Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Jasmine Sun's avatar

I broadly like & agree with this characterization! One note though —

> The US, in turn, benefitted from … a combination of the New Deal and not being economically decimated by World War II. As European nations rebuilt their economies and constitutions from scratch, scarred by the memory of the Great Depression, they were sympathetic towards social-democratic policies and strong unions. The US felt no need to change course and give the workforce a greater role in economic governance.

This is path dependence, sure, but it's also the way that historical circumstance affects political culture (more sympathy/support for social democracy + worker protections), which then gets institutionalized as policy, right? I think culture & its perpetuation does matter — but that its origins are deeper than surface-level personality traits (e.g. tall poppy syndrome) + policy is often required to "lock it in"

Expand full comment
Steve Crossan's avatar

The 'why we should care' is I think because having a high concentration of the most powerful and successful corporations outside of Europe is material both economically and politically (see last years' reports that 50% of Nvidia employees are worth more than $25m).

Comparative advantage - sure - but when one sector is so important for the global economy it's hard to be happy about focusing on handbags.

I don't find that Europeans are culturally meaningfully less entrepreneurial, but it is harder to scale. To me that seems to mostly be about availability of capital and knowhow and ultimately the strength of public markets. Amazon and Uber seem to have negotiated our internal barriers pretty well.

Expand full comment
1 more comment...

No posts