to publicly align with it.
In such a system it is inevitable that the society it governs will become more and more sclerotic with time, with anything that appeals to the interests of the very specific ruling class immediately becoming chained to the ground by endless rules more or less the moment it's been invented. They literally think they're preventing World War 3 and creating peace on Earth. You won't convince people like that of the benefits of competition and free enterprise, because deep down they believe that "competition" is evil and (for all their mouthing about diversity), that in reality unity is strength.
The USA doesn't suffer this problem to the same extent, because the American constitutional arrangement is relatively static and the culture accepts that. It isn't seen as a half-completed project to create utopia through lawfare against disunity, it's seen as a reasonably acceptable arrangement set up centuries ago and which should ideally be left alone as much as possible.
The UK, for its faults, did realize at some level that the EU was like this and has now left "Europe" without suffering the consequences that were so confidently predicted. It turns out that you can work together just fine even without any kind of super-state structure, e.g. just this week the intelligence chiefs stated that Brexit had made no impact on European intelligence cooperation despite this being a pre-referedum prediction. Changing the constitution doesn't immediately change the culture of course, but the UK is not an ideological goal in the same way the EU is, and it's now also more democratic again, so the culture there can hopefully self correct given enough time.
But plenty of them find it hard to fit in socially, and then leave later.
I think it's less the money aspect, and more the fact that American society is more bland, uniform. It's easier to fit in. In Europe, unless it's a true international metro (amsterdam, london, brussels, ...), there's a huge cultural barrier. You just can't hitch into it as an adult. Your children will fit in, but not you.
An European citizen can go to Egypt or Estonia or the Canary Islands or Iceland or Norway or Switzerland without a passport
OTOH it's easier to learn English for an European - we all study it in primary schools - and go to the US than for an American to learn Norwegian and move to Norway.
It's also a lot less of a cultural shock to go EU->USA than the other way around.
Any source? I doubt many EU citizen would agree with that, especially those aware of US work and health system.
those who would benefit from migrating to Europe cannot afford to, are greatly discouraged or straight up can't (passport, language barriers etc)
OTOH most of those going to the US right now are from eastern Europe, following the flood after the wall fell.
Or people who are going there to increase their salary, not necessarily their quality of life. I have several friends who are working for one of the FAANGS in the US but come back to Italy for medical check-ups or holidays because here's cheaper, safer and it's a better place to spend your free time or raise kids.
European population in the US is pretty stable though.
In the end people of European descent are still the largest ethnic group in the US of A, the USA were founded mostly by anglo-germans while the opposite has never been true.
But maybe we should talk about rail, because that is apparently going splendidly in the US.
I usually spend only a few weeks a year in the US but every time I visit I'm struck by home much energy and resources are expended on rather mundane everyday activities. I don't think most countries could afford to live this way.
In many ways, European countries are coasting along on wealth exploitation resulting from centuries of colonialism. North America is similar but the US in particular is absolutely dominant at the modern knowledge economy. This is where Europe in general lags behind.
Europe’s glory days are behind it. The glory days of the US are ahead of it.
Europeans have a higher quality of life, for now. Wait until the bill for the welfare state comes due and we shall see how sustainable that model is without the ability to create wealth.
It's not pompous. When you attribute others of being pompous or smug, that's just your gut being triggered, and your defense mechanism kicking in. No need to be triggered.
> they ran the world but badly in need of an update
None of the comments here refer to any sort of longing for a colonial past.
Here's the thing about that article, and the invariable discussion that follow it.
Americans are modernists. We point at numbers. This number is bigger than that number, and therefore it is better.
There are differences in quality that can't be expressed in numbers. Cultural variety is much vaster in Europe than in America. e.g. How do you value knowing multiple languages. We can double down out of spite, seeing it as a triumph that you can get by with just english, but the joy of conversing day2day in multiple languages is a qualitative experience most of us do not comprehend. Yet it is a form of wealth, it accumulates in the mind, but wealth nonetheless.
