Here on earth, what you wrote is much closer to the truth. The American economy is awash with opportunities to work for small businesses, with employees free to move around and chart their own destiny.
What about the European system prevents that for the employee?
Otherwise we surely can do this in europe as well, just with a little bit more friction.
From personal experience:
1. Less employment opportunities due to no VC funding, and risk averse mentality of entrepreneurs meaning next to no big EU SW product companies. That's why the best paying jobs in EU tech scene are mostly US companies, which also tend to be clustered in only a few cities in the EU, where housing is now a major issue.
2. Employment and tax laws. 100% cross-country employment across the EU is still not a thing, as every government wants taxes be paid in their country, so they have the laws and bureaucracy in place to make sure jobs and tax revenue don't leave their country, so living in a country while being employed in another is incredibly rare as an employee and not a B-2-B contractor.
3. The big one: Language barriers and bureaucracy differing from country to country means huge friction and risk when moving to a country you're not familiar with, along with the added overhead of learning a new language on top of having a full time job plus the challenge of building new social circles with a different language and culture. I've seen many people leave a country due to the culture shock, language barrier and isolation that lead to, despite them being friendly people and productive workers.
This might even be a fun challenge to deal with when you're young and single, but when you have a spouse and maybe even a child, things get even more complicated fast when it comes to immigration, finding a house or a job, especially if your spouse doesn't work in tech or any other career where English is normalized at work, or even needs their credentials translated and locally equivalated by the authorities to be eligible for employment.
I've met many expat couples where one works in tech and their non-tech spouse has been unemployed for months/years due to their education, skills and experience not being recognized in the new country. Some EU countries really love bureaucracy, credentials, and don't tolerate you not speaking the local language.
A friend of mine got laid off as part of his company going bankrupt with his last two wages going unpaid. The bureaucracy, letter bombardment and appointments in dealing with the authorities to try to recoup those two months wages, all having to be done in German, a foreign language to him(and me), makes the experience completely exhausting and I can feel he just wants to give up on those unpaid wages.
Imagine someone from Ohio having to learn a new language when moving to California and then another language when moving to New York. Not having to deal with bureaucracy in a foreign language for every state is a huge asset for the US and a weakness of the EU labor mobility. The fix could be easy, mandate English as a second language for bureaucracy in every EU country, but I can name a few countries (not the Northern ones) where I know they'd rather see the world burn than adopt English. It's one of the reason why the UK and Ireland are the top destinations for EU migration, at least that was the case for UK before Brexit.
4. Racism, xenofobia, discrimination and glass ceilings from the locals, when you come from the "wrong" country, have a "wrong" sounding name or the "wrong" skin color.
#4 is definitely a bit of an issue. Europe is surprisingly regressive, even compared to the US. Lots of rude comments towards non-white coworkers.
Every system could be improved and if you prefer one the other isn't by default inherently evil.
People within both systems can suck.
I'm from Africa and both places are like heaven on earth in comparison.
If they all are all happy and free to chart their own destiny - why are those contract things then pretty much standard in the US (as it seems to me)?
And maybe things are not perfect on either side of the atlantic?
I would be fine with less regulations and hire and fire here in europe btw - but I would be not OK, having to sign such contracts. But I don't see, why we can't have both. Meaning employee respecting contracts - but not mandated from above.
They aren't standard by any means.
When things that we are used to (but unhappy with) because our jobs involve a lot of proprietary technological secrets trickle down to sandwich shop minimum wage workers…it’s not worth saying that they’re not standard.
There’s a reason that multiple state legislatures are working to ban noncompetes entirely, and it’s not because they’re uncommon.
I've always found it much easier to "chart my own destiny" when my healthcare is guaranteed, forever, for free, whether I have a job or not.
