Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

> Ask the former UdSSR and Warsaw pact states.

With the inexplicable exception of Hungary.

> All of this also ignores the fact that Europe jails people for thought crime at a much higher rate than US or even Russia.

This sounds crazy to me and I have trouble believing it. I tried to find sources, but could not. As you were mentioning rates i.e. numbers, I am sure you have some source for this? The fact alone that hate-speech and holocaust-denial laws exist is not sufficient.

There was this little thing called World Wars that decimated a lot of capital of all kinds (demographic, financial, materiel, infrastructure) which USA exited in completely different position - one of oversupply of all the above to the point that Marshall Plan helped USA as much as it helped Europe by providing an extension of demand for USA industry.

The entire Silicon Valley exists because that windfall was allowed for the most ridiculous defense spending in the world which went on to create the baseline that private investment could continue (though there was considerable dip when the defense spending got cut in 1990s, private demand by then could continue).

In comparison, wider common market in EU is mostly, well, a thing from 1993 - the EEC had partial one, but it's only since 1993 that you could reasonably treat EU market similarly as USA one, which heavily impacted just how big you could grow as company (you need people to buy your products/services after all). And you still have to deal with things like multiple languages whereas for USA it's viable to have just limited english support.

Combine this with huge impact of retirement funds looking for investment opportunities and zero interest rates for long time, you have conditions where in USA you could get multi million investment for a juice company with overengineered juicer. It's essentially law of large numbers there, lots of churn will get you more even if actual successful companies are lower percentage - the scale does it.

And let's be honest, a lot of US investment capital (including Y-Combinator!) did a lot to ensure that prospective founders from Europe founded the company at least partially in USA (in case of YC, even focusing on SFBA).

Also, you mention GDPR, when it's one of the easiest regulations to deal with in my experience (it actually cleared up stuff that existed before). The DSA and DMA only become really strict once you have MAU bigger than adult population of many of EU countries (more than 10% of total EU population).

Honestly, for startup, a lot of it is easy checklist of "don't do that" - the most you might have to do is to look at what goes through the brains of your marketing dept once you have one and prevent them from going crazy with tag manager... something that your users would be happy about too.

If anything is missing, it's the large VC industry that was incubated through decades of defense and government spending in USA (guaranteeing demand and customers).

"Socialist" is such a loaded term it's kind of best to avoid it in any discussion where you aim for clarity.

The original definition, which is where it got its lasting popularity, comes from the popular workers' movements of the 1910s and 20s: workers owning the means of production. That is basically describing an economic system in which enterprises, particularly factories, are democratically controlled by the people working in them, who would have a say in how the enterprise is run.

This notion of socialism was corrupted by Lenin and his ilk when they essentially seized the worker's revolution that tore down the Tsars of Russia and founded the USSR. However, instead of decentralized workers' councils actually owning, profiting from, and controlling the factories (and farms and other enterprises) that they worked for, the state was put in charge of all of these. Ostensibly the state represented the will of the people, so that is how this leap was justified, but of course in reality it was one of the most heinous dictatorships that the world had seen in a long time. But because worker's rights were a popular idea at thrle time, the new absolutist monarchs of the "Soviet" empire kept claiming they are "socialists", just as they claimed they are "democratic", and no one bothered to contradict them.

In the meantime, in the West of Europe, particularly Germany, the same basic workers' movements were co-opted by Hitler, here claiming that he represents the people of Germany in their interests against the bogey-men they hated, the Jewish people (and Armenians and a few others), identified as evil Capitalists that had to be combatted. So they also named their movement "socialist", while in reality having an iron grip and military-like complete top-down control of the means of production.

Finally, more actually democratic forces that were nevertheless interested in keeping the capitalist status quo came up with a series of more minor reforms that would give some more resources, better lives, and rights to workers without actually putting them in full control of the enterprise they worked for. This movement ended up calling itself social-democrat or democratic socialism. Being very much similar to the previous status quo, and keeping the wealthy in power and in control of enterprises, while also not egregiusly oppressing workers to the point of revolt, this proved to be the most enduring form of "socialism" that persisted.