Europeans are utterly unable to create new global enterprises at the rate of America and China, apart from a few odd balls like Spotify. Different places optimize for different things, for better and worse.
> Europeans are utterly unable to create new global enterprises at the rate of America and China,
Having a homogeneous, single-language, single market of 350 million, and 1.4 billion people, respectively, is an enormous competitive advantage that Europe cannot replicate, without doing away with sovereignty and brainwashing ~80% of its population.
And despite all that, the quality of life of the average European is pretty good.
And how much success does it have making things sold to consumers? (Which is where the common market is most important.)
I don't think I have a single thing in my home made by an Israeli brand (And I don't use Waze, and either way, it's Google's now). I have quite a few European-branded items, though.
Europe is a collection of small countries. It's not coincidence that the economic powerhouse of Europe, Germany, is the most populated country. And since this is going quite off topic here is some wild idea: let's keep just a fraction of the current universities, like say 5 or 10%, force talent in Europe to concentrate in a few places, force mixing across nations. Actually this is already encouraged somehow but let's be more brutal. Just thinking out loud maybe an stupid idea.
Having a homogeneous, single-language, single market of 350 million, and 1.4 billion people, respectively, is an enormous competitive advantage that Europe cannot replicate, without doing away with sovereignty and brainwashing ~80% of its population.
And despite all that, the quality of life of the average European is pretty good.