> Europe is economically uncompetitive

Meh. It's competetive enough. Productivity per hour worked is about the same (sometimes higher) than in US. We just work reasonable hours.

> Those places are not liveable from a European perspective.

If the sacrifices these people make were at least for something that was obviously good - I could maybe understand that. But it's mostly making the world worse (either through financial schemes, addictive social media, marketing, AI, or other pointless bullshit).

Imagine wasting your life slaving away at making better ways to get people addicted to nicotine. That's IT now.

Agreed.