[luckylion]

I've never really understood fashion, so I can't comment on that (Whoever makes the models wear the most ridiculous outfit wins?). However, why isn't France going to Mars? Where is France (or Germany, or Sweden etc for that matter) creating the Internet, or GPS, or Hip-Hop, or Jazz, or doing cutting edge medical research? It's not that they don't do that at all - it just, that, if the safety net was such a strong driving force, we'd be light years ahead of the US. And we're really not.

[badpun]

Regarding culture superiority, I feel like it's just that the big and wealthy countries manage to spread their culture the most, and that's what catches on in the world. If jazz and hip-hop were invented in the Czech Republic instead of the US, there would be much larger chance of it staying just a local phenomenon, and the world would be taken over by some other cultural trend instead.

[luckylion]

Possibly, but I'm not convinced. France and Germany spend lots of money to subsidize their artists, the French have gone so far to order radio stations to play a quota of French music - yet despite their wealth and their size (on the European level at least), they don't dominate culturally.

That's not to say that it couldn't be random that a lot of the recent advancements happened in the US, I just don't find it likely.

[badpun]

The problem with subsidised art (or subsidised anything really) is that the money in large part goes to the people who are well connected and great at weaseling their way into funding. So, there's a constant stream of always-mediocre French, German etc. (state-funded) movies in local artsy cinemas in Poland, which no one wants to watch, because they're mediocre.

In other words, the film makers are not subject to the market forces, they don't need to make something that the audience actually wants. The official stats of the PISF (polish state institute which funds movies) say that only 4 out of hundreds funded movies have recouped the state investment via tickets and other sales. The rests are flops, which is not a problem for anyone involved. That's how you get bad art.

[luckylion]

Yeah, I've been having similar feelings. The state acts like a monopoly on culture and so the focus isn't on the audience but on the grant administrators. At least we're creating a proxy indicator for studying the tastes and likes of the officials that decide what gets subsidized ;)

[ricardobeat]

I think you should vary your news sources, or pay more attention to the names. A large amount of cutting-edge research comes from EU universities and companies, especially Germany, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, UK. Related business ventures will always pop up in the US first though, due to the vast investment capital.

[luckylion]

> A large amount of cutting-edge research comes from EU universities and companies

I'm not attacking European universities and companies, I'm not arguing that there isn't any great research, I'm saying it's not a multiple of the US, which it really should be if "have a strong social safety net and the possibilities are endless" was true.

[sebst]

While I hear your point that the explosion of cultural proceedings is below the utopia mentioned here, it may be worth noting that the WWW was invented by a guy born in London working partly for the French government. That was Tim Berners-Lee ;)

[luckylion]

Yeah, I'm not arguing that nothing happens in Europe, just that it's not overwhelming - which it would have to be if the social safety nets were a deciding factor.

I don't that social safety nets play a large role - for most academics, researchers, engineers, artists, there's a de facto social safety net (via tenure, high income, patents, equity, stock options, grants, strong job security etc), so a general safety net doesn't improve their situation and output. And having a general safety net also doesn't by itself increase the amount of people of exceptional skill and/or ability.

I'm not against safety nets (though I do believe that we've gone too far and have created strong negative incentives), but I do believe that "our society will be like Star Trek" doesn't hold water. We have them, and our societies aren't like Star Trek.