Europe started going backwards from some time. Energy is becoming more expensive, raw materials are becoming more expensive, industry is thickening, jobs are closed, education is not ok, most important tech developments are happening elsewhere, we don't have a thriving startup environment, most large tech companies are established elsewhere.

Maybe we will wake up at some point and do something.

Discourses won't put foot on the table and won't help with economic competition.

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kaon_2 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Poland is doing fine. Southern Europe is doing very well. Greece is growing superfast. Switzerland is still one the richest and successful countries in the world. Denmark is amazing.

Germany and the UK are the sick men of Europe. France is going brankrupt. Careful with confusing the 19th century superpowers with the whole of Europe. Yes cost of living has increased by which i mean real wages have stalled in many places, but this is worldwide and mostly due to external causes such as rocketing gas and oil prices. If we succeed in making lasting peace with Russia and getting access again to their natural resources, a new golden age may well commence.

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Angostura 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, yes - if your biggest external source of energy declares war, and your hitherto trusted defence partner goes rogue - it's going to have a chilling effect and the measures needed to address that will hit both the economy and the populous

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RandomLensman 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Why would measures aiming to create more energy supply necessarily hit the economy and the populous?

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AndrewDucker an hour ago | parent [-]

Losing a chunk of your energy supply, while simultaneously having to build a bunch of new energy supply, will hit the economy.

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RandomLensman an hour ago | parent [-]

Yes, losing hurts, but building new supply would necessarily hurt why (instead of being accretive)?

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AndrewDucker an hour ago | parent [-]

Because it will cost money, and that money has to come from somewhere.

If you have 300 froblets per month being shipped to you, and suddenly you have only 200 froblets arriving and you have to spend £5 billion building a froblet factory, then you're both going to be short on froblets and high on expenses at least until the factory is built.

And yes, in the long run you'll have built the factory, will be getting a safer supply of froblets, and everything will be sunshine and roses, but while you're building it all that's an extra expense that you have to find the money for.

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RandomLensman an hour ago | parent [-]

Investment costs money but why would investments hurt? What hurts is the loss of supply.

The money is spent on something and comes (hopefully) with a positive RoI and NPV. And you could borrow to build to reduce own capital outlay.

I don't think there was a lot of new energy production was put into place, though.

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AndrewDucker 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

RoI isn't instant. If it takes you 20 years to build as much supply as you need then you're spending money over that time to try and get back to where you were.

And spending money on one thing means you don't have it for something else. Even if you're borrowing, you can borrow less for other things, unless you want to break your credit score, which would also hurt.

	▲	RandomLensman 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Your first paragraph is describing the effect of the loss of supply, not the investment. I don't think Europe was anywhere close to borrowing capacity, so plenty of scope there.