10 ms·

Europe needs to escape providerism

70 points by dividendpayee 3y ago

woodruffw 3y ago
For some definitions of wealth, surely. By most quality of life metrics, the average (Western) European is doing as well or better than the average American.
- bequanna 3y ago
  Can you cite some specifics? I’ve travelled to quite a few places in Europe and coming from the American Midwest, we are beating much of Europe in most/all QoL metrics by a mile. Much larger and nicer homes, larger properties, mincer automobiles, more variety of all consumer goods, higher incomes, more wealth and social mobility to name a few and I live in “flyover” country.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    Which QoL metrics?
  - Alcatros552 3y ago
    Take life expectancy https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/world-life-expectancy-map https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/world-life-expectancy-ma... or take how we treat the elderly and you will know the difference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhlIiMgDxm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhlIiMgDxm4
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    Based on conversations I've had, it seems most Americans who think that way took a vacation to a ritzy area of Barcelona, Nice, or Florence, and and deduced that 100% of Europeans, must live like that.
    - bequanna 3y ago
      That could be. Very interested to hear specific ways the Europeans are beating us and where exactly they are hiding all that prosperity!
  - boudin 3y ago
    It's a matter of opinion and what people want, but from American i crossed path with who settled in western Europe: accessible health-care, better infrastructures, holidays and work-life balance are some of the things that are recurring.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I meant by both proxy statistics (e.g. life expectancy) and self-reported statistics (e.g. QoL metrics). I've linked both of those in comments in an adjacent subthread. I, like many Americans, would take a strong safety net, sustainable urban development and a smaller home over the US's mess of a safety net, socially devastating suburban sprawl, and a 4000 sqft McMansion.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - tomjakubowski 3y ago
    Suicide rates are a good place to start. Overall the EU's suicide rate is 10.25/100k vs 14.04/100k in the US, and it looks like many places in the Midwest are doing worse than the US average. [1] US suicide rates https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/... [2] EU suicide rates https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/edn-20230908-3 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/e...
- dividendpayee 3y ago
  The article suggests heavily that, the way things are going, that's not going to be the case in the future. Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off.
  - meheleventyone 3y ago
    It doesn’t really succeed in making that case though, there’s a lot of invective but few facts. If you used the same criteria as the author for the US outside of SV how does it compare? And as for AI DeepMind is HQ’d in Europe!
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      > Today’s Europeans are not yet poor — they are still living off the prosperity created by prior generations, and that enables their passive consumption Supported by something also said by others [7] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/26/europe-is-the-free-rider-continent https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/26/europe-is-the-fr... The underlying issue seems to be an incompatibility between egalitarianism and inspiration to individual exceptionalism. Why be great in Europe, if the rewards to being great elsewhere are better, and you can afford to relocate? To benefit from European social benefits? If you're that successful, you've far exceeded that standard from personal wealth! Consequently, you're stuck in a weird middle ground with misaligned incentives papering over a fundamental incompatibility.
      - meheleventyone 3y ago
        I’m aware the opinion exists.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    > Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off. As an American, I've heard some variant of this for literally my entire life. Europe is technologically conservative in ways that the US is not. It's unclear that this has, is having, or will have any impact on the actual material wellbeing of the people who live there. Compare life expectancy[1], or just about any self-reported QoL metric[2] (where the US doesn't perform badly, just not better!). [1]: https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/europe-developed-countries/life-expectancy/ https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/euro... [2]: https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/
- Racing0461 3y ago
  > most quality of life metrics This is what we refer to as "europoor". Sure they have taxpayer funded "healthcare", council "housing", public "transportation" but it's not really what i would want for myself. Those things only exist because the middle class in europe is foced to give up a lifestyle of freedom/autonomy to average it out so the folks below them can get (1 + 0)/2. It won't stand on its own otherwise. Thankfully the decision isn't being made for me by making those things prohibitively expensive to force me to live in urbania.
  - bequanna 3y ago
    Also, not paying your fair share for defense seems to have its advantages.
  - atoav 3y ago
    So you'd rather live in a villa next to a slum than in a decent house next to a decent house?
    - Racing0461 3y ago
      That's not the tradeoff. It's a decent house out in the suburbs vs some dense urban inner city apartment or something attached to other people with people of varying crazyness for lack of a better word living around you. And if you do want to own a house, it's going to be crazy expensive and cars you can't drive unless it's tuesday and you have an odd numbered license plate. The people living in the villas are the actual wealthy who gets to bypass the system (ie billionaire flying a private jet to a climate change conference to try to get the government to ban cars to force you to use a packed train). I'm advocating for freedom/autonomy for the middle class instead of grouping everyone who isn't a billionaire together. I'm just saying we add one more partition.
- deleted 3y ago
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- marcusverus 3y ago
  Americans have significantly higher disposable income[0] and household net worth[1], and less debt[2]. By what QOL metrics is the average Western European doing better than the average American? [0] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm [1] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-net-worth.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-net-worth.htm#indicator-... [2] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm
kleiba 3y ago
Ah, being 30 again!
askonomm 3y ago
And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...
- missedthecue 3y ago
  Yet 3x more Europeans immigrate to the US than Americans going the other direction. People vote with their feet and I feel like the EU vs US online discource is mainly based on vibes rather than facts.
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    Not sure this means anything. Almost every European country has a huge number of English speakers. Few Americans speak one of the local languages of Europe well enough to live there. Plus, we'd have to assume people were well informed in general about living conditions in various places.
    - hansvm 3y ago