How about having rich traditions (even watered down after centuries), having a terroir or countryside, the subjective experience of not always being surrounded by flimsy, disposable crap, ... It's all things americans have difficulties comprehending because it cannot be measured.
fwiw - there's subjective things in America a European cannot comprehend. e.g. the frictionless quality of uniformity, the respite from having unassuming neighbors, ...
of course they're not. no broad generalization can be fully accurate. There's always counter examples.
Also, not that it matters, being on the internet and all, but you literally don't know me and couldn't be more wrong about my situation.
I hope you’re not basing this on news reports, because that’s never going to give you an accurate picture.
In the US, I was blown away by the amount of wealth even “poor” Americans have, and how friendly, optimistic, and happy everyone is.
In Europe, I only saw this in the richest few countries, and even there most people seemed to be stuck in some sort of constrained, nice-but-middle class mode of life.
To be clear, I really loved Europe - and Europeans - and it does better with some important things - healthcare, walkability, baking bread, no mass shootings.
But there’s a clear difference overall, and it goes the other way.
Anecdotally, the Americans I talk to are saying things are worse than I've ever heard them say in my life. My parents used to have an unshakeable work ethic, but after my mom's company was bought up by private equity and squeezed for every penny, I've never seen her less happy to go to work. And she's far from alone.
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/opinion/economy-biden-vib...
True. But this is just cultural. Europeans complain more, it's what they do.
I’ve travelled to quite a few places in Europe and coming from the American Midwest, we are beating much of Europe in most/all QoL metrics by a mile.
Much larger and nicer homes, larger properties, mincer automobiles, more variety of all consumer goods, higher incomes, more wealth and social mobility to name a few and I live in “flyover” country.
Very interested to hear specific ways the Europeans are beating us and where exactly they are hiding all that prosperity!
I, like many Americans, would take a strong safety net, sustainable urban development and a smaller home over the US's mess of a safety net, socially devastating suburban sprawl, and a 4000 sqft McMansion.
[1] US suicide rates https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/...
[2] EU suicide rates https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/e...
And as for AI DeepMind is HQ’d in Europe!
Supported by something also said by others [7] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/26/europe-is-the-fr...
The underlying issue seems to be an incompatibility between egalitarianism and inspiration to individual exceptionalism.
Why be great in Europe, if the rewards to being great elsewhere are better, and you can afford to relocate?
To benefit from European social benefits? If you're that successful, you've far exceeded that standard from personal wealth!
Consequently, you're stuck in a weird middle ground with misaligned incentives papering over a fundamental incompatibility.
As an American, I've heard some variant of this for literally my entire life.
Europe is technologically conservative in ways that the US is not. It's unclear that this has, is having, or will have any impact on the actual material wellbeing of the people who live there.
Compare life expectancy[1], or just about any self-reported QoL metric[2] (where the US doesn't perform badly, just not better!).
[1]: https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/euro...
I don't think it makes sense to wave away life expectancy as a demographic anomaly: there are counterbalancing anomalies that favor the US (such as tobacco and alcohol consumption), and yet Europe still averages out on top. But even if it was: obesity (and societal compromises made to accommodate it) are part of self-reported QoL metrics. Why ignore that?
The same is true for the Better Life Index: Europe is not exceeding the US in many (or even a majority) of metrics, but is consistently at par with them. The conclusion to draw is that the OECD's framing can be biased, but that bias doesn't actually appear to favor Europe.
As for income: it turns out that perception is everything. Joe Schmoe in America might have more disposable income than the average German or Italian, but he's also aware of his country's lopsided income distribution[1]. That kind of inequality permeates through QoL perceptions.
This is what we refer to as "europoor". Sure they have taxpayer funded "healthcare", council "housing", public "transportation" but it's not really what i would want for myself. Those things only exist because the middle class in europe is foced to give up a lifestyle of freedom/autonomy to average it out so the folks below them can get (1 + 0)/2. It won't stand on its own otherwise.
