[fsckboy]

there might be a correlation to how quickly companies form, projects start, and innovation progresses in America (entrepreneurship) compared to Europe, and how the robust workers' rights might figure into making companies reluctant to hire a batch of workers that they can't easily terminate.

[hnlmorg]

Any such correlation wouldn't be down to causation imo. I've always assumed the American attitude of "Do first, ask forgiveness later" was the more likely candidate for many of Silicon Valley's success stories.

It's also worth noting that there's plenty of innovation happening in Europe too.

edit: I'll add a little more detail as to why I don't agree with your theory: in Europe you can still make employees redundant relatively easily. So if a company hires 100 employees then realises it's not cost effective, it can easily make 80 of them redundant. The catch is you cannot rehire for the same roles (basically you cannot make someone redundant to get around firing them), but given the purpose of your thought experiment was to cull staff after initial growth, redundancy works perfectly fine here.

Europe also has such as thing as short term contracts. Not contractors, though we obviously have that too, but FTEs that are hired for 6 months / 1 year rather than indefinitely. I'm sure America has this too.

So there isn't really any need to hire people with the intention of firing them shortly after. In fact any company that does this would get a pretty bad reputation pretty quickly. That's true for America too.

I've also seen people fired at short notice in the UK too so it's not like it can't happen in Europe even with greater worker rights. Heck, I was unfairly fired from one job -- but I hated the job anyway so it wasn't worth my time taking the company to court. Instead I used that energy to find a job I did like.

[fsckboy]

I pointed out that there might be a correlation and described a sensical hypothetical link.

you respond definitively claiming that you know the answer, not causation.

[hnlmorg]

Chill buddy, I wasn't claiming to know the answer. I was just saying I think your hypothesis is unlikely and gave a counter-theory. That's generally how discourse works and it's definitely not a personal attack.

I will say calling your own hypothetical link as "sensical" is a little presumptuous though. The very fact I disagreed in the first place should be evidence that it's sensical to everyone. :)

[fsckboy]

it's not my own hypothetical link, it's widely suggested in microeconomic circles

[hnlmorg]

I heard all sorts of hypothetical links suggested in microeconomic circles. Some of them contradict other hypothetical links and it's hard to really prove these things given the huge number of variables involved. However this particular suggestion still seems rather unlikely to me.