      Anecdotally, not a single American I've talked to who was on the fence about moving to Europe was deterred by not knowing the native language well enough. Whether overly optimistic or not, the prospect of spending a few months learning well enough to barely get by and spending more time later to become more adept never amounted to even a footnote in the deciding factors.
      - lordnacho 3y ago
        Sure, they convince themselves that everyone speaks English, which is generally true in the kinds of places that hire expats. But plenty of them find it hard to fit in socially, and then leave later.
        trgn 3y ago
        Yeah, the language factor is hugely underrated. I think it's less the money aspect, and more the fact that American society is more bland, uniform. It's easier to fit in. In Europe, unless it's a true international metro (amsterdam, london, brussels, ...), there's a huge cultural barrier. You just can't hitch into it as an adult. Your children will fit in, but not you.
Phenomenit 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding_disorder
pulse7 3y ago
Why US Fails to Distribute Wealth?
- deleted 3y ago
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- Detrytus 3y ago
  Because equal distribution of wealth takes away all motivation for hard work and innovation. There's no point to work hard just to have your profits taken away in taxes and distributed to lazy bastards that didn't bother to finish high school. America is a land of opportunity: you either win big or lose terribly. Europe is for people who want to play it safe.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - atoav 3y ago
    America was the land of opportunity.
- FredPret 3y ago
  You mean “succeeds in allocating wealth fairly”
roschdal 3y ago
AIs use too much energy, is expensive, created pollution, hallucinates and causes human poverty.
gabrielfernado 3y ago
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jahalai 3y ago
The statements about providerism and europe not producing anything of value purely focusses on computer technology and not on any other type of technology. Take the agriculture sector; europe's not only produces tons of vegatables/fruits and meat, but it also has strong R&D programs such as seed enrichment, dna modification, etc. There are many other sectors out there
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  > strong R&D programs such as seed enrichment, dna modification Europe is famous for banning DNA-modified crops under the precautionary principle. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-ban-gmos https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries... You might be able to research them there, but you can't actually make them, and the article is about production not theoretical R&D.
phkahler 3y ago
This is not really ALL of Europe. Germany seems to be quite the industrial country. Maybe that's why they're the largest economic player there.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Well let's put it in perspective. The GDP of germany is smaller than the overwhelming majority of US states. That's not the whole US, that's each state by themselves. Americans are more productive by an order of magnitude. Not that the various European nations don't have things to offer or aren't doing novel things. There's plenty that they do, but the sheer volume that the US produces across the spectrum including novel things is unmatched by a long shot.
  - dmurray 3y ago
    Actually, Germany has a higher GDP (4.4t USD/year) [0] than any of the 50 US states, led by California [1] at 3.6t USD/year. Perhaps you meant GDP per capita, which would make you correct, but your post certainly wasn't phrased that way. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
dang 3y ago
Oh gosh, can we please not do national/regional bickering here? That's not curious conversation (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). As a first step in a better direction, I've changed the baity title to a less baity, or at least more obscure, phrase from the article itself.
- elteto 3y ago
  dang: could you unflag? It's frustrating when some things can't be discussed on HN because they are insta-flagged as a way to silence them. Although this one is a touchy subject the article does raise some interesting points which could be debated.
  - dang 3y ago
    Yes, I turned the flags off a while ago.
    - elteto 3y ago
      Thank you.
- t8sr 3y ago
  I don't see anything about this post that's against the guidelines. The topic is eminently relevant. I agree with others who have said that this is getting flagged simply because people disagree, on an emotional level. Maybe that's enough to not want this discussion here, but then we should also remove posts discussing Rust (hah).
  - dang 3y ago
    I didn't say it broke the guidelines (other than by having a baity title).
- n0rlant1s 3y ago
  dang: Your about bio says "Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups" and that is exactly what is happening here. It's a fruitful discussion with a lot of nuance and yes, disagreement. Nothing here seems against guidelines
mezeek 3y ago
This applies for literally every country except the US and China. It's not like any of the other G20 countries (not to mention the entire rest of the world) have anything close to "a US tech sector" or anything approaching the level of engineering/science/product/manufacturing capability of the US. California is where the entire world population goes to when they wanna make stuff.
- probablynish 3y ago
  If you're considering not just tech, but the general mindset of being somewhere that builds/produces things that other people use, as opposed to just industries of middlemen who skim off the top, then I'd argue India also has that mindset, maybe a few other SE asian countries too, and furthermore that nowhere is quite as bad as Europe in terms of having the opposite mindset.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Europe makes a lot of things. Not sure why you think the chemical industry or a place making drilling guidance systems is skimming of the top or a middlemen. It is precisely the mindset of needing to make "stuff" that is keeping Europe back, because then software doesn't count.
n0rlant1s 3y ago
"If they can’t ban products, then it’s not consumer protection: it’s just wealth extraction." Couldn't have said it better myself
lucideer 3y ago
I really like HN: the posts are on deeply interesting topics, & the userbase rarely fails to follow up with in depth technical analysis & insightful context in the comments. It's a pity that every once in a while a post like this comes along & slaps you back to reality by reminding you that there's still a significant contingent that fit the stereotype of brain-dead growth-hacker valley types. --- Reluctant as I am to get into debating this, the essential flaw in this thesis is that consumerism is inherently positive, & that by extension production of a wide range of consumer products is self-evidently proves the utility of such innovations. A side feature is survivorship bias whereby US products will tend to dominate a globalist borderless market by virtue of that international market being constructed to serve the model pursued by US companies. This is less about European individuals being subject to Providerism & more about EU companies being subject to "competition" within a biased arena that extends beyond their borders.
- deleted 3y ago
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probablynish 3y ago
It's tempting to read just the headline and see an opportunity to express your views on the great Europe vs US online debate (everyone has a take), but the article does have an interesting thesis. > If you wanted to regulate AI, I think you’d want to regulate somewhere at the production level, not at the consumption level. Why is it that the EU regulators are focusing entirely on the consumption level? > Well, because they are consumers > [...] > I didn’t really get this until I moved to San Francisco. I had never in my life met people who make stuff.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  I am really surprised how someone could miss all the industry making stuff in Europe while there.
