'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley'
tilburguniversity.edu
tilburguniversity.edu
Most of the popular old school European Comics are from Belgium; Tintin, The Smurfs, Asterix, Lucky-Luke, etc. That doesn't mean they were all made by Belgians, there were French and Italian authors.
The reason they were based in Belgium, is because American Comic books where banned in Belgium. This is an artefact from the second world war, the American comic books were banned by the nazis. But the after-war catholic government kept the policy going for a while. In other countries, the market was flooded with American comics such as Picsou Magazine, so there were little room for other kind of comics. The Belgian market, while small, was enough to give an audience and thus work for Non-American comic authors. The ban didn't last long, but was enough to kickstart an entire industry that would eventually get good enough to compete on its own.
This fact is little documented, I learned it while studying comic book drawing in Belgium. The teacher was then complaining about the flood of Japanese Manga, which in his opinion would kill the European comic industry, as they were subsidised by a captive Japanese audience. Much of the cultural industry in France now only survives because of laws mandating that at least half the products sold must be French. And so is it with other European countries. But unfortunately those very same laws are preventing the growth of a pan European industry.
Interestingly, the quote below is only in https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgische_strip - only in the Dutch version of the wikipedia article, not in the English version.
> In 1936 verscheen het stripblad Bravo, dat voornamelijk vertaalde Amerikaanse strips bracht. Ook het in 1938 gecreëerde Robbedoes publiceerde aanvankelijk veel Amerikaanse strips. De lage kostprijs van de Amerikaanse strips verhinderde voor een groot deel dat Belgische auteurs kansen krijgen. In de loop van de jaren 1930 verschenen er ook steeds meer strips in het katholieke blad Zonneland / Petits Belges.
> Door de Tweede Wereldoorlog viel de aanvoer van Amerikaanse strips stil en Belgische auteurs als Jacques Laudy, Sirius en E.P. Jacobs kregen meer kansen.
Translated:
> In 1936, the comic magazine Bravo was launched, which mainly published translated American comics. Robbedoes, created in 1938, also initially published many American comics. The low cost of American comics largely prevented Belgian authors from getting a chance. During the 1930s, more and more comics appeared in the Catholic magazine Zonneland / Petits Belges.
> Due to the Second World War, the supply of American comics came to a halt and Belgian authors such as Jacques Laudy, Sirius, and E.P. Jacobs were given more opportunities.
And encouraging and requiring open-source software development in Europe, founded by non-profit organizations and government. With requirements and control. The base for solution is readily available with Linux and BSD. Our politicians and CEOs only think in short terms. As consumers do :(
We can ban or tax things, like shipping Laptops with proprietary operating-systems. Declare, that the pre-installed operating-system must be open-source with {GPL, MIT, BSD} and fulfill standards. If not? Fine. Ship it without an operating-system.
And teach kids at school about scale of software and vendor lock-in. Every monopoly starts with being lazy and just grasping the first solution...
Regulations are for people. And are applied upon companies. They have a probable side effect, very wealthy persons don’t get extremely rich by harming everyone.
If that means I can install Linux on a laptop? Fine. Replace a battery? Fine. I’m not ruined if I got sick? Fine. Wealthy persons don’t need to be afraid that all other people start getting desperate? Fine. Breathing clean air? Fine.
I favor regulation over splitting monopolies. Because a split doesn’t prevent it to happen again. If we split {Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon…} the smaller companies will start the same stuff again.
PS: Sometimes things fire back? Or it seems like it fires back. The Cookie-Directive for example. Sadly companies use malicious compliance as business opportunity. There are now companies with a business model entirely relying on serving cookies for others and storing it centrally. Otherwise we see how big the problem actually is because they need to show what they do…
Also, 'tech investment' is such BS these days. Infinite venture capital (or at least in ZIRP days) that has led to little real 'innovation', just more BS gamified adtech. And now the US is ripping down any realistic science R&D. It's Europe's moment to take the reins or lose the opportunity. You don't Softbank or some blood-stained oil money from UAE to do that.
Maybe that will change in the next few years, but it didn't happen for NYC or Texas either.
Your high tech is behind the tech of 10 generations from now. Just as meaningless a comparison.
It’s unfortunate so many so poorly understand the ramifications of physics.
