> Dutch MP Barbara Kathmann, author of four of the motions, told The Register. "If we continue outsourcing all of our digital infrastructure to billionaires that would rather escape Earth by building space rockets, there will be no Dutch expertise left."
This kind of casual anti-technology attitude among European politicians is part of the reason we are in this mess.
No. The main reason we got in this mess is because the US is a better market for startups, simply because of the amount of available money, and the fact that it’s easier to start in a market with 340M people who speak the same language.
Also yes, because it's easier to start in a jurisdiction with sane laws and bearable tax burden, none of which is available in the EU. EU is indeed drowning in mind boggling bureaucracy.
This popular mythology in certain circles but it relies on people not calculating the effective total tax rate, including local and property taxes, and in that case California is the 13th cheapest state in the country:
You also want to consider what your taxes fund – for example, a startup founder probably benefits from proximity to two of the best university systems in the country and the better quality of life means you get more top people in your employee and networking pools. The ultra-rich are going to leave but a founder who isn’t already in the top income bracket is making an economically rational decision.
This is extremely enlightening. I'm not surprised New York is basically the most expensive state to live in. There are obvious outliers though, such as Alaska, where you end up paying 50% markup on most basic home amenities just because of transit costs. I think I need to check up on where most of NYS money is really going.
Lag effect. 30-40 years ago, California was a different place, way more business friendly. Lots of military connected companies. Lots of money. Lots of people moving there. Educated workforce. It's very different now.
Israel is a small market and English fluency is worse than much of Western Europe (imo roughly comparable to France), yet they were able to crack the US market despite both being poorer than much of Western Europe until barely a couple years ago and having similar access to American markets.
And barely 20-25 years ago, Dutch firms like Philips NV and NXP Semi were both major players in the electronics and software industry, yet squandered their lead.
The issue is European leaders in both the private and public sector just don't care for technology, are overwhelmingly from legal and non-STEM financial/consulting backgrounds. The capital flight due to the Eurozone crisis also played a role, but Israel was also heavily impacted by that as well.
But, at least speaking for Germany here, the anti-technology stance of politicians and Germans in general certainly has a huge part in hampering the startup scene.
This always goes both ways. It's not wrong to be skeptical and wanting privacy etc., but it also means it's harder to make bank by tracking everyone and selling their data, which has been a huge part of American technology startups for over a decade. And it often also just means, people don't trust new things and will not try them.
Not sure this applies equally to the Netherlands though.
They appear to be chastising the billionaires, not the space tech. Chastising space tech would not fit in with the argument they are advancing about the need to adopt local tech. However, chastising the US billionaires definitely supports their argument.
I can read what was said without your interpretation of it.
Fast forward 20 years and Europeans will be hopelessly dependent on SpaceX just like they are on big tech now.
They're billionaires because they invested in tech that the whole world is dependent on now. Chastising them shows that European technophobic bureaucrats still don't get it.
Chastising "billionaires that would rather escape Earth"; the goal isn't developing space tech, it's escaping the world instead of fixing it with their resources.
Anti-technology is just a dog whistle for anti-capital. Billionaires have made things exceptionally worse. Facebook was started as a way to rate women’s faces, is the foundation our data collection industry is built off of. We need to tear down the entire system and rebuild something else.
I still can't even see what supposed anti-technology content there is in the quote. But perhaps there's a broader context to incorporate that those from Europe could explain to Americans?
You may not agree with the sentiment, but the quote isn't anti-technology.
It doesn't say that "escaping Earth" is an inherently bad thing, it simply highlights the perils of outsourcing digital infrastructure to certain billionaires who wish to do so. Which is a valid concern.
This is not "anti-technology"-- it is just a potshot at Elon Musk.
You could also accuse it of mixing up issues of infrastructure independence, wealth inequality and increasing plutocratic tendencies. All of those do deserve a nuanced discussion (instead of a single catchphrase).
But labeling this as as "anti-technology" is simply incorrect, and we need to do better than that.
It isn't anti-technology, it's anti-capital/anti-big-business. If you don't allow businesses to scale-up because billionaires are bad, then you're biggest companies will be those that are from the previous century.
> Europe’s lack of industrial dynamism owes in large part to weaknesses along the “innovation lifecycle” that
prevent new sectors and challengers from emerging. These weaknesses begin with obstacles in the pipeline
from innovation to commercialisation. Public sector support for R&I is inefficient due to a lack of focus on disruptive
innovation and fragmented financing, limiting the EU’s potential to reach scale in high-risk breakthrough technologies. Once companies reach the growth stage, they encounter regulatory and jurisdictional hurdles that prevent
them from scaling-up into mature, profitable companies in Europe. As a result, many innovative companies end
up seeking out financing from US venture capitalists (VCs) and see expanding in the large US market as a more
rewarding option than tackling fragmented EU markets. Finally, the EU is falling behind in providing state-of-the-art
infrastructures necessary to enable the digitalisation of the economy.
I sincerely have no idea why mentioning the anti-technology stance of the EU always gets downvoted on HN.
It's almost like people are confusing the contents of the comment with the comment itself, expressing their disdain for the legal burden of the EU by downvoting a comment mentioning that fact.
This kind of casual anti-technology attitude among European politicians is part of the reason we are in this mess.