- deleted 3y ago
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- sabas123 3y ago
  The distinction between usage and production is a silly one imo. Every producer is also probably a consumer of tools.
  - loeber 3y ago
    Author here. I think you misunderstood the distinction I was drawing. How you train ML models is distinct from how you apply ML models. Regulating applications is so wide-ranging and full of edge cases that it's severely impractical. How you train them is a much narrower scope where you could actually set some regulatory constraints. (I do not endorse regulating AI at this point in time, this is just for the sake of argument.)
    - em-bee 3y ago
      i strongly disagree (or i am not getting your point) first of all, protection of individuals is the only thing that matters. yes, the current rules are a patchwork, but i don't see any alternative. how is setting constraints on the language model going to help protect me from abuse by that model? for example how would such a regulation prevent facial recognition? a more limited model only limits the capacity of a facial recognition system, potentially leading to more false positives which would make things worse. on the other hand, a rule banning facial recognition provides full protection, as does a ban on using machine algorithms to make decisions that affect a persons life. AI use is either safe or low risk, or it is dangerous. those dangers need to be averted. as i see it, the EU does not regulate AI at all. it regulates the harmful effects of technology on people. you can build whatever AI tool you want, as long as you use it in a manner that does not hurt people. or is my understanding of the current regulations wrong?
dm319 3y ago
So someone who reaped all the benefits of living in a social system where education is of a certain standard for all then moves to a deregulated country with huge wealth, education and health inequalities, but has ended up on the rewarding side of that, is now wondering why things are so different.
- deleted 3y ago
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Alcatros552 3y ago
The old european countries understand that education invested in the young results in taxes for the long run. Every soul without healthcare could just die along the way and all the investments are gone including the workpower I find it wrong to call it lack of creating wealth of providerism its neither of those things. Its a fine balance to understand what is best for the entire population
- Detrytus 3y ago
  > The old european countries understand that education invested in the young results in taxes for the long run. But those taxes will go to IRS, because the best and brightest Europeans will emigrate to US, where there are best opportunities for them.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - Alcatros552 3y ago
    thats big bogus we import lots of talent worldwide
  - aziaziazi 3y ago
    Only the opportunist will emigrate to grab those opportunities. Most of the best and brightest europeans are smart enough to find a great job within their own country or close, with a great healthcare, eduction, fresh food, rail system while living close to their family.
n0rlant1s 3y ago
I love how this is a post about the European regulation of technology and people are arguing in the comment section about quality of life
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  well the article clearly says that the problem is that EU passes legislation that are from the point of view of the customer not the producer, which is a way to increase the quality of life, you as a consumer are (more?) protected against the exploitation by those entities with large pockets and zero incentives to behave ethically.
lordnacho 3y ago
He makes some good points about regulation. You don't want to do it in a way that people take a chance in order to pay a small fine in case things work out, while others play by the rules and miss out. But you also can't see regulation as a kind of mass, as in "lots of regulation bad". You can make good rules and you can make bad rules, it's not a question of "there's a lot or a little". Finally, regulation is also a kind of value system. Like a garden, if you have no rules at all, things will grow. If that's all you care about, then you'll be happy with weeds growing all over the paths. In practice, you will care, and you will cut out some of the growth because you don't like it. There are plenty of businesses this has happened to, like tobacco and gambling. Your GDP will be lower than if you just allowed it, but that doesn't make it worse.
elteto 3y ago
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.
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- rightbyte 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
  > 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.
t8sr 3y ago
This article makes me sad, because: 1) It's completely true that the EU's economic outlook is dire. 2) Most Europeans (I am one) do not want to hear it, will not discuss it and will flag this article to avoid having to think about it. To an outsider it might be surprising that this isn't on the political agenda at all. People complain about the gradual deterioration of the economy, but the causes are only discussed at the 6th grade level. (Half the population blames everything on immigration and the other half wants to retire at age 55 and ban this computer nonsense.) Obviously our living standards are only made possible by the fact that our, historically, strong economy has made it possible to import phones and computers from China, produce from South America, tech from the US. But the average European (especially in the West) assumes they are owed these things, and never think about why our purchasing power should be higher than, say, India's. (Or, indeed, why it's dropping compared to the US.)
- loeber 3y ago
  Author here. Glad it resonated with you :)
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earthnail 3y ago
I like the article, but I think the consequences that the author suggests lack insight into what’s really holding European entrepreneurs back. IMO it’s all about simplifying regulation. Simplify tax. Simplify bookkeeping. Simplify hiring and firing. I’ve lived in various European countries and I always get the impression so much energy is spent on solving every edge case with yet another rule, trying to make the world perfectly fair. It arranges the status quo better but prevents a lot of future change. Generally speaking, I firmly agree with the analysis of the author. As far as modern tech like computers go, the “providerism” description is spot on.
- Telemakhos 3y ago
  Thomas More once (I think in the often unread first half of Utopia) that the only fair system of laws is one simple enough for the average citizen to understand. Once you need legal professionals to understand the laws or to navigate the justice system, you're holding people accountable to standards they don't know, and that's fundamentally unjust.
tanepiper 3y ago
Written by a true SV libertarian acolyte annoyed that they can't crack Europe's legislation
orwin 3y ago
So i looked at data, and i don't think its true? https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Share_of_manufacturing https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Share_of_manufactu... https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/CountryRanking?IndicatorCode=11 https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/CountryRanking?IndicatorCode=1... Which, honestly, for non oil-producing countries, not bad.
