Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Europe crushes innovation

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 146 posts

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#21

Post by Scarblac »

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

The part of the article I can read is about a contrast between the US and Europe.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#22

Post by latexr »

The article is really making the point that shitting on workers is OK—desirable even!—so that individual companies can make trillions of dollars. “Innovation” to the author equals making money, and being unable to sack hundreds of people at once with complete disregard for them or the social impact it causes is seen as a negative.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#23

Post by seydor »

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…

that's just the size of the eu budget but that's a fraction of what EUrocrats control via regulation and via their sovereignity in member states. EU is not a federal state government like the US

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#24

Post by aswerty »

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

The article image is literally the USA with a jetpack and Europe with a ball and chain. So it seems self evident why somebody might reference the US.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#25

Post by analog31 »

I remember for the past 50 years, that Americans have been warned that looking across the oceans (or even the Great Lakes) for policy ideas would lead to "stagnation." The latest propaganda point is that Europe is even poorer than Mississippi. That sounds horrifying, if you've never been to either place.

Meanwhile it seems that Europe has been pulling ahead of us in measures that affect the quality of life for common people, including the working class. While the fear of "stagnation" was remotely believable during the 1970s, it's clear today that we're the ones who've been hornswoggled.

The US is still better for making software, as China is better for making printed circuit boards, but I'm not sure either of those things are all that bad for the common people.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#26

Post by Muromec »

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.

There is a small problem -- more innovative society next door will get richer and eat you anyway. So lets enjoy the good times and be weak men while it lasts.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#27

Post by Muromec »

jstummbillig wrote: post #20
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'…

Why would it become unaffordable?

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#28

Post by latexr »

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

The entire point of the article is to compare Europe to the USA. Even the illustration at the top makes that point immediately obvious and unambiguous.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#29

Post by ghaff »

s0sa wrote: post #14
rich_sasha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And add the per country spend that almost certainly exceeds per capita EU spend.

Re: How Europe crushes innovation

#30

Post by Muromec »

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…

Brussels isn't even a nice city, what is this even about.
Post reply on HN