I feel like this will be an enternal debate on HN. I also think there’s no need to come up with a definitive answer. The EU and US have fundamentally different perspectives on a bunch of things that results in a very similar but mildly different society. Trying out different ideas is good. Variation is good.
Don't forget that while we have competing interests and disagree strongly on many things - overall we are friends. When someone does something that works we all benefit. Sometimes we decide what "they" did is better can switch, other times we decide what "they" did is worth overall but they did develop something that we didn't that we can use. Even if "they" are clearly worse, "we" cannot do it all and so both of us specializing in something different results in both of us getting the benefits of both to at least some extent.
And that's all we're asking, guvner. Can we try not having "tech giants"? We've tried and there are all sort of issues that negatively affect society, privacy, innovation, ...
I would be surprised. Sure money is good, either direct (if taxes are paid) and the trickle down stuff from a lot of big salaries. But we don't tolerate employee 'abuse' that is rampart in US, we don't like too-big-to-fail, mega corporations messing massively with laws that should govern them.
And the massive success in US is at least partially a side effect of being able to be harsh, move very fast (ie fire half of company when needed). We don't have such adaptability, some say for good reason, some disagree.
I don't think any smart politician doesn't see this clearly, but we lean way more left generally than even democrats in US, so at the end directions taken are roughly in same direction, but otherwise unique.
As long as there is overall freedom of movement and thought and cca fair competition we are all better off as such, I have US colleagues who love it here, and I know few folks who are happy across the pond.
Yes, but afaict not with the lack of giants. It's more "we want to have lots of successful startups like in silicon valley". Some become giants, most not.
Come to think of it... don't politicians in Alaska, Washington, Colorado, Nebraska, Arkansas, Florida and so on also want startups like in silicon valley?
Boulder, Colorado is where Tech Stars (the 2nd most successful incubator after YC for most of the past 2 decades) started and despite having a population of ~100k people, Boulder is where many of Tech Stars biggest successes happened.
Washington is home to Microsoft and Amazon, so it's doing okay, too.
