| ▲ | andsoitis 2 hours ago |
| > No one seems to be building anything The article is literally about ASML, the company that builds the most complex machine ever built by humans. I can pick a couple of other companies across a wide variety of industries if you'd like. |
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| ▲ | thesmtsolver2 an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| And ASML wouldn't be possible without US taxpayer funded research. ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology utilized foundational research from the U.S. Department of Energy. > In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet.[7] Two years later, it joined a consortium, which included Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) it operates under is funded by the US government, licensing must be approved by Congress.[14] Furthermore, in return for being permitted to join this consortium, ASML committed to the establishment of a US-based research center and to source 55 percent of components for all machines sold in the US from American suppliers.[7] ASML collaborated with various manufacturers to obtain mirrors, including the Belgian firms IMEC and Sematech as well as Germany's Carl Zeiss.[14][15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML |
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| ▲ | sputknick an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Fair point, ASML is a linchpin in the global economy, and very much a European company. But Europe has a population larger than USA, shouldn't they at least be close to us in leading edge companies? They invented the Industrial Revolution. |
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| ▲ | philistine an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Europe manages to give a measurably better lifestyle for more people for less money than the US. Europe’s a success. | | |
| ▲ | iririririr 15 minutes ago | parent [-] | | yeah, but what are they doing for the poor billionaires who depend on infinite growth, uh? |
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| ▲ | throw__away7391 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It appears to me that in most of Europe there is an unspoken bargain: society provides you with a reasonably comfortable and secure life where your basic needs are guaranteed at least to some level, and in exchange you are supposed to stay in your lane, make sure your ambitions match and follow one of the approved tracks, and leave things like starting businesses to a hidden aristocracy with family money, who for their part generally accept higher demands on their contributions and avoid "vulgar" displays of their wealth in exchange. | | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > But Europe has a population larger than USA, shouldn't they at least be close to us in leading edge companies? An economy is there for the people. If that larger number of people have a higher quality of life than in the US, aren't they wealthier? And if they do it for less money, aren't they wiser? > They invented the Industrial Revolution. And a lot more, my friend! You're welcome. | | |
| ▲ | majormajor an hour ago | parent [-] | | > An economy is there for the people. If that larger number of people have a higher quality of life than in the US, aren't they wealthier? It's a little unclear how it shakes out there. I've met a number of young western Europeans while traveling there who are jealous of the ability of Americans to afford cross-ocean/different-continent multi-week trips to tier-1-hotel-cost cities, while feeling like it's more out of reach to them to find a job that would let them. (Phrasing edited here because, as a reply pointed out, "international" travel in Europe is easy and common due to proximity.) On the flip side, those people also enjoy having much more time off. But hey, at least American isn't as 996'd as China yet? There's no single linear "better" scale. (There are, of course, many Americans without the means to travel to Europe or Asia themselves, who could give two shits about an "innovative" company being based in the US vs anywhere else since it doesn't seem to be helping them personally, but the overall mobility is still higher for now. But that's more due to the age of the country than anything else. History suggests that as low-hanging-fruit continues to close the US will also get more and more of that social stagnation too. It's easier to become upper class when you go to a place without an upper class yet.) | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis an hour ago | parent [-] | | > I've met a number of young western Europeans while traveling there who are jealous of the ability of Americans to afford that travel, while feeling like it's more out of reach to them to find a job that would let them. The statistics tell a story different from those anecdotes: young Europeans are considerably more internationally traveled than young Americans, probably by something approaching a factor of ~2 in the likelihood of crossing national borders in a given year. But they're not necessarily twice as geographically well-traveled. Much of the difference is due to Europe's small countries, open borders, dense transportation network, and cheap short-haul international travel. Look up what percentage of Americans between 25 - 34 have never traveled outside their own country, vs. Europeans in western or Northern European countries. etc. | | |
| ▲ | rietta 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I had this exact conversation with a barber on the UPC campus in Barcelona in 2005 (if my memory is right). My reply to his assertion was to ask if he ever considered how large US states are compared to EU countries. People do travel within the USA alone and with their families all the time. Just this week mine crossed three states for a beach vacation and the returned home. International travel is not unheard of but not the same distance scale. If I recall he said something like he had not thought of it that way. I do not recall if we were talking in Spanish or English anymore after 21 years. | |
