I think, ^this is the main problem in the US. A government is there to protect and serve the people and is elected therefore, Apple is there to serve themselves (the shareholders) and are in no way responsible to or for the people.
The people running government get there by way of appealing to constituencies within the people and often run things to suit themselves, their vision and their constituencies, not everyone. For that matter, varied factions without a people often have opposed views and agendas.
Many of the people in government agencies are appointed or hired, not elected. People often vote for a politician not because they like or agree with him/her, but because the alternative is seen as worse. People speak of 'holding their nose and voting for...'
Businesses like Apple are subject to free market forces where customers 'vote with their dollars' and competition counter-balances exploitative self-interest to some extent. Look at the pushback Apple gets over unpopular design decisions, people threatening to 'jump ship' over to Windows or Android, etc...
Government and businesses are staffed with the same species; human beings. Everything someone doesn't like about 'politicians' or 'CEOs' can be found in some form in both. Both entities are held accountable, one to the electorate and one to free markets, neither of which is perfect.
I also like, that our government (local our European) stands for the people they represent.
The people they represent aren't the whole citizenry. Brexit is one example. A rightward shift in response to dissatisfaction with government is another. The word that's trickled in over here is that some governments seemed considerably more in favor of enabling large scale immigration (to the point it became disruptive) than many of the citizenry.
People in power often think they know better than much of their constituency. Sometimes they're right, but my point is they often stand for what they personally believe in and think they can get away with without paying too high a political price.
Because as the wsj noted innovation is at an all time low in the EU.
This is an interesting statement that deserves a harder look. In the U.S., we are having to grapple with the 'inconvenient truth' that for varied reasons bringing large scale manufacturing back to the United States, rather than relying on China, Vietnam, India, etc..., is at best daunting and likely not feasible. No matter how much one loves America, believes in what they think it stands for, etc..., the 'American Way' as it functions in the context of our modern, mostly post-scarcity, diverse and relatively prosperous society, doesn't lend itself to competing well on the world stage in terms of blue collar manual factory work, and the related technical expertise needed (I'm told Tim Cook said China offered a significant advantage in manufacturing due to a highly skilled workforce and advanced tooling capabilities, including a large number of skilled machinists).
Love America all you want, we're not the best positioned for doing everything.
Maybe the E.U.'s 'culture,' business culture, tightly regulated State or whatever isn't as conducive the kind of tech. sector business innovation the produces a Microsoft, Apple, Google or Meta/Facebook that lasts? I say 'lasts,' because the E.U. and perhaps like-minded nations do produce some big names - RIM (Blackberry; Canada) and Nokia (Finland) come to mind, but they don't seem to diversify and last.
I don't want to over-state the issue; our computers, operating systems and a lot of big niche software (e.g.: Microsoft Office, word processors, web browsers) are largely from American companies (with hardware made in China). China has been progressively producing alternatives to U.S. software/platforms, but has the E.U.?
Open question in neutral language - what is the major contribution (aside from some market dollars) of the E.U. to personal computing and related platforms these days?
And so I don't come off as too U.S.-centric, those of you in the E.U., are your main software products (e.g.: word processor/spreadsheet/office suit, web browser, e-mail client) mainly E.U.-based company-branded alternatives, or are you mainly using products from U.S. companies for those?