Ah, one of billions. Belief this opinion of yours is relevant in any way is cute in “the child is clearly an idiot” kind of way.
Achieving Euro-Big-Tech for social media and AI would not improve European's lives either, except for the few oligarchs that would run the equivalent corporate giants there.
I can't help hearing Bender's voice after getting kicked out of the Casino...
Average American is materially wealthier than the average European, with more influence over the latter than the latter has over the former. Go above the bottom 20% or so, and you have vastly higher living standards in most of America compared with most of Europe.
This is obscured by our terrible treatment of the bottom 10%, as well as by the burdens we put on our middle class. But the American middle class is wealthier and, I’d argue, more powerful than most European countries’, the exceptions being in the West and the North of the continent.
If you ignore the wealth metrics, Europeans live objectively better lives than a majority of Americans.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/24/robert...
Define that “basic quality of life” and map it to the EU. We define our baselines much higher in America than they do in Europe because of course we do, we’re richer per capita.
Quality of life for the bottom I think 50% of Americans is worse than in Europe, almost entirely due to food quality and healthcare. But for most Americans, it’s materially better for most values worth measuring. (For the richest Americans it’s way better, but that isn’t how I believe one measures a society.)
Keep in mind that I’m counting the whole EU. If we restrict ourselves to its richest members, sure, QOL is higher in Switzerland and Norway than in Mississippi.
It is possible to live comfortably in most of Europe for €1000-€1500/month. This is almost impossible for most of the US, more so as upcoming Medicaid cuts occur.
https://www.kff.org/quick-take/about-17-million-more-people-...
The United States provides universal coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA); none of these programs expose citizens to unlimited liability. Under the ACA, annual out-of-pocket costs are capped at about USD 9,200 even when bills exceed USD 1 million. Even in Germany, there is a co-insurance payment; liability is at 1300/year, I think. Given that US coverage is cheaper, this can go either way. It is widely accepted that it is much easier to see a specialist in the US and get appointments than in Germany, so there is a good argument to be made that US health care is better.
Living on EUR 1,500 per month in Germany is feasible only in remote rural areas, and even a net income of EUR 3,000 in provincial cities leaves little discretionary spending. Higher average earnings in the United States, together with easier property acquisition, generally offer superior opportunities for wealth building. Claims to the contrary overlook relevant data on median incomes, benefits, and costs and are pure cope about the declining standard of living in Western and Central Europe for the middle class.
Few European social welfare systems unburden their populations of all of these. Those that do are comparable to America’s wealthiest states.
> It is possible to live comfortably in most of Europe for €1000-€1500/month. This is almost impossible for most of the US
It’s also a lot easier to earn more than that wage in America [1][2]. (And you can absolutely live an okay life in NYC if you got your subsidies right on a job that pays ~$20k/y.)
[1] https://kagi.com/images?q=average+monthly+wage+eu+member+map...
[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-median-income-by-sta...
Nice. Where can I get that salary in Spain?
Even upper-middle-class women are more likely to die giving birth in the US than in (almost any part of) Europe.
Middle-class families can be financially ruined by chronic or terminal illnesses within the family.
Below-average income families in the US have heavy financial hurdles trying to get their kids into college.
Religious homeschooling is currently preparing a generation of undereducated American children.
GDP isn't quality of life.
You repeated this misinformation in another thread.
Association between Wealth and Mortality in the United States and Europe - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa2408259 | https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa2408259
The study is fascinating on its own without needing to be lied about.
The rich people in the US have lower life expectancy than the poor people in Europe. People in Europe are also happier than the ones in the US. What those startups will bring?
For one thing I'm interested in quality of life for my kids, not only mine. The world is a big race: those who refuse to run become irrelevant and disappear.
Source?
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=rich%20people%20in%20the%...
“Survival among the participants in the top wealth quartiles in northern and western Europe and southern Europe appeared to be higher than that among the wealthiest Americans. Survival in the wealthiest U.S. quartile appeared to be similar to that in the poorest quartile in northern and western Europe.”
The wealthiest 25% of Americans have mortality similar to the poorest 25% in Northern and Western Europe. And the wealthiest 25% of Europeans as a whole outlive the wealthiest 25% of Americans.
