> “It’s the Valley-or-bust mentality that breaks the ecosystem and really hurts Canada,” Gomez said.
Canadian pride isn't enough to keep a company in Canada. There are real and significant economic incentives to move elsewhere. That said, it's disappointing that YC no longer supports Canadian companies.
The European Union is strictly meant for European countries. CANZUK is a hypothetical agreement that would only include the above. I'd also say that one challenge the EU has is the free movement of citizens of poorer EU countries to richer ones. It might work well for the EU but Canadians are very concerned about immigration and the idea of newcomers undercutting domestic wages. The CANZUK countries all have similar levels of wealth and cultural similarities so that would be much less of a concern. Also, none of the CANZUK countries are in a common market as large as the European or American unions so they would all stand to benefit from that.
It's just silly because we're not a European country. I think Canada would benefit a lot from a CANZUK-type agreement though. The lack of a large single market makes Canada less competitve compared to the US/EU/China in many ways like scaling a business.
To me it's want versus need. A lot of people feel like they're forced into things like that and don't feel wealthy despite being wealthy by any objective measure.
The problem is that many Americans are so bogged down in expenses that they don't feel wealthy despite their median wealth. For example, it's basically assumed that you must have a car and pay its high recurring expenses, including ancilliary expenses like having a home big enough to have a parking space.
Because the US is, or for a long time has been, just the best place in the world for so many things. Want to be a SWE grunt? You'll earn twice the salary in the US. Do you have startup ambitions? There's nowhere better than the US, specifically the Bay Area, in nurturing and scaling a business. Filmmaking? Hollywood is the place to be. If you want to be at the center of fashion or finance or contemporary art, NYC. US dominance might be changing but a place being the top of a field means it attracts the best of the best from around the world, and for an ambitious person, the best place to be is among them.
I like to think about what Canada would be like if it could take the best qualities from the US and leave the rest. What if Canada's capital markets were so robust that it was just as good a place as the US to start and scale a company? What if it could match the US in economic productivity? PM Carney seems to have made it a goal to get Canada there but time will tell whether that happens. Some other countries like Switzerland rival the US by per capita measures and many would say it's a great place to live with fewer sociocultural problems than the US has.
Why do you think things will change in 3 years? All indications are that this is just the way the country is trending and, at any rate, it's prone to making 180 degree turns every 4 years anyway.
Why does being rules-based have anything to do with it? Innovation industries, especially software, have been the massive driver of GDP growth globally since the 1990s. The US and China have been excellent at nurturing those industries domestically (China with its heavy hand of government, the US with the rawest capitalistic structures to support innovation investments) while Europeean countries haven't.
In that case, why not have some measurement of what makes a person likely to be a public charge that applies to every country, rather than a blanket ban on everyone from targeted countries?
The US is no longer the place for anything that's truly worldwide. It's amazing how quickly the country has isolated itself compared to just one year ago.
It's a factor but it's also true of non-union jobs. Politicians are against any short-term pain because they're afraid they won't be elected. But it's just a part of the culture, US voters don't like it either (even if they're not the ones facing potential job loss)
One other thing about the US is that they're stubbornly protectionist when it comes to jobs. They're scared to introduce efficiencies such as automating things like manufacturing because some people will lose their jobs in the short-term, even though it's better economically for the long-term. It's ironic that the country run by a Communist Party isn't afraid to embrace innovation like the US is afraid.
This is usually an early warning that layoffs or firings are coming. Also, if Amazon's managers don't know what their reports are doing and their impact, then what are they doing?