[throwaway18875]

> Europe can't even build its own tech companies

I'm not sure where this notion comes from. First, Europe does build its own tech companies — Bolt, Bol, SoundCloud, and Spotify, which started in Sweden. Second, do we really consider companies like Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, Netflix, and Twitter as pure progress?

I think the case is that the US has been really good at promoting its domestic products. Another reason why the US has more tech companies, and why more companies move to the US, is the lack of legislation for worker protection. However, this is the same argument as to why most products are manufactured in China.

> GDP per capita in western Europe remains stagnant

First, this is clearly not true [1]. Second, GDP per capita is a poor metric for assessing wealth and quality of life [2].

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?.... [2]: https://time.com/5118026/gdp-metric-success-wealth/

[dgellow]

Startups move to the us because of the ease of access to VCs (or capital in general)

> I'm not sure where this notion comes from.

From the outside the EU sounds like on large unit. Where in facts it is a fragmented group. The EU has plenty of tech companies but it is pretty competitive when you have that many countries to cater to, each with their own culture, language, and laws. So you will target a specific market - like France, with marketing in french, adapted to the French context. Expanding to anew place is expensive and difficult. So you end up with lots of local, small/medium size businesses instead of one unified large business.

Just my personal opinion living here. And not saying it’s bad, it’s just a different dynamic

[throwaway18875]

It might be true, but could you be more specific as to what qualifies as easy access to capital? Because EU does have VCs https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/which-country-has-the-mo...