You're free to think otherwise, but this is what I've been repeatedly told by entrepreneurs in Europe (who mostly copy US ideas), and europeans living in Silicon Valley (who came here to innovate in ways they can't back home).
Yeah or it's just the capital that has been there in abundance.
Spawned from the defense industry, thriving through the money made in the 2000s and after by creating profits all over the world (ads!) and then evading taxation as much as possible while funneling the money back to the valley and hiring the world's best talent to keep that first place.
The small business owner pays taxes because what else can they do?
Big corps go through tax-havens and relocations and don't do so, while profiting off of the infrastructure paid for by taxes (=> enabling customers over seas to even buy iphones).
Traditional companies ship physical products and/or employ more people in the respective countries, while they also try to evade taxation I think those circumstances make them a much better subject to it though.
Really, the more I keep on talking to my friends in the Valley the more it boils down to the money factor. Salaries, VCs and all the likes.
I don't say Europe shouldn't be less business hostile, but one should see the Valley the way it is and realize that just buy changing the laws and trying to copy it Europe can't succeed. They should find their own path.
They can't make money like they do in the US, but I'd argue that good innovation
- that increases the welfare of the people and is meant to bring universal progress - still is more abundant in Europe than in SV.