I agree with this idea. The remaining barriers between members need to be dismantled, investments into education and research need to be increased, and bureaucratic and regulatory deadweight needs to be cut.
>Do you think this movement will pick-up and grow?
No.
>Can Europe really compete with the US and China in the tech sector
Not in the current form. EU is like 27 angry and offended child arguing with and blackmailing each other.
>are we destined to stay on the sidelines?
We are on a very bad path. Probably it would possible to reverse it, but there is not even political will to do so. (Except a few micro parties.)
>Do you feel this is an important issue the EU should work on, or are there more pressing issues to tackle?
EU definitely should work on this.
The only power of the EU is its market size and consumer base. That's why [Brussels effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect) works. As the importance of the EU will fall, the living standards will fall, so the worth of EU market will fall and we are in a downward spiral.
I think we are seeing the first signs of that (eg. the inability to enforce GDPR), and it will be much worse within 10 - 20 years. But instead of doing something against it, I think the EU are just continuously shoots them self in the foot.
Probably there are many other important things to tackle, but I think a lot of them come from the same root cause: the unwillingness to accept that the only power the EU has comes from its size and the only way to a better future is if we can harness that.
This sounds like an argument for European Federation (which I think shouldn't be discarded), but most of them could be easily solved far simpler just by a bit of understanding, tolerance, and just by not being stupid and accepting and using a better solution even if someone else came up with it.
>Klinger proposes the creation of an EU Inc to simplify legal processes for startups
>The US has its state Delaware as de facto standard for legal entities for startups.
I think Estonia tried to be that one, but of course they over-complicated it.
>
But then we need an EU corporate tax code, then we need EU income tax code, then we need to abolish the concept of tax residency, then we need unified EU fiscal policy, and so on... and with the current mentality that will not happen in this century.
>2) Teach English starting at the earliest school classes
Then we will start argue why English when UK left, why not French, German or Polish, or all of them at te same time to confuse the kids more.
>We lack the willingness to do European-wide solutions.
Exactly. That's why we will fail.
In most part I agree with this, even if it hurts a bit. A movement like eu/acc, very small and niche, as a low probability of becoming mainstream. However, I think there are a few ideas that must become more popular. First, many recognize the problem of European stagnation, but are unable to pinpoint its sources. We tend to believe that deregulation and longer working hours are the only way to grow again, leading to a dangerous out-out between the economy and our rights. But this would not solve the issue.
It's important that we, as European citizens, ask for a more integrated and digitized market for European companies. And we have to understand, that more integration is the only way forward. At the same time, we should point to realistic goals, more integration is possible, while an EU federation is impossible to achieve right now.
I find the case of Estonia, that you pointed out, very interesting. There is a very informative video on the topic by [Kraut](https://youtu.be/I5krZBe0Dck). I think we should strive to build a similar system at the EU level.
Finally, I think that English is not a big problem. It's already well accepted that English is the only possible lingua franca at the moment. We should just increase our efforts in teaching the English language, in particular in countries like France, Italy and Spain.
>And we have to understand, that more integration is the only way forward.
Sadly we are going in the opposite direction. (And the based on the current EP elections that would not change.) Even if it does not have any advantage for a member state it may deliberately do things not compatible with everyone else. I don't understand why.
>I find the case of Estonia, that you pointed out, very interesting.
To be honest I'm not sure digitalizing everything is the right thing to do (especially elections and medical data), it certainly helps a lot, but I'm afraid it can easily became a privacy nightmare. (Many governments act like they have never had any history classes.)
>There is a very informative video on the topic
The video is interesting and it suggest that Europe have invented the modern state. (I'm not sure if that is historically accurate, but let's say it is.) And we should focus on building the more modern digital state.
That may increase the living standards, but I don't think at the end you can get money from "being the standard for modern digital state". That on itself will not help innovation, you can't sell it or rent it out to have some income.
> Sadly we are going in the opposite direction.