The richest Americans, where I mean top 1 to 5%, on the other hand, match with the richest Europeans because of course we do, we’re accessing the same global pool of health services. But there is zero evidence rich Americans are outlived by poor Europeans, even if we restrict ourselves to its wealth West and North.
Compared with EU Europeans, yes. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that similarly-wealthy Europeans are healthier than their American counterparts.
> we should not be including them for comparison of majority outcomes
OP made a statement about the rich in America doing worse than the poor in Europe.
It doesn't matter if your salaries are higher when your healthcare it's subpar (and more expensive) and tons of food additives are hazardous.
Linux came from Europe. A lot of open source does, see blender.
I know VC money is sexy but does it add real value
That is a strange way to dismiss the innovation from the country that brought to market:
- the light bulb
- the mass produced car
- the airplane
- the artificial heart
- the gold standard in Covid vaccines
- the personal computer
- the smartphone
- the internet
- GPS
- MRIs
- consumer grade LLMs
- the world’s largest public cloud providers
- TCP/IP and BGP
- the web browser
- the most popular search, social media, and e-commerce companies in the world
I know it feels good to say “but did they really make human kind better off?” and dismiss American innovation as another goofy VC-funded cash grab iPhone app; but the US is responsible for technology that has made the world better many times over.
This mentality is why Europe will never replicate the success of the US technology sector.
inb4 “but we don’t want that success!”
Even 9front with namespaces has tons of European collaboration.
No country has a monopoly on innovation, you're being absolutely ridiculous
Eta: the tape recorder was invented in Europe. The compact cassette and compact disc were developed by Phillips to unimaginable commercial success. I'll keep coming back as i think of more :)
My American ex said she had to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day at school. Apparently this is law in most states. I suspect it might be related.
What a shame
I mean the comment i replied to basically comes across as a 11 year old who just aced their last history exam for the year.
It's just tragic that most Americans grow into adults without ever learning anything more about the rest of the world, or realizing how narrow and biased their baseline education was
English.
Democracy.
The Enlightenment.
Modern Science.
Modern Religions.
Modern Medicine.
The School System we are all still using today.
The Industrial Revolution.
The Share Market.
Modern Corporations.
The modern legal system.
etc. etc. etc.
One of these things is not like the others...
Huh? Wasn't that BioNTech, a german company?
In no small part because I utterly despise the VC fueled hustle culture winner takes all disruptive bullshit from the US. I don't want to be anywhere near that particular toxic wasteland.
I don't work for it, I just post shit here.
There are and have been plenty of startups throughout Europe, and the typical story is that they get bought by American companies and eye-watering amounts of VC capital.
Not saying that's the only issue; it's also true that getting meaningful funding is excruciatingly difficult in much of Europe. However, at the same time US companies have this "one little trick" to get a global reach: enormous huge stacks of cash.
Companies do well there, but only some people do. This difference is clear and large even when ignoring the homeless population. Higher-ups do extremely well, tech jobs are cushy, but people doing the more hands-on work tend to get the shorter end of the straw staff with low pay and long commutes.
The times of Bell Labs, C, Unix, Lisp/MIT machines... are long gone.
I'd assume that general health or happiness would be much more important than the number of startups.
USA embraced capitalism and is geared towards proving concepts FAST and enabling networking. I love that about USA and I miss that in Europe, when it comes to IT/Tech sector in particular.
I'm not aware if Europe produced anything of significance in the past 30 years, we're lagging heavily behind USA/China and that's a fact. One could argue that Linus Torvalds is European hence Linux === European but I won't resort to such petty claims.
We produced very little value. We're having issues due to language discrepancy. Even though a lot of people speak English, it's often the case that we Europeans aren't able to communicate as well using English as we can in our native tongue. The lack of unified language is visible. The diversity in culture drives people to favor their own, we're bad at teamplay (this is from my personal experience and I am guilty of this).
There's many valuable lessons we could have learned from USA but we failed to apply them. We have various freely available systems that are great at, say, education - but education means nothing when it's difficult to apply it once people are done with it.
I worked with plenty of people from USA and I had huge prejudices towards them, in terms of "they talk a lot" or "they are not as competent, they are really slow when it comes to pumping out code" but I learned I was wrong to the point it's not funny. If anything, USA is really good at starting and pushing projects out that actually work.
