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The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

theguardian.com

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Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#31

Post by pjc50 »

overkalix wrote: post #23
fsloth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically entire Europe was a warzone from the end of the Roman period to... oh, Ukraine.. well, Europe still is a warzone but much less so now than in the past centuries. The middle ages wars didn't really involve the population. They were more a matter of aristocracy. Cities were raized, since those where the way to control land, but you generally left the peasants and their lords alone. Peasants really didn't care…

> wars mostly affected the 'state' and not the people that much How do you exactly think armies are fed, armed, and paid? There are innumerable examples of revolts ignited due to the abuses of the local or occupying army. This idea of "limited" warfare where a king took a few men and fought it out with his rival with the population not caring or suffering much is utterly deluded.

Parent is more right than wrong; while armies were fed by forage, local purchase, and outright looting, they were also necessarily localised and the apparatus for total war didn't really exist until railways, despite Napoleon beginning mass mobilisation.

The Grande Armee marching across Europe would have made a huge impact to the zone within a day's ride of it, and much less outside of that. It was the 20th century which made giant fronts and mass bombing of civilians behind the front possible. Not that previous war was without its atrocities (Magdeburg), but the scale was proportionally smaller.

And, yes, tax and fiscal policy was completely dominated by warmaking related costs. As the state was much smaller and had little remit outside that.

"Nationalism was not a concept yet" also deserves looking at; the map looked very different, with either huge loose polyglot empires (Austria-Hungary, HRE) or smaller monarchial states, and the idea of self in the world that people would have had looked very different. Especially for much of the middle of that period it was bound more to religion.

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#32

Post by Xylakant »

mamon wrote: post #28
dmurray wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often the people who are willing to work long hours and lack formal qualifications are immigrants. Maybe there are not enough immigrants in your town? Or they would have needed to start as apprentices 5 years ago, and it's hard for them to get into the apprentice system?

That's the paradox: Germany took in over 1.4 million "refugees" from Syria and North Africa (predominantly young, healthy males), and they still couldn't find ~20k temp workers to pick up asparagus this summer. They lamented how Polish people can't come anymore, due to COVID-19 lockdown. So no, it's definitely not the lack of immigrants, they are just wrong kind of immigrants, the too-lazy-to-work kind.

> So no, it's definitely not the lack of immigrants, they are just wrong kind of immigrants, the too-lazy-to-work kind.

Refugees are by law not allowed to work until they have a semi-permanent residence permit of any kind ("Duldung" would be sufficient in some, but not all cases). So yeah, they're all lazy and at fault here.

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#33

Post by 082349872349872 »

fxj wrote: post #7

Hofpfisterei is a chain of bakery shops, headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Its business focuses on southern Germany. It has 163 branches and employs about 950 people. Its history reaches back to the year 1331 when the mill Toratsmühle was mentioned for the first time. It must have existed before that date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofpfisterei

That beats the documented history of the pre-1371[1] https://www.baeren-muensingen.ch (although I don't put much stock in the Napoleon story)

"Bavarians can do anything[2] — except speak German"

Akkadakka nach bayerischer Art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_gtGfAail4

PS. Fasching means Münich is part of the civilised world (as if the Limes weren't enough?). Ändä miini Miinig!

[1] The oldest venue where I've ever played a gig was built ca. 130.

[2] You all even have us beat for dialect wikipedia articles:

31.381 https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn

27'293 https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Houptsyte

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#34

Post by avhception »

dmurray wrote: post #26
locallost wrote: post #10

Where I live in Germany, small traditional butchers and bakers etc. are also closing down, but not for the lack of customers. They get too old, and nobody wants to take over. About 8 or so years ago, a baker closed at the city center, replaced by a chain, and a friend lamented how traditional bakers can't keep up with the chains that basically put frozen products in the oven. Her father laughed and said the place was…

Often the people who are willing to work long hours and lack formal qualifications are immigrants. Maybe there are not enough immigrants in your town? Or they would have needed to start as apprentices 5 years ago, and it's hard for them to get into the apprentice system?

> hard for them to get into the apprentice system?

Speaking as a German, it's also a failure to integrate these people properly. The small bakery in my home town closed down, too.

Immigrants are in no short supply, but there are a few factors that prevent them from taking on a venture like that:

- They're generally forbidden to work until their formal immigration process has made enough progress in our bureaucracy, which can take years

- They usually have no capital to pay for up-front expenses like buying the buildings and equipment

- We segregate them from society by putting them in some sort of immigrant shelter while the bureaucracy does it's thing

Especially the last point is rather bad I think, it leads to parallel societies that keep to themselves rather than integrating into the German society surrounding them. Most Muslim migrants would probably rather not operate a "German"-style bakery in the traditional sense.

Our capability for integration is declining, too, because as a society we are becoming more and more estranged from our fellow citizens as community activities, especially in small towns and villages, dry up.

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#35

Post by martopix »

mamon wrote: post #28
dmurray wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often the people who are willing to work long hours and lack formal qualifications are immigrants. Maybe there are not enough immigrants in your town? Or they would have needed to start as apprentices 5 years ago, and it's hard for them to get into the apprentice system?

