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How Europe crushes innovation

economist.com

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Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#11

Post by rich_sasha »

seydor wrote: post #2

It's not so much crushing innovation, as it's prioritizing anything but innovation. Primarily the importance and the finances of people living in Brussels. It's more parasitic than actively hostile

How does the cost of the Brussels administration compare to, say, the US federal administration? A spot-checked LLM answer tells me, as fraction of GDP:

- EU: 1%

- US: 24%

- China: 35%

That is quite a favourable comparison for Europe, I'd say.

EDIT if anything, staring at these numbers, one might conclude the EU is not spending enough in general, in particular on innovation. Quite the stark contrast to being a money grab, IMO.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#12

Post by cromulent »

The article (which is great) is written from the perspective of "large old established companies innovating". This is something that is fairly elusive even in the different environment of the rest of the western world, I think.

Startups have a different set of constraints in Europe, one of which is the safety net for the people trying to become "ramen profitable".

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#13

Post by ImageXav »

I would add an aspect that is not covered here but is often ignored: the strong labour protection laws result in a mentality where if you get a good job you are much less likely to want to take risks e.g. start your own business. There was a post on the HENRY (high earner, not rich yet) UK subreddit the other day from someone who had a wealth of experience and had the opportunity to join a start up as a CTO. It honestly sounded like a great chance to initiate change. All of the comments were telling the poster that they had it good, that 99% of start ups fail, that the hours would be gruelling. I feel as though the conversation would have been quite different in a US subreddit.

A term they like to use is 'crabs in a bucket'.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#14

Post by s0sa »

rich_sasha wrote: post #11
seydor wrote: post #2

It's not so much crushing innovation, as it's prioritizing anything but innovation. Primarily the importance and the finances of people living in Brussels. It's more parasitic than actively hostile

How does the cost of the Brussels administration compare to, say, the US federal administration? A spot-checked LLM answer tells me, as fraction of GDP: - EU: 1% - US: 24% - China: 35% That is quite a favourable comparison for Europe, I'd say. EDIT if anything, staring at these numbers, one might conclude the EU is not spending enough in general, in particular on innovation. Quite the stark contrast to being a money…

How are you arriving at these percentages? Show your work.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#15

Post by oklahomasports »

hernandipietro wrote: post #7

Innovation at the expense of crushing workers and increasing the gap between parasitic management compensation and worker wages. No, thanks. Europe may need reform but it’s not the USA way of doing things, except for the elite for which “ the economist “ is a already known and tired sockpuppet.

Why do you need to reference the USA? Makes it seem like your politics are based on resentment and not a dispassionate discussion of tradeoffs

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#16

Post by rs_rs_rs_rs_rs »

rich_sasha wrote: post #11
seydor wrote: post #2

It's not so much crushing innovation, as it's prioritizing anything but innovation. Primarily the importance and the finances of people living in Brussels. It's more parasitic than actively hostile

How does the cost of the Brussels administration compare to, say, the US federal administration? A spot-checked LLM answer tells me, as fraction of GDP: - EU: 1% - US: 24% - China: 35% That is quite a favourable comparison for Europe, I'd say. EDIT if anything, staring at these numbers, one might conclude the EU is not spending enough in general, in particular on innovation. Quite the stark contrast to being a money…

Comparison does not work, EU does very little compared to what the US/China administrations do, you'll have to add the cost of all the countries administration too.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#17

Post by bryanlarsen »

knowledge-clay wrote: post #10

I'd rather live in a society with strong labor protections than one that is "more innovative", whatever that means.

You can have your cake and eat it too. It's called the Danish model, although Denmark does not completely implement it. Make it cheap & easy to both hire & fire people, but then take care of people who are fired through a generous safety net. High taxes pay for the safety net.

Explicit taxes are better than implicit taxes. Forcing companies to provide social services such as employment guarantees or health insurance to employees makes taxes look lower than they actually are.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#18

Post by Muromec »

It is indeed pretty impossible to fire people who don't want to be fired. It's still possible to spin up a subsidiary and hire people into it and if doesn't work out, well, it didn't work out. Is it even the most commons reason why companies do layoffs?

Sounds like a propaganda piece to suppress both wages and rights here.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#19

Post by only-one1701 »

oklahomasports wrote: post #15
hernandipietro wrote: post #7

Innovation at the expense of crushing workers and increasing the gap between parasitic management compensation and worker wages. No, thanks. Europe may need reform but it’s not the USA way of doing things, except for the elite for which “ the economist “ is a already known and tired sockpuppet.

Why do you need to reference the USA? Makes it seem like your politics are based on resentment and not a dispassionate discussion of tradeoffs

Read the first 3 lines of the article, my man.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#20

Post by jstummbillig »

knowledge-clay wrote: post #10

I'd rather live in a society with strong labor protections than one that is "more innovative", whatever that means.

Do you really? Or do you actually want to sustain your standard of living as safely as you can?

Because then the question arises: What if the current way of handling labor protection in the EU (as one of many components) leads to destroying yours and everyone elses standard of living, simply because it's unaffordable? Would you still argue that this is the way to go? Everyone going down with the ship together?

I don't know what will happen and what the root causes are (labor laws might not contribute much to the picture, I really don't know), but at least we should be somewhat cognizant of the fact, where the industries of the future are currently built and where they are not, and have a fantastic explanation of why this is not going to be a super big issue.

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