[hnbad]

> What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation?

The US barely produces enough illegal drugs for its own market. If all illegal drug manufacturers cut off the supply lines to the US, the illegal drug trade in the US would tank overnight. What is it about the US that puts it so far behind South American countries in innovation?

[pb7]

You're comparing your populace to drug addicts? Ok then.

Producing (recreational) drugs isn't innovation. Drugs don't improve your daily life. Absence of them doesn't make life resemble that of the 1900s. They don't increase productivity allowing you to achieve more with your life. And most importantly, the number of people consuming recreational drugs from SA is a rounding error. Every single person in Europe consumes some type of software created by American companies, directly or indirectly.

[tremon]

They're comparing drug producers to peddlers of surveillance capitalism.

Surveillance doesn't improve your daily life. Absence of surveillance doesn't make life resemble that of the 1900s. Surveillance doesn't increase productivity. And most importantly, the number of people not subject to surveillance is a rounding error. Every single person in Europe is subject to some type of surveillance crafted by American companies, directly or indirectly.

[hnbad]

Cocaine and other illegal stimulants certainly increase productivity to some extent.

The point I'm making isn't that US software is inherently harmful (nor would I make that argument for every drug that is illegal in the US, though) but that the situation is comparable in that US software and business conduct found to be in violation in the EU is harder to prosecute than the same software and conduct from EU companies. The "innovation" US companies take advantage of is getting to grow their products and companies and a less regulated market before taking advantage of the slow reaction time of the legal systems of foreign markets they enter fully-formed (whereas companies local to those market would get nipped in the bud if they tried to build the same kind of business there).

This should be self-evident when the reason we're even talking about this is that the EU is taking actions against US companies that it would have already taken against any EU company trying the same (e.g. consider the Ireland tax loophole used by non-EU companies in the EU or the circus around trying to game the GDPR and privacy laws).

In short: the innovative advantage of Silicon Valley is that it allowed tech startups to build products that would have been blatantly illegal in Europe and then enter the European market with sufficient political and financial capital to squash any existing competition and bite the legal fines until legislation was able to catch up with what they were doing. This is consistent with recent "disruptions" like Airbnb innovating zoning law violations, Uber innovating taxi service regulation violations, Crypto innovating financial product regulation violations and AI innovating copyright violations.