rossdavidh 3y ago
Good points about poorly structured regulation vs. good, unfortunately obscured by a silly take on who is productive. Where does all the most advanced lithography in the world come from? A Dutch company. The U.S. has nothing to compare, and the Chinese even less so, and without this Dutch company's equipment you cannot make the advanced chips in that iPad, or any modern computer. The points about poorly structured regulation being the worst of both worlds (all the costs with none of the benefits) is solid, though.
- figassis 3y ago
  I think people keep missing the point. Few or fewer does not mean none.
thefz 3y ago
> I had never in my life met people who make stuff. In Europe, my parents worked for non-profits. The parents of my friends were mostly middle managers, financiers, or professional service providers. Living in Silicon Valley is profoundly different, because the people you meet are working on building things that you use. Your milieu is not a whole continent. I know lots of people who actually make stuff.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Of course there are people that make stuff. There are VW factories, there are natural gas wells, there is a baker just down the road selling bread. But the author is using an anecdote to make a point: America is about making stuff. Most people in the US make things. We have government bureaucrats and university professors and data entry people, but a larger portion of our population creates things, it's a part of our culture to be creative, it's no longer really like that in Europe with a few exceptions (the Netherlands for example exports a ton of food) and you see that when you look at aggregate imports vs exports.
  - earthnail 3y ago
    Germany exports an absurd amount of goods. However, many of the goods exported are from older technology value chains - cars for example. It’s dangerous for an exporting country to not be exporting in an entire crucial sector of modern tech: computers.
  - rickydroll 3y ago
    In the US, I'd say some people make things. The rent seekers of wall street try to covert every made thing into a rented thing you never own. Renting discourages maker curiosity and leads people to the comfortable trap of providerism.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > but a larger portion of our population creates things Any data supporting this? USA still runs a trade deficit against Europe.
- 3y ago
nvm0n2 3y ago
This analysis is good but it misses the deeper underlying problems. "Providerism" is sort of a tautological statement if you're talking about sectors in which Europe is a weak exporter (there are sectors in which it is a strong exporter). The actual roots of the malaise are ideological, which is why they are so intractable to solve. In particular a lot of it traces back to the EU (often conflated with Europe), which is [still] seen by many people (and nearly all the political elites) as a grand unifying project; the continent's manifest destiny. The EU sells itself as the Final Solution to the Final Solution, an overriding mission to eliminate any chance of war in Europe ever again through infinite unification. And yet the EU is not a dream but a set of institutions and treaties. It's run by people who justify their existence with reference to glorious ideals like peace and fraternity, but who spend their day to day lives on a relatively limited set of "competences", areas where the EU is delegated power. And this is at the root of many of the problems. Despite the superficial appearance of being merely a technocratic bureaucracy, the Commission is deeply ideological and lately has had Presidents who demand it become even moreso. Its explicitly stated goal is to duplicate or even exceed the cultural and economic unity of the USA without also duplicating the cultural and constitutional aspects. How to achieve this? By wielding the primary tools at its command, namely rules and grants. And so the EU pours forth an endless array of rules and grants. Are they important? Do they matter to voters? Are they clearly drafted? Does the problem they purport to address even exist at all? These questions don't matter. In democratic western governments specific laws are the means to specific ends (hopefully pleasing voters by solving some specific problem), but in the EU, laws are the end in and of themselves. The passing of them is what matters, the impact is secondary. This leads directly to the EU's supporters adopting whatever random treaty-competence-driven legislative agenda the EU adopts as automatically morally good. It can be seen in the flood of HN comments of the form, "As an EU citizen, I am proud to be protected by my benevolent government". The EU doesn't grant citizenship and the protection benefits of cookie banners are debatable, but if you believe the EU creates benevolence merely by existing then there's a powerful incentive to publicly align with it. In such a system it is inevitable that the society it governs will become more and more sclerotic with time, with anything that appeals to the interests of the very specific ruling class immediately becoming chained to the ground by endless rules more or less the moment it's been invented. They literally think they're preventing World War 3 and creating peace on Earth. You won't convince people like that of the benefits of competition and free enterprise, because deep down they believe that "competition" is evil and (for all their mouthing about diversity), that in reality unity is strength. The USA doesn't suffer this problem to the same extent, because the American constitutional arrangement is relatively static and the culture accepts that. It isn't seen as a half-completed project to create utopia through lawfare against disunity, it's seen as a reasonably acceptable arrangement set up centuries ago and which should ideally be left alone as much as possible. The UK, for its faults, did realize at some level that the EU was like this and has now left "Europe" without suffering the consequences that were so confidently predicted. It turns out that you can work together just fine even without any kind of super-state structure, e.g. just this week the intelligence chiefs stated that Brexit had made no impact on European intelligence cooperation despite this being a pre-referedum prediction. Changing the constitution doesn't immediately change the culture of course, but the UK is not an ideological goal in the same way the EU is, and it's now also more democratic again, so the culture there can hopefully self correct given enough time.
Yizahi 3y ago
I don't think that EU lagging behind USA is specifically about this or that regulation or not leaning into blockchain(scratched) into NNs. To have a major shift and possibly (but not guaranteed) success EU need to become a federation. There, I said the forbidden words :) . Filthy imperialist and all that. Having a unified laws (a-la USA), unified army, politics (or rather the lack of unilateral blocking of any policies which exist today, promoting Orban-ism everywhere), unified standards from power sockets to rail signalling and power delivery will free the immense amount of resources. Even with heavier regulations EU Federation would be a MUCH more interesting giant market for new companies than it is today.
nojvek 3y ago
Curious other than Norway with its massive oil funds and Germany with its manufacturing industry, and to some extent France. How do rest of EU ensure exports > imports? Or is it all piggy backing of the big producers like Germany that the Euro is kept strong? What is the incentive for European countries to product more if someone else is doing it for them?
praut 3y ago
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- GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
  Don't do this here
  - praut 3y ago
    [dead]