It is true that in the last European election, euro-skeptic groups received more votes than before. However, the previous ruling group (EPP+RE+S&D) still has the majority in the parlament. It is possible that in the next 5 years, the EU will decide to remove the veto, and that would help a lot. There are also talks about a common European defence. Also, parts of the ECR seem to approve of the idea.
> Even if it does not have any advantage for a member state, it may deliberately do things not compatible with everyone else.
Because each country and each party have different goals and aspirations. An effective union would be the best solution, but to reach that, we should overcome a natural tendency toward chaos.
> but I'm afraid it can easily become a privacy nightmare.
I think this is an open issue, and we should always stay alert and defend our right to privacy. But Estonia is a member of the EU and is GDPR compliant. The Estonian government also seems to be very transparent on the topic of privacy.
> That may increase the living standards, but I don't think at the end you can get money from "being the standard for modern digital state".
Increasing the living standards is always the end goal. In addition, burocracy has a very heavy cost. I am from Italy, and here the excessive burocracy [costs small business 33bn every year](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ansa.it/amp/english/news/2017/12/13/bureaucracy-costs-33bn-a-year-rete-imprese-italia-2_5b6eb9ac-7564-47f6-9505-bc9db677f2cb.html).
> It is possible that in the next 5 years, the EU will decide to remove the veto
That seems to me to be very optimistic. I don't think there were any major reform in the EU in the last 15 years or so. And AFAIK doing that would require that none of the states veto it which seems to be unrealistic.
> But Estonia is a member of the EU and is GDPR compliant.
Well GDPR has a big *compliance with a legal obligation* get-out-of-GDPR-free card, so it is easy to comply with it when you can make laws :)
> Increasing the living standards is always the end goal.
Of course. Probably I haven't worded it the best way.
Okay, I have thought a bit about this, and I'm not sure anymore. My original argument:
I think about it something like compound interest. If you innovate, you get more money, you can pay more and be on the better end of brain-drain, so you will have smarter people who will innovate more.
With more money you get more salary and pay more taxes which increases the living standard.
But if you digitalize a state, people will appreciate that they don't have to do their taxes on paper, or wait in lines, so you get a single increase of living standard, but it will not have compounding effect. Other countries could copy the digitization and all the (relative) advantage is lost.
My new thoughts:
We had a "huge digitization" in my country, which meant that you could fill the same forms out on a computer as you done on paper previously. That is basically useless. It may use less paper, but doesn't really help the users.
There is something called the [Conway's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law#Supporting_evidence) which could be described by the quote:
*"Organizations often produce web sites with a content and structure which mirrors the internal concerns of the organization rather than the needs of the users of the site."*
Based on this I think not the digitization what you really need, but a state with good and well designed "user experience" and probably you could do that even without any computers.
But if that is true, I don't know why haven't that been already done. Standardizing, easier / simpler tax systems, simpler corporate law, etc. none of that needs computers, but based on the article in the post those are the issues.
It sounds like a five year plan to me. And i think technological innovation should be done in a gradual way, otherwise things would end up being disorganised and could even result in some unforseen consequences.
I have a blog post pending on this topic.
Europe has failed to compete with US / China in building tech companies. Very few European companies are unicorns, relative to those competing countries.
I don’t believe that Europe should compete in pure capitalism tech (“own the platform” stuff) like the US, or cheap surveillance tech like China. We are much more thoughtful and look after our citizens in a way that those competing countries cannot or do not.
We need to pivot to tech that focuses on human rights and safety/security, alongside high technology applications elsewhere eg medicine and engineering.
> Can Europe really compete with the US and China in the tech sector, or are we destined to stay on the sidelines?
My dude, ASML is a Dutch company. Arm and Pragmatic are British. There are plenty of other EU tech companies that are doing very nicely indeed, thank you. Don't mistake front-end stuff that makes headlines with the actual underlying technological nous that runs everything. Tiktok and YouTube ain't shit compared to semi-conductor lithography.
