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?

#101

Post by TMWNN » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

>The third, and most striking, reason Europe has fallen behind is the lack of newly created firms in its blue-chip indices. Many of the biggest companies in America, such as Amazon, Netflix, Tesla or Facebook, are young enough to be run by their founders. In Europe old names prevail.

Harry Truman said in 1945 about the atomic bomb, "We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies". I feel the same way about FAANG and SpaceX/Tesla and Silicon Valley as a whole (and Wall Street, and Hollywood, and the Ivy League), that they are in the United States.

That doesn't mean I approve of everything they do. That doesn't mean I can't or won't decry their putting thumbs on scales toward a certain type of bien-pensant ideology. That does mean that, overall, I am very, very glad that they are American instead of Russian, Chinese, or even British, French, or German.

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

#102

Post by systemvoltage » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:37 AM UTC

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #41

underwater wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, Steve Jobs rejected conventional medicine when he became sick, which may have contributed to his premature death.

It’s almost as if experts in one area (business) are often novices in other areas (medicine)

It's almost as if experts in one area (business) often listen to experts in other areas (medicine). Except, Steve Jobs.

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

#103

Post by bww » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:38 AM UTC

It’s rather remarkable how many comments in this thread dismissively explain that, sure, the US has created far more super successful companies in recent years but, hey, who even cares about that and actually big companies are stupid anyway and Americans are all brainwashed.

That’s interesting for its knee-jerk, defensive quality. But I’ll bite: the point of using huge companies as a proxy for economic performance is that globalization and the internet mean that increasingly you’ll have few (and often: one) winners in a given space that capture essentially all the value. If Europe isn’t a competitive player in creating these winners, they’re accepting that they simply aren’t going to capture any meaningful value in these emerging and ascendant industries. That, to me, implies a certain resignation to economic stagnation as a point of pride.

I genuinely wonder how you can endorse that state of affairs without any concern for how, in the face of declining competitiveness, the comfortable status quo that is preferable to success continues to get paid for.

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

#104

Post by TMWNN » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:40 AM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #59

chrisseaton wrote: post #8

Why are European companies so unambitious ? My whole civilian career I've had to work for North American companies because the European alternatives aren't even attempting to be competitive.

I have wondered this. I work at an American company with many European employees and it is just really hard to see a complete lack of ambition/competitiveness. At some point being on vacation so much must hurt, I know projects are delayed when folks just can’t be expected to be there and will randomly disappear for 4+ weeks at a time. But that really doesn’t explain the extreme cultural conservatism towards effort/am…

>At some point being on vacation so much must hurt

Ian Fleming wrote a new James Bond novel a year. He could do this because his job as an executive for a British newspaper let him take a month off every year. He'd go to his Jamaican estate[1], write the novel, and bring it home.

... Good god. According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming#Post-war>, his job let Fleming take three months off each year! Either way, I'm pretty sure the list of American non-owner executives who took a month or three off annually in the 1950s is very, very short.

[1] Goldeneye[2]

[2] Yes, that Goldeneye

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

#105

Post by nxc18 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:43 AM UTC

everyone wrote: post #67

nxc18 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have wondered this. I work at an American company with many European employees and it is just really hard to see a complete lack of ambition/competitiveness. At some point being on vacation so much must hurt, I know projects are delayed when folks just can’t be expected to be there and will randomly disappear for 4+ weeks at a time. But that really doesn’t explain the extreme cultural conservatism towards effort/am…

Your crud app is 'advancing society'? Really?

Not all of us have boring jobs.

Geospatial intelligence is a severely underutilized technology (read: extreme growth potential).

Remember the John Hopkins coronavirus dashboard making the rounds last year? You’ve probably had a use for the software that powered that.

