Europe had the opportunity to create a silicon valley 30 years ago. They fumbled it so badly that most euro tech talent went to the US and worked or even founded their companies there. They still have not (and likely never will) implement the general reforms needed to create fertile grounds for tech to compete with the US.
If the current EU mindset existed 150 years ago, they would have banned steam engines because they are too loud and annoying. That's the level of shortsighted immediate gratification we are dealing with.
I don't know what SK has to do with this, they are basically still close to an emerging economy. Europe had a roaring economy when SK was still mostly farming.
The environment can absorb pollution, just not as quickly as we're currently polluting. It's okay to emit pollution sometimes. I'm totally in favor of heritage railways running their ancient smoke-belching steam trains on the third Sunday of every month so we can see them go. Just not every day.
That's just the world now. Delete China and the US has no more electronics and raw materials either. You wanted globalization and well that's what you got.
Besides, 6 weeks vacation is great. Also we don't need to have so much stuff, I don't even own or want a car, something that's very hard to do without in America. We don't have this exhausting desire to make things a race and to be number 1.
Not exactly that, but one thing that comes to mind: Germany was about to switch the phone network to fiber with data service in the late 80s(!), but then Helmut Kohl (CDU chancellor) decided to build TV cable instead. He wanted to promote private TV stations because the public ones weren't conservative enough for him. Spoiler: Private TV stations ended up doing barely any political programming anyway.
Technical note: For some years, the few regions that got the OPAL optical network had the worst internet, but that problem would not have occurred with OPAL everywhere: Fiber can always be upgraded at the endpoints, the numbers were just too small to develop the technology.
If the current EU mindset existed 150 years ago, they would have banned steam engines because they are too loud and annoying. That's the level of shortsighted immediate gratification we are dealing with.
I don't know what SK has to do with this, they are basically still close to an emerging economy. Europe had a roaring economy when SK was still mostly farming.