Free software activists in Europe have been saying for decades that it’s a matter of sovereignty and the investments may be painful at first but will end up saving untold amounts of money.
I’m a USian and also have worked in tech for decades. I hope Europe succeeds, there needs to be competition.
The US is in a similar position when it comes to manufacturing. The various business interests have sold our country’s capabilities in exchange for short-term profits.
Offshoring was wildly profitable for decades, why pay people domestically to do a thing when you can pay less to people in another country to do the same thing. Thanks to this, we now import the vast majority of things from overseas because we have little to no domestic manufacturing capability. The massive industrial manufacturing base that carried the US economy after WWII was deconstructed in a few decades
Most of the money that was being poured into US tech companies from all around the world was funneled back out into foreign manufacturing centers who now control the market for electronics hardware. Apple has spent hundreds of BILLIONS investing in SE Asia’s electronic hardware manufacturing industry because it was cheaper. This helped create an entire industry that renders any attempt to create domestic production unprofitable.
The US made a lot of billionaires and not much else. Today our tech sector is largely just software running on hardware that was manufactured elsewhere and imported. (It would be a shame if someone invented a thing which could create software at scale)
The only reason that the US remains dominant in these fields is because we’ve strong armed every other country into accepting our Intellectual Property laws which subordinates your laws and regulations into a system for enforcing our monopoly.
Once that link is broken, and the EU imports their own hardware and writes their own software irregardless of US IP laws then the US tech sector will collapse.
Free software activists in Europe have been saying for decades that it’s a matter of sovereignty and the investments may be painful at first but will end up saving untold amounts of money.
The Marshall plan goodwill has run out now.
I’m a USian and also have worked in tech for decades. I hope Europe succeeds, there needs to be competition.
The US is in a similar position when it comes to manufacturing. The various business interests have sold our country’s capabilities in exchange for short-term profits.
Offshoring was wildly profitable for decades, why pay people domestically to do a thing when you can pay less to people in another country to do the same thing. Thanks to this, we now import the vast majority of things from overseas because we have little to no domestic manufacturing capability. The massive industrial manufacturing base that carried the US economy after WWII was deconstructed in a few decades
Most of the money that was being poured into US tech companies from all around the world was funneled back out into foreign manufacturing centers who now control the market for electronics hardware. Apple has spent hundreds of BILLIONS investing in SE Asia’s electronic hardware manufacturing industry because it was cheaper. This helped create an entire industry that renders any attempt to create domestic production unprofitable.
The US made a lot of billionaires and not much else. Today our tech sector is largely just software running on hardware that was manufactured elsewhere and imported. (It would be a shame if someone invented a thing which could create software at scale)
The only reason that the US remains dominant in these fields is because we’ve strong armed every other country into accepting our Intellectual Property laws which subordinates your laws and regulations into a system for enforcing our monopoly.
Once that link is broken, and the EU imports their own hardware and writes their own software irregardless of US IP laws then the US tech sector will collapse.
Here’s Cory Doctorow explaining what that would look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jsstmmUUs