70 points by dividendpayee 3y ago

For some definitions of wealth, surely. By most quality of life metrics, the average (Western) European is doing as well or better than the average American.

bequanna 3y ago
Can you cite some specifics? I’ve travelled to quite a few places in Europe and coming from the American Midwest, we are beating much of Europe in most/all QoL metrics by a mile. Much larger and nicer homes, larger properties, mincer automobiles, more variety of all consumer goods, higher incomes, more wealth and social mobility to name a few and I live in “flyover” country.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Which QoL metrics?
- Alcatros552 3y ago
  Take life expectancy https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/world-life-expectancy-map https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/world-life-expectancy-ma... or take how we treat the elderly and you will know the difference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhlIiMgDxm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhlIiMgDxm4
- missedthecue 3y ago
  Based on conversations I've had, it seems most Americans who think that way took a vacation to a ritzy area of Barcelona, Nice, or Florence, and and deduced that 100% of Europeans, must live like that.
  - bequanna 3y ago
    That could be. Very interested to hear specific ways the Europeans are beating us and where exactly they are hiding all that prosperity!
- boudin 3y ago
  It's a matter of opinion and what people want, but from American i crossed path with who settled in western Europe: accessible health-care, better infrastructures, holidays and work-life balance are some of the things that are recurring.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I meant by both proxy statistics (e.g. life expectancy) and self-reported statistics (e.g. QoL metrics). I've linked both of those in comments in an adjacent subthread. I, like many Americans, would take a strong safety net, sustainable urban development and a smaller home over the US's mess of a safety net, socially devastating suburban sprawl, and a 4000 sqft McMansion.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tomjakubowski 3y ago
  Suicide rates are a good place to start. Overall the EU's suicide rate is 10.25/100k vs 14.04/100k in the US, and it looks like many places in the Midwest are doing worse than the US average. [1] US suicide rates https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/... [2] EU suicide rates https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/edn-20230908-3 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/e...
dividendpayee 3y ago
The article suggests heavily that, the way things are going, that's not going to be the case in the future. Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off.
- meheleventyone 3y ago
  It doesn’t really succeed in making that case though, there’s a lot of invective but few facts. If you used the same criteria as the author for the US outside of SV how does it compare? And as for AI DeepMind is HQ’d in Europe!
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    > Today’s Europeans are not yet poor — they are still living off the prosperity created by prior generations, and that enables their passive consumption Supported by something also said by others [7] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/26/europe-is-the-free-rider-continent https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/26/europe-is-the-fr... The underlying issue seems to be an incompatibility between egalitarianism and inspiration to individual exceptionalism. Why be great in Europe, if the rewards to being great elsewhere are better, and you can afford to relocate? To benefit from European social benefits? If you're that successful, you've far exceeded that standard from personal wealth! Consequently, you're stuck in a weird middle ground with misaligned incentives papering over a fundamental incompatibility.
    - meheleventyone 3y ago
      I’m aware the opinion exists.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  > Right now, Europeans are still living off past prosperity, but if they don't build a real technology industry and innovate, then future Europeans will be much worse off. As an American, I've heard some variant of this for literally my entire life. Europe is technologically conservative in ways that the US is not. It's unclear that this has, is having, or will have any impact on the actual material wellbeing of the people who live there. Compare life expectancy[1], or just about any self-reported QoL metric[2] (where the US doesn't perform badly, just not better!). [1]: https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/europe-developed-countries/life-expectancy/ https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/euro... [2]: https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/
Racing0461 3y ago
> most quality of life metrics This is what we refer to as "europoor". Sure they have taxpayer funded "healthcare", council "housing", public "transportation" but it's not really what i would want for myself. Those things only exist because the middle class in europe is foced to give up a lifestyle of freedom/autonomy to average it out so the folks below them can get (1 + 0)/2. It won't stand on its own otherwise. Thankfully the decision isn't being made for me by making those things prohibitively expensive to force me to live in urbania.
- bequanna 3y ago
  Also, not paying your fair share for defense seems to have its advantages.
- atoav 3y ago
  So you'd rather live in a villa next to a slum than in a decent house next to a decent house?
  - Racing0461 3y ago
    That's not the tradeoff. It's a decent house out in the suburbs vs some dense urban inner city apartment or something attached to other people with people of varying crazyness for lack of a better word living around you. And if you do want to own a house, it's going to be crazy expensive and cars you can't drive unless it's tuesday and you have an odd numbered license plate. The people living in the villas are the actual wealthy who gets to bypass the system (ie billionaire flying a private jet to a climate change conference to try to get the government to ban cars to force you to use a packed train). I'm advocating for freedom/autonomy for the middle class instead of grouping everyone who isn't a billionaire together. I'm just saying we add one more partition.
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marcusverus 3y ago
Americans have significantly higher disposable income[0] and household net worth[1], and less debt[2]. By what QOL metrics is the average Western European doing better than the average American? [0] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm [1] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-net-worth.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-net-worth.htm#indicator-... [2] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm

kleiba 3y ago

Ah, being 30 again!

askonomm 3y ago

And yet Europeans have vastly higher life quality than Americans ... I wonder why that is ...

missedthecue 3y ago
Yet 3x more Europeans immigrate to the US than Americans going the other direction. People vote with their feet and I feel like the EU vs US online discource is mainly based on vibes rather than facts.
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Not sure this means anything. Almost every European country has a huge number of English speakers. Few Americans speak one of the local languages of Europe well enough to live there. Plus, we'd have to assume people were well informed in general about living conditions in various places.
  - hansvm 3y ago
    Anecdotally, not a single American I've talked to who was on the fence about moving to Europe was deterred by not knowing the native language well enough. Whether overly optimistic or not, the prospect of spending a few months learning well enough to barely get by and spending more time later to become more adept never amounted to even a footnote in the deciding factors.
    - lordnacho 3y ago
      Sure, they convince themselves that everyone speaks English, which is generally true in the kinds of places that hire expats. But plenty of them find it hard to fit in socially, and then leave later.
      - trgn 3y ago
        Yeah, the language factor is hugely underrated. I think it's less the money aspect, and more the fact that American society is more bland, uniform. It's easier to fit in. In Europe, unless it's a true international metro (amsterdam, london, brussels, ...), there's a huge cultural barrier. You just can't hitch into it as an adult. Your children will fit in, but not you.

