Skype started in Europe (Swedish/Danish co-founders, Estonian devs, offices in London, company in Luxembourg). No "committe/government/consensus" there.
Also, Apple and Google are examples of American companies that started with public funding.
Finally, many European countries rank higher than the US when it comes to social mobility. Don't most European know several millionaires who "came out of nothing" (or at least from a quiet European middle class background)? I think so.
Don't confuse the fact that, during startup, a business used available public funding as just another available opportunity to leverage, vs a business that never would have started/survived without public funding.
Apple received early stage funding from the SBIC programme: http://www.sbia.org/?page=sbic_program_history
And, more importantly, many of the technologies used by Apple right from the first computers to the iphones were developed with government funding and used free of charge: http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2013/10/24/t-iphone-go...
And I am not even talking about the later government subsidies from American states and from Ireland in the form of massive tax breaks. Nokia didn't get away with paying a 2 percent tax on its European profits (but probably received other government funding themselves along the way).
Similarly, the Google founders' work on the pagerank algorithms on Stanford was funded by a government entity, the National Science Foundation, and they were allowed to use it commercially free of charge. And Google too, has received massive tax breaks.
The Steves were highly motivated; lack of government funding likely would not have stopped Apple from existing much as we know it now.
Just because a party was involved doesn't make 'em indispensable.
No. Most Germans don't even care for FB (or twitter). Or they use it with a limited purpose. They think it's silly.
Skype is a nice example, but is one of fewer companies like that.
> Apple and Google are examples of American companies that started with public funding
Are you sure? A lot of SV companies have had public funding but I'm not sure about them.
"Don't most European know several millionaires who "came out of nothing""
Well, this happens pretty much everywhere, even in 3rd world countries (sure, in a much smaller quantity). Social mobility is important, but a comfortable life in a comfy job may also be a prison (better than going through difficulties, sure)
Not really, atleast from my experiences. Almost the complete youth & young adults atleast use Facebook and a considerable amount Twitter (more Twitter user, the older they get). Older adults and eldery only use FB/Twitter partially (I'd say 20%) and realtively inactive
Though, yes, in Germany - on average - Facebook & Twitter are less used, mostly because of privacy reasons
Among younger (20-30) Germans, I think almost everybody is on FB (and even more are on What's App).
But for a while Germany had StudiVZ and MeinVZ. After a while FB became more popular, people with some international friends joined at first, and after a while everyone else did and the other networks basically starved. It was sad to watch, especially since many (local) groups there and parts of the UI were IMHO much nicer than what's on FB today.
You're leaving out the parts where Americans are enslaved to their corporate jobs through employer-provided healthcare, lack of unions, and a weak safety net. Combine that with regulatory capture by corporations, extreme concentration of wealth, and legalized bribery of legislators, and now you've got the American model.
There are a dozen countries with it. Spain, for example, has a few thousand miles.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_rail_lines
Doing this requires a lot of collective work: investment, property acquisition or licensing, railway building, etc
This requires collective vision and goals
Germany population density: 226/km^2
The Northeast US has a fairly good railway system despite it having a lot of legacy constraints not around in Germany. Most of the rest of the US is far to sprawling for railways to be effective.
Can you give us the population density of Southern California vs Spain, for example?
And don't you think Germany has more legacy constraints with a higher density and older tracks?
"Could not" is a bit strong. "Unlikely" I'd agree with.
But my rationale is different: German businesses traditionally have a strong bias towards B2B models (esp. the "Mittelstand") and startups eschew consumer-facing business models. For example, America has Microsoft, Germany has SAP.
Also, Linux was created in another socialized state, Finland. I would argue that the impact of Linux is at least an order of magnitude more profound than Facebook.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
"On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, with no fees due.[24] Coming two months after the announcement that the server implementation of the Gopher protocol was no longer free to use, this produced a rapid shift away from Gopher and towards the Web. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
Btw, I'm not disagreeing with you, the European idea of making things for "everybody" got into play there.
I agree it's a more "European" model of development, sure.
which Andrew Tanenbaum created at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
In the US you have millionaires came out of "nothing" (of course, from nice universities, nice contacts, etc), people jumping at opportunities, while in Europe this would take 2 meetings, 3 viability studies and 4 months.
Besides extreme things like Facebook, most people of the US are stick to their destiny. If you can't afford to attend an university, you have not much more chance to rise out of the dust in the US than in Europe. Those that succeed are very few. Of course those are presented everywhere, to prove the US dream.
People like Bill Gates never came from poor destiny. Gates parents already where rich. The rich in the US also provide, that people from lower classes don't enter theirs. You have to have visited the right university (costly!) or you have to have the right parents to get the well paid jobs -- or both of course.
Of course, the possibilities in some sectors like IT are better and when you have ideas, you can easier get some money. Also when you loose, you get easier a second chance ... but all that has nothing to do with the education system and even less with university fees.
And sure, entrepreneurship is allowed, but then you'll have to convince your family of why are you not getting a nice job as a government clerk or something.
It is just as cultural in the US that many families are affronted by their children or relatives that choose to try entrepreneurship over employment.
Because they compete for capital. The former requires high taxes, which leave a lot less private capital for investment and entrepreneurship. For example, imagine if the government had taxed away 90% of Elon Musk's fortune.
edit: maybe better framed as a question - why do you think that Germany could not have produced facebook?
Germans are "very serious" even when they're having fun.
If we want to talk about specific public policies conducive to the formation of web start-ups, California created Facebook by refusing to enforce noncompete agreements -- building an environment in which "Take this job and shove it! I'll start my own company!" can't be met with "You'll never work in this industry again!"
It is also true that something as "simple" as starting your own company or working as a freelancer it often involves a lot of paperwork and upfront costs, which discourages a lot of people.
Still, I believe things are changing (in some countries faster than others), at least on this account.
American model: individually centered, "pay for what you want", development is driven by small companies and individual decisions (most of the time). "Works for me"
European model: centered on the community, social support, development by committee/government/consensus. Slow but directed improvements
Germany could not have produced Facebook. But they have a great train network. France puts satellites on orbit and does the TGV.
In the US you have millionaires came out of "nothing" (of course, from nice universities, nice contacts, etc), people jumping at opportunities, while in Europe this would take 2 meetings, 3 viability studies and 4 months.
So, while I'm more towards in favour of the European model someone has to ask themselves what are they missing. Yes, they have a very nice and educated workforce that will be ready to work and be very productive at a big company where they will work hard, sure, but will come out with the least amount of new ideas (that's not their job), and will do the things most likely to be accepted by the majority.