[divbyzer0]

Amish or Luddite? No. Underinvestment in technology? Yes. Poor bureaucratic response? More yes.

The US is leading in eCommerce with FAANGs. With this trade comes very valuable data mining and 'Surveilance Capitalism' where intimate user behaviours and trends are translated into further competitive advantage.

When you look at the FAANGs. The US gets all the upside (as well as some of the downsides), but the EU gets only downsides. e.g. Amazon will hollow out retail and logistics, as well as computing infrastructure, the economic efficiencies are returned to the US as well as the rich user data.

The EU is struggling to respond in a contructive way. It really needs to create a few tech hubs, and promote new ventures.

Instead, its doing what the EU does best. Kicking the can down the street, and adding bureaucracy to appear to be doing something.

[thu2111]

EU and its governments set the tone, though. The USG attacks tech firms only rarely, and only when there's pretty overwhelming evidence of some sort of specific wrongdoing. The EU seems to pretty routinely attack the tech industry even when there's no demonstrable harm. So tech entrepreneurs in Europe receive a pretty strong message that if they get big they're going to meddled with and certainly not celebrated. US founders don't get the same.