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Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

economist.com

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Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#321

Post by j_4 »

onion2k wrote: post #226
apatters wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you don't you'll end up with fewer businesses, which will concentrate wealth, which has documented negative effects on society.

You'll end up with fewer businesses, but the ones that won't get started are the ones people aren't really willing to put effort in to starting. You'll only really lose the easy "fill in a form and off you go" businesses. I don't imagine that's much of a loss. If someone has an idea, and a real drive to start, then they can start pretty much anywhere, even if it isn't super simple to register a company. So, really, m…

This is a really damaging take. In any area imaginable, a low barrier to entry has been proven to breed more people on the high end of skill and commitment. There's nothing wrong with folks who don't want to deal with dehumanizing red tape.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#322

Post by sudosysgen »

gryn wrote: post #92
lashloch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I'm having a hard time sympathising with you rather than the people spending time with their friends and family and enjoying life. Life is not a purgatory unless you believe there is an afterlife, which many people do not. You are free to derive joy from hard work or whatever, but do not think yourself better than those who do not share your priorities.

the point he's probably trying to convey is that lifestyle is subsidized by the rest who aren't and wouldn't be possible otherwise.

I'd rather give up the Californian consumer objects actually.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#323

Post by sveme »

kortilla wrote: post #277
Barrin92 wrote: post #99

As usual the article is almost exclusively concerned with market capitalization as an indicator of economic success. Countries like Germany are dominated by small and middle-class, family owned business. 'Big corporate' is indeed more successful in the US or China but it's just one model to manage an economy and I don't think it's that great. One of the most important points is also buried at the end of the article >…

“No big companies” is a fine policy for things that don’t require a lot of money to innovate on. A small business will never be capable of producing anything like the iPhone for example. Pushing the envelope on tech is very expensive and this is where Europe’s current model doesn’t work. If it’s just companies reselling existing things or incremental tech (e.g. grocers, telecoms, utilities, airlines, etc), then small…

Software often does not rely on huge capital. There‘s a bunch of European companies that have a good chance of doing exceptionally well (klarna, trade republic, celonis, biontech come to my mind, for example).

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#324

Post by MperorM »

tasubotadas wrote: post #306
MperorM wrote: post #284

If you remove the bay from the equation, the US starts looking much more like the rest of the world. I now live in Copenhagen Denmark but still maintain a decent network in the bay. The difference of culture is astounding. More than anything else the bay created a culture of innovation and excellence that cannot be found anywhere in Europe. That it happened to be the bay area that became this hub and not eg. Copenhag…

>If the great minds of the bay collectively moved to Europe Why they don't move?

coordination problem. Europe provides no competitive advantage to any first mover.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#325

Post by cryptica »

This idea of giving entrepreneurs second chances is idiotic. It makes no sense. They say it's because of learning/experience. That's total BS.

You've learned 10 times as much when you've had to launch your business with 0 funding and struggled to compete against multi-million dollar VC-funded meme stocks and the corporate hivemind for 10 years. That's real learning/experience.

I can tell you how the whole pyramid scheme works from beginning to end. Maybe the whole point of the 'second chances' mindset is that people who failed are more likely to become dishonest and engage in illegal activity or cover-up the second time to avoid failing again. They are more desperate the second time, but trust me, they're no wiser.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#326

Post by reader_mode »

techrat wrote: post #262
reader_mode wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is no different with regards to movement. Just consider public health care in say Norway and in Bulgaria. Yeah it's financed indirectly by public funding but the quality can be terrible. In Croatia (where I'm from) you will regularly wait for 6+ months on life altering procedures and tests. And the public health system is in a constant crisis because of underfunding and overuse - just a few months ago drug sup…

>In Croatia (where I'm from) you will regularly wait for 6+ months on life altering procedures and tests. Anecdote meet anecdote: I had to wait over a year for life altering surgery. My first test after becoming a candidate was over 6 months out. I'm in the US.

That sounds like a donor list thing ? I'm talking about more day to day stuff. Like recently my friend had a seizure while driving, thankfully he was at a red light, but lost his licence etc. He had to wait 2 and a half months for diagnostic scans. He went private and got it done in a week. Other friend had herniated disk, 6 months till his appointment with a specialist. Also went private and got surgery done in a month or so.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#327

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

laurent92 wrote: post #165
ddalex wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand the people in EU are happier, have better social protection, better benefits, better health systems, better consumer protection, better application of rules and laws, they make for more productive employees. Do the shareholders get as rich as fast as in the hyperactive US economy? Not, but the society functions better. I very much prefer the EU.

