Is Europe Just Not Good at Innovating? | Hacker News Reader

Is Europe Just Not Good at Innovating?

berthub.eu

3 pointsTechTechTech7 comments

This seems to refer to software innovation, and it’s an open question whether much of the recent developments in software are innovations or “innovations”. Some people prefer privacy and less intrusive options…. European pharma/biotech seems to be doing ok, and they can make neat cars and planes when they put their mind to it. Come back in two years and review the overall tech and science scene to see whether the article needs revision.

CERN is pretty neat, too. Oh, and how much US innovation is really Indian innovation?

It's just simply that in Europe we have less systematic inequality, almost no second-generation rich people. Rich people are almost always 4-7 generations old (who made money before anti-inequality regulations and values took root in ~1880-1945). These people are so many generations away from getting shit done they just don't see it as an appropriate thing for a good respectable gentleman to do. And the rest are too poor to take any risks - and the nanny state gives them an ability to keep a shitty, but almost risk-free existence.

Innovation needs systematic inequality and a culture that declares it a virtue to succeed at the expense of everyone else. America has it. China has it. India has it. Russia has it, it's just that their innovators are mostly abroad because the state is too scary and disgusting, so they prey onto Americans, mostly, because these have more disposable income to leech off.

That definition of innovation would apply to all the EU colonial empires. They all collapsed.

Modern corporations of the US/India/China hardly last more than a 2-3 generations/business cycles. They are so hyper optimized that any change in the environment causes major trauma or collapse. They praise themselves 24x7 via marketing/ads/pr so people actually believe there is something special about them. But one tariff change/one covid virus/one interest rate hike/one regime change and what happens?

The form of innovation you talk about is seasonal. It comes and goes.

What's still standing? Since we are talking about the EU - The Vatican. There is a different kind of innovation happening there to pull that off. The chimp troupe in the EU is too distracted and mesmerized by the superficial to realize what is interesting about its own backyard.

Who speaks of old corporations? Besides, in EU they are exactly like that - very old, multi-generational, usually comes from "original" world-changing inventions like ball bearing (SKF) or tram (Siemens), or well, SAP :D.

And for innovation, all that's needed is a class of people who are on one hand, set for life and can take risks because they always know that have something to fall back on, and on the other hand, have examples of personal self-made success close to them. All it takes is a lot of people who grabbed their bags less than two generations ago and can inspire their kids to do the same, and/or fund their peers' kids. There are plenty of those in the USA and almost none in EU.

Instead of increasing inequality and the problems that come with that, we should come up with new ways to pool and allocate capital. Collectively owned investment banks, co-operatives, state funding, etc. We need to innovation in collective ownership.

But whole point of innovation is to give 1000x people the leverage they can claim by their performance, and let them become obscenely rich at the expense of others. If you don't do it, they will just do it where they are allowed to, the world is big, and European citizens are full of privilege when it comes to exploiting it: they are white, speak languages, and are visa free just about everywhere, not at all seen with suspicion. It's easy for them to jump the boat, easier than for anyone else, so they all do it before they are allowed to ruthlessly exploit others.

It's a bind: either become dog-eat-dog rat race society, or just rot in backwardness, age, and eventually get invaded and overrun when no one will care anymore.

You can try holding them from running away but... i come from Soviet Union where they did just that, and i know how it ends.

A society that is persistently in denial about people's innate inequality is doomed.

I believe there's enough capable people to whom money is not all that matters for this to not be as big of an issue as you think. Sure, people who only care about their personal wealth and power will leave everything behind for a chance to get it, but the vast majority of people would pursue their dreams close to their family and friends for just a good salary if given the capital to do so. It might even be a positive for society to lose those self-centered power hungry people, as they have negative effects in addition to the positive economic ones, especially when you give them a lot of power.

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