The amount of effort to evaluate everything and work out where the "catch" is ..... it's just understandable that we might look for our governments to shoulder a bit of that burden in the critical areas. At least our healthcare systems usually help us that way.
Yes, Europeans are fond of telling scary tall tales about these kinds of strawmen. "Our economic growth may be sclerotic, our regulatory environment may be completely uncompetitive, and every third company may be relocating operations elsewhere, but the real win is that we don't have too many kinds of products to be confused choosing between!"
It's a coping mechanism for decline.
As for decline....look in the mirror. Everyone experiences it.
> As for decline....look in the mirror.
I’m in Europe, so I can just look out my window. It’s very pretty! And completely sclerotic and dysfunctional.