Thankfully the decision isn't being made for me by making those things prohibitively expensive to force me to live in urbania.
It's a decent house out in the suburbs vs some dense urban inner city apartment or something attached to other people with people of varying crazyness for lack of a better word living around you. And if you do want to own a house, it's going to be crazy expensive and cars you can't drive unless it's tuesday and you have an odd numbered license plate.
The people living in the villas are the actual wealthy who gets to bypass the system (ie billionaire flying a private jet to a climate change conference to try to get the government to ban cars to force you to use a packed train). I'm advocating for freedom/autonomy for the middle class instead of grouping everyone who isn't a billionaire together. I'm just saying we add one more partition.
[0] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm
[1] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-net-worth.htm#indicator-...
It's a pity that every once in a while a post like this comes along & slaps you back to reality by reminding you that there's still a significant contingent that fit the stereotype of brain-dead growth-hacker valley types.
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Reluctant as I am to get into debating this, the essential flaw in this thesis is that consumerism is inherently positive, & that by extension production of a wide range of consumer products is self-evidently proves the utility of such innovations.
A side feature is survivorship bias whereby US products will tend to dominate a globalist borderless market by virtue of that international market being constructed to serve the model pursued by US companies. This is less about European individuals being subject to Providerism & more about EU companies being subject to "competition" within a biased arena that extends beyond their borders.
America is a land of opportunity: you either win big or lose terribly. Europe is for people who want to play it safe.
People quickly jump to point out how the average quality of life in Europe is so much higher than in the US. And rightly so, that's not even up for debate.
But why does having high quality of life have to be orthogonal to having a strong tech market? I think the more interesting question is could Europe maintain their standards _and_ also have a strong tech industry that could compete with the US?
If turns out that you can't have one without the other... then that would be a very interesting and somewhat scary answer. If you could only optimize for one or the other which one should we go for?
I'm very interested in this because I think it's easier for the US to catch up on some social advances than it is for Europe to have its own Silicon Valley. And therefore would love to see the US actually (ha! one can dream) do so.
Those things are not contradictions. Outside of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google's fields the competition level in tech is quite good. And honestly, I only want one of those around me at all.
> People quickly jump to point out how the average quality of life in Europe is so much higher than in the US. And rightly so, that's not even up for debate.
I would not say that. Europe is stretching from Portugal to the Urals.
Technological progress is a socially destabilizing force. America didn’t have the amount of historical cultural inertia Europe had, which was both a cause and an effect of technological progress.
Human biology was never designed to exist within a technological world, no matter whether you believe in creation or evolution.[1] This means every step towards in technological progress is further disruption to the collective psyche of the society. Humans fare better when both the rate of technological progress and absolute amount of technology is near zero.
It’s no coincidence that the conservative factions of every country are opposed to/sceptical of new technologies.
1: This is an absolute fact from all POVs, which people know is true (duh science/religion), but for most people this is counterintuitive in the first look, for the single reason that we were lied all our lives that we do live better than those before us. People of the past lived happier and more content lives despite child mortality, diseases, wars, violence, inequality, and scarcity. And a Rust-writing NixOS-loving software dev is saying this, not an unga-bunga caveman. Read some Ted Kaczynski.
1) It's completely true that the EU's economic outlook is dire.
2) Most Europeans (I am one) do not want to hear it, will not discuss it and will flag this article to avoid having to think about it.
To an outsider it might be surprising that this isn't on the political agenda at all. People complain about the gradual deterioration of the economy, but the causes are only discussed at the 6th grade level. (Half the population blames everything on immigration and the other half wants to retire at age 55 and ban this computer nonsense.)
Obviously our living standards are only made possible by the fact that our, historically, strong economy has made it possible to import phones and computers from China, produce from South America, tech from the US. But the average European (especially in the West) assumes they are owed these things, and never think about why our purchasing power should be higher than, say, India's. (Or, indeed, why it's dropping compared to the US.)