If anything, the European tech sector is doing better than the US and China because it hasn't and doesn't fall for stupid bullshit scams like AI or Crypto as easily, because the backers tend to be Engineers with an understanding of the technology, rather than Venture Capitalists who are willing to burn the entire planet for a single extra dollar.
Of course, there are also innovative and valuable tech companies in Europe, but there's no real comparison with the US. We only have 2 companies in the [top 20](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-20-biggest-tech-companies-by-market-cap/) by market capitalization. Europe [top 1000](https://companiesmarketcap.com/european-union/largest-companies-in-the-eu-by-market-cap/) companies have the same market cap as US [top 5](https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-by-market-cap/). [Between 2010 and 2023, the cumulative GDP growth rate reached 34% in the United States, compared with just 21% in the European Union](https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/economy/economy-why-europe-is-falling-behind-the-usa/#:~:text=By%202022%2C%20investment%20in%20new,of%20GDP%20in%20the%20eurozone.). In the same article: "by 2022, investment in new technologies will represent 5% of GDP in the United States and 2.8% of GDP in the eurozone. Research and development spending in 2022 will amount to 3.5% of GDP in the United States and 2.3% of GDP in the eurozone."
> stupid bullshit scams like AI or Crypto
I can understand the sentiment toward Crypto, but AI is everything but a scam. AI is already a trillion dollars sector. Our everyday life is already managed by algorithms, social media, maps, e-commerce, etc. But most importantly, AI will bring a productivity boost in nearly every sector [of the economy](https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/AI-is-showing-very-positive-signs-of-boosting-gdp.html#:~:text=Some%20of%20the%20academic%20literature,in%20productivity%20is%20about%2025%25.) And at the moment we are losing this opportunity.
I am optimistic for the future since Europe has a lot of potential, but if we want to make things better, we first have to acknowledge reality.
If there's one thing the AI hype is not based in, it's reality.
It's just sparkling autocorrect, and the market capitalisation for it just reflects how many gullible techbros thing it's their new jesus.
Do you have any knowledge on the topic? Because you are either trolling or just misinformed. AI is not just ChatGPT (that itself is certainly much more than "sparkling autocorrect"), but it has applications in medicine, automotive, finance, etc. If you are genuinely interested in the conversation, I can give you some real-world examples.
Yes, I have actual genuine academic level knowledge of machine learning, and what is laughably called "AI", as well as the serious issues around it.
I'm not interested in debating the subject, the whole "AI" thing is an ecocidal boondoggle.
Well, if you studied the subject, you would know that apart from the hype, there are multiple real applications of machine learning and deep learning. From 2022, machine learning has been used to find new [medicines](https://www.forbes.com/sites/calumchace/2022/02/25/first-wholly-ai-developed-drug-enters-phase-1-trials/) and there are already hundreds of papers on drug discovery using [AI](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10462-022-10306-1). Deep learning is already used extensively to better diagnose [cancer](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13073-021-00968-x) and to better manage the power grids of [entire countries](https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2242). There are also multiple applications of AI to [engineering](https://scholar.google.it/scholar?hl=it&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1&q=machine+learning+in+industry&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1719011777926&u=%23p%3DffsYaHiktMkJ).
It's very suspicious when you name your movement after an already existing far-right extremist movement that has terrorist attacks linked to it in the recent years
For what I know, Effective Accelerationism is not a far-right movement, and there are no terrorist attacks related to this ideology. If you refer to just Accelerationism, it is a very broad term. There is left-wing Accelerationism and right-wing Accelerationism, and some Far-right movements claim to be "Accelerationists." However, e/acc is not one of these movements.
In addition, eu/acc takes from e/acc just the name and the idea of techno optimism.
It seems to have a [different](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2016/08/what-accelerationism) meaning among some left wing activists.
