If Europe somewhat deregulated startup stage businesses an countries issued more visas to engineers it could probably turn a lot of things around. So far European founders have been moving to US. But these days I imagine I'm not the only one who doesn't want to work in the shadow of US technofeudalist oligarchy and receive money from people like Marc Andreessen.
I believe there is a lack of startups in New Zealand (the example I'm familiar with) because it simply doesn't make any financial sense to begin a startup[1]. The rewards are not enough to cover the risks.
The USA has a culture of startups because there you often get financially rewarded for winning. Startups are mostly a loser's game in New Zealand (Disclosure: I'm a very minor winner at the startup game over here - I have at least some skin in the game and some practical learning).
Improving regulations would help - however governments seem to lack the skills/incentives/motivation to choose good compromises.
> receive money from people like Marc Andreessen.
Money doesn't actually have morals: the point of money is it allows all of us to choose between morally conflicting choices based on prices and our bank balance. Money is a fungible representation of limited resources. I've never met Marc, but his writing seems fairly disagreeable to me.
Part of the reason Europe is economically losing is that Europe doesn't play economics to win.
Systems have their own emergent properties and Europe seems hell bent on regulating their systems so that European countries gift control to the USA for critical things.
Could you point out specific examples of what is too regulated? I never understood this complaint. True, I also never bothered digging into it because I started out with the belief that it's just a talking point. But I'm happy to be proven wrong.
Not sure but I've read that employee termination rules and employee compensation requirements are problematic for startups over there. That for a company at that stage certain risks can be existential rather than just "win some lose some" so having them forced on you is not a good situation.
