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Comment by stymaar | Hacker News Reader

The key problem for Europe is that they don't want to take strong enough actions against US tech to let their own actors develop. Which is how China has reached tech dominance, and how even a shithole country like Russia can have their own “tech” industry.

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Even in a hypothetical world where they somehow killed off US tech completely, they still wouldn't have their own actors develop. There is no collective will, no risk taking mindset. The VCs are cowardly with capital, and people don't follow through on bright ideas. Taxes and regulations suffocate any progress and no one wants to do anything about it.

The EU would rather cruise off into perceived comfort and safety rather than attempt to stay relevant economically and on the world stage. Only when the region is unable to afford its own welfare will it start wondering where things went wrong.

> Taxes and regulations suffocate any progress and no one wants to do anything about it.

We could rephrase this as "the shareholders aren't maximizing their value and the average Joe doesn't have a problem with it".

You can use as many trendy "capitalism bad" phrases as you want, it doesn't change the reality that the EU has stagnated and fallen behind both economically and on the world stage, and will likely never catch up at this rate. The average Joe's welfare pool will stagnate with it, by the way.

A mindset shift away from the very mindset you espouse is what is necessary for the EU to succeed.

You do realize geopolitics has made it kind of hard to have reasonable negotiations with the US in general, right? (cof cof Canada)

Taking actions against other economies hardly matters when in like half the EU countries legislation is actively hostile against start-ups and entrepreneurs. You can probably count globally notable companies that were established in the EU in the last 25 years with one hand.

The fact that Russia, with its notably worse institutional framework for business has more relevant tech companies than the EU speeks volume about the value of your argument.

It doesn't matter how good or bad your legislation is when you are always facing an uphill battle against a better capitalized company serving a bigger market, especially in a sector which, despite its name, has very little technology in it, and hence little barriers besides marketing and network effect.

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