What anti-technology attitude do you see?

Chastising developing space tech?

They appear to be chastising the billionaires, not the space tech. Chastising space tech would not fit in with the argument they are advancing about the need to adopt local tech. However, chastising the US billionaires definitely supports their argument.

I can read what was said without your interpretation of it.

Fast forward 20 years and Europeans will be hopelessly dependent on SpaceX just like they are on big tech now.

They're billionaires because they invested in tech that the whole world is dependent on now. Chastising them shows that European technophobic bureaucrats still don't get it.

The whole point is "escape Earth" -- i.e. Elon doesn't care about the long term effects on Earth, not that space tech is bad.

Chastising "billionaires that would rather escape Earth"; the goal isn't developing space tech, it's escaping the world instead of fixing it with their resources.

Anti-technology is just a dog whistle for anti-capital. Billionaires have made things exceptionally worse. Facebook was started as a way to rate women’s faces, is the foundation our data collection industry is built off of. We need to tear down the entire system and rebuild something else.

I still can't even see what supposed anti-technology content there is in the quote. But perhaps there's a broader context to incorporate that those from Europe could explain to Americans?

No. The main reason we got in this mess is because the US is a better market for startups, simply because of the amount of available money, and the fact that it’s easier to start in a market with 340M people who speak the same language.

Also yes, because it's easier to start in a jurisdiction with sane laws and bearable tax burden, none of which is available in the EU. EU is indeed drowning in mind boggling bureaucracy.

Source: am a startup in the EU.

If it was merely about taxes and regulations then nobody would want to choose California over almost any other state for their startup.

This popular mythology in certain circles but it relies on people not calculating the effective total tax rate, including local and property taxes, and in that case California is the 13th cheapest state in the country:

https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-to-be-a-taxpayer...

You also want to consider what your taxes fund – for example, a startup founder probably benefits from proximity to two of the best university systems in the country and the better quality of life means you get more top people in your employee and networking pools. The ultra-rich are going to leave but a founder who isn’t already in the top income bracket is making an economically rational decision.

This is extremely enlightening. I'm not surprised New York is basically the most expensive state to live in. There are obvious outliers though, such as Alaska, where you end up paying 50% markup on most basic home amenities just because of transit costs. I think I need to check up on where most of NYS money is really going.

I'm not sure about that.

Say, at-will employment exists in California and that's just one simple example off the top of my head.

In Germany, an employee is near impossible to fire.

A lot of companies are moving to Texas though (https://www.newsweek.com/multiple-companies-ditching-califor...)

Lag effect. 30-40 years ago, California was a different place, way more business friendly. Lots of military connected companies. Lots of money. Lots of people moving there. Educated workforce. It's very different now.

"EU is indeed drowning in mind boggling bureaucracy."

Just look at how many software patents the EPO keeps printing.

But, at least speaking for Germany here, the anti-technology stance of politicians and Germans in general certainly has a huge part in hampering the startup scene. This always goes both ways. It's not wrong to be skeptical and wanting privacy etc., but it also means it's harder to make bank by tracking everyone and selling their data, which has been a huge part of American technology startups for over a decade. And it often also just means, people don't trust new things and will not try them. Not sure this applies equally to the Netherlands though.

The Dutch people are early adopters. But our startups generally think way too small.

Trust in the US was also at big part of it. That trust is now gone.

> because of the amount of available money

And that capital was started by major government investment in semiconductor manufacturing.

Israel is a small market and English fluency is worse than much of Western Europe (imo roughly comparable to France), yet they were able to crack the US market despite both being poorer than much of Western Europe until barely a couple years ago and having similar access to American markets.

And barely 20-25 years ago, Dutch firms like Philips NV and NXP Semi were both major players in the electronics and software industry, yet squandered their lead.

The issue is European leaders in both the private and public sector just don't care for technology, are overwhelmingly from legal and non-STEM financial/consulting backgrounds. The capital flight due to the Eurozone crisis also played a role, but Israel was also heavily impacted by that as well.

You may not agree with the sentiment, but the quote isn't anti-technology.

It doesn't say that "escaping Earth" is an inherently bad thing, it simply highlights the perils of outsourcing digital infrastructure to certain billionaires who wish to do so. Which is a valid concern.

The implication is that "building space rockets to escape Earth" is bad.

Ok but why is that bad here? Because they are not interested in serving the tech needs of the Dutch, and have other interests.

That's not an anti-tech stance, quite the opposite!

No.

The implication is that it should not be an oligarchy but a democracy that inhabits other planets - which is indeed a valid stance.

The issue is not going to space. The issue is supporting a system where a single entity controls it, supporting a dictatorship.

Which is funny, because the US had this stance. At least under WW2 and the cold war.

Who know what happened, the US population allowed corporate greed to take over - what a shame.

Please lets just call things what they are.

This is not "anti-technology"-- it is just a potshot at Elon Musk.

You could also accuse it of mixing up issues of infrastructure independence, wealth inequality and increasing plutocratic tendencies. All of those do deserve a nuanced discussion (instead of a single catchphrase).

But labeling this as as "anti-technology" is simply incorrect, and we need to do better than that.

It isn't anti-technology, it's anti-capital/anti-big-business. If you don't allow businesses to scale-up because billionaires are bad, then you're biggest companies will be those that are from the previous century.

> Europe’s lack of industrial dynamism owes in large part to weaknesses along the “innovation lifecycle” that prevent new sectors and challengers from emerging. These weaknesses begin with obstacles in the pipeline from innovation to commercialisation. Public sector support for R&I is inefficient due to a lack of focus on disruptive innovation and fragmented financing, limiting the EU’s potential to reach scale in high-risk breakthrough technologies. Once companies reach the growth stage, they encounter regulatory and jurisdictional hurdles that prevent them from scaling-up into mature, profitable companies in Europe. As a result, many innovative companies end up seeking out financing from US venture capitalists (VCs) and see expanding in the large US market as a more rewarding option than tackling fragmented EU markets. Finally, the EU is falling behind in providing state-of-the-art infrastructures necessary to enable the digitalisation of the economy.

from https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3...

I sincerely have no idea why mentioning the anti-technology stance of the EU always gets downvoted on HN.

It's almost like people are confusing the contents of the comment with the comment itself, expressing their disdain for the legal burden of the EU by downvoting a comment mentioning that fact.

This phenomenon is commonplace on HN. It brings to mind the shrieking lady in this Monty Python: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3-51DhOzHE