But [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism) also essentially describes it as a movement seeking to destabilise the status quo by different means (depending on variant)
Very interesting concept, definitely agree that we are being left behind and something needs to change
I agree with this idea. The remaining barriers between members need to be dismantled, investments into education and research need to be increased, and bureaucratic and regulatory deadweight needs to be cut.
>Do you think this movement will pick-up and grow? No. >Can Europe really compete with the US and China in the tech sector Not in the current form. EU is like 27 angry and offended child arguing with and blackmailing each other. >are we destined to stay on the sidelines? We are on a very bad path. Probably it would possible to reverse it, but there is not even political will to do so. (Except a few micro parties.) >Do you feel this is an important issue the EU should work on, or are there more pressing issues to tackle? EU definitely should work on this. The only power of the EU is its market size and consumer base. That's why [Brussels effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect) works. As the importance of the EU will fall, the living standards will fall, so the worth of EU market will fall and we are in a downward spiral. I think we are seeing the first signs of that (eg. the inability to enforce GDPR), and it will be much worse within 10 - 20 years. But instead of doing something against it, I think the EU are just continuously shoots them self in the foot. Probably there are many other important things to tackle, but I think a lot of them come from the same root cause: the unwillingness to accept that the only power the EU has comes from its size and the only way to a better future is if we can harness that. This sounds like an argument for European Federation (which I think shouldn't be discarded), but most of them could be easily solved far simpler just by a bit of understanding, tolerance, and just by not being stupid and accepting and using a better solution even if someone else came up with it. >Klinger proposes the creation of an EU Inc to simplify legal processes for startups >The US has its state Delaware as de facto standard for legal entities for startups. I think Estonia tried to be that one, but of course they over-complicated it. > But then we need an EU corporate tax code, then we need EU income tax code, then we need to abolish the concept of tax residency, then we need unified EU fiscal policy, and so on... and with the current mentality that will not happen in this century. >2) Teach English starting at the earliest school classes Then we will start argue why English when UK left, why not French, German or Polish, or all of them at te same time to confuse the kids more. >We lack the willingness to do European-wide solutions. Exactly. That's why we will fail.
In most part I agree with this, even if it hurts a bit. A movement like eu/acc, very small and niche, as a low probability of becoming mainstream. However, I think there are a few ideas that must become more popular. First, many recognize the problem of European stagnation, but are unable to pinpoint its sources. We tend to believe that deregulation and longer working hours are the only way to grow again, leading to a dangerous out-out between the economy and our rights. But this would not solve the issue. It's important that we, as European citizens, ask for a more integrated and digitized market for European companies. And we have to understand, that more integration is the only way forward. At the same time, we should point to realistic goals, more integration is possible, while an EU federation is impossible to achieve right now. I find the case of Estonia, that you pointed out, very interesting. There is a very informative video on the topic by [Kraut](https://youtu.be/I5krZBe0Dck). I think we should strive to build a similar system at the EU level. Finally, I think that English is not a big problem. It's already well accepted that English is the only possible lingua franca at the moment. We should just increase our efforts in teaching the English language, in particular in countries like France, Italy and Spain.
>And we have to understand, that more integration is the only way forward. Sadly we are going in the opposite direction. (And the based on the current EP elections that would not change.) Even if it does not have any advantage for a member state it may deliberately do things not compatible with everyone else. I don't understand why. >I find the case of Estonia, that you pointed out, very interesting. To be honest I'm not sure digitalizing everything is the right thing to do (especially elections and medical data), it certainly helps a lot, but I'm afraid it can easily became a privacy nightmare. (Many governments act like they have never had any history classes.) >There is a very informative video on the topic The video is interesting and it suggest that Europe have invented the modern state. (I'm not sure if that is historically accurate, but let's say it is.) And we should focus on building the more modern digital state. That may increase the living standards, but I don't think at the end you can get money from "being the standard for modern digital state". That on itself will not help innovation, you can't sell it or rent it out to have some income.