| ▲ | majormajor 40 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The statistics tell a story different from those anecdotes: young Europeans are considerably more internationally traveled than young Americans, probably by something approaching a factor of ~2 in the likelihood of crossing national borders in a given year. But they're not necessarily twice as geographically well-traveled. Much of the difference is due to Europe's small countries, open borders, dense transportation network, and cheap short-haul international travel. Means and using those means for any given particular end are entirely different things. It's hardly surprising that Americans are generally insular and uninterested in non-American things. (This is not a good thing IMO. But it's a thing.) But more importantly, like you say, "interntional travel" in Europe includes, say, "going to the UK from France" vs the overseas 5-to-10hr+ flights that are required to cross the Atlantic to have these conversations in my anecdotes. That's my bad for saying "international" instead of "cross-ocean" or such. So let me clarify that the jealousy here is being able to pay for flights and hotels to spend 2+ weeks across an ocean in cities with $100-or-equiv-per-night-to-$300+-per-night hotel costs. They didn't think they'd ever be able to afford a similar trip to SF or NY. --- The non-anecodotal version of this story would likely be the rise in social-acceptance and popularity of the more right-wing parties in Europe. A lot of people, younger especially, feel like they're getting left behind and aren't interested in mostly-older or born-into-more-money people's generic remarks about how it's still great overall for them. K-shaped economies + "stay in your lane" are how you get Trumps :( | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | We're on the same page. Yes, young Americans are more likely than young Europeans to have traveled intercontinentally / across the ocean. |
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| ▲ | cbeach an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| ASML is not the norm in Europe. It is the exception. The top ten companies by revenue, worldwide, features zero European companies. We in Europe cheer our meddling technocratic leadership while sneering at American risk taking and innovation. We have a fundamental cultural malaise, and those of my friends who feel the same as me have simply left Europe for a better life in the US or other dynamic economies. At this point I feel like a stick in the mud for staying here, and quite honestly, I worry for my children's future here. |
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| ▲ | majormajor an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It would be very hard for a country to force it's most ambitious to not leave if there are other places eagerly recruiting them. But when such a pull exists, it's very hard to counter that. Consider the number of non-SV places in the US that have tried to replicate that environment and basically failed. Even the famously "business friendly" places like Texas or Georgia that are success stories for poaching tech companies or film production largely work by having companies move there once they've left the high-growth phase and are no longer chasing strictly the most ambitious would-be-best-and-brightest talent. The success stories there (that aren't just resource-extraction) have come from significant protectionism, essentially forcing a country to build its own version of the mega-companies even if it's a money-loser with copycats building shoddy copies for decades at first. There's no easy way for Europe to magically change that with "culture." There's too many already-established mega-talent-bases in other places to think you can have people just pass up on that in a fully-global-market situation. I would ask instead: why let those foreign mega-corps be so integral to so many basic services of modern life? Perhaps not just Europe, but the entire world, would be better off if we had fewer monoliths and more variations, with more flexibility for local markets to develop different solutions or in different directions. | |
| ▲ | cowpig an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Your children need the number go up? | | |
| ▲ | CamperBob2 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yes. Any other questions? | | |
| ▲ | cowpig an hour ago | parent [-] | | Why? edit: In all seriousness, some numbers I'm concerned about for children are the - % of carbon in the atmosphere - the number of militaristic demagogues in positions of power - the number of hours the average person spends reading propaganda on social media - the parts per million of microplastics in drinking water - the democracy index The sum of dollars consumed, dollars invested, dollars spent by governments, and net exports is a weird proxy signal to obsess over | | |
| ▲ | Kyo91 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Unemployment rate doesn't make the top 5? | |
| ▲ | tshaddox an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Because eventually there will be an asteroid or nearby supernova that will destroy civilization unless humanity’s total wealth and technology have improved vastly between now and then. Stasis is death. | | |
| ▲ | majormajor an hour ago | parent [-] | | I don't find it likely that my kids or grandkids will have better odds of avoiding asteroid or supernova death by working to death to try to become interplanetary ASAP. I think doing so would introduce far more risks to them. Space ain't friendly. Beyond that I find it hard to care to drive anyone to work their ass off today for whatever humans are around 100+ years in the future. And, of course, more technological development brings more chance of mass self-inflicted die-off of humanity anyway. In 1900 it would've been much harder to kill 10%, 20%, 50%, 90% of the global population than it is today. Everything is death eventually. And predicting the future is hard. |
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