What can Europe do?
13 Oct 2019Has Europe built its villa and retired?
Most of what I see, read, and hear seems to come from the US. I feel culturally swamped and get the impression that Europe isn’t providing much in return. We’re all still watching Friends, we’re going to see the new Avengers, we’re talking about Game Of Thrones, and we’re watching Snapchats of people dabbing.
Maybe that’s harsh as there’s a lot that goes into “culture”, but my daily life really does involve a lot of America. When it comes to tech products I use, that’s even more true. European weakness seems clearer. We have none of the Giants and less of the rest. This article puts the value of EU tech companies founded since 2000 at $240 billion, Y Combinator, a single Silicon Valley accelerator started in 2005, has produced companies worth over $100 billion.
I often wonder whether we can do something about it. Bruno Marcaes, a Portuguese ex-politician now writer, argued no; that Europe has lost its sense of adventure and will not be driving the future. Here’s a few quotes to give an idea of his thinking, but the full interview and his book The Dawn of Eurasia are worth their time:
MAÇÃES: The last year, the last two years, have been better, but still the predominant feeling in Europe is of stagnation, of not going anywhere, especially among the young — where sometimes you have, of course, social security and healthcare and even a salary that allows you to live decently, but you have no dreams, no opportunities of getting into the job that you always wanted to get into.
That’s the feeling in Europe now.
COWEN: So Europe lacks the spirit of adventure.
MAÇÃES: That is certainly the case. I think you see that. One of the areas where the spirit of adventure today is more relevant and important is technology. You see in Europe the idea that technology’s against us, and we should resist this rather than embrace it. A very negative spirit, which I think is a good example of how adventure has disappeared from the European psyche.
COWEN: Why did Europe turn its back on technology and push adventure out of its psyche? Is it World War II? Failures of imperialism? The social welfare state was too comfortable? All of the above? What’s your model?
MAÇÃES: Many different things, but I think my model would be . . . the fundamental factor is the fact that we led the previous revolutions. We were successful. We got a lot out of them. I think it’s human nature — it applies to individuals, but also to countries and even to continents. If you’ve been successful bringing about the last wave of change, then you want to preserve things as they were. You want to enjoy the fruits of what you did, of all the work you had. Then it will be up to others, in other parts of the world, to lead the next wave. Perhaps in 1,000 or 2,000 years, Europe will be back there again.
Has Europe built its villa and has been reclining in it for decades. Are we too safe and settled? Peter Thiel thinks so. A quote from Zero To One:
Europeans just react to events as they happen and hope things don’t get worse. The indefinite pessimist can’t know whether the inevitable decline will be fast or slow, catastrophic or gradual. All he can do is wait for it to happen, so he might as well eat, drink, and be merry in the meantime: hence Europe’s famous vacation mania.
As a European who feels more like a “definite optimist” that’s hard to read. Are we really so pessimistic? Well…
We hardly look confident. These stats don’t show that the US is a place of definite optimists, but taking on Peter Thiel can be left for another day.
Is there anything we Europeans can do to drive the future? Are the joie de vivre of the mediteranian and the welfare of the nordic countries symptoms of having built our villa, of lacking the obsessiveness of Silicon Valley to “change the world” or the hunger of the Chinese to do whatever it is the Chinese want to do?
While I agree that we do not have enough desire to control our future, I do think valuing time outside of work, valuing caring for others, valuing access to healthcare and education are not signs of complacency but the right things to value.
Perhaps the definite optimists amongst us can work hard to create technology combined with European values? We may not turn the global tide, but we have strong universities, a tightly packed group of cultures that can collaborate and compete, and I know I have the desire to build into our future and other young people do too.
Plus lets not forget where we sit in the world. Asia and North Africa are right next to us. There are so many opportunities for us to build technologies operating outside of the EU comfort zone.
A lot needs to happen for us to build strong European technology and likely even more to then expand outside of our borders, but I think we can. I have no solution to make it happen. Only some suggestions given what I’ve seen in the young people around me and what I’ve read about how the Americans have managed to achieve what they have. Let’s be more positive. Let’s be far more ambitious. We can try to take on some monumental problems because for all the hype Silicon Valley tech companies get, snapchat is hardly impressive, the real problems seem to have space for us to work in.
If we can do that, we can provide a cultural direction to technology that the US and China cannot. And if the West is really falling and the East is rising, Europe is a thrilling place to be. Why should we listen to what anyone tells us we’re capable of?