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I'm not talking about drone legislation here in Europe, but state overreach in tech in general + bad scene for startups compared to the US (for now...) due to politics.



Any concrete examples you are referring to?


Can start with the number of unicorns in USA vs Europe, especially when you take population in to account https://www.failory.com/unicorns


That isn't a concrete example of a regulations that hinder innovation.


What do you think the cause is? Unwashed eggs?


any number of reasons: language barriers, existing American firms anti-competing, smaller domestic markets, less centralisation, and, yes, in some cases, regulation, but, when it comes down to it, it's better to have smaller firms that don't (or less frequently) damage society than larger firms than do, even just from the perspective of wealth distribution.


> it's better to have smaller firms that don't (or less frequently) damage society

I'm not sure about that - I really like my lifestyle which would be nearly impossible to attain in Europe, but is very attainable for Americans.

I don't see how you're materially better off because you're forced to use foreign companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) instead of having your own.


What are you talking about? I am unable to follow your reasoning, maybe you can walk us through?


I think he's saying that, yes, this regulation means that your own companies are more ethical, but European consumers end up using these less-regulated American companies anyway. this is true, but this problem has started to be solved by the EU anyway, for example, with the Digital Markets and Services Acts


Why are you asking me? And what does 'Unicorns' have to do with innovation anyway?


How many of those unicorns are financial black holes never expecting to turn a profit?

And the inclusion of so many cryptocurrency "unicorns" in that list is also quite telling.


So Estonia is better than the US?


> Any concrete examples you are referring to?

Entity formation time; time and capital required to hire the first N employees; number, cost and time of licensing required before first sale can be made. Each are higher in Europe. Combine that with the multiple languages and regulators which inhibits scale and you get the present situation.

Which, I will note, is fine. It’s optimised for stability, not wealth. On the other hand, it naturally means having to choose between American and Chinese tech giants.


> Entity formation time; time and capital required to hire the first N employees; number, cost and time of licensing required before first sale can be made. Each are higher in Europe.

Which Europe? All of those can be done online with minimal effort or upfront investment in many EU countries. Do you mean Belarus?

> Combine that with the multiple languages and regulators which inhibits scale and you get the present situation.

This is true, because the EU is composed of 20+ different countries, each with different languages, cultures, histories, priorities. It's impossible to remove that boundary.


> All of those can be done online with minimal effort or upfront investment in many EU countries. Do you mean Belarus?

Each of them can be done online in most countries. All, very few. I think only Estonia comes to mind. (At least one form in that process requires visiting a notary in most of Western Europe.)

The cost of terminating an employee is also a unique risk that European firms have to capitalise for which American start-ups do not. Again, I understand why one would choose this stability. But it comes with a cost.

> It's impossible to remove that boundary

It's absolutely possible by mandating a lingua franca. But it would cause irreparable damage to those cultures, which is why the EU--sensibly, in my opinoin--has chosen to preserve them. But this is a choice and it comes with costs.


Spain still has not succededed after triying for centuries. Italy has "dialects" [1]. I'm not sure about the local detaild of the other countries.

[1] A dialect is a language without a flag or a float.


The bi annual push for chat control (key „escrow”)


The US had an entire decade of war on cryptography that was literally required to safely transact on the internet, and yet the 90s had plenty of online store startups.


Granted the chat control issue, is unfortunate on the privacy front, however I wouldn't call it a hindrance on innovation.

IMO, often innovation happens because it is motivated to work around rules and regulations. So in many cases regulation and rules are what drives innovation. People want to hack the system and thus have to innovate. A completely hacked and open system doesn't really inspire new ideas, because the old ones just work fine already.


You're talking about innovations in "working around the system." These are often orthogonal to innovations in actual tech.




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