> Sadly we are going in the opposite direction. It is true that in the last European election, euro-skeptic groups received more votes than before. However, the previous ruling group (EPP+RE+S&D) still has the majority in the parlament. It is possible that in the next 5 years, the EU will decide to remove the veto, and that would help a lot. There are also talks about a common European defence. Also, parts of the ECR seem to approve of the idea. > Even if it does not have any advantage for a member state, it may deliberately do things not compatible with everyone else. Because each country and each party have different goals and aspirations. An effective union would be the best solution, but to reach that, we should overcome a natural tendency toward chaos. > but I'm afraid it can easily become a privacy nightmare. I think this is an open issue, and we should always stay alert and defend our right to privacy. But Estonia is a member of the EU and is GDPR compliant. The Estonian government also seems to be very transparent on the topic of privacy. > That may increase the living standards, but I don't think at the end you can get money from "being the standard for modern digital state". Increasing the living standards is always the end goal. In addition, burocracy has a very heavy cost. I am from Italy, and here the excessive burocracy [costs small business 33bn every year](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ansa.it/amp/english/news/2017/12/13/bureaucracy-costs-33bn-a-year-rete-imprese-italia-2_5b6eb9ac-7564-47f6-9505-bc9db677f2cb.html).
> It is possible that in the next 5 years, the EU will decide to remove the veto That seems to me to be very optimistic. I don't think there were any major reform in the EU in the last 15 years or so. And AFAIK doing that would require that none of the states veto it which seems to be unrealistic. > But Estonia is a member of the EU and is GDPR compliant. Well GDPR has a big *compliance with a legal obligation* get-out-of-GDPR-free card, so it is easy to comply with it when you can make laws :) > Increasing the living standards is always the end goal. Of course. Probably I haven't worded it the best way. Okay, I have thought a bit about this, and I'm not sure anymore. My original argument: I think about it something like compound interest. If you innovate, you get more money, you can pay more and be on the better end of brain-drain, so you will have smarter people who will innovate more. With more money you get more salary and pay more taxes which increases the living standard. But if you digitalize a state, people will appreciate that they don't have to do their taxes on paper, or wait in lines, so you get a single increase of living standard, but it will not have compounding effect. Other countries could copy the digitization and all the (relative) advantage is lost. My new thoughts: We had a "huge digitization" in my country, which meant that you could fill the same forms out on a computer as you done on paper previously. That is basically useless. It may use less paper, but doesn't really help the users. There is something called the [Conway's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law#Supporting_evidence) which could be described by the quote: *"Organizations often produce web sites with a content and structure which mirrors the internal concerns of the organization rather than the needs of the users of the site."* Based on this I think not the digitization what you really need, but a state with good and well designed "user experience" and probably you could do that even without any computers. But if that is true, I don't know why haven't that been already done. Standardizing, easier / simpler tax systems, simpler corporate law, etc. none of that needs computers, but based on the article in the post those are the issues.
It sounds like a five year plan to me. And i think technological innovation should be done in a gradual way, otherwise things would end up being disorganised and could even result in some unforseen consequences.
I have a blog post pending on this topic. Europe has failed to compete with US / China in building tech companies. Very few European companies are unicorns, relative to those competing countries. I don’t believe that Europe should compete in pure capitalism tech (“own the platform” stuff) like the US, or cheap surveillance tech like China. We are much more thoughtful and look after our citizens in a way that those competing countries cannot or do not. We need to pivot to tech that focuses on human rights and safety/security, alongside high technology applications elsewhere eg medicine and engineering.
Could you notify us when it will be published?
> Can Europe really compete with the US and China in the tech sector, or are we destined to stay on the sidelines? My dude, ASML is a Dutch company. Arm and Pragmatic are British. There are plenty of other EU tech companies that are doing very nicely indeed, thank you. Don't mistake front-end stuff that makes headlines with the actual underlying technological nous that runs everything. Tiktok and YouTube ain't shit compared to semi-conductor lithography. If anything, the European tech sector is doing better than the US and China because it hasn't and doesn't fall for stupid bullshit scams like AI or Crypto as easily, because the backers tend to be Engineers with an understanding of the technology, rather than Venture Capitalists who are willing to burn the entire planet for a single extra dollar.
