• 6 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 17th, 2023

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  • LOL, this poor guy…the only sane person in an insane asylum. How bad is it? Only about 4% of global cloud infrastructure capacity is European‑owned, with most European governments, firms, and citizens relying on US hyperscalers.

    More background:

    Average investment in telecom and digital infrastructure per operator in Europe is less than half that in the US, with a total connectivity investment gap to 2030 estimated at at least €174bn and likely over €200bn to hit EU “Digital Decade” gigabit and 5G targets.

    EU telecom policy has historically favored many national and sub‑national operators, leaving Europe with over 100 mobile operators and only about 5m subscribers per operator on average, versus roughly 107m in the US and 467m in China, which undermines scale and returns on capital for big 5G and fiber

    Fragmented capital markets (27 different regimes) and shallower venture and growth equity pools make it harder to scale home‑grown cloud, AI, and semiconductor players compared with US deep capital markets and Chinese state‑directed finance. roll‑outs

    The EU is a regulatory superpower (GDPR, Digital Markets Act, AI Act), but multiple analyses argue that “over‑regulation” is overstated; business surveys show lack of skilled staff, energy costs, and uncertainty rank higher as barriers to investment than regulation, which tends to come fourth and often from national, not EU, rules.

    The more specific critique is that Europe leaned heavily on competition and privacy law without pairing them with an ambitious infrastructure and industrial build‑out, leaving it as a regulator of US platforms rather than an owner of its own stack.


  • The cost of nationalism. The nostalgia for their little nation statelets is costing Europeans their sovereignty. Which is ironic as the little nationalists are all about sovereignty but in reality help outside powers to colonialise Europe.

    It’s time for an emotionally painful but necessary goodbye to the European nation state. Europe needs a single capital and service market where startups and Tech companies can scale up as rapidly as in the US and China and pool capital from across the continent following a single set of rules rather than being bogged down with 27 mini markets.

    If this can’t be done at an EU level then a coalition of the willing should go ahead. According to a study the remaining internal barriers in the EU are equivalent to a 44% tariff on intra EU trade. Worse than anything Donald Trump has imposed. The first countries to achieve this will create immense additional prosperity.

    European nationalism is Europe’s biggest threat to its prosperity and sovereignty, worse than Russia, China and the US combined.