Phenomenit 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding_disorder

pulse7 3y ago

Why US Fails to Distribute Wealth?

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Detrytus 3y ago
Because equal distribution of wealth takes away all motivation for hard work and innovation. There's no point to work hard just to have your profits taken away in taxes and distributed to lazy bastards that didn't bother to finish high school. America is a land of opportunity: you either win big or lose terribly. Europe is for people who want to play it safe.
- deleted 3y ago
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- atoav 3y ago
  America was the land of opportunity.
FredPret 3y ago
You mean “succeeds in allocating wealth fairly”

roschdal 3y ago

AIs use too much energy, is expensive, created pollution, hallucinates and causes human poverty.

gabrielfernado 3y ago

[dead]

jahalai 3y ago

The statements about providerism and europe not producing anything of value purely focusses on computer technology and not on any other type of technology. Take the agriculture sector; europe's not only produces tons of vegatables/fruits and meat, but it also has strong R&D programs such as seed enrichment, dna modification, etc. There are many other sectors out there

nvm0n2 3y ago
> strong R&D programs such as seed enrichment, dna modification Europe is famous for banning DNA-modified crops under the precautionary principle. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-ban-gmos https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries... You might be able to research them there, but you can't actually make them, and the article is about production not theoretical R&D.

phkahler 3y ago

This is not really ALL of Europe. Germany seems to be quite the industrial country. Maybe that's why they're the largest economic player there.

friend_and_foe 3y ago
Well let's put it in perspective. The GDP of germany is smaller than the overwhelming majority of US states. That's not the whole US, that's each state by themselves. Americans are more productive by an order of magnitude. Not that the various European nations don't have things to offer or aren't doing novel things. There's plenty that they do, but the sheer volume that the US produces across the spectrum including novel things is unmatched by a long shot.
- dmurray 3y ago
  Actually, Germany has a higher GDP (4.4t USD/year) [0] than any of the 50 US states, led by California [1] at 3.6t USD/year. Perhaps you meant GDP per capita, which would make you correct, but your post certainly wasn't phrased that way. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

dang 3y ago

Oh gosh, can we please not do national/regional bickering here? That's not curious conversation (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). As a first step in a better direction, I've changed the baity title to a less baity, or at least more obscure, phrase from the article itself.

elteto 3y ago
dang: could you unflag? It's frustrating when some things can't be discussed on HN because they are insta-flagged as a way to silence them. Although this one is a touchy subject the article does raise some interesting points which could be debated.
- dang 3y ago
  Yes, I turned the flags off a while ago.
  - elteto 3y ago
    Thank you.
t8sr 3y ago
I don't see anything about this post that's against the guidelines. The topic is eminently relevant. I agree with others who have said that this is getting flagged simply because people disagree, on an emotional level. Maybe that's enough to not want this discussion here, but then we should also remove posts discussing Rust (hah).
- dang 3y ago
  I didn't say it broke the guidelines (other than by having a baity title).
n0rlant1s 3y ago
dang: Your about bio says "Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups" and that is exactly what is happening here. It's a fruitful discussion with a lot of nuance and yes, disagreement. Nothing here seems against guidelines

mezeek 3y ago

This applies for literally every country except the US and China. It's not like any of the other G20 countries (not to mention the entire rest of the world) have anything close to "a US tech sector" or anything approaching the level of engineering/science/product/manufacturing capability of the US. California is where the entire world population goes to when they wanna make stuff.

probablynish 3y ago
If you're considering not just tech, but the general mindset of being somewhere that builds/produces things that other people use, as opposed to just industries of middlemen who skim off the top, then I'd argue India also has that mindset, maybe a few other SE asian countries too, and furthermore that nowhere is quite as bad as Europe in terms of having the opposite mindset.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Europe makes a lot of things. Not sure why you think the chemical industry or a place making drilling guidance systems is skimming of the top or a middlemen. It is precisely the mindset of needing to make "stuff" that is keeping Europe back, because then software doesn't count.

n0rlant1s 3y ago

"If they can’t ban products, then it’s not consumer protection: it’s just wealth extraction." Couldn't have said it better myself

lucideer 3y ago

I really like HN: the posts are on deeply interesting topics, & the userbase rarely fails to follow up with in depth technical analysis & insightful context in the comments. It's a pity that every once in a while a post like this comes along & slaps you back to reality by reminding you that there's still a significant contingent that fit the stereotype of brain-dead growth-hacker valley types. --- Reluctant as I am to get into debating this, the essential flaw in this thesis is that consumerism is inherently positive, & that by extension production of a wide range of consumer products is self-evidently proves the utility of such innovations. A side feature is survivorship bias whereby US products will tend to dominate a globalist borderless market by virtue of that international market being constructed to serve the model pursued by US companies. This is less about European individuals being subject to Providerism & more about EU companies being subject to "competition" within a biased arena that extends beyond their borders.

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probablynish 3y ago

It's tempting to read just the headline and see an opportunity to express your views on the great Europe vs US online debate (everyone has a take), but the article does have an interesting thesis. > If you wanted to regulate AI, I think you’d want to regulate somewhere at the production level, not at the consumption level. Why is it that the EU regulators are focusing entirely on the consumption level? > Well, because they are consumers > [...] > I didn’t really get this until I moved to San Francisco. I had never in my life met people who make stuff.