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

#106

Post by TMWNN » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:44 AM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #20

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #18

A point not made in the article: American consumers are better at consuming and driving growth than European consumers: When the article mentioned Starbucks and Tesla, I immediately thought, those would never have taken off in Europe. Americans are just much better consumers. Americans spend more on luxury and value convenience to a greater deal. American consumers are also more adventurous and willing to try new thi…

Europe has plenty of "luxury" brands, although few in the tech sector, admittedly. But consumer-facing brands aren't everything. Germany's industry is famously reliant on "hidden champions": specialist mid-sized companies you've never heard of, producing, say, industrial pumps, chewing-gum wrapping machines, or large curved glass panels.

>Germany's industry is famously reliant on "hidden champions": specialist mid-sized companies you've never heard of, producing, say, industrial pumps, chewing-gum wrapping machines, or large curved glass panels.

Besides smaug7's point (which the article also makes), mittelstand is a German, not European, phenomenon.

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

#107

Post by TMWNN » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

wrnr wrote: post #55

passerby1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country is it, mind sharing the name?

Belgium, Flanders

>Belgium, Flanders

Does pillarization help or hurt here? I'd have thought that having multiple universities when there might otherwise be just one (University of Leuven being one obvious example), for example, might encourage competition. Or does it just take away potential advantage of scale without compensating benefits?

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

#108

Post by jessedhillon » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #86

oneplane wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, billionaires are just concentrations of wealth and power which hardly helps the masses. That is a general pattern in the USA anyhow, a few concentrations here and there but everyone else seems to be screwed in various ways (be it basics like healthcare, education, safety).

Sure, mainly I wanted to point out that, there is no conflict between providing a strong social safety net policy and having billionaires. The only reason to avoid the safety net would seem to be a myth that somehow others have to suffer for success to be possible.

I'm not familiar with the wealth situation in Scandinavia, but I just want to point out: what matters is the numbers of millionaires/billionaires created, not just the number existing. For example, these higher numbers could be leftover nobles or aristocracy.

Also, it's a pretty unconvincing comparison to pick a small population country to benchmark the US against.

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

#109

Post by wpasc » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

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 >…

In defense of the article (not agreeing nor disagreeing), the article then includes reasons why it is concerned with market capitalization:

>But if it continues, the waning of Europe’s business will bring consequences. Big firms invest in innovation, which boosts economic growth. Left to regulate only foreign groups, Europe’s ability to shape global business norms—on privacy, say, or the uses of artificial intelligence—will look weak. European policymakers’ cries for “strategic autonomy” will come to nothing without corporate backing.

>Europe’s smaller firms now find themselves competing against global behemoths with inbuilt advantages. Large firms can afford to buy and try new technology, borrow at cheaper rates and absorb fixed costs more efficiently. They tend to spend relatively more on research and development. The dearth of big companies helps explain why European spending on research, at 2.1% of gdp, is below the average of the oecd, a group of mostly rich nations.

I have no certainty about few, big corps vs. heterogenous medium sized corps, but I think the point has about Europe's ability to influence global norms/best practices has validity. Europes influence could be negatively affected without strong, global presence by local companies in sectors it cares about influencing.

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

#110

Post by quartesixte » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 3:59 AM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #20

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #18

A point not made in the article: American consumers are better at consuming and driving growth than European consumers: When the article mentioned Starbucks and Tesla, I immediately thought, those would never have taken off in Europe. Americans are just much better consumers. Americans spend more on luxury and value convenience to a greater deal. American consumers are also more adventurous and willing to try new thi…

Europe has plenty of "luxury" brands, although few in the tech sector, admittedly. But consumer-facing brands aren't everything. Germany's industry is famously reliant on "hidden champions": specialist mid-sized companies you've never heard of, producing, say, industrial pumps, chewing-gum wrapping machines, or large curved glass panels.

Yeah European industrial machine manufacturers are world class and some have virtual monopolies on their product.

It’s not sexy and definitely slow. Months where they sell more than 4 machines a month is “crazy busy” for these guys. Granted, each machine takes months to manufacture, but when one machine sells for $25million + millions more in support costs, you don’t have to work very fast to hit big revenue.

But their customers don’t expect fast either.