This is easily one of the best written and most uninformed articles I have read on Medium.
But that is not its core problem. Its problem is that it makes assertions that are patently contrary to actual metrics. And it apparently bases most/all of its assumptions on the UK as Europe.
And, as every genuinely intelligent person knew even before Brexit: UK, ce n’est pas l’Europe.
What is a success story and how do you know?
The bizarre feature of this article is represented best by a remark that is patently and easily controverted by looking on the road and sales numbers:
“The UK does even worse, with chronically inept management over decades ensuring that its supposed flagship automotive brands (Rolls-Royce, Bentley) are merely small sub-divisions of large European companies (BMW and VW respectively) and its larger engineering firms are chronically mismanaged.”
And then, thank you once again, for making my positions easy to prove:
“Many Europeans shrug their shoulders at all of this, believing that profits are evil and relatively free markets are bad.”
So here are some interesting numbers to work back from wrt to the “chronically mismanaged” companies drueben, au de la... The only place where the US looks “better” is in services Travel (makes sense) and some financial services. Yeah, that employs a lot people that distributes benefits widely and fairly. NOT:
Let’s take Germany, for example. A country the size of Montana and a population ¼ of USA and practically no natural resources and largely land-locked:
(Numbers are 2019)
BRD GDP: 3.861T
USA GDP: $21.43T
BRD CURRENT ACCOUNT SURPLUS: +$289,603,130
USA CURRENT ACCOUNT DEFICIT: -$480,230,000
BRD-CHINA TRADE BALANCE: +22.2bb
USA-CHINA TRADE BALANCE: -283.6bb
BRD Average Lifespan: 80.89 years
USA Average Lifespan: 78.54 years
The “adorable posture” of Europeans (exemplified by BRD) gives them not just longer lives and easier lives (everything from vacation to education and crime and mental health), it also lets them KICK ASS when it comes to real measures of success.
And you cannot manufacture a bottle of coke, a pharmaceutical, a car body and a vast number of other things without German tech. Those currently unimportant (nope) vaccines would not get made without it, for instance. You just don’t get the whoopies! and marketing and hype because these companies just keep innovating without all the hoopla of who becomes a billionaire overnight.
And when you take a company like Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, etc, the dependency on Dutch and British companies is unthinkable. ASML, ARM, NXP, etc.
What’s important to note about this, too, is that the hype and wealth slung about by US “tech” sector is a lot of that, hype and wealth. But let’s even be clearer: If you know how many Europeans both invented or first discovered the innovations that are part of US tech success – past and present – you might reflect on the educational and social advantages. In other words, both in person and intellectual property, Europeans are constantly lending development assistance. And there are many, but as a reminder here is a sampling:
Programming Languages - theory – UK
Programming Languages - first – UK
Relational DBs – UK
Programming Languages high level – Germany
Programming Languages, Compilers high level – Germany
Programming Languages OO, 1st widely used general purpose and hi/low-level: Denmark
Linux – Finland
Sun Micro – First and most successful commercialization of Unix and RISC (not to mention a vast number of other things): Germany and India
Cloud, Scalable NoSQL – Netherlands
And on and on.
If you look into the teams and leaders in many successful modern tech companies, they are hugely dependent on European talent and initiative. And that excludes the vast amount of talent that comes from India and East Asia.
But the real perspective here is what the US had more than anything is a giant head start. And a huge number of scientists from Europe came over here and laid many of the theoretical and practical foundations of the USA’s tech lead. Europe meanwhile concentrated mostly on recovering its industrial dominance while the USA set out to destroy theirs. And as a bonus, European unions and living standards eclipsed USA’s, USA’s declined and continue to decline in comparison.
So, there you have it: The real story.
