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The Future of European Competitiveness

commission.europa.eu

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Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#51

Post by 1N73RC3P70R »

Mistletoe wrote: post #15
frankjr wrote: post #5

> Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought: in fact, the productivity gap between the EU and the US is largely explained by the tech sector. The EU is weak in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth. Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European. > Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies…

The thing is though that I want to move to Europe precisely for all these same reasons. And I want to do it with my USA dollars and wealth that enabled it, so I do recognize the dissonance there. Are Europeans happier due to all of the reasons you listed? Do you enable wealth to grow at the expense of the happiness of its residents if you implement the reforms needed to “move fast and break things”? Are Americans hap…

[flagged]

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#52

Post by bjornsing »

lsy wrote: post #14

I suspect it is actually a great strength of Europe that the attitude towards regulation (to put it perhaps overly simplistically, favoring more intangible rights over economic growth) precludes hype and bubble phenomena like the mentioned "creation of large, integrated data sets" or "young, innovative tech companies". This means that business, at least to some extent, is forced to address real-world issues and work…

You are assuming that we can carry on as we have for the last 50 years, stay competitive in existing industries and live well on our old merits indefinitely. I’m not so sure that’s true. I think it’s more likely that you’ll see a deteriorating situation, because of lost competitiveness in established industries but also because those established industries will become less important in relative terms. That decline will be very hard to handle politically.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#53

Post by Workaccount2 »

silverquiet wrote: post #27
clarionbell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that it's not sustainable. We can't defend ourselves, our economies are de-industrializing, we have right and left radical taking over political spectrum all the while our pension and healthcare systems are moving ever closer to a breaking point. The careful approach may have brought as pretty far. But isn't working anymore. It hasn't worked since 2008 at least.

> We can't defend ourselves, our economies are de-industrializing, we have right and left radical taking over political spectrum all the while our pension and healthcare systems are moving ever closer to a breaking point. Other than the defense part, the same could be said for the US.

The US has very rosy economic future projections compared to Europe, and frankly the rest of the world. Don't be fooled by sensational headlines and chronically online college kids complaining.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#54

Post by gwervc »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #44
frankjr wrote: post #5

> Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought: in fact, the productivity gap between the EU and the US is largely explained by the tech sector. The EU is weak in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth. Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European. > Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies…

Another point to consider: what happened to Telegram's CEO? Pavel Durov was arrested because he didn't police his platform sufficiently or whatever, or so France claims. That alone is unsettling. It's been discussed among techies on Twitter. Why would anyone smart enough to create something want to start a company in the EU? Why risk your neck to start a startup in such an environment?

This is in addition to the world most expensive taxation (France), so assuming you can manage to be a least ramen profitable you can't expect to cash-in more than ~40-45% of the end profits in your pocket.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#55

Post by wiz21c »

throwaway48540 wrote: post #12
wiz21c wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regulatory barriers constrain growth in several ways I fail to see why it is a bad thing. We need to curb CO2 emissions which, in some wya or another, implies consuming less energy. Limiting the growth would certainly beneficial and would allow us to transition to world where growth is less central.

That isn't related at all. Please don't try to sell de-growth as some green strategy, you're only going to antagonize people. De-growth will most likely lead to more CO2 emitted per person. Only high technology can change this.

I understand growth as more economic activity and there I fail to see how they are disconnected. I mean, the more you move stuff around, the more you produce AI generated images, the more you consume energy ??? Of course we could as well produce energy without carbon emissions but we are not there yet.

I'd be happy (honestly) to hear an example.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#56

Post by bArray »

> To digitalise and decarbonise the economy and increase our defence capacity, [..]

> If Europe cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions.

At some point you need to make sacrifices, you can't have everything. The very nature of politics is to trade-off ideals. The EU has been far too used to getting its own way on everything.