Ultimately, do we even have a microchip factory (we might, but I'm unaware of it)?
Sorry for the wall of text, I just wanted to explain my POV and agree with you.
Personally, I'd love to see movement in EU's tech sector. We're 30 years behind USA in tech. I won't touch upon quality of life or similar topics because I'm interested in exploring technology.
As an American, It is really hard to understand how this can be for a country with such an incredible intellectual and engineering tradition.
1. Europe has no large data centers. It has no such datacenters because the Green movement is much more powerful in Europe than in America, and they have systematically blocked the expansion of gas turbine power in favor of over-builds of renewables. The result is Germany having the most expensive electricity in the world. It just isn't affordable to train an LLM in the EU. Notice how Elon Musk has imported gas turbines from around the world to power the xAI datacenter; that just wouldn't be allowed in the EU.
But, still, a German company could do so using US datacenters. Mistral in France has probably done it this way. But then you hit:
2. Copyright laws in Europe are more restrictive. Even in the US it's very unclear whether training an LLM on copyrighted works is actually legal, but the US courts are fairly efficient and US law has the concept of fair use, which is flexible enough to give them the leeway to decide it's legal. In Europe the fair use equivalents are either more restrictive or don't exist at all, and courts follow the local culture of being much less business friendly, so it's much riskier to attempt this. The EU as a set of institutions is much more in hoc to the press than people realize, and MUCH more so than US administrations are. They regularly side with copyright holders over tech companies in disputes in a mostly successful attempt to curry positive PR for the EU project.
It won't win me any friends on HN but both of these factors boil down to a lack of a strong Republican Party equivalent in Europe. I don't think Americans appreciate the extent to which their economic success is dependent on the strength of the Republicans, and they really should. If American conservatism collapsed or was taken over by the left, as has happened in parts of Europe, you'd be seeing the EU-ification of America very quickly.
> As an American, It is really hard to understand how this can be for a country with such an incredible intellectual and engineering tradition.
As a German, I would claim that getting Germans on a hype train is incredibly hard.
I also cannot see anything that is "intellectual" about these LLMs. To me, the whole LLM scene is rather like "rich alpha tech bros are tech-broing; a lot of sycophants in the inner circle of these tech bros attempts to use the dictate of the moment to become rich fast; and a lot of real or feign AI fanbois attempts to rid the hype wave to make easy money".
With the absorption of entire markets the sober European view should be that the US approach was correct. Throw things at the wall until you have a wall full of things that stick. It looked pretty stupid until it didn't.
This approach only works if you have an insane amount of capital to waste ...
I am aware of that, and this is actually my point:
Since you don't know what will work, you can easily have a long phase of "duds" in your investments until you get one big hit. If you don't have a huge mount of additional capital lying around, as an investor you will go bust during such a long "starvation period".
That is why I wrote that this kind of investment approach only works if you have an insane amount of capital to waste.
With an insane amount of capital you do get a more reliable % of success but with a single lottery ticket you still have odds to win.
If you are not in the game at all you certainly wont.
The C-Suite are nearly all European.
The manufacturing is worldwide, but mostly Western. Only one facility in the US, employing about 100-200 people.
As for US-financed... it's a publicly-traded company that makes most of its revenue from selling to big chipmakers, so largely Taiwanese and Japanese "funded".
Silicon Valley is financed by China, Japan, and the Middle East
I have seen no evidence that European states would’ve developed the comfortable pace of work, welfare state, retirement and vacation systems independent of their amassed colonial wealth.
Not to mention countries like Poland and other soviet bloc nations that were the ones getting occupied, not the ones doing the occupying until VERY recently? And in saying "Europe", you're also including the non-EU Balkan states, Switzerland, the Nordics, Ukraine, Russia and depending on how you decide to split things, even Turkey?
Yet despite the MAJORITY of the nations here not being colonizers or having colonial histories, they all have all the comforts you mention in your comment, with things getting steadily better for the average Joe.
And what precisely did the glorious US manage to get with all their wealth, power and splendour, where people live in fear of ever having to go to a doctor's office lest they be indebted for the rest of their lives? Where you can get fired on the schizophrenic whims of the C-levels demanding the stones be squeezed for every last drop of blood?
