“They've been indoctrinated into thinking that if a business makes money, it must be cheating. The entire continent has Stockholm Syndrome from decades of leftist academics preaching that profit = exploitation, as if every entrepreneur is some 19th-century robber baron twirling a mustache”
So true!! As a university professor, this nails it. It’s sad — Amsterdam, for instance, used to have such a strong culture of business. But that vitality has greatly diminished.
This is very misleading, just look at the data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_compan...
Yes, it's different for different countries, and some EU countries are less startup friently. But countries like Norway or Estonia have ~1 unicorn per 1M people, just 50% of US (~2)
Your description of the European intellectual climate is admittedly accurate if somewhat hyperbolic.
But I think your analysis of the root causes is lacking. European humans aren't different organisms than non-european humans. Culture does not form in a vacuum. It comes from base properties of the geography and experiences of humans in the region.
In my opinion, it's primarily down to 3 things:
1) Population density: Europe has 3X the population density (and subsequent urbanization) as the US. Urbanization leads to more collectivist attitudes. If you compare European attitudes to those in a high density American location like New York City, you'll be amazed how similar (in everything from religiosity to socialist economic leaning to political philosophy). It's the higher proportion of low population density areas of the US that lead to major differences in political philosophy.
2) Experience of downside risk: European risk aversion is quite easily explained by the fact they have experienced the most extreme version of downside risk imaginable in recent memory (WWII). The worst thing the US knows is a depression. Not total annihilation, fire bombing and markets going to 0.
3) Ethnocentrism: Europe's nationalist ethno-states are far less culturally diverse than the broader US. This leads to a higher capacity of empathy for strangers (because people in a mono-culture are more similar to you, you empathize with them more easily). Ironically though, this empathy is what leads to a higher percentage of GDP being driven by centralized government spending (50% in Europe vs. 30-35ish% in USA). The market is less empathetic, but ultimately more efficient and grows the overall pie faster...even accounting for the additional increase in inequality.
Growth compounds exponentially, so this gets more dramatic over time. People in podunk US Midwest States now have a higher disposable income per capita (on both mean and median measures) than people in London, a place you would traditionally think of as among the richest in the world.
But again, the US didn't get here because 'culture.' It got here due to design decisions made hundreds of years earlier. Being a multicultural society reveals base human racist leanings, which results in more individualist governance, which leads to a greater embrace of markets and private capital, which leads to faster growth.
Coudenhove-Kalergi writes about this dichotomy you mention between urban man and rural man right at the beginning of the book "Practical Idealism." I think you will find it highly relevant.
I'm not so sure your first point is correct. Would you consider the Nordic countries to be collectivist? Because they are among the most sparsely populated countries in Europe, more sparsely than the US, but they are the countries with the best government services. Also, Canada is more sparsely populated the US.
The north is different due to the weather. I mean, sure, Canadian tundra and the Nordic Arctic and Sub-Arctic is technically land, but I'm not sure you're getting a good comparison of population density by including it in calculations. That would be like calculating the oceans around the US in population density numbers since people live on boats technically.
Nordic countries have small populations due to the limitation of arable land to support humans at all. The US has no such limitation and could support vastly more population.
Incredible to see such blind fanaticism here on HN. The sheer ingnorant, anti-europeanism here is incredible. Europe socialist? Hates capitalism? The home of thacher, austerity, the EU is socialist? I just don't even know what media one consumes to get this kind of world view.
Is this how american's justify selling their country to the highest bidder? "at least we're not eating toilet paper like the europeans". You know, some of the richest people in the world...
> anti-capitalist activists using iPhones, riding in Ubers, and ordering Amazon deliveries…
> every single job, iPhone, and modern convenience they enjoy exists because someone, somewhere, took a risk to make a profit.
Amazingly capitalists use things invented by socialists, like satellites, or the LED. Or things invested by Nazis and Monarchists.
Their favourite iPhone is made by communists, with minerals mined by .. well I am not sure what you call em but they are not capitalists
Every day Capitalists use public sanitation, running water, Education, GPS, police and prosecution but they imagine they could exist in a mad max world instead of dying of cholera
China is the most economically capitalist major country on earth. In fact, they embrace capitalism more than the US if you compare percentages of GDP driven by government spending.
50% of European GDP is government spending. The USSR was 70-80%. Meanwhile China is currently at 30%.
China has been a capitalist state since the 70s with a turn to State Capitalism in the 2010s. Furthermore, China's leadership remains anti-Welfarism, with Xi himself making speeches against expanding the already weak social safety net.
> Every day Capitalists use public sanitation, running water, Education, GPS, police and prosecution but they imagine they could exist in a mad max world instead of dying of cholera
Capitalism doesn't preclude public infrastructure. That's just a facile argument.
> the LED
The modern LED was developed by Texas Instruments and Bell Labs in the 1950s.
> like satellites
Both the US and the USSR knew about how to launch satellites in space by the mid-1950s. It was the USSR that chose to prioritize it, and the US that chose to deprioritize it.
> Their favourite iPhone is made by communists, with minerals mined by .. well I am not sure what you call em but they are not capitalists
Do you think those miners are volunteering out of revolutionary solidarity? Or perhaps "disposable cogs in the global supply chain" was the term you were looking for?
The USSR was a state-run economy. Workers got wages, sure, but the mines, the profits, the whole system was controlled by the government, not private owners chasing profit. Capitalism isn't just "getting paid," it's about who owns the means of production and how wealth circulates.
>Europeans don't just dislike capitalism. They've been indoctrinated into thinking that if a business makes money, it must be cheating. The entire continent has Stockholm Syndrome from decades of leftist academics preaching that profit = exploitation, as if every entrepreneur is some 19th-century robber baron twirling a mustache.
Your prior is objectively false, because Europe has the Stripe and Spotify founders (both of which became billionaires during the last 15 years or so).
Come on, the U.S is devolving into a fascist dictatorship as we speak, mostly due to capitalism and the worship of wealth. And for as long as capitalism remains, it will only get worse and worse, because capitalism is deeply flawed in that it has exponential power concentration built it. Monopolies form and rent seeking wealth siphons the wealth from the working people to the top. Breaking large companies would help, but it's like fighting a fire with buckets of water, eventually concentrating capital corrupts the regulators and this happens. If you can't see the connection between what's happening and capitalism, you really should think about it more objectively.
People are also happier in most European countries than they are in the US, because the constant competition for wealth and using wealth as the measure of what everyone is worth is not good for mental health and does not lead to a peaceful society, but one where people are set against each other. Europe has problems, but fixing them with capitalism is not going to lead to better lives for most people.
This sounds plausible on the surface, but by putting them all in the same basket you show that you have no idea what you are talking about : it's a bit like blaming wokists for their voting for Trump because wokists are from the USA and Trump was elected in the USA...
Europeans don't just dislike capitalism. They've been indoctrinated into thinking that if a business makes money, it must be cheating.
Those are some big assumptions about 750 million people. Would love to see the data on this.
> In America, a 20-year-old can drop out of college, code an app in his dorm, and become a billionaire. In Europe? Good luck.
Assuming that's the case with you, right? And if not, then why not if it's so simple? Everybody knows that these cases are extremely rare, but they do happen both in the US and in the EU.
> The ultimate proof that Europe's system is broken? Its smartest people leave. Engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs, they all flee to the U.S., Switzerland, or Singapore, where they're allowed to keep what they earn.
Again, would love to see the data on this. Based on my own personal anecdata, one of the reasons why IT engineers don't move to the US despite being offered to do so is because they enjoy the other benefits of living in the EU, like high-speed rail, free health-care, free higher education, being car independent, childcare benefits and having more days off.
