I'm not talking about drone legislation here in Europe, but state overreach in tech in general + bad scene for startups compared to the US (for now...) due to politics.
IMO, often innovation happens because it is motivated to work around rules and regulations. So in many cases regulation and rules are what drives innovation. People want to hack the system and thus have to innovate. A completely hacked and open system doesn't really inspire new ideas, because the old ones just work fine already.
I'm not sure about that - I really like my lifestyle which would be nearly impossible to attain in Europe, but is very attainable for Americans.
I don't see how you're materially better off because you're forced to use foreign companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) instead of having your own.
And the inclusion of so many cryptocurrency "unicorns" in that list is also quite telling.
Entity formation time; time and capital required to hire the first N employees; number, cost and time of licensing required before first sale can be made. Each are higher in Europe. Combine that with the multiple languages and regulators which inhibits scale and you get the present situation.
Which, I will note, is fine. It’s optimised for stability, not wealth. On the other hand, it naturally means having to choose between American and Chinese tech giants.
Which Europe? All of those can be done online with minimal effort or upfront investment in many EU countries. Do you mean Belarus?
> Combine that with the multiple languages and regulators which inhibits scale and you get the present situation.
This is true, because the EU is composed of 20+ different countries, each with different languages, cultures, histories, priorities. It's impossible to remove that boundary.
Each of them can be done online in most countries. All, very few. I think only Estonia comes to mind. (At least one form in that process requires visiting a notary in most of Western Europe.)
The cost of terminating an employee is also a unique risk that European firms have to capitalise for which American start-ups do not. Again, I understand why one would choose this stability. But it comes with a cost.
> It's impossible to remove that boundary
It's absolutely possible by mandating a lingua franca. But it would cause irreparable damage to those cultures, which is why the EU--sensibly, in my opinoin--has chosen to preserve them. But this is a choice and it comes with costs.
[1] A dialect is a language without a flag or a float.