That's the paradox: Germany took in over 1.4 million "refugees" from Syria and North Africa (predominantly young, healthy males), and they still couldn't find ~20k temp workers to pick up asparagus this summer. They lamented how Polish people can't come anymore, due to COVID-19 lockdown. So no, it's definitely not the lack of immigrants, they are just wrong kind of immigrants, the too-lazy-to-work kind.

If you say something racist and prejudiced like that you need evidence that the problem here is that their unwillingness to work. Furthermore the idea (given by your use of quotes) that people coming from Syria during a civil war aren't refugees also requires a strong justification. Otherwise this message should not have a place here.

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#36

Post by mamon »

Xylakant wrote: post #32
mamon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the paradox: Germany took in over 1.4 million "refugees" from Syria and North Africa (predominantly young, healthy males), and they still couldn't find ~20k temp workers to pick up asparagus this summer. They lamented how Polish people can't come anymore, due to COVID-19 lockdown. So no, it's definitely not the lack of immigrants, they are just wrong kind of immigrants, the too-lazy-to-work kind.

> So no, it's definitely not the lack of immigrants, they are just wrong kind of immigrants, the too-lazy-to-work kind. Refugees are by law not allowed to work until they have a semi-permanent residence permit of any kind ("Duldung" would be sufficient in some, but not all cases). So yeah, they're all lazy and at fault here.

By what law? I'm pretty sure that at the same time Germany allowed them in they also adjusted their policies to make access to jobs easy for them (https://www.oecd.org/els/mig/Finding-their-Way-Germany.pdf) German economy in general suffers from the lack of workers, which is the limiting factor for many businesses growth. If they could make a productive use of those "refugees" they surely would by now. They are not gatekeeping the job market.

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#37

Post by jon-wood »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #22

> "So they say you can’t close. And I think, well, come and spend your money with me instead, then." You get this all over the small picturesque villages in the UK, people love the idea of village shops and village pubs but few are willing to put any money behind them. Remember my parents remarking that their neighbors where sad the village pub was closing down, my parents thinking its ridiculous because they only se…

I saw this a while ago with a startup I was working for, we did online grocery delivery for butchers, bakers, greengrocers and the like. Eventually we had to shut down because we ran out of money, but we did one final week of deliveries - that week was the biggest week we ever did, and the first to make a profit, if all the people saying how sad they were to see us go and making one last order had just used us instead of a supermarket every other week we’d still be delivering.

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#38

Post by Xylakant »

mamon wrote: post #36
Xylakant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So no, it's definitely not the lack of immigrants, they are just wrong kind of immigrants, the too-lazy-to-work kind. Refugees are by law not allowed to work until they have a semi-permanent residence permit of any kind ("Duldung" would be sufficient in some, but not all cases). So yeah, they're all lazy and at fault here.

By what law? I'm pretty sure that at the same time Germany allowed them in they also adjusted their policies to make access to jobs easy for them ( https://www.oecd.org/els/mig/Finding-their-Way-Germany.pdf ) German economy in general suffers from the lack of workers, which is the limiting factor for many businesses growth. If they could make a productive use of those "refugees" they surely would by now. They are not…

Here's the rules and regulations: https://www.bmas.de/DE/Themen/Arbeitsmarkt/Infos-fuer-Asylsu... TL;DR: At least 3 month in the best case, never in the worst case. Many cases require explicit permission from the authorities. Even if you're allowed to work before your application has been approved, you still face the problem that your refugee application might not be approved. Few employers will risk investing substantial amounts of education into a person with such a risky status. Once you have a permanent residence status things get easier.

Generally, a major problem is that practically no education that refugees may have is recognized in Germany. So even if the person is a doctor, baker or whatever, even if they speak proper German, they're not permitted to work in the job that they're educated for - so even if there's a lack of qualified workers on one side and qualified workers on the other side, you'd still need to go through at least large chunks of the education. My wife who has a full teacher education from a neighboring european country (ECTS credits and all) still had to go back to university before being allowed to teach in Germany. There's also language barriers (obviously)

It's also the case that in 2018 43% of the refugees had a job - that's certainly less than everyone would have wished for, but it's not as if all refugees are out of work.

Since you cited the case of having to import foreign workers for field/harvest work: That's something that the farmers prefer. The imported workers are unorganized, often speak no German and have little to no knowledge of their rights. They're kept in containers under the farmers control. They're easy to exploit in ways that people with even the least bit of local support network are not. They'd not take natural Germans either if they applied.

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#39

Post by [deleted] »

avhception wrote: post #34
dmurray wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often the people who are willing to work long hours and lack formal qualifications are immigrants. Maybe there are not enough immigrants in your town? Or they would have needed to start as apprentices 5 years ago, and it's hard for them to get into the apprentice system?

> hard for them to get into the apprentice system? Speaking as a German, it's also a failure to integrate these people properly. The small bakery in my home town closed down, too. Immigrants are in no short supply, but there are a few factors that prevent them from taking on a venture like that: - They're generally forbidden to work until their formal immigration process has made enough progress in our bureaucracy, w…

[deleted]

Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)

#40

Post by ahelwer »

avest wrote: post #25

There's a butcher fairly close to where I live that's been open since 1760 and there's often a line out the door on weekends etc. I love going there as if you ask where the meat is from, they'll give you directions to their fields up the road! If that's not the best way to determine animal welfare then I don't know what is. https://www.fconisbee.com/

Presumably the best way to determine animal welfare would be to not eat them in the first place?
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