In the end, one may talk about all the startups (when the BPI pumps billions into it, I sure hope there are some startups and medium companies), but EU has proven unable to build an Apple . It would be dismantled here, and CEO beaten up before reaching any interesting level. DailyMotion (French) was as big as Youtube. Many others like this. We always end up #2, and the Silicon Valley still decides what is ok to say o…

The EU doesn't build Googles or Amazons, because those companies are inherently unhealthy monopolies. But it has built numerous tech successes, including Nokia, Spotify, Wise, Airbus, and others.

In reality the EU has curbed the imperial pretensions of aggressive US corporates numerous times - including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, and (soon) Facebook.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#328

Post by Aunche »

Barrin92 wrote: post #99

As usual the article is almost exclusively concerned with market capitalization as an indicator of economic success. Countries like Germany are dominated by small and middle-class, family owned business. 'Big corporate' is indeed more successful in the US or China but it's just one model to manage an economy and I don't think it's that great. One of the most important points is also buried at the end of the article >…

>Europe has no homogeneous consumer market for tech giants like the US or China which can propel tech firms to gigantic size.

Yet they use Google and Facebook all the same. WhatsApp was an American company that wasn't even used in America but dominates Europe.

As far as domestic companies go, Nokia was a former megacorp and SAP is still one today, which proves that big tech has always been a possibility there. However, they were founded ages ago.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#329

Post by sdoering »

bennybob wrote: post #227
reader_mode wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a thriving tech scene in Europe and we do quite well! Is there really ? I see attempts at copying the US tech scene, but a lot of it seems structured to suck money out of government funds and programs. I see very little private investment. Just recently I talked to a local VC, in a casual chat about how they started their fund I found out they pulled money out of a EU fund, they had to put up like 25% of t…

Also wages in tech in the EU are laughably bad compared to USA. I'm in the UK, same problem. Yet everyone seems to think that a couple weeks more holiday makes up for it.

What is the overall cost of living associated with the respective salary. Amd of people proposing a free market, why is it a problem that suddenly the same job is paid more for in a more competitive job market?

As others pointed out, CoL is also way lower in most parts were there are relevant jobs to be had.

I am working a job that would pay at least double in SF. I can afford to pay the mortgage on a 130 square meter house with 500+ square meters of garden and relax by growing my own food as a hobby with 40 hours per week, 6 weeks of holiday, paid overtime, really good health care covered by insurance.

I live in one of the four largest cities in Germany. So I benefit from the infrastructure like theater, Medical stuff and so on as well.

And also the ability to start a business on the side with filling out a single form.

And I am able to generate FU money from my main salary, go on trips, give to charity and such.

Reading about insane prices for living in SF or other tech regions puts a damper on the high salaries IMHO.

But I also define my life not by the amount on my pay check.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#330

Post by TMWNN »

dv_dt wrote: post #133
TMWNN wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On the other hand, people here don't tend to go bankrupt and lose their house, healthcare (ironically) and life (from a social aspect) in general when they don't have a perfect health Only 4% of US bankruptcies are because of medical bills https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/0... >. A tipoff that [insert large percentage here] of bankruptcies aren't actually because of medical costs is that on…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6366487/ Here is a different take from a newer paper. > The majority (58.5%) “very much” or “somewhat” agreed that medical expenses contributed, and 44.3% cited illness-related work loss; 66.5% cited at least one of these two medical contributors—equivalent to about 530 000 medical bankruptcies annually. Really though it suggests the US has both a medical bankruptcy proble…

>Here is a different take from a newer paper.

This paper is by Himmelstein and Woolhandler, the same authors who wrote the earlier one that the authors the Post piece cites was responding to. As the Post piece says:

>So Carlos Dobkin, Amy Finkelstein, Raymond Kluender and Matthew J. Notowidigdo did what’s called an “event study.” Instead of looking at bankruptcies to see how many involved medical bills, they started with the illness, and asked how much more likely people were to declare bankruptcy after they got sick. That’s a much better way to tease out causation than asking whether someone who just went through a financially ruinous divorce also owed his or her dermatologist thousands of dollars.

In other words, it's not surprising that someone who declares bankruptcy owes medical bills among all the bills he is behind on. While "correlation is not causation" is used far too often by people who don't really understand its meaning, this is an example. Again, from the Post piece:

>That jibes with what we’ve seen in the bankruptcy data since Obamacare passed. If medical bills really were driving so many people into bankruptcy, then we would have expected filings to plummet after 2013, when millions of people gained health insurance coverage. Instead we see a smooth decline from the recession-era peak.

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