How Europe lost its dominance in tech. Try for FREE for 30 days, and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription
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0:00 Intro
0:18 EU vs U.S. tech company market cap
0:33 Irish brothers start Stripe in America
2:07 Spotify enters the U.S. market
2:46 Europe’s troublesome regulations
3:25 Elon Musk’s work ethic
4:00 EU’s new battery law
5:31 EU’s new AI Act
6:46 Europe’s lagging space industry
8:07 Today’s sponsor: Brilliant
Select broll sourced from Getty
Sources:
Patrick and John Collison image sourced from Stripe
Peter Thiel image (edited by Newsthink): Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Patrick Collison blog post:
Allied Irish Bank: William Murphy, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Ulster bank: Михал Орела, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Goldman Sachs: 2211473abhijithsaravanan, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Elon Musk’s Vator News interview (used with permission):
source
Are there other reasons why Europe lost its edge?
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Trust me as an african this is not sad to me. Long may this continue
Title: Europe’s Missed Opportunity: Economy of Scale
Much has been said about Europe’s aging population, regulatory burdens, and declining entrepreneurial drive. Yet one crucial factor remains overlooked: economy of scale.
Fragmented markets, duplicated infrastructures, and siloed innovation efforts prevent European states from harnessing the efficiencies that scale provides. In a world dominated by unified global actors, Europe’s failure to consolidate is more than inefficient — it’s strategically limiting.
Without scale, competitiveness falters, technological momentum slows, and decisive action becomes elusive. Cooperation is not just desirable; it is essential for relevance.
this is laughable. anti-eu rightwing bullcrap. you claim that starting a business in europe is harder like the entire continent is a monolith, while there are vast differences between eu-member states. you present labour protection as a bad thing? also you claim that eu labour laws hinder productivity, but that’s a flat out lie. when you look ar productivity in relation to the amount of hours worked , europe actually scores higher than the us. and while europe is lagging behind when it comes to high tech, there are lots of other industries where europe is actually leading.
Why are they always comparing a continent(Europe) to a country(united states)? Why can't they compare a single country from Europe to the United States??
Not suprising. EU law is about size of 100 times that of the bible (joke). No small startup can afford to read, memorize and implement all the law. If they make one mistake they can face annihilation on the market by the tax guys or some EU standards reichsdiktat, leading to losing usually the sole source of income and possibly jail for innovating. Demoralizing the wannabe inventor for life destroying all hope that came from a genuine passion and motivation to work. Big competitors have so much money for lawyers to sue any small startup into debt and scare everyone off who dares to touch their monopolies.
Decades pass and america still does not even have to compete to stay on top. As a euro youth i would be loyal to USA and not EU if i had to pick a side. America is not a good choice but EU will be turning to second poorer version china at this pace.
EU invigilates everything, they make demands and do not care how us the plebs live with it – we have to suck it up and do as our master says.
EU was to ban private digital conversation, tried to mandate every company to leave a backdoor for EU cops to read every message and post we send over the internet on demand. Im not sure if it passed but there was a bill to block a website in the entire EU for copyright or wrongthink. They wanted to ban anonymous communication, EU already has made it a criminal offense to sell anonymous crypto past 2027. They tried passing a law punishing people for failing to reveal hard drive contents to the police whether there is anything incriminating or not. They already passed some EU wide digital ID for everyone and added a digital wallet to it – i wonder if they will ban banking one day deeming it a threat of money laundering as they always call it. Tax tax tax, there is nothing but tax, nothing outside of tax and everything belongs to tax.
No freedom of speech, no freedom of information and communication, no freedom of association by extension, and most political views are either suppressed by the state or illegal at all. It is borderline impossible to live by yourself and quit interacting with the state. Its so tiresome.
I tried getting a radio antenna and EU customs denied it. I tried importing electronics and they got halted at the border for non compliance with EU norms. As if i cared for a little home project what EU thinks about it. Want chemicals? Chemicals for a home lab are mostly banned too and you need to risk being caught with an illegal chemical and risk your health and entire lab synthetizing it yourself because you dont have the reichs-license to buy them. No H2SO4 for euros, no pure H2O2 – these are simple and basic chemicals used for everything and i am denied them. At least i can get copper for motors and other electrical components, wow copper is legal. But i cannot refill my car battery myself because H2SO4 is verboten. They make me inhale toxic fumes to get what i need and also have to refine it later and still get a quite bad product, thank you EU. No high power lasers and nothing in optics for euros, best lasers they offer are dumb pointers – you need to risk sight, arsen, health and life to get anything better that you need by building it by hand. In america all these are easy to get, so unfair. I wonder why americans build new things… Perhaps its because they are allowed to play around and actually build their ideas. We are stuck to seeing inventions in textbooks where americans build everything and we watch because the nanny state does not allow her children to grow up.
No. It's not. We simply wont respect IP rights in the future 😂
all im hearing is tech bros cant have European slaves but choice to exploit American workers
fair, startups need to have a better environment in europe. But employee protection, labor laws etc. are a good thing actually, and i'm proud to have that here.
Because Europe experienced socialism
EU is going to die in poverty, but at least we have laws for laws
I wonder if you can talk about the cultural decline of Europe. It almost like almost everything is on "decline".
Stripe most certainly could NOT have been started in Ireland.
I responded to a survey from some UK Gov department recently about what the problems are in UK Sci/Tech. Easy to answer 1) Lack of US style risk capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem. 2) Senior positions of companies are plagued by incompetent, feckless managers who are about self-enrichment and doing 9-5, not doing what's successful or meritocratic.
The primary motive and envision of creating usa was economy, building companies, space explorations, finance, start ups , banks, free market, Liberty, no constraints or restraints on any new ideas, innovation and implementation of brand new ideas and thoughts and get help from govt.
Lack of hassle in business, entrepreneurship.
Mostly usa built for liberty and economical reason.
Europe is more like a Home. Work a bit, make money, relax, do a bit business, go for holidays and come back , go for a vacation, enjoy, work life balance.
Its non competitive but a healthy lifestyle back in Europe.
Usa is like fierce competition place with dozens of experiments are going on with rules and regulations but a free country.
Now i get it. 😅🇺🇸🇪🇺😀😇
Why is stopping AI from discriminating and asking companies to not use slaves for battery production seen a bad thing? Sure America is faster in those industries but at what cost. I'm not European but I actually thought both those initiatives were very forward thinking.
Stupid clickbait video. Eu is doing fine it's just not commercial and more intellectual Top20 physicians maths etc all from Europe. Science overall Newton darvin Einstein Freud Gauss etc. Go study USA bachelor physics everything u learn was developed in eu. Xbox PlayStation Facebook is for children
Wow. after watching this it's no wonder so many Europeans are bitter with the U.S.
❤❤😍😍💕💕
Companies will go to other countries where labour laws are favourable for them. Eg the US, where it is easy for companies to hire and throw people. Like companies, people also move there for the immediate pay increase but you work your rear off. At the end of the day if companies leave Europe for US for the benefit of easy regulations, I am fine. I am sure those companies won't survive just by doing business there. They will need a presence in the European soil and all major companies prefers to have a foothold in EU and Japan than being just in the US. Regulations in Europe is stricter than the US, where as in the US, it is purely profit driven and the employee satisfaction is poor. I am happy for such companies to leave, at the end of the day you are not a slave for any company.