Comment by pembrook
8 months ago
Not sure how you could possibly come up with this idea — but I’d recommend not consuming hysterical media narratives and instead looking at actual data. This is a chart of globally relevant companies founded in Europe in the last 50 years:
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/s/1Fn23uYVxK
The data depicts the exact opposite of what you are saying. As an entrepreneur, you can be “safe” knowing you will have far less chance to succeed in the EU.
These just compare market cap. As the US economy is disproportionally financialized, that outcome is hardly surprising: This was just measuring market financialization by proxy. I mean two of the largest on the left, Google and Meta, are essentially just ad companies.
Now compare companies by actual revenue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_E...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_t...
I omitted the 50 years distinction because, unsurprisingly, the companies in the US are younger.
None of these are actually relevant for founders, however, as even in the US you only have a couple dozen large cap companies, but millions of founders.
What is relevant is the share of employers per capita, as that shows us how many founders actually exist.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.MPYR.ZS?most_rec...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.MPYR.ZS?most_rec...
Yes, Europe did have great entrepreneurial culture in the past, but the point of the “founded in the last 50 years” distinction is to measure how things have been going for entrepreneurs who are still alive today.
You can’t call a region a “safe haven for entrepreneurs” if all the globally relevant entrepreneurs from that region are dead from old age.
Remember, Europe has double the population of the US. To lag behind so dramatically in the last 50 years is absolutely something to be concerned about.
Having to move the goalposts to the 1850s to make a point about relevant European businesses should be alarming to you.
Your point is well taken, but I think we need to question why Europe declined so significantly as a centre of innovation.
A big part of it is obviously the relative effects of twentieth century wars, both hot and cold. However, we also need to be aware that in recent decades, the US has just offered a better deal for entrepreneurs than Europe. By that I mean it has been a democratic, rule-of-law-based country with relatively easy access to capital and relatively low taxes.
It still has the last two things, of course. But the first two are also essential, long-term, and if they're eroded then the US might stop looking like a better deal.
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Lag by what measure? Cities are just better as cities, laws are annoyingly bureaucratic but actually work, your neighbour isn't likely to shoot you dead... The US does better on abstract statistics like GDP, but... GDP is biased in favour of whoever issues the global reserve currency, so that doesn't actually mean a lot unless you are specifically trying to accumulate units of global reserve currency.
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But if that is true, why does the EU actually has almost double the entrepreneurs per capita the US has, as I have linked?
> Having to move the goalposts to the 1850s to make a point about relevant European businesses should be alarming to you.
Please actually have a look at the EU list and click through to the companies. They are all directly linked in Wikipedia. The majority is from the 1980s and younger.
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Stop pretending that America of today is anything like America of 15 years ago
Please elaborate on the anti-entrepreneur shifts that have occurred in the US in the last 15 years that would disrupt this trend. I’m not aware of them.
If this were true, 15 years would definitely be enough time to show up in some form of data you can cite about the death of American startup culture.
Who is talking about the last 15 years? We are talking about the last 15 weeks.
America has jut installed a corrupt autocratic government that has immediately become mired in corruption, graft and defiance of the rule of law.
That will have a negative effect going forward.
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Historical data is not great for forming an argument when the basis is that things have radically changed and historical results don't matter anymore.
How much of this is because of the US strong-arming companies in their sphere of influence? Nobody here actually forgot the MegaUpload fiasco, it's just that people pretend to forget abusive relationships.