[SpicyLemonZest]

I think you're misreading the source of the defeatism. It's clear what European leaders should do if they want to compete with US big tech. They should sit down with corporate leaders at Spotify, Ericsson, ASML, etc. and talk though what reforms are necessary for Europe to start minting unicorns as rapidly as the Americans can.

But European leaders haven't been willing to do this, perceiving (I think correctly) that European citizens won't tolerate the idea of asking rich CEOs for regulatory advice or making the creation of billionaires a policy goal. So instead they focus on the kind of pointless efforts described in the source article, where government agencies endlessly chase their tails on standards and objectives.

To the eternal frustration of governments and advocates around the world, there's no argument for why you should use domestic products that can adequately substitute for high-quality domestic products people want to use.

[smsm42]

If Europe were capable of doing this, Europe would not need to do this. They'd already have active and vibrant tech scene compared to US one - EU is bigger than US by population, and certainly not less smart - in fact, a lot of people live in EU and work for US tech companies. So why US has "big tech" and Europe does not? They decided their political model must work differently, even at the cost of not having big tech. So now they don't have big tech. And no amount of committee meetings is going to change that, even if all governments would want it really, really hard.

[dns_snek]

> So why US has "big tech" and Europe does not?

Because having "big tech" is a sign that the government has completely failed to enforce anti-trust laws and allowed dangerous concentration of power to occur. It's a symptom of a disease not some desirable goal.

The EU doesn't need or want "big tech", it just needs "tech". It needs generous public funding for infrastructure, open source, and it should aim to build upon open standards whenever possible.

We don't need domestic monopolies that are just going to fuck us in the same way that US corporations fuck Americans while we all pretend to enjoy it for the sake of looking superior to the other camp.

[smsm42]

> The EU doesn't need or want "big tech", it just needs "tech".

Why doesn't it already have "tech" and has to resort to governmental action to procure one? I mean, it is obviously very easy to acquire just "tech" without government completely failing to enforce laws and population being fucked by corporations, and it is a testament to how dumb Americans really are that they failed to do that. But Europeans are not dumb, so why they didn't do it by now? Why we are discussing the matter now instead of just pointing to clearly superior open-standard non-fucking European "just tech" as a superior alternative to American "big tech"?

[sunshine-o]

Let's not forget Big tech is also fueled by the rest of the world and Europe.

If you walk into a bank in Europe and have some money to invest they will sell you mostly debt and the "Magnificent Seven" or a funds with those stocks inside.

The EU is ridiculous when it says it want to built an alternative because it's entire financial/banking system end up fueling the saving of its citizen into those companies.

This is also why we end up in that absurd situation where the Mag 7 make up 1/3 of the S&P 500 market cap.

If the EU is serious about offering an alternative (which I doubt) it needs to offer a sustainable path for its people to invest in it. Not do another fake program where insiders will grab some public money and get nowhere (it has been tried for 25 years).

[smsm42]

> If the EU is serious about offering an alternative (which I doubt) it needs to offer a sustainable path for its people to invest in it.

Did US government do something like that? If US has some attractive investments and EU does not, why don't they? I mean, EU citizens would probably like to invest in EU companies, much better than in US companies, they are not some self-haters to refuse a good investment just because it's in EU, right? So why don't they invest there? Why do they invest in US instead and there is a need in a special action - not taken prior to now - to enable them to invest in the EU?

[sarchertech]

It’s not really comparable though. The EU isn’t a unified single language market, and its GDP and per capita GDP are much smaller.

[smsm42]

Language is not a huge deal - if the French and the Spanish and the Dutch can use Facebook, they could use Eurobook if that existed, as well. The problem of course would be, if they made a committee to build Eurobook, they'd spend 5 years in meetings to ensure every country and every language is absolutely equally represented and then would build something that no speaker of any language would use.

As for GDP, EU overall GDP is only slightly less than US GDP, so it could very well sustain the industry of comparable size. Per capita GDP is indeed lower, but I'm not sure how that precludes creation of something like Eurobook.

