[elteto]

This one is sure to elicit strong opinions here on HN.

People quickly jump to point out how the average quality of life in Europe is so much higher than in the US. And rightly so, that's not even up for debate.

But why does having high quality of life have to be orthogonal to having a strong tech market? I think the more interesting question is could Europe maintain their standards _and_ also have a strong tech industry that could compete with the US?

If turns out that you can't have one without the other... then that would be a very interesting and somewhat scary answer. If you could only optimize for one or the other which one should we go for?

I'm very interested in this because I think it's easier for the US to catch up on some social advances than it is for Europe to have its own Silicon Valley. And therefore would love to see the US actually (ha! one can dream) do so.

[rightbyte]

> I think the more interesting question is could Europe maintain their standards _and_ also have a strong tech industry that could compete with the US?

Those things are not contradictions. Outside of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google's fields the competition level in tech is quite good. And honestly, I only want one of those around me at all.

> People quickly jump to point out how the average quality of life in Europe is so much higher than in the US. And rightly so, that's not even up for debate.

I would not say that. Europe is stretching from Portugal to the Urals.

[Aerbil313]

> But why does having high quality of life have to be orthogonal to having a strong tech market?

Technological progress is a socially destabilizing force. America didn’t have the amount of historical cultural inertia Europe had, which was both a cause and an effect of technological progress.

Human biology was never designed to exist within a technological world, no matter whether you believe in creation or evolution.[1] This means every step towards in technological progress is further disruption to the collective psyche of the society. Humans fare better when both the rate of technological progress and absolute amount of technology is near zero.

It’s no coincidence that the conservative factions of every country are opposed to/sceptical of new technologies.

1: This is an absolute fact from all POVs, which people know is true (duh science/religion), but for most people this is counterintuitive in the first look, for the single reason that we were lied all our lives that we do live better than those before us. People of the past lived happier and more content lives despite child mortality, diseases, wars, violence, inequality, and scarcity. And a Rust-writing NixOS-loving software dev is saying this, not an unga-bunga caveman. Read some Ted Kaczynski.