Comment by FirmwareBurner
7 months ago
Hear me out, I have a tinfoil hat theory. What if, those requirements weren't put to help small shops making a new browser, but to guarantee the big shops who already have a browser are getting fined? *hits bong*
And this is why the EU's GDP versus the US is now only 65% and shrinking. The regulations are about beating US companies into compliance, sometimes with righteous motives; but there's no forethought on how a domestic EU startup might be able to comply, or how a startup would convince investors to take the gamble.
Yeah, because EU software companies were totally destroying the American software industry before the last decade…
The EU’s relatively shrinking GDP has much more to do with their populations growing older and their population size stabilizing, and the relatively tiny amount of migration, than EU digital laws, most of which have been replicated throughout the world.
Additionally, the EU has always had weak financial markets, and the only strong financial center, the city of London, quit the EU and both the EU and the city of London have suffered because of that, with a whole bunch of LSE listed companies moving to New York (including possibly Shell, which would be devastating for London as a financial center).
>The EU’s relatively shrinking GDP has much more to do with their populations growing older
I'm not buying this argument. Same how the US's economy isn't stronger because Americans have more kids because we're not talking about agrarian civilizations here where every pair of hands on the farm ads proportional labor output. In service based economies, a smart person with a wealthy VC behind him can generate the GDP growth of tens of thousands of traditional labor jobs so population growth isn't the bottleneck.
EU economy is weak not because of lack of more kids, but because they have not captured any high growth industries (specifically tech) to generate better jobs and new wealth for future generations of youth. Europe is all old wealth and in the hands of old people. Once the economy becomes a fixed pie with no growth, population growth follows suit. EU economy is weak because after 2008 they went the route of austerity while the US printed it's way out dumping cheap money on fueling economic growth.
If Europeans would hypothetically start having way more kids tomorrow, those kids would end up being even poorer having to share the same fixed pie of limited economic resources. Another argument why more kids != wealthier for Europeans, is a news I read today of another local university graduate who moved his start-up to the US, so what's the point in making more kids if they have no funds to increase the GPD here and they leave? More kids with no comparable growth in money = those kids competing with India or Bangladesh.
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> Yeah, because EU software companies were totally destroying the American software industry before the last decade…
In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44553811 I pointed out that in the past a lot (former) successful German software were simply bought out by US-American software companies.
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That's not necessarily true; as the EU had many major players, especially historically: SUSE, Ericsson, Nokia, SAP; all were or are being shredded by US competition despite a domestically entrenched position. Even in 2008, when both economies did badly, the EU and the US had nearly identical GDP figures.
The EU might point to ASML as a point of pride; but that assumes an ASML competitor wouldn't get tens of billions to compete the moment ASML is inconvenient.
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If my coworkers are anything to judge by, the smart ambitious Europeans are coming to work in tech in the US to seek their fortune.
> US is now only 65% and shrinking.
It's a fake news that just don't take into account on currency value change (euro has lost some value between 2019 and 2024). But if you look really want to look at it this way, I have a bad news for new: USA has shrink 15% since January compared to Europe as EUR go from 1$ to 1.15$.
If we look at GDP at purchasing power parity from 2007 to 2023 we have this:
- European Union: 31,162 => 61,217, +96% (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...)
- USA: 48,050 => 82,769, +72% (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...)
Which shows a slight catching-up by the European Union over the period.
>GDP per capita, PPP (current international $)
In other words, it's already been adjusted for exchange rates. If you adjust for today's USD/EUR exchange rate, you're double-adjusting it. The US dollar has dropped in the recent months, and much of that is arguably due to bad decision making by the current administration, but it hardly refutes the claim that US growth has outpaced EU growth for the few decades.
No they are about improving the lives of EU citizens.
America doesn't give a flying fuck about it's people it puts corporations first.
Now I don't judge every nation has it's own culture.
Actually, that's because the USA has the world reserve currency as a result of the former Bretton Woods system, itself a result of World War 2. This allows it to command a large exchange rate premium without having to actually work for it. This is the reason the USA has a larger GDP per capita than every other country except for a bunch of tax havens (which have artificially inflated total GDP).
you mean the US GDP is bigger because the US lacks consumer and environmental protection?
We can look at China that is focused on growth at all costs. If you look at rare earth metals, they're equally distributed but they are toxic to extract. The west has pretty much stopped extracting. China is still going full steam ahead. https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic...
China would bulldoze my hometown in 2 seconds if it meant an addition 0.1 GDP. I would say that the US is between Europe and China for balancing GDP vs protecting its citizens.
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Everything has tradeoffs. You can protect children extremely well, if you mandate that every household have a live-in social worker, subsidized by the government with a 30% caretaker tax on top of standard income tax. If a government were to pass such legislation, do you hate children and love money that much to want to repeal it?
At some point, protections are not feasible - and the EU's "consumer and environmental" protections are apparently unfeasibly expensive in their current form to have a competitive economy. This is also self-defeating, as only in the context of a competitive economy, would these protections have any merit or be enforceable. Beggars can't be choosers.
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Probably the case!