RandomLensman 3y ago
I am really surprised how someone could miss all the industry making stuff in Europe while there.
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sabas123 3y ago
The distinction between usage and production is a silly one imo. Every producer is also probably a consumer of tools.
- loeber 3y ago
  Author here. I think you misunderstood the distinction I was drawing. How you train ML models is distinct from how you apply ML models. Regulating applications is so wide-ranging and full of edge cases that it's severely impractical. How you train them is a much narrower scope where you could actually set some regulatory constraints. (I do not endorse regulating AI at this point in time, this is just for the sake of argument.)
  - em-bee 3y ago
    i strongly disagree (or i am not getting your point) first of all, protection of individuals is the only thing that matters. yes, the current rules are a patchwork, but i don't see any alternative. how is setting constraints on the language model going to help protect me from abuse by that model? for example how would such a regulation prevent facial recognition? a more limited model only limits the capacity of a facial recognition system, potentially leading to more false positives which would make things worse. on the other hand, a rule banning facial recognition provides full protection, as does a ban on using machine algorithms to make decisions that affect a persons life. AI use is either safe or low risk, or it is dangerous. those dangers need to be averted. as i see it, the EU does not regulate AI at all. it regulates the harmful effects of technology on people. you can build whatever AI tool you want, as long as you use it in a manner that does not hurt people. or is my understanding of the current regulations wrong?

dm319 3y ago

So someone who reaped all the benefits of living in a social system where education is of a certain standard for all then moves to a deregulated country with huge wealth, education and health inequalities, but has ended up on the rewarding side of that, is now wondering why things are so different.

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Alcatros552 3y ago

The old european countries understand that education invested in the young results in taxes for the long run. Every soul without healthcare could just die along the way and all the investments are gone including the workpower I find it wrong to call it lack of creating wealth of providerism its neither of those things. Its a fine balance to understand what is best for the entire population

Detrytus 3y ago
> The old european countries understand that education invested in the young results in taxes for the long run. But those taxes will go to IRS, because the best and brightest Europeans will emigrate to US, where there are best opportunities for them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Alcatros552 3y ago
  thats big bogus we import lots of talent worldwide
- aziaziazi 3y ago
  Only the opportunist will emigrate to grab those opportunities. Most of the best and brightest europeans are smart enough to find a great job within their own country or close, with a great healthcare, eduction, fresh food, rail system while living close to their family.

n0rlant1s 3y ago

I love how this is a post about the European regulation of technology and people are arguing in the comment section about quality of life

peoplefromibiza 3y ago
well the article clearly says that the problem is that EU passes legislation that are from the point of view of the customer not the producer, which is a way to increase the quality of life, you as a consumer are (more?) protected against the exploitation by those entities with large pockets and zero incentives to behave ethically.

lordnacho 3y ago

He makes some good points about regulation. You don't want to do it in a way that people take a chance in order to pay a small fine in case things work out, while others play by the rules and miss out. But you also can't see regulation as a kind of mass, as in "lots of regulation bad". You can make good rules and you can make bad rules, it's not a question of "there's a lot or a little". Finally, regulation is also a kind of value system. Like a garden, if you have no rules at all, things will grow. If that's all you care about, then you'll be happy with weeds growing all over the paths. In practice, you will care, and you will cut out some of the growth because you don't like it. There are plenty of businesses this has happened to, like tobacco and gambling. Your GDP will be lower than if you just allowed it, but that doesn't make it worse.

elteto 3y ago

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.

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rightbyte 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
> 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.

t8sr 3y ago

This article makes me sad, because: 1) It's completely true that the EU's economic outlook is dire. 2) Most Europeans (I am one) do not want to hear it, will not discuss it and will flag this article to avoid having to think about it. To an outsider it might be surprising that this isn't on the political agenda at all. People complain about the gradual deterioration of the economy, but the causes are only discussed at the 6th grade level. (Half the population blames everything on immigration and the other half wants to retire at age 55 and ban this computer nonsense.) Obviously our living standards are only made possible by the fact that our, historically, strong economy has made it possible to import phones and computers from China, produce from South America, tech from the US. But the average European (especially in the West) assumes they are owed these things, and never think about why our purchasing power should be higher than, say, India's. (Or, indeed, why it's dropping compared to the US.)

loeber 3y ago
Author here. Glad it resonated with you :)
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earthnail 3y ago

I like the article, but I think the consequences that the author suggests lack insight into what’s really holding European entrepreneurs back. IMO it’s all about simplifying regulation. Simplify tax. Simplify bookkeeping. Simplify hiring and firing. I’ve lived in various European countries and I always get the impression so much energy is spent on solving every edge case with yet another rule, trying to make the world perfectly fair. It arranges the status quo better but prevents a lot of future change. Generally speaking, I firmly agree with the analysis of the author. As far as modern tech like computers go, the “providerism” description is spot on.