You're not going to get some defense of the US here, there's well known connections between America's tryst with Slavery and Jim Crow and its dysfunctional government services.
But I'd love to see a Venn diagram of countries that "Actually Colonized" (tm) and countries with really generous welfare systems/labor protections. I am guessing it'll be close to a single circle w/ some countries that are actually just a bunch of banks in a trench coat, sitting on the outside (looking at you Switzerland).
Letting most of your population twiddle your thumbs all summer without any consequences means you're mortgaging some sort of early lead, that's really all it is. Europeans don't have some magic productivity pill for the rest of the year that keeps you ahead of the curve.
What do you think the unemployment rate actually is in European countries?
Having a social safety net doesn't make most people want to loaf around. I get that there's a massive amount of propaganda on this point in the US, but like, it doesn't hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
> I'd love to see a Venn diagram of countries that "Actually Colonized" (tm) and countries with really generous welfare systems/labor protections.
I encourage you to try diagramming that and see how it goes. Don't forget to include Ireland and the Nordics ;) And always remember that correlation isn't causation.
While you're at it, maybe have a look at the research on inequality, or the benefits of social safety nets.
I’m really, really starting to question how much of an Ultimate Flex “good for companies” is, when it comes at the expense of: standard of living, worker’s rights, privacy, a safety net, and everything else America lacks due to its single minded focus on being “good for business.”
Me, who enjoys higher salaries, more jobs, better benefits, better healthcare, better schools, more diversity, and higher purchasing power.
Also it's more fun to work for US tech companies than Nokia :).
> the system is absolutely drastically worse than other developed countries
I can see my GP same day, and a specialist within a week, for $0. It really can't get any better for me...
That means having the money...
Wait until you hear about things like the Mayo Clinic Executive Health Program: https://www.mayoclinic.org/departments-centers/mayo-clinic-e...
You can spend three days in a luxury suite at the #1 ranked hospital in the world, while their top docs screen you for everything. You literally have full access to whatever the Mayo Clinic offers.
> I suppose in that narrow case, US health care may be good.
Yes, that narrow case of millions of tech workers like myself.
You're not gonna believe this, but you are paying for it. Every dime your employer spends on taxes is one dime they're not paying you in cash.
Wow, really?
The system is a joke. It takes forever to get MRI appointments. Everything has so much bureaucracy. You fill out forms and make calls and get letters and all this bullshit.
Meanwhile, I can just book stuff online instantly now that I live in europe.
And it's visible in outcomes, too. Life expectancy in the EU is around 5 years higher than in the US.
> You fill out forms and make calls and get letters and all this bullshit.
No I don't? I log into my hospital health system, click a button to schedule a specialist, pick a time, and then submit.
"In 2023, the average waiting time was lowest in the U.S. and Switzerland (28 days), while it was highest in Spain (77 days) and France (63 days)." - https://www.statista.com/chart/33079/average-waiting-times-f...
> Meanwhile, I can just book stuff online instantly now that I live in europe.
That's how it works here too, lol. Are you comparing 1980s US vs 2020s Europe??? You know we have computers here in the US now...
Capitalists (the class, and the ideological faction devoted to promoting the interests of that class.)
The idea that a business could be considered successful by just providing a living wage for its owners and employees or contributing to the community is not a consideration.
People in this country see a single person startup making a few million dollars to be a greater success story than providing for the lives and well being of 20 employees for a decade.
Europe doesn't have that same level of power. If tomorrow morning you banned Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Salesforce in Europe, you'd destroy their economy.
What Europe needs to do is create the conditions for tech companies to emerge that could truly compete against US big tech. As long as European will prefer working for US corporation, there's no chance for Europe to compete. Simple as that.
If a rush to get anything non-US were the priority the market of converting Chinese solutions would already deliver better solutions.. US tech (of this office sort) looks a lot like US steel plants a couple decades after other nations built replacements, that's why it is comical that Europe is not only using it but often using the very worst of it.
I personall think it is a great idea to ban US big tech from EU, especially now that the US is essentially an enemy foreign nation.
It has spent the last 10 years lobbying EU to ban Huawei, Chinese electric cars, Tiktok, etc.. It has banned foreign ships from travelling between US ports, a deal by Japan's Nippon Steel, imposed 300% tax on Bombardier, and imprisoned French executives until they agreed to sell a division of Alstom to GE.
