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Comment by frollogaston | Hacker News Reader

Their entire tech sector compared to the US or China

Goodness, how specific.

If you want a more specific example, it's the company we're already talking about. There's no EU parallel to Apple, or the other FANG.

SAP, NXP, ASML, Hexagon, Infineon... These are all companies guaranteed to be touching hardware or software, they you use today, and will use tomorrow.

Biggest market cap out of those is SAP at $333B, which is less than the least valuable FAANG company Netflix.

We were talking innovation, not market cap, right?

If the software you use today, that the businesses you go to, even in the US, are using it, then there's hardly stagnation, is there?

I drink milk every day, but there's no innovation there

You jest, but milk production in Europe is far more sophisticated than in the US. Innovation has occurred there [0]. There's no stagnation, despite being a heavily regulated industry. There are new products coming to market, the market is growing at a predictable and fairly decent rate.

And if you need market cap to understand these areas, both Nestle (France) and Lactalis (Switzerland), outpace the entirety of the US industry.

The average person probably thinks that their phone, or websites, show no innovation, despite the rapidly changing underlying technologies.

[0] https://www.ahfesproject.com/app/uploads/2022/04/AHFES-A6.2_...

He is conflating progress and business model innovation with profits. That since the US allows its corporations to get repugnantly large and wealthy, enough to rival many developed nations' GDPs, the US necessarily has more progress and business model innovation. It's just American exceptionalism.

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