Mmm. My impression - and this is a complex subject that deserves a deeper treatment than the article and comments will give it - my impression is that Europe has a number of very well developed systems to protect the social elite from becoming social not-elites. Especially the tax code and measures against people succeeding too much like in America.
It is stunning that Europe has failed to participate in the tech boom of the last few decades. Even with the social safety nets to protect against failure. I suspect they have a tax code that punishes high-risk high-reward gambits and that a side effect is the lack of extreme successes. If there are no extreme successes, then medicine is the field most guaranteed to win people moderate and respectable success. The average doctor is more respectable than the average engineer, the outlier engineer is far more important than the outlier surgeons. It isn't close, they were basically raiding top scientists and engineers in WWII out of Germany for example because they could reliably do things of civilisational significance.
This is a key problem with equalising the playing fields. Society is dragged forward by outlier successes. Punish them, and progress stops. This is why the big slow trend of people organising against inequality is so concerning.
It is stunning that Europe has failed to participate in the tech boom of the last few decades. Even with the social safety nets to protect against failure. I suspect they have a tax code that punishes high-risk high-reward gambits and that a side effect is the lack of extreme successes. If there are no extreme successes, then medicine is the field most guaranteed to win people moderate and respectable success. The average doctor is more respectable than the average engineer, the outlier engineer is far more important than the outlier surgeons. It isn't close, they were basically raiding top scientists and engineers in WWII out of Germany for example because they could reliably do things of civilisational significance.
This is a key problem with equalising the playing fields. Society is dragged forward by outlier successes. Punish them, and progress stops. This is why the big slow trend of people organising against inequality is so concerning.