This is why I support Trump as a European - at least he is upfront about the racket he is running. If the pretence cannot be maintained, our politicians will be forced to respond.
Trump is like europe lite
Meanwhile most European cash (from pension funds, wealth funds, banks etc) flows into Wall St indirectly funding Big Tech/SV etc.
So bog standard protectionism is what he's advocating for. He should have a discussion with economists as he's making assumptions outside his expertise, I suspect.
Or maybe the issue is this whole notion of "tech" as a top-down thing where companies impose products on idiots? Maybe another Silicon Valley is precisely the opposite of what we need.
Maybe solutions would look more like - how can Europe end the exploitation of the (mostly American, sure) big tech companies dominating them, while simultaneously encouraging the growth of user-first tools.
Interoperability laws would be a good start, as Cory Doctorow has been insisting. NLnet and initiatives like it are a good step in this direction too, pump money into projects who want to upend these relations.
These movements will have a hard time really going far if the big tech companies' relationships with governments in European countries isn't addressed politically. Therein lies the real thorny issue, I think.
Microsoft's tentacles are so deeply entangled into European business that thinking about imposing a ban on their products and services almost makes me laugh. A ban without preparing for mass migration to alternatives first is going to end in a disaster for European business. I don't see the will to take on such risks. Let's start from there.
edit: typos
But Europeans MUST ban data transfer! Like yesterday! And that is literal but temporary shutdown of american Big Tech. Logic. And I know eg. Australia tried something.
Also european spy agencies don't want it because they are literal 3rd Word institutions if we talk new technologies and getting stream of data is easier.
Shut data transfer now. We are not integrated yet.
This is inconsistent. If Europe must ban American Big Tech because of human and privacy rights (something I tend to agree with) then it should not create anything in its stead, and actively prevent a European Silicon Valley from ever happening.
It's extremely unlikely European business people are better than Americans. Once they become powerful enough, chances are they will be even more evil.
Of course, it was swiftly pointed out that it would be impossible to mine it and meet the stringent environmental standards that we have in Europe, because we're good and care for the world.
Fine to trash the environment in China though.
Similarly, hands have been wrung in Finland because they banned importing Russian timber for obvious reasons, but this meant potentialy cutting down more Finnish wood and failing to meet environmental obligations. Aparently if you cut down trees a bit to the East it's ok for the environment.
The European regulatory regime is specifically designed to prioritize social welfare (as defined by regulators) over technological advance. Just look at Spotify: technically stagnant, but a lobbying and regulatory powerhouse.
Isn't the EU currently trying to force encryption back-doors?
European investors are risk averse cowards who could never imagine putting down vast sums of money for pre-revenue, pre-profit type companies. That’s why you never get the big wins, and why you’ll never attract the big winners. They’ll just go to America.
There is nothing special about US in itself that makes it lucrative for any one to stay. No wonder these calls of promoting local ecosystems in their original geography is heard again and again.
Aside from increased average wages, more amenable environment to starting businesses, a gigantic pool of natural resources, no (current and past) threat of military invasions or coups, and so on.
You're proposing that the only reason people immigrate here is because they heard about the US on the TV. We can argue whether it's "nicer" to live in Madrid or New York City, but most would-be immigrants and past immigrants came here to escape famine, impoverishment, oppression, and the like.
Ofc, all of Europe and Asia is oppressed. Great thinking!
What is needed is capital, world leading expertise (yes, top of the field - the people who can command the famous $100M sign on bonuses we hear about), and more risk appetite. If you were, say, an investor ready to fund and grow companies with ready captial, I think your options would be more open.
There exist quite a lot of people in European countries who are risk-affine, but these are not necessarily good at handling the insane amount of red tape.
Believe me: in Germany, there exist quite a lot of people who would (assuming they could, and this criminal act will never be solved) immediately love to kill the politicians who made these red tape laws, and the bureacrats that enforce them.
It's sad, because Europe really has a lot going for it. It also doesn't HAVE to go the US/China route of course, but if it does it will need to make some very serious changes that go beyond just preaching about doing it from the political pulpit
Most baffling to me are the 25 y.o. graduates of engineering universities who can't write five lines of code in a programming language of their choice. All right you want to be a developer, where the hell have you been all these years? You can get to the senior level by that age, let alone learn one programming language.
