Comment by rjzzleep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rjzzleep | Hacker News Reader

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Wonder how much of this is related to the fact that France's energy minister have been MBA and political science graduates for quite some time. The previous one was Hollande's partner, so it's just another kind of nepotism[1].

Macron selling off France's nuclear infrastructure probably doesn't help either.

Does anyone here have historical knowledge of Europe's glory days? Were there more actual scientists and engineers in key positions in Government in the 60s and 70s?

For example in Germany Helmut Schmidt(74-82) had a plan for the future where Germany was to build out a fiber optic grid, which the subsequent Chancellor Kohl scrapped because did not like the influence of public TV services and wanted copper for cable TV to counter it[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ségolène_Royal

[2] https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...

Valery Giscard d'Estaing graduated from Polytechnique (best engineering school in France).

He was a key driver of things like nuclear power, high-speed trains, the Minitel, etc.

> Does anyone here have historical knowledge of Europe's glory days?

You mean the Renaissance? Since then it's been 400 years of brain drain to the US.

You mean the US has competitive advantages because their products don't contain social costs like the ones from Europe?

I think it is simpler than that.

The US gained a lot of highly qualified immigration around WWII, when Europe tore itself into shreds. Poles, Italians, Russians, Germans, you name it.

And it is hard to disrupt the advantage of places like California ever since. Once you have top universities and top corporations somewhere, individuals will flock to them instead of trying to create competing hubs elsewhere. Plus the dominance of the English language all but guarantees that English-speaking countries will be the net benefactors of this global movement.

For all their advantages, Germany, Japan et al. still struggle with their parochiality when attracting foreign talent, while the US can do this really, really well. Take the entire roster of top IT people in the US and make a checkmark next to every immigrant or a child of immigrants. Similar lists in Munich, Paris, Tokyo etc. would look very different. Most European countries struggle with the fact that recent immigrants tend to be overrepresented in prisons.

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