Telemakhos 3y ago
Thomas More once (I think in the often unread first half of Utopia) that the only fair system of laws is one simple enough for the average citizen to understand. Once you need legal professionals to understand the laws or to navigate the justice system, you're holding people accountable to standards they don't know, and that's fundamentally unjust.

tanepiper 3y ago

Written by a true SV libertarian acolyte annoyed that they can't crack Europe's legislation

orwin 3y ago

So i looked at data, and i don't think its true? https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Share_of_manufacturing https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Share_of_manufactu... https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/CountryRanking?IndicatorCode=11 https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb/en/CountryRanking?IndicatorCode=1... Which, honestly, for non oil-producing countries, not bad.

rossdavidh 3y ago

Good points about poorly structured regulation vs. good, unfortunately obscured by a silly take on who is productive. Where does all the most advanced lithography in the world come from? A Dutch company. The U.S. has nothing to compare, and the Chinese even less so, and without this Dutch company's equipment you cannot make the advanced chips in that iPad, or any modern computer. The points about poorly structured regulation being the worst of both worlds (all the costs with none of the benefits) is solid, though.

figassis 3y ago
I think people keep missing the point. Few or fewer does not mean none.

thefz 3y ago

> I had never in my life met people who make stuff. In Europe, my parents worked for non-profits. The parents of my friends were mostly middle managers, financiers, or professional service providers. Living in Silicon Valley is profoundly different, because the people you meet are working on building things that you use. Your milieu is not a whole continent. I know lots of people who actually make stuff.

friend_and_foe 3y ago
Of course there are people that make stuff. There are VW factories, there are natural gas wells, there is a baker just down the road selling bread. But the author is using an anecdote to make a point: America is about making stuff. Most people in the US make things. We have government bureaucrats and university professors and data entry people, but a larger portion of our population creates things, it's a part of our culture to be creative, it's no longer really like that in Europe with a few exceptions (the Netherlands for example exports a ton of food) and you see that when you look at aggregate imports vs exports.
- earthnail 3y ago
  Germany exports an absurd amount of goods. However, many of the goods exported are from older technology value chains - cars for example. It’s dangerous for an exporting country to not be exporting in an entire crucial sector of modern tech: computers.
- rickydroll 3y ago
  In the US, I'd say some people make things. The rent seekers of wall street try to covert every made thing into a rented thing you never own. Renting discourages maker curiosity and leads people to the comfortable trap of providerism.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > but a larger portion of our population creates things Any data supporting this? USA still runs a trade deficit against Europe.
3y ago

nvm0n2 3y ago

This analysis is good but it misses the deeper underlying problems. "Providerism" is sort of a tautological statement if you're talking about sectors in which Europe is a weak exporter (there are sectors in which it is a strong exporter). The actual roots of the malaise are ideological, which is why they are so intractable to solve. In particular a lot of it traces back to the EU (often conflated with Europe), which is [still] seen by many people (and nearly all the political elites) as a grand unifying project; the continent's manifest destiny. The EU sells itself as the Final Solution to the Final Solution, an overriding mission to eliminate any chance of war in Europe ever again through infinite unification. And yet the EU is not a dream but a set of institutions and treaties. It's run by people who justify their existence with reference to glorious ideals like peace and fraternity, but who spend their day to day lives on a relatively limited set of "competences", areas where the EU is delegated power. And this is at the root of many of the problems. Despite the superficial appearance of being merely a technocratic bureaucracy, the Commission is deeply ideological and lately has had Presidents who demand it become even moreso. Its explicitly stated goal is to duplicate or even exceed the cultural and economic unity of the USA without also duplicating the cultural and constitutional aspects. How to achieve this? By wielding the primary tools at its command, namely rules and grants. And so the EU pours forth an endless array of rules and grants. Are they important? Do they matter to voters? Are they clearly drafted? Does the problem they purport to address even exist at all? These questions don't matter. In democratic western governments specific laws are the means to specific ends (hopefully pleasing voters by solving some specific problem), but in the EU, laws are the end in and of themselves. The passing of them is what matters, the impact is secondary. This leads directly to the EU's supporters adopting whatever random treaty-competence-driven legislative agenda the EU adopts as automatically morally good. It can be seen in the flood of HN comments of the form, "As an EU citizen, I am proud to be protected by my benevolent government". The EU doesn't grant citizenship and the protection benefits of cookie banners are debatable, but if you believe the EU creates benevolence merely by existing then there's a powerful incentive to publicly align with it. In such a system it is inevitable that the society it governs will become more and more sclerotic with time, with anything that appeals to the interests of the very specific ruling class immediately becoming chained to the ground by endless rules more or less the moment it's been invented. They literally think they're preventing World War 3 and creating peace on Earth. You won't convince people like that of the benefits of competition and free enterprise, because deep down they believe that "competition" is evil and (for all their mouthing about diversity), that in reality unity is strength. The USA doesn't suffer this problem to the same extent, because the American constitutional arrangement is relatively static and the culture accepts that. It isn't seen as a half-completed project to create utopia through lawfare against disunity, it's seen as a reasonably acceptable arrangement set up centuries ago and which should ideally be left alone as much as possible. The UK, for its faults, did realize at some level that the EU was like this and has now left "Europe" without suffering the consequences that were so confidently predicted. It turns out that you can work together just fine even without any kind of super-state structure, e.g. just this week the intelligence chiefs stated that Brexit had made no impact on European intelligence cooperation despite this being a pre-referedum prediction. Changing the constitution doesn't immediately change the culture of course, but the UK is not an ideological goal in the same way the EU is, and it's now also more democratic again, so the culture there can hopefully self correct given enough time.

Yizahi 3y ago

I don't think that EU lagging behind USA is specifically about this or that regulation or not leaning into blockchain(scratched) into NNs. To have a major shift and possibly (but not guaranteed) success EU need to become a federation. There, I said the forbidden words :) . Filthy imperialist and all that. Having a unified laws (a-la USA), unified army, politics (or rather the lack of unilateral blocking of any policies which exist today, promoting Orban-ism everywhere), unified standards from power sockets to rail signalling and power delivery will free the immense amount of resources. Even with heavier regulations EU Federation would be a MUCH more interesting giant market for new companies than it is today.

nojvek 3y ago

Curious other than Norway with its massive oil funds and Germany with its manufacturing industry, and to some extent France. How do rest of EU ensure exports > imports? Or is it all piggy backing of the big producers like Germany that the Euro is kept strong? What is the incentive for European countries to product more if someone else is doing it for them?

praut 3y ago

[dead]

GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
Don't do this here
- praut 3y ago
  [dead]