Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There? • Hacker News Board

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#171

Post by megalomanu » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:38 AM UTC

lurena wrote: post #78

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted. There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of A…

As a french I'm accustomed with this point of view, but I think it is too often based on a false vision of what is France and what does french people truly want. France has not always been the country you describe. Even if France never leaded the french revolution and always been more attracted to the philosophical or political side of things, France hosted a lot of technical revolutions and even be part of a "startup culture" in some domains, like automobiles. I invite you to read the bio of Louis Renault or André Citroën. They were true pionners and they share some life events and a mindset very similar to those of a web entrepreneur. Today, we tend to despise all those huge industrial automobile, food, or aviation companies that didn't really innovate anymore, and it's normal because they're symptomatic of the collusions between state and business, but we forget too often that they started like startups, at a time it was possible to make of a small company in a disruptive domain a true unicorn. And many of these companies are the root of the social rights we beneficiate today. If we can't build new big companies anymore, our social system (which I'm fond of by the way) is doomed. I believe France was at this time much more confident with technological progress. Maybe because time was more hopeful, company management more patriarcal, inequalities where less important, and examples of bad conduct from great companies less visible. Anyway. But the roots of innovation are still here, and on the contrary, all the social regulations are not necessarily a true part of what a complex country like France means to be. We must find the balance.

(By the way, I have a familial anecdote (really not significant, it's just pretty fun) on was I said about confidence in technological progress : my great grandfather was a blacksmith, as his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on. And what did he do when automobile replaced horses ? He became a car mechanic.)

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#172

Post by oelmekki » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:40 AM UTC

dnomad wrote: post #160

jacquesm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with France is the employment laws. Start-ups in other countries don't have this problem to the same extent. The secondary problem is that there is a lot of capital floating around in France with 'strings attached', great to get you going, but a huge problem later on.

People like to make a big deal of France's employment laws like there are some extraordinary overwhelming problem that businesses must struggle to overcome. This is silly. France is the 5th largest economy in the world. Finding highly educated, hard-working engineers is straightforwards thanks to the coordination between the government employment agencies and the excellent universities. Just like in America or anywhe…

As a french developer with a 10+ years career, I second that. I've also been a CTO, so I'm well aware of the employer point of view.

I've seen many people worrying about not being able to fire people once hired. But what I've seen in facts are only two people needing firing, and it was done without any problem. What I saw incredibly more often is company getting into panic because their good developers would leave. It's not firing that is hard, it's retaining.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#173

Post by markvdb » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:44 AM UTC

jdminhbg wrote: post #102

lurena wrote: post #78

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted. There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of A…

> There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Here are some numbers (even if I'm not sure about the use of comparing # of people in France and # of Americans in poverty):

https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-un...

TLDR: Depending on the criteria, 12.7%/43.1 million or 14%/47.5 million Americans are living in poverty. About half of which in abject poverty (under 50% of the poverty level).

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#174

Post by jackvalentine » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:48 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #126

jackvalentine wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In economies where minimum entitlements are sufficient to protect workers from exploitation, unions serve no useful purpose at all They serve the purpose of making sure workers get their legal entitlements. For example, Unions right in Australia are tackling the problem of underpayment of legally mandated wages “wage theft” and have succeeded in getting a state government to adopt as policy the treatment of deliber…

>most of the reasonable criticism you could direct at them comes down to enforcement Sounds like you agree with me. In a democracy, unions are just about the least efficient way you could possibly address inadequate enforcement of labor laws. If all you want is a workers lobby group, then why do you think the best way to achieve that is with organisations that exploit people with collective bargaining agreements, and…

I gave you a concrete example of the good work unions are doing and you responded by just calling it inefficient and saying "many far superior ways" without outlining any. The reality is it was a thing that was happening and unions took a leading role in the political process to fix it. Unions are people participating in democracy.

Not only that, you seek to put words in my mouth about exploitation and tyranny.

I'd also like to point out that beyond your (in my view) irrational distaste for unions, you have a very US-centric view of what a union is. Those of us looking from the outside in are constantly bemused by people like you.

Please only respond to the things I actually say, not the things that you think I will say in the caricature you have built.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#175

Post by perl4ever » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:49 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #96

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May 17: "18 USC §§2340 & 2340A make it a federal crime for a person acting under color of law to commit torture overseas." ...That doesn't seem to fit the general "frivolous law" theme...

The point was hardly that every law on the federal books is bad. If you read the first 100 tweets on that account, my opinion is maybe 90 are bullshit that shouldn't be on the books. Nobody is going through all of those and removing the trash. Every little thing doesn't need a law, everything shouldn't be a federal crime. eg "18 USC §1465 makes it a federal crime to produce an obscene, lewd, lascivious, or "filthy bo…

I disagree with treating every specific refinement or implication of an age-old law as some irrelevant newfangled detail we don't need.

I looked up "21 USC §§331, 333, 343(g) & 21 CFR §139.150(b) make it a federal crime to sell "egg noodles" that aren't ribbon-shaped."

