Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing? • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by realmod » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

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…

United States unlike EU is one big market, with one unified language and standards, and I believe this difference is a huge reason (the reason?) why US has so many large startups and corporations. Also one might think that the existance of large companies like Apple points to a deficit in executive/governmental branches.

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

#442

Post by Nimitz14 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

berkes wrote: post #289

thijsc wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to know where to start! Looking at the Netherlands, where I'm from: There are many fast-growing tech companies. Both big and small. Bigger examples are Adyen and Elastic. GitLab started out here. This is a pretty nice overview, which still misses a lot: https://www.notion.so/Dutch-SaaS-Landscape-89504403a57e43f58... There are many many tech companies with 10s of millions of revenue that aren't even on this list.…

... Just Eat Takaway. Booking.com are from the Netherlands too. Spotify is Swedish. As is Klarna and Mojang. SoundCloud is German. Mixcloud British. Several of the covid vaccines were develeoped in europe (albeit under the umbrella of US companies such as J&J). Volkwagen and Volvo are beating Tesla in sales numbers and in getting self driving to market hands down. There is lots of high tech in Europe. Just Because th…

Nothing you mentioned is high tech. Car companies haven't innovated anything in decades. Spotify is a perfect example of a company with lots of revenue that doesn't do anything interesting with it.

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

#443

Post by galgalesh » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

BobbyJo wrote: post #40

erhk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is extracting less value from its people than the U.S. is right now. Hardly a bad thing

If you assume the value extracted leaves the system, the sure. That's a bad assumption though. When everyone makes more everyone gets more. I mean, if a lot of something gets made in the US, it's generally because the US people demand it with spending.

I think you misunderstood the original point. The idea is that there is more to life than consumption. Even if a higher extraction results in more consumption, that doesn't mean the end result is more valuable to the people.

When you remove the assumption that more consumption equals more value to the consumer, then it doesn'tatter whether the value "leaves the system" or not.

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

#444

Post by Dudeman112 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:02 AM UTC

break_the_bank wrote: post #351

tsimionescu wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge companies concentrate power and distort the market. They can then extract rent from the economy by forcing others to play by their rules. Talking about Apple specifically, they haven't released an innovative phone in years, but are still selling their phones for premium prices. They invest huge amounts of money in marketing to influence consumers to buy their products for prestige rather than any cost/benefit an…

If Huawei or someone else was building a better mobile experience people would be buying that over Apple. What is an innovative phone? The iPhone 12 looks marvellous, runs great, is secure, gets constant updates unlike android and tries to preserve privacy. Apple Pay is awesome, makes me spend more cause of how fluid it is but still is an amazing experience. The software with the hardware makes apple great.

>If Huawei or someone else was building a better mobile experience people would be buying that over Apple.

Just what is it with HN and pretending that customers in general care more about functionality than anything else?

Marketing and hype are the main motivators for your average customer. As long as the product isn't utter shit when compared to the alternative, those are far more important for sales than the product itself being good.

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

#445

Post by joelbluminator » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #350

andruby wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life Does the US have a higher quality of life than Germany, France or the Netherlands? I agree that innovation is important and societies should promote it, but -imho- not at the cost of consumer & employee protection.

Depends on the demographics. Algerians in France or Turks in Germany don't have such a great quality of life, but neither do El Salvadorans in the US. The U.S. is 60% Europe, 25% Latin America, 10% Africa, 5% Asia, and has pretty good quality of life for these demographics. As demographics in Europe change, the EU will see more of the issues it likes to criticize the US for, but the demographic-adjusted quality of li…

A lot of white Europeans in the U.S have a horrible quality of life, Trump would probably not have been elected otherwise.

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

#446

Post by tluyben2 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

joelbluminator wrote: post #438

tluyben2 wrote: post #287

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I would like to see US answers to this but in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich and then it degrades fast: in NL it is good to great for all. So I can pick bleeding hard work in a lottery to maybe be someone or I can do whatever I like and have most of those same perks. Where is the choice here?

> in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich I would argue almost everywhere in the world quality of life is fantastic if you are rich. What is the huge difference between living in a gated community in California to doing it in Thailand?

That in Thailand that would cost almost nothing. And personally, it is much nicer on probably almost everything besides the small issue that the country is completely owned by the military. But yes, you are right: rich is also better in NL. But it is not 1000x better: it is just better. Subjective of course; if you enjoy driving McLarens into trees then rich is a lot better.

