Look at companies like AMSL which no one comes even close. It is likely that every device you own has a microchip made with a machine by AMSL. Is it sexy? Is there a narcissistic tweeting CEO? No, but there is inovasion at the highest level.
The mRNA vaccine also came out of the "EU".
What the EU has little off and what you are probably complaining about it throwing money at a hundred things to see what sticks. Those methods cause things like
Theranos to spawn.
Rampent capitalism causes people to suffer and die. You may get a few unicorns with some inovation but you can get there without the suffering as well.
And even there, if you look at the sheer amount of R&D projects funded by the EU... Anyone serious can't say the EU doesn't invest massively in R&D. Interestingly enough, most of what I see funded and successfully becoming products are incremental development (increasing wireless bandwidth for specific apps or constraints, improving industrial productivity or getting to next gen for any tech) and few moonshots. I work with a lot of tech SMEs and most consider these projects key to their survival, as they get put in touch with (international) customers to work on hard but specific use cases and they get funded for R&D, improve their portfolio...
But as you said, it's not very sexy, there's a little bit (not that much really) of management/bureaucracy (and most actually understand that state of things as the european equilibrium between corruption and too-much-red-tape) and it's not that hard to get funded on small to medium projects.
This kind of incremental development has been criticized a lot, precisely because it discourages scientists from trying anything audacious. Developing a slightly more efficient telegraph line every year still does not beat inventing e-mail.
Whenever you introduce large bureaucracy into any process, risk mitigation becomes the main goal of the most important actors, at the cost of all the previous goals.
> This kind of incremental development has been criticized a lot, precisely because it discourages scientists from trying anything audacious. Developing a slightly more efficient telegraph line every year still does not beat inventing e-mail.
I’d be surprised to learn that it would have been possible to run packet data on the original telephone system.
I’d be less surprised to learn that decades of incremental improvements ultimately enabled packet data to run on top of telephone lines.
I said most, but if you're looking at the projects funded by the EU, there's plenty of heavy projects such as the EPI (that can be criticized of course) and contributions to many fundamental research projects.
Incremental research is needed, and as a collaborator or downstream from many of these projects, the developed tech is often disruptive in many ways, be it cost reduction (keeping the industry competitive) or creating new features, improving safety of security of the products. Yes, developing a slightly better telegraph has its use and it doesn't beat inventing email but email itself was a incremental progress from telegraph, telex, fax, BBS, internet... Haven't seen a 747 assemble itself from a DARPA project yet.
A lot of the cutting edge stuff on all kinds of wireless or fiber communication is funded through the EU and I'd say looking at funded projects year after year you can see lots of research lab work percolate quite quickly to a large network of SMEs that then provide new services to lots of European companies.
Most of the groundlaying work on mRNA has been done by Katalin Karikó, a Hungarian scientist who moved to the US to continue her research in better conditions.
The history of mRNA research is pretty tangled, but its majority took place at the American side of the pond. Unless you want to cherry-pick one particular moment and disregard all others, then no, mRNA technology is not a European, or even majority-European invention.
Katalin Karikó moved to the US in 1985, from a Warsaw Pact country.
She did her research at UPenn and accepted a demotion and pay cut in 1995 because grant agencies decided this weird mRNA stuff wasn't worth funding.
In 2006 she founded startup company RNARx, funded with 100k USD of government grants, but didn't come to an agreement to license patents of her own work which UPenn held.
So in 2013 she joined German company Biontech, funded with 150m EUR of venture capital, which was finally able to productize the research.
Absolutely not. The most common Covid vaccines originated in Europe (AZ, BionTech) with the exception of Moderna (US).
To take an example were all the ground work was done in Europe and later propelled US companies to riches: MP3.
But hey, if you want to play Super Trump with countries, and the US to win, fine for me. The US win by virtue of being the most exceptional country on earth.
Why did BioNTech have to partner up with American Pfizer to get anywhere with their (groundbreaking!) technology? Why did we give the Americans the secret sauce?
> Rampent capitalism causes people to suffer and die.
Ill-informed but strongly held attitudes like that are a big problem in the EU. There would be a lot fewer people on Earth and they would suffer a lot more if we didn't have Capitalism. They would suffer even less if we had more of it.
I am not saying no capitalism, I am saying regulation is good. Such as in no child labor[1] and enforced safety standards[2], which yes, slows down innovation but safe lives. Sadly most regulations are made in blood.
No regulations are fine and dandy unless you are one of the first 346 to die from Boeing's MAX disaster until the "market corrects itself".
Even the EU has been complaining how expensive it is to run rail through Switzerland. The reason being regulation which prevent such disasters as in Ohio. [3]
Paper routes and other forms of light work are good for children.
The bad kinds of child labour disappear as poverty disappears. No need for any hard regulation there.
I actually looked at the reported workplace safety violations and the reported workplace accidents for Tesla a couple of years ago to see whether the reporting was biased against Tesla or not -- turns out it was. It still is.
> The bad kinds of child labour disappear as poverty disappears. No need for any hard regulation there.
I'm sorry but that is extremely cold hearted, mostly useless and bordering on the sociopathic. As an excuse for child labour. Just "fix" everything, have enough money and no children will need to work in risky conditions? You should go and tell the DRC government that, as well as the families whose children are dying/poisoning themselves for their whole lives, they would be overjoyed.
It is not a solution in any way a form, it's a desired state. Hard regulations banning these kind of undesirable practices will be an immediate (ish, with time for enforcement) fix and literally save lives.
Is your view similarly useless and sociopathic with regards to all regulations? Building codes are only a chore and increase housing prices, once everybody is rich all housing will be of good quality (until an earthquake or hurricane or poor living conditions strike and kill, but who cares, right?).
Look at companies like AMSL which no one comes even close. It is likely that every device you own has a microchip made with a machine by AMSL. Is it sexy? Is there a narcissistic tweeting CEO? No, but there is inovasion at the highest level.
The mRNA vaccine also came out of the "EU".
What the EU has little off and what you are probably complaining about it throwing money at a hundred things to see what sticks. Those methods cause things like Theranos to spawn.
Rampent capitalism causes people to suffer and die. You may get a few unicorns with some inovation but you can get there without the suffering as well.