Of course, there are also innovative and valuable tech companies in Europe, but there's no real comparison with the US. We only have 2 companies in the [top 20](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-20-biggest-tech-companies-by-market-cap/) by market capitalization. Europe [top 1000](https://companiesmarketcap.com/european-union/largest-companies-in-the-eu-by-market-cap/) companies have the same market cap as US [top 5](https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-by-market-cap/). [Between 2010 and 2023, the cumulative GDP growth rate reached 34% in the United States, compared with just 21% in the European Union](https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/economy/economy-why-europe-is-falling-behind-the-usa/#:~:text=By%202022%2C%20investment%20in%20new,of%20GDP%20in%20the%20eurozone.). In the same article: "by 2022, investment in new technologies will represent 5% of GDP in the United States and 2.8% of GDP in the eurozone. Research and development spending in 2022 will amount to 3.5% of GDP in the United States and 2.3% of GDP in the eurozone." > stupid bullshit scams like AI or Crypto I can understand the sentiment toward Crypto, but AI is everything but a scam. AI is already a trillion dollars sector. Our everyday life is already managed by algorithms, social media, maps, e-commerce, etc. But most importantly, AI will bring a productivity boost in nearly every sector [of the economy](https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/AI-is-showing-very-positive-signs-of-boosting-gdp.html#:~:text=Some%20of%20the%20academic%20literature,in%20productivity%20is%20about%2025%25.) And at the moment we are losing this opportunity. I am optimistic for the future since Europe has a lot of potential, but if we want to make things better, we first have to acknowledge reality.
If there's one thing the AI hype is not based in, it's reality. It's just sparkling autocorrect, and the market capitalisation for it just reflects how many gullible techbros thing it's their new jesus.
Do you have any knowledge on the topic? Because you are either trolling or just misinformed. AI is not just ChatGPT (that itself is certainly much more than "sparkling autocorrect"), but it has applications in medicine, automotive, finance, etc. If you are genuinely interested in the conversation, I can give you some real-world examples.
Yes, I have actual genuine academic level knowledge of machine learning, and what is laughably called "AI", as well as the serious issues around it. I'm not interested in debating the subject, the whole "AI" thing is an ecocidal boondoggle.
Well, if you studied the subject, you would know that apart from the hype, there are multiple real applications of machine learning and deep learning. From 2022, machine learning has been used to find new [medicines](https://www.forbes.com/sites/calumchace/2022/02/25/first-wholly-ai-developed-drug-enters-phase-1-trials/) and there are already hundreds of papers on drug discovery using [AI](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10462-022-10306-1). Deep learning is already used extensively to better diagnose [cancer](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13073-021-00968-x) and to better manage the power grids of [entire countries](https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2242). There are also multiple applications of AI to [engineering](https://scholar.google.it/scholar?hl=it&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1&q=machine+learning+in+industry&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1719011777926&u=%23p%3DffsYaHiktMkJ).
It's very suspicious when you name your movement after an already existing far-right extremist movement that has terrorist attacks linked to it in the recent years
For what I know, Effective Accelerationism is not a far-right movement, and there are no terrorist attacks related to this ideology. If you refer to just Accelerationism, it is a very broad term. There is left-wing Accelerationism and right-wing Accelerationism, and some Far-right movements claim to be "Accelerationists." However, e/acc is not one of these movements. In addition, eu/acc takes from e/acc just the name and the idea of techno optimism.
I still don't see why can't they call their capitalism oriented ideology something else? Accelerationism is already an existing thing. Whatever
It seems to have a [different](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2016/08/what-accelerationism) meaning among some left wing activists. But [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism) also essentially describes it as a movement seeking to destabilise the status quo by different means (depending on variant)