The joke is that the decarbonisation never really happened, it ended up being a "anywhere but here" policy. So all of the manufacturing prowess is lost, technology is greatly dependant on dictators wanting to destroy Europe and security sacrificed as a result. The irony is, the most energy efficient manufacturing method is not to ship materials multiple times around the planet, it's to create and manufacture close to home. Supermarkets know this best.

> The problem is not that Europe lacks ideas or ambition. We have many talented researchers and entrepreneurs filing patents. But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation, and innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations.

It is made as difficult as possible for companies to be innovative in Europe. Speaking on behalf of a UK company that wanted to trade with Europe, they made it so difficult we gave up. Now we trade in other markets and there is far less restrictions.

> As a result, many European entrepreneurs prefer to seek financing from US venture capitalists and scale up in the US market. Between 2008 and 2021, close to 30% of the “unicorns” founded in Europe – startups that went on the be valued over USD 1 billion – relocated their headquarters abroad, with the vast majority moving to the US.

In exactly this situation now. US venture capital is offering double with less strings.

The rest of this is definitely a read for tonight. The problem is that in order to fix all of this they should have started 10 years ago.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#57

Post by mlinhares »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #44
frankjr wrote: post #5

> Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought: in fact, the productivity gap between the EU and the US is largely explained by the tech sector. The EU is weak in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth. Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European. > Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies…

Another point to consider: what happened to Telegram's CEO? Pavel Durov was arrested because he didn't police his platform sufficiently or whatever, or so France claims. That alone is unsettling. It's been discussed among techies on Twitter. Why would anyone smart enough to create something want to start a company in the EU? Why risk your neck to start a startup in such an environment?

If your platform is a cesspool of CSAM and you loudly say you'll do nothing about it, countries not holding you accountable are the problem. None of the other large social platforms have behaved like this because they know where it ends.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#58

Post by eastbound »

martythemaniak wrote: post #10

Canada also suffers from lack of competitiveness, productivity, etc and I always wonder if we actually have the political constituency for a pro-growth agenda. I don't think we do it seems the group that would vocally back this is likely For example the governing Liberals have been pretty bad on the economic file and will most certainly lose the election next year, but the alternatives are: 1) A Russian-propaganda fu…

> A Russian-propaganda fuelled Conservative party

The “russian” accusation does not hold. It never has. It’s only a big mixup of ideas that can’t withstand being explained rationally. For example: CNN said about 5600 times in 2019 that they had “definitive proof” that Trump was a Russian asset. Still no such proof has been shown in public.

I recommend to re-study whether those are really russian-fueled, or whether they are not just good ideas that you don’t like because they question your lifestyle at first sight.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#59

Post by 1N73RC3P70R »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #39
clarionbell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that it's not sustainable. We can't defend ourselves, our economies are de-industrializing, we have right and left radical taking over political spectrum all the while our pension and healthcare systems are moving ever closer to a breaking point. The careful approach may have brought as pretty far. But isn't working anymore. It hasn't worked since 2008 at least.

On the defense issue, I don’t really see where the threat would come from. Russia isn’t in such a great place militarily either. It would be incredibly culturally strange for China to invade that far away and I don’t know that their military is configured for that anyway. They may influence and sabotage but would never attack Europe militarily IMO. Middle East and North Africa states don’t pose much of a threat still…

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Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#60

Post by AlchemistCamp »

izacus wrote: post #21
moi2388 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the truth/ideal situation would be somewhere in the middle. But the inability to capitalise on the tech sector, difficult regulations as barrier to entry, and a lot of changing rules regarding innovation, making things “green” and environmental and consumer safety does give a high burden to industry when competing with entities like China and the USA which do not have these restrictions. I think a long-term…

My two cents are that EU needs to follow USA with aggressive protectionism to offset the regulation.

Follow? The EU has been more more protectionist for decades in everything from agriculture to cars.

If you look at the WTO’s published data, the mean tariffs in the EU are 5.0% while even now, the US is at just 3.2%.

https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/tariff_profiles_l...

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