I would bet the exact opposite.
Let's start off simply with the fact that Berlin is not intended to be SF or SV in any capacity by the German elite(you're better off going to Munich or Frankfurt for that). There is 0 institutional interest to make it an innovation hub on top of the political center, as once again this can be done elsewhere(preferably closer to actual industrial centres).
Secondly, it's simply impossible to get tier 0 tech talent to come to Berlin(unless you give a lot of equity or you have a very elaborate scheme to pay them via offshore, which most startuppers simply don't know how to do) due to salary/tax differentials with either US or even something like Zürich/London.
Lastly, there is 0 evidence that I've seen that German bureaucracy(Berlin included) is going to down, and that's been the case since the last 10 years. This will pretty cleanly stop most innovation.
Not saying you're wrong.. but what's the proof? It's easy to think of counterexamples. Places like Malaysia that are full of immigrants and are not particularly successful. Or Japan, which is notoriously insular and successful. London has the whole industrial revolution and boom before colonialism and the wave of immigrants
One would also expect a major difference between for instance the US siphoning off the world's top talent (ex: post USSR collapse immigrants from the scientific community) and undereducated economic refugees from Central America. For instance you're not exactly seeing a flood of Latin-America-born founders in the US (not the best metric, but still)
But of course there are counter examples and there are probably other factors. London's industrial revolution and the boom of the British empire was driven by trade and a scientific revolution. That started with them cutting loose from the catholic church and limiting the power of royals. The resulting influx of people from all over Europe and later the rest of the world probably helped. Some of the more radical people at the time actually ended up in New England where they helped bootstrap the modern USA.
Japan's industrial revolution started with the royals realizing they needed to catch up and importing a lot of knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_era. Japan of course did not keep the foreigners but they did catch up in a hurry by interacting with a lot of them. China is doing an interesting reverse take on this where they send people all over the world and they then bring back knowledge.
So, yes it's not all black and white. But this stuff usually starts with places being open to outside influences and importing and generating a lot of new knowledge and skills locally. Typically, with the help of foreigners in some way. London is a melting pot of nationalities from all over their empire. And the US bootstrapped from the British empire and absorbing bits and pieces from other European colonists (Dutch, French, Spanish, etc.).
The proof was given.
> It's easy to think of counterexamples.
There is a difference between huge cities of cheap labor and innovation hubs.
> you're not exactly seeing a flood of Latin-America-born founders
Maybe not of tech companies, but you'll be shocked how many highly profitable "boring" companies like construction companies, staffing agencies, and auto sales/repair companies are owned by Latina/Latino owners. BTW: owning a business is legal, even if you are in the US illegally, also that has fueled a boom.
Immigration is just a faster method of getting that effect.
For the last 20 years across the whole western world we have seen that despite having more migrants than ever, the cities are not becoming cleaner or more vibrant - but rather everything goes backwards.
Ancient empires, early 20th century USA etc. succeeded not due to migration but due to government and people willing to work for the government to make it more successful.
Essentially the type of immigration and it's rules in Europe had been a thing but productive when you can have N entire block of people living on welfare with 0% interest in getting a job or even learning the language and with that foundation you don't either always get 2nd/3rd generation that are working but instead doing crime.
Which drives the demand for labor immigrants down because they ofc do lit want to establish themselves in a country thdt that is dangerous.
What’s your evidence for this? It’s more plausible that immigrants come to rich places for the potential to make money.
I don’t know about the Netherlands, but Silicon Valley arose in America during a time of historically low immigration. 1920s immigration reforms caused the foreign born population to drop from 15% to under 5% by 1970. Bill Shockley was born in London to American parents but raised in America. Six of the “traitorous eight” that founded Fairchild semiconductor were born in America. All the founders of Intel were born in America, same for AMD.
What is the Netherlands without the Dutch? Your nation is your people. It's your blood, your history, your family, your culture, your shared values and heritage.
I would much prefer my children and theirs after them have a homeland where they can live in peace and harmony with their own kind, than to live in a soulless economic zone as minorities surrounded by foreigners who hate them.
Frankly, it makes me sick when people use these arguments as a justification for the dispossession of their own heirs, the destruction of everything their own ancestors toiled for countless generations to deliver to you. You have no idea how precious it is if you think GDP can ever quantify it. F*ck the economy.
[1] It doesn't even come close to compensating for the negative economic effects of the migrants who are not successful startup founders, studies and articles focusing on whom are heavily censored and taboo.
The UK's international heyday came at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. Arguably, the power and influence of the UK has declined significantly since WW2.
Immigration to the UK prior to WW2 was pretty minor (e.g. the Huguenots and Irish immigrants). The last census prior to WW2 was in 1931 and showed England and Wales had only a 2.1% foreign-born population. By comparison, immigrants made up 6.6% of France's population.
Widespread immigration only occurred in the post-WW2 period, due to serious labour shortages in the UK. It was then that large numbers of immigrants, mostly from former colonies, settled in London. And then there were significant waves of immigration from Eastern Europe in the late 20th century due to globalisation and the enlargement of the European Union.
With that in mind, we need to be careful we're not confusing correlation and causation.
My interpretation of the timeline is that the UK became an immigration magnet due to its prosperity, rather than its prosperity being the result of mass immigration.
Also by having colonized a bunch of places whose residents then wanted to move to the UK.
And modern immigration can split between legal immigrants with skilled professionals and illegal immigrants.
Europe is receiving a lot of ilegal economic immigrants with low education, doesn’t know german/french/italian/dutch or barely know English, and many are religious fundamentalist. What kind of innovation do you expect from them?
I don’t understand why Europe keeps accepting ilegal immigrants.
That makes the current debates in the US and the EU about limiting migration so silly and backwards. I come from the Netherlands; a country that used to punch way above its weight economically, militarily, and scientifically in the seventeenth century when New York was still called New Amsterdam. That happened on the tail-end of the rest of Europe pushing out intellectuals, religious minorities, etc. a lot of whom ended up in Amsterdam. You might think of Amsterdam as the seventeenth century Silicon Valley. Modern day dutch politics are dominated by populists with an anti migrant sentiment. They are longing for the good old days when the Netherlands was so great without realizing that migrants were a big part of that greatness.
Later London took over. And eventually the US ended up absorbing a lot of immigrants and became a world power. Twentieth century New York became the amazing place it is today. These events are not disconnected. You need a critical mass of migrants for stuff like this to happen.
I currently live in Berlin, which has a lot of people moving to it from all over the place. It's too early to tell for sure but I wouldn't be surprised to see some beautiful things happen here over the course of the next decades. If it does, it will be despite of the locals. Silicon Valley increasingly feels like it has a lot of greatness in its past but not necessarily in its future. There sure is a lot of money there. And some good universities. But moving there is not the logical move it would have been twenty years ago. I never did but it could have easily happened.