21 USC §331 is just about regulating fraud in commerce. It starts:

"The following acts and the causing thereof are prohibited:

(a) The introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any food, drug, device, tobacco product, or cosmetic that is adulterated or misbranded.

You could show that to someone a couple thousand years ago, and nothing would prevent them from understanding the purpose of it. You could probably get someone from the time of Hammurabi to understand the concept.

21 CFR §139.150(b) doesn't make it illegal to sell egg based pasta that isn't ribbon shaped, it defines "egg noodles" as such, as opposed to tubular shapes which are not "egg noodles". Standards to facilitate commerce are normally considered legitimate even by libertarians who wish to radically shrink the federal government. So unless you are an anarchist or particularly wish to abolish egg noodles or inhibit commerce in them, I don't understand where you're coming from.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#176

Post by adventured » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:58 AM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #144

adventured wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Your claim about American poverty is beligerently false. The US poverty rate is below both the French [1] and Canadian [2] poverty rates. It's also below the rates of poverty in Spain and Italy. France also has a higher rate…

The poor in France still have access to education, healthcare, etc. These rates are not comparable.

70 million people in the US get free healthcare via Medicaid + CHIP. That nearly covers 2x the poverty rate.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#177

Post by seszett » Mon, May 28, 2018, 9:00 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #89

marticode wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate tax rate is at 33% and 16% for small business, that doesn't strike me as particularly high, especially considered what it used to be in the US. There are many taxes on employee's but they fund their benefits, so that's something you don't have to provide separately to your employees and you can basically see it as part of the salary.

It was increasingly a problem for US competitiveness. The US was bleeding a lot of successful companies to other countries for tax purposes, and it was getting worse (Pfizer tried to flee to Ireland). The average national rate in Europe is around 18%, and 21% for the EU. France is competing with this: Austria 25%, Spain 25%, Netherlands 25%, Italy 24%, Norway 23%, Denmark 22%, Sweden 22%, Portugal 21%, Slovakia 21%,…

You're comparing the maximum rate for France with average rates in the other countries, which isn't really fair.

The actual average in France is 23% (in 2016, it's probably lower now) so nothing really extraordinary. The maximum rate is also being progressively brought down from 33% to 25%.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#178

Post by llcoolv » Mon, May 28, 2018, 9:00 AM UTC

llcoolv wrote: post #167

erikb wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how Americans get so shocked about it, while it is quite clear to the rest of the world. Honestly when I was visiting the US the first time, I was shocked how Second World everything was. Most people live in poor areas (of course most well off Americans don't travel to these part of towns so they don't see it). Many non-chain shops are struggling. Food prices are ridiculously high in comparison to the not that…

[flagged]

Great. A whole bunch of downvotes and not a single decent argument :D

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#179

Post by baybal2 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 9:03 AM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #98

pilooch wrote: post #41

I run a machine learning company in France. Call it a startup or not, doesn't matter. Most of what I read in the comments here is not exactly true nor relies on statistics (sound like my story is...). For companies acting within the science or innovative space, France is a haven. CIR is a tax return that covers 30% of R&D personnel, JEI is a status that halves the taxes on personnel for 8 years, and nullifies gov tax…

>The truth is it is much much cheaper than in the US, and probably unmatched in Western Europe. Now, all this preexisted Macron. Not only Europe, but much of China as well. Besides the basic "no tax for a new company below $N annual revenue for 5 years," there are megatons of all kinds of obscure, but very generous state grants. If stars align well for the company, it can effectively live off grants while having 0 re…

The point I want to convey however is this: a functioning business is not supposed to be a vessel for collecting grants/tax credits/funding rounds from sucker investors, but producing something useful.

Another one: China is a high tax country. Scoring one or another double digit tax credit may be a matter of life and death for a company. The party nominally wants to enable the new business formation, preferably in high tech sectors, but on another hand makes it near impossible by demanding that each company wanting to do so to have more lawyers and "government relationship" staff than coders and engineers, shuttling centimetre thick stacks of legal papers to offices of MofCom every week.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#180

Post by woodpanel » Mon, May 28, 2018, 9:04 AM UTC

megalomanu wrote: post #171

lurena wrote: post #78

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted. There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of A…

As a french I'm accustomed with this point of view, but I think it is too often based on a false vision of what is France and what does french people truly want. France has not always been the country you describe. Even if France never leaded the french revolution and always been more attracted to the philosophical or political side of things, France hosted a lot of technical revolutions and even be part of a "startu…

We must find the balance.

I think so too. Not being French but reducing France to just being France if it keeps it's inefficiencies is what made it take the role of "Europe's sick man" from Germany.

As if having a permanent base of 20% unemployed youth (and 10% in general) is a price worth the cost of being a "well-meaning" nation.

PS: And no, youth unemployment is not a new thing in France as it stood around 27% in 1997. Pre-Euro and Pre-German-Labor-Reforms.