[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.