It's really tiring to see the same handful of arguments on HN every time anything related to Europe or the EU is posted on here. Yes, some things the USA is doing better than Europe, but far from everything and depending on your political leanings (or rather social position) even most.
In this case, it's not hard to make the argument that you can't have one without the other.
If you're always going to lean into risk aversion and safety nets, you will lose to the player who is willing to make more risks. This involves the losers losing bigger, but the winners winning bigger.
That's what the US is compared to Europe. The winners are better off, but the losers are worse off.
Everything is a trade off. But it's highly unlikely you can have best of both worlds in the long run.
The context of the article is an innovation fund for tech startups. The comment was a dumb remark about how the US will fail in this domain. Airbus is not relevant to the discussion because Airbus is not a tech startup.
So, Spotify and raises eyebrows … SAP. Innovative.
Nobody here is seriously suggesting the EU doesn't compete economically. The conversation is focused on tech companies, which is in the subject of the thread. Broadly the EU competes very well with the US, China and globally more generally. In most tech areas the EU continues to lag far behind the US and China.
except you seem to think (like many others commenters in this thread) that "tech" means solely "silicon valley-type startups", which it does not.
I'll give you some examples that usually stun the average Italian hence they usually stun most other people as well. You think Italy and probably think fashion but in fact the Top 10 Italian exports are (first semi-random results):
1) Machinery including computers: US$116 billion (17.2% of total exports)
2) Pharmaceuticals: $55.5 billion (8.2%)
3) Vehicles: $47 billion (7%)
4) Electrical machinery, equipment: $45.8 billion (6.8%)
5) Gems, precious metals: $25.7 billion (3.8%)
6) Plastics, plastic articles: $24.3 billion (3.6%)
7) Articles of iron or steel: $21.4 billion (3.2%)
8) Mineral fuels including oil: $19.4 billion (2.9%)
9) Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $17.4 billion (2.6%)
10) Clothing, accessories (not knit or crochet): $16.4 billion (2.4%)
I see a lot of "tech" in this list, I had this very same conversation with a German Private Equity last week but they are well aware and invest in "tech", just not the "tech" the average HN visitor think about
"Tech" as in "toolmaking" is a category so broad to be almost useless. (And somewhat questionable too, when the likes of Google make money with something that is more of a service : advertising.)
"Infocom" has always been clearer to me, not sure why its usage waned so much ?
My mistake, I'd forgotten Dodge was owned by Stellantis.
That said, multiple American car companies (Dodge, Jeep, Chrystler) going under and ending up owned by an EU conglomorate sure doesn't feel like a stirling defense of GP's claim, I.E., "What the EU builds is not competitive with what America builds"
I mean, Jeep and Dodge (when owned under their American umbrella corp., FCA) were later found to be using similar defeat devices (see "Other manufacturers [0]). Though if you want to smear them, you may as well go all in and point out they were the original Nazi car brand - not even Tesla has that kind of credibility
Spotify is a Swedish company and is the defacto music streaming company, Supercell is one of the largest mobile game companies and is Finnish, Mistral AI is French. There are a lot of European companies that have solid footprints in America.
How many of the top level comments are just blanket assumptions that this is going to be corrupt without any pointing at specifics of this proposal? The knee-jerk reactions are strong
Because it's their experience with how the EU is run. These top level commenters you refer to don't want to waste their time with the specifics is the proposal because they believe that these initiative is a poorly managed redistribution of tax money.
I don't think VC system is good, but I'm tired of going in to EU calls to only see there's actually no money for start-ups but it's often earmarked to keep big EU companies afloat and competitive. This is in itself not a bad thing, pretty much everyone does it (US military industrial complex for example). So I accepted these as money injection to big business rather than expecting it to tickle down to small businesses or start-ups.
On start-up funding we have a systematic issue of European wealth going to US for investment and EU start-ups going to US to find investment. These EU money injections doesn't solve it imho.
Seems comparison makes certain regions look good or bad, and that could lead to accountability which would be good or bad depending upon how you benefit or not from the policy.
That’s part of the problem with globalists who want a single world government, one government for the world deprives the people of choice.