I have the feeling, and again, I do not live there so I cannot be sure (and can you be even if you live there?) But from books, docus and US friends, the difference is not 1000x even. It is just another world. That is simply not true here.

I guess it is a matter of taste if you can stomach that inequality. I walked (yes, strange EU thing where one uses legs instead of wheels) through some part of Fort Lauderdale and it looked like a bloody war zone. I could not live in a country that permits that. Your have poor here but that is exclusively mentally challenged(or what is the current PC term?) People who get help but always fall back, and very few of them. I recognize the vagrants in my home city from decades ago: still the same people: they have a state provided house and get help but it does not help. You cannot fix that. But rows of addicts turned criminals lining the streets in tents and worse. In the richest country on earth. Rich people should be ashamed that happens on their doorstep. They can and should fix it today.

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

#447

Post by riffraff » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:04 AM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #434

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but doesn't Apple rely on European companies like Bosch for sensors and stuff? So, no iPhone without those crappy uninnovative European companies. Oh and Linux and the WWW were developed in Europe, if I remember correctly?

Yes, but how is Europe monetizing those things? Just because something was invented here is irrelevant if people can't use it to pay rent or create new well paying jobs.

They are produced in Europe (Bosch, STM, Infineon etc.. have way more factories in Europe then outside it) and pay taxes there.

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

#448

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:05 AM UTC

thow-01187 wrote: post #430

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.) > supposedly more investment in R&D Not supposedly, factually. The article explicitly states this. It’s the Economist; if you…

Imho, what was happening in the Silicon Valley economy looks much more like displacement of value rather than creation of value (1). Google/Facebook have displaced other ad formats, redirecting money to themselves. AWS have displaced IT technicians in other corporations, redirecting money to themselves. Apple is selling overpriced commodity hardware, redirecting money to themselves. Uber is displacing taxis, redirect…

> the aforementioned corporations grew 500%-1000% in their profits and valuations since 2010. Meanwhile, the US productivity has grown by 4.7%. Had the SV tech been a clear net positive to the economy, the productivity growth would look different

This is not necessarily true. The American economy is huge. Sections can grow slowly, sections can grow fast, all adding value while the bulk grows moderately.

> When the tech/telecom was truly creating new value (1995-2005), the productivity growth was at 27% that decade

4.7% growth accumulates to close to 60% over ten years. (EDIT: I misread the original comment.)

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

#449

Post by dalbasal » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:08 AM UTC

Especially viewed through a market cap lens, this could be rephrased from "corporate" to "software/tech." Interesting how different the article and comments go, If rephrased this way.

The way these discussions go depends a lot on definitions, anchor points and framing. Framing around market cap, accounted value add, tax or number of employees yields a different article entirely... With totally different conclusions.

Even the "EU" as a definition, isn't perfectly parallel to China and the US. There's no national pride or coherency to the EU.

I'm Irish. Google, FB, Intel, dell, etc. employ almost everyone I know. We wouldn't see these as more "ours" if they were Dutch companies. They're just "MNCs." MNCs don't have homes, as it is seen here.

Even Irish founded MNCs like Ryanair aren't really seen as Irish companies, and no one cares emotionally about EU founded companies. Belarus fighters recently grounded a Ryanair flight to arrest and torture dissident. It barely made the news, and there was no sense that this was a national issue. We don't have an air force, and the EU doesn't do geopolitics... so there's really no way of making it one. An American Airlines flight would have had totally different politics.

I'm not sure which perspective is the operative one. Multinationals have employees, customers, regulators, and taxmen in arbitrary locations. Which do we care about?

Facebook and Twitter, for example, a showing that cultural Americanness means something in itself. The policies and controversies are being built around American politics and culture. They're not scrambling to find an appropriate (or inappropriate) place in the Burmese or Sudanese info-political context. Whatever happens elsewhere will be derivative of decisions tailored to an American context.

Not sure where I'm going with all this.

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

#450

Post by tovej » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:09 AM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #437

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it nice that a large part of the European economy consists of stuff helping people (the "state activities" you mention) vs. the large part of the US economy that consists of hurting people?

US creating top paying tech jobs for the working class and not taxing them to death so they can grow into a flourishing middles class is also helping people. >large part of the US economy that consists of hurting people Source? If you're talking about the defense sector then you should also know that the UK and France were several years in a row number 2 and 3 worldwide in arms sales, including to the Saudi regime.

US upward social mobility is among the worst in the world. US workers are stuck in a rat race that simply doesn't exist to the same extent in Europe.