And I agree with your second point too - I don't really know what's going on with education, or more generally, the culture surrounding it these days (old man yells at cloud I know), I'd like to see that improved, because in a lot of Europe this is being (effectively) paid for by the public, and if it's producing people with no hope then what's the point?
That to me is like saying, it requires you to work 40 hours a week at your company. Is that really any kind of hurdle? Most of the entrepeneurs I've known have mortgaged their houses a/o retirement savings.
But yes, I also assume this simply means you're capable of paying yourself a salary for a few months which is completely reasonable.
You’re tied to the Netherlands specifically for a few years, but that’s about the only knock I can see.
The first thing that springs off everyone's lips is 'healthcare' but the types of people we need aren't exactly going to struggle to afford higher quality than most public services here, wherever else they are.
And I don't think offering anything more is a good idea. There's little else a wealthy person can't already just buy in another country, except for maybe looser labour and environmental regulations, and I certainly don't want that.
If the US doesn't want free power projection, that's fine, but it's not much of a threat against a continent that is full of nuclear or and nuclear-latent states.
Create another "Silicon Valley": why
One could argue Europe learned its lessons about surveillance states
What about ASML just bans the rest of the world and creates a global silo, ups the price and adds crazy licensing, and then the EU adds tariffs?
Grab em by the what again, mr Trump?
If Europe wants to do anything that can compete with US big tech, they should get rid of those regulations first.
It creates a better-safe-than-sorry culture where companies would be crazy to take huge financial risks to ship advanced tech in a market that’s about 15% of the world.
First consider the 16 mph / 25 km/h speed limit - have you ever seen a road sign with such speed limit? Lowest 'normal' speed limit is 30 km/h. The result is, you are either impeding traffic, or a truck tries to overtake you, misjudges distance and kills you. The lowest speed limit and the ebike speed limit need to match.
Second, the 250W power limit is an ass pull. Imagine you are Cycling up a medium-steep hill - 15% incline. 250 watts gives you 3 miles per hour. Let's say 10 miles per hour is a minimum acceptable speed, that requires 800 watts of power. And god help you if you are overweight or carrying groceries or a child as a passenger.
And ebikes cost £2,000 and £4,000 for a cargo bike because we have imposed 60% tax on importing bicycle parts from China.
Also electric scooters and mono wheels are illegal
They don’t gel very well
You are given ample warning if you're found to be in violation of GDPR, you are then also given instructions and guidance on what you did wrong and what your next steps are. Depending on the severity, you're given ample time to fix the issue. ONLY AFTER ALL THIS, which can take months, are you at risk of getting a fine, and they start off tiny, like 5 digits usually unless it's an egregious fuck up. If you continue fucking up, the fines escalate yes, but that's how it should work.
Let's not forget that none of this is something that got snuck into law out of the blue, it was known for years it was coming, and yet companies were STILL given leniency and ample opportunities to fix their behavior.
Guess what, no company I have ever worked for got a fine! Fancy that, almost like this is just FUD from people who only give a shit about making maximum money for the least amount of effort, screw the people we're harvesting data from amirite?
Also, jail? Name literally a single occurrence of this ever happening. I fucking WISH we'd be putting people in jail for the shenanigans they like to pull, but unfortunately it's only tiny fines for the most part.
For example, before Facebook, in Germany there existed studiVZ, schülerVZ, meinVZ (basically the same social network of the same company for different audiences). But this social network wasn't a commercial success, even though for some time it was much more popular in Germany than Facebook.
Generally, many successful German software companies were simply bought by US-American companies:
- SuSE was bought by Novell
- DLD (company: Delix; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Linux-Distribution ) was bought by Red Hat
- Star Division (the company behind Star Office) was bought by Sun (which again was bought by Oracle)
- In 2023, Software AG was bought by the private equity company Silver Lake
- Recently, Hornetsecurity was bought by Proofpoint.
For now, that "crap" big tech throws at us outperforms the "non-crap".
I'd love to see competition though, K2 is a nice step.
One can try it, but it will never be a fair game.
I don't know what to make of that.
If these practices were invented in China/Russia we would call them deceptive and fraudulent.
Tit for tat.