[sarchertech]

EU GDP is about 2/3 US GDP. That’s a very significant difference. Per capita income is probably less important than average and median disposable income, which is much higher in the US and has an obvious impact on B2C companies.

FB was incubated in a single unified market before it really spread to the EU. It’s harder for companies to take off and reach tech giant reach with the much smaller individual markets in the EU.

It’s much harder to build a product that appeals to everyone from the Irish to the Bulgarians, and to advertise to them than it is to do the same for everyone in the US. And it’s not just the tech companies, the individual content creators on the platform have the same comparative problems.

[com]

There were Eurobooks and they were pretty well bought out by Facebook. Hyves and so on. The online CV networks were bought by LinkedIn.

[api]

The answer is simple: simplify and streamline all the bureaucracy.

Complexity is a regressive tax. It disproportionately penalizes small ventures and entrepreneurs who don’t have whole departments of people to deal with it. The effect is to prevent the formation of new companies. Large incumbents are able to deal with it, so it actually protects them.

[f30e3dfed1c9]

"The answer is simple: simplify and streamline all the bureaucracy."

Well, that sounds easy! I wonder why no one else ever thought of it. Good thing there are geniuses like you around.

[api]

People think of it all the time. But there’s a giant system full of people whose careers and incomes are linked to the complexity, not just government bureaucrats but also lawyers, accounting firms, expensive consultancies, etc. It’s a hard sell because it would decimate whole industries that revolving around servicing the complexity.

But it’s one of the thing the EU could do to win in new industries.

Honestly if the EU became more innovation and entrepreneur friendly I think they’d kick America’s ass. Tons of smart people, and the positive side of the social safely net is that it derisks entrepreneurship. America is full of would be founders who can’t afford to take the leap since they could lose their health care, etc.

[mmooss]

> making the creation of billionaires a policy goal

Concentrating wealth to the degree of the US is not at all necessary for innovation. As an extreme example, Bezos would have done the same thing for a tenth or less of the current lifetime income.

In fact, when many leading entrepeneurs started, the wealth concentration wasn't nearly as high, yet they were still motivated. Now with wealth concentration much higher, my impression is less motivation and opportunity for startups, innovation, starting a business in your garage, etc. In more economic terms, I think it's well-established that such high concentration of wealth reduces economic mobility.

[SpicyLemonZest]

The causation is in the other direction. Innovative entrepreneurs cause wealth to become highly concentrated, and cause their companies to distort the societies they're embedded in, by the act of producing goods and services that a large number of people want to buy.

Bezos is actually a great example, because he made almost his entire US$250B fortune from unrealized stock appreciation rather than salary or new awards. Even the most extreme wealth tax proposals I've seen wouldn't get him down to US$25B. The US could only have achieved that target by restricting how much Amazon is allowed to innovate and grow.

[IrishTechie]

I disagree. They could for example make it mandatory to grant more stock options to employees so the wealth they are generating is more broadly spread beyond the founder/CEO. I’m sure there are plenty of other approaches that would still handsomely reward innovation and growth but prevent where we ended up today.

[Intralexical]

> They should sit down with corporate leaders at Spotify, Ericsson, ASML, etc. and talk though what reforms are necessary for Europe to start minting unicorns as rapidly as the Americans can.

The EU should ask established incumbents how to best create lots of new upstarts, some of which will no doubt end up competing with them or disrupting their business models?

[SpicyLemonZest]

Yes. They shouldn't take their words as gospel, of course, they'd want to find some current upstarts as well. But the idea that successful businesspeople are just snatching pieces of the pie and have nothing useful to say is exactly the attitude that's incompatible with an innovative tech sector.

[wolvoleo]

No, the last thing we should do is transform Europe into a neoliberal stronghold like America. It's not all about making money. It's about creating a civilisation for citizens, not business. Business is just a means to an end.

The current polarisation in America is a direct result of billionaires controlling policy, and the anger of a huge disadvantaged minority being taken advantage of by populists (which ironically are mostly oligarchs)