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The Future of European Competitiveness

commission.europa.eu

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Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#61

Post by frankjr »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #24
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…

> Probably not what the self patting EU clowns were expecting. I don't know who you have in mind with "self petting EU clowns" but in general people are very aware of what's going on. A lot of companies have been giving this feedback for a long time.

> I don't know who you have in mind with "self petting EU clowns"

The politicians.

> A lot of companies have been giving this feedback for a long time.

Yeah, still got ignored as the report suggests.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#62

Post by throwaway48540 »

wiz21c wrote: post #55
throwaway48540 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live near 2 nuclear power plants producing practically zero CO2 compared to the energy output. We are there and have been for decades.

You're basically saying "I don't want to consider other ways to produce energy so you should stop doing all the fun stuff you do". Nobody is ever going to agree with that, and you're going to antagonize people from even trying to be environmentally conscious.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#63

Post by carlosjobim »

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…

> Who does that leave to defend against?

Maybe the criminal gangs, who already have capacity rivaling and sometimes surpassing European governments?

Or maybe killing, gang raping, shooting, bombing and looting is not an actual military conflict, because the soldiers don't wear uniforms, and thus nothing for the busy Europeans to mind.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#64

Post by Der_Einzige »

mlinhares wrote: post #57
MangoCoffee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's more CSAM per capita (at least 10x likely more like 100x) on a platforms which "purports to police CSAM" like Civit.ai. No one does anything about it though.

Oh you don't believe me? This is one of the most popular models on their whole site: https://civitai.com/models/402667/age-slider-lora-or-ponyxl-...

Stable Diffusion 1.5 was trained on at least thousands of images of this stuff and no one has tried to get that model taken down, mostly because training on sufficiently large datasets almost guarantees that you'll have illegal content included within it. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/20/24009418/generative-ai-i...

I'm also shocked for related reasons that the 3 and 4 letters haven't been more upset about LLMs, since there's almost certainly a ton of classified info just sitting on the internet that LLMs have ingested into their training data. (don't believe me? https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2024/03/26...)

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#65

Post by Workaccount2 »

bjornsing wrote: post #52
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 wi…

EU pulling an IBM or Hewlett-Packard.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#66

Post by bjornsing »

zelos wrote: post #45

> The EU is entering the first period in its recent history in which growth will not be supported by rising populations....We will have to lean more on productivity to drive growth. Hasn't the second part always been the case? Is there any advantage to boosting raw GDP without also increasing GDP per capita?

> Is there any advantage to boosting raw GDP without also increasing GDP per capita?

For EU bureaucrats there sure is: we can afford more of them and they can have higher salaries.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#67

Post by VancouverMan »

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…

The mainstream media and established parties have wrongly tried to portray them as "extremists" or "fringe", but the People's Party of Canada's platform is by far the most reasonable, balanced, and sensible out there:

https://www.thepeoplespartyofcanada.ca/issues

It isn't perfect (their proposed immigration rate is far too high, for example), but unlike all of the other parties, at least what they propose would generally steer Canada in a much better direction than it has been going in under the Liberals and Conservatives.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#68

Post by photochemsyn »

Europe's most fundamental problem appears to be the energy supply, which is dominated by fossil fuel imports - Russian gas and oil, Middle Eastern & North African gas and oil, and US LNG tanker gas. This puts Europe in a bind, as the document notes:

> "Even though energy prices have fallen considerably from their peaks, EU companies still face electricity prices that are 2-3 times those in the US. Natural gas prices paid are 4-5 times higher. This price gap is primarily driven by Europe’s lack of natural resources, but also by fundamental issues with our common energy market. Market rules prevent industries and households from capturing the full benefits of clean energy in their bills. High taxes and rents captured by financial traders raise energy costs for our economy."

These costs percolate through the rest of the European economy, affecting everything from data centers to manufacturing plants to household budgets and consumer spending. The only real long-term fix will be to construct an energy system not reliant on imports from the rest of the world, and while some progress is being made, it'll take decades of focused effort (with China in the lead) to get off fossil fuels entirely, with the established and politicially influential fossil fuel investor class fighting it every step of the way, as has been the case in the United States ever since the late 1970s.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#69

Post by AlchemistCamp »

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #50
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious what statistics you’re looking at. If you look at media real (inflation-adjusted) earnings, they’re considerably higher than one, two or any number of decades ago, even with the cost disease that medical and schooling sectors suffer from. Not only that, but wage growth has been faster for those earning below the median income than for those earning more. Absolute poverty rates have also fallen dramaticall…

> they’re considerably higher than one, two or any number of decades ago I do not think that is correct? This actually shows stagnation for at least 2 decades in real median household income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United... Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

The chart you shared shows over a 30% increase of U.S. real median household income over three decades.

First, note that this is median, not mean, so it’s not skewed by outliers. Secondly, t’s real income, which means it’s already inflation adjusted. Finally, it’s a measure of households not people. This understates the per-capita gains, since the average household size has shrunk since the 80s. Arguably, increasing prosperity is part of why people now choose to live with fewer people such as extended relatives and housemates.

Re: The Future of European Competitiveness

#70

Post by RandomLensman »

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?

Does every startup have to be in social media?
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