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Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

economist.com

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Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#391

Post by thow-01187 »

raverbashing wrote: post #305
238475235243 wrote: post #43

I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). Starting is hard enough without the general negative attitudes, the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly). And I was in one of the two best EU countries, God only knows how bad it is in Spain or Italy or…

> the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly) No country has 8 weeks of vacations. Not even counting statutory + public holidays > Glory to the LLC. Glory to firing someone with less than six months notice I don't think even Italy is 6 months. Germany isn't. But way to go generalizing it for the whole EU. (also pop quiz, what do the acr…

Yes, vacations are financed as a hidden tax on normal working days - the worker pays for it from his labor cost. What exactly is the problem with having 10% lower salary in exchange for 10% more time? How is it supposed to be a drag on business formation? btw, LLCs are a possibility everywhere

Every EU country I've been to has a concept of probation periods - during the first ~3 months, the employer can freely terminate the new employee, or at least choose not to extent his contract. Also, collective dismissals are about equally as difficult in most of the EU than in the US (1)

What is unarguably easier in the US is to capriciously fire an individual on the spot for trivial reasons. I wouldn't call that a feature, though

(1) - https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EPL_OV

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#392

Post by nxc18 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #331
nxc18 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you stopped working, society wouldn’t care. If everyone did, there would be a problem; no more good food or vacation accommodations. I’m frustrated in the lack of big picture thinking in this discussion generally. Imagine how much better off we’d all be if the people at Intel, Boeing, or Qualcomm took their jobs seriously. Imagine if there was (non-joke) US competition to DJI for drones. Imagine if there was an An…

Honestly, on the balance, I don't think any of the examples you mentioned would do that much to my general happiness. I care about the other things in life so much more than about processor performance. If Google Maps hadn't come someone else would do it. They didn't invent digital maps. I don't think society in general would be very different. If we lost basic things like safety, food, and so on, then yes that matte…

Again, very small-scale thinking that misses the forest for the trees.

Yes, you don’t care about processor performance. Fine. What I care about is the people in my life not wasting time because of shitty Android phones. I care about things like being able to give my parents my old phones, which have years of productive life on them; Qualcomm is the reason that doesn’t work on Android. I care about the people who can’t afford the flagship; they deserve a great experience just as much as I do.

Digital maps did exist before Google Maps. And they sucked. The industry was all about digital preparation of maps that would be printed. On paper. We don’t know that no one would have done it better; you could say electric cars would have happened anyway, except they didn’t happen until very recently. When a field technician can do a network trace to solve a power outage in minutes instead of hours, that matters.

Big tech is enabling things like replacing pesticides with robotics, targeting fertilizer application based on need, and reducing the environmental impact of the food you eat. Big tech is doing things like improving the safety of cars with automatic emergency braking, giving you early earthquake notifications (buying precious moments to duck, cover, and hold on), predicting and warning about dangerous weather with increasing accuracy, and improving medical diagnosis among many, many, many other achievements. So yes, of course, ‘just candy’.

People doing their jobs well, consistently, is how healthcare is delivered, housing is produced, and climate change will be solved. The US could implement a social safety net regardless of cultural issues and it very well should. 3 month vacations and slack work ethic will do absolutely nothing to solve healthcare, housing, or climate change, so I don’t really understand why those concerns are relevant.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#393

Post by techrat »

reader_mode wrote: post #326
techrat wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In Croatia (where I'm from) you will regularly wait for 6+ months on life altering procedures and tests. Anecdote meet anecdote: I had to wait over a year for life altering surgery. My first test after becoming a candidate was over 6 months out. I'm in the US.

That sounds like a donor list thing ? I'm talking about more day to day stuff. Like recently my friend had a seizure while driving, thankfully he was at a red light, but lost his licence etc. He had to wait 2 and a half months for diagnostic scans. He went private and got it done in a week. Other friend had herniated disk, 6 months till his appointment with a specialist. Also went private and got surgery done in a mo…

Not a donor list thing. Had to wait months for scans, referrals and tests.

All private.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#394

Post by meheleventyone »

kortilla wrote: post #264
brnt wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an awesome place for workers!

Low pay and not meaningful/interesting work but otherwise it’s good as a “lifestyle” gig.

Where was DeepMind founded?

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#395

Post by dodobirdlord »

analog31 wrote: post #37
okareaman wrote: post #9

The opening paragraph: In 1984 a besuited 20-something American executive on a visit to France offered Europeans a few tips for corporate success. Entrepreneurs needed to be given a second chance if they failed and government bureaucrats made for lousy investors, he told a television interviewer. His advice was sage. But European companies ruled the global corporate roost alongside those of America and, occasionally,…

Yet they moved their taxable entity to Ireland, if I understand things correctly. I'm not sure what it means to say that they're an "American" company. And what do we actually gain from having companies nominally located in the US?

They haven’t “moved” anything, they set up a corporation in Ireland and arrange for profit to be booked there.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#396

Post by jmkerr »

Barrin92 wrote: post #99

As usual the article is almost exclusively concerned with market capitalization as an indicator of economic success. Countries like Germany are dominated by small and middle-class, family owned business. 'Big corporate' is indeed more successful in the US or China but it's just one model to manage an economy and I don't think it's that great. One of the most important points is also buried at the end of the article >…

> "(Europe has over 100 mobile operators, compared with a handful in America or China.) These lack the economies of scale and opportunities to grow quickly enjoyed by firms plying the American or Chinese markets."

This is such a bad example, I count 6 European carriers with more subscribers than AT&T.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operato...

> "These internal barriers mean Europe has many smaller firms operating at national, not continental, scale."

Looks like they're not interested in continental scale because they're already at global scale with together 1.4B subscriptions.

I generally agree with the point but this is a bad example.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#397

Post by coldtea »

kortilla wrote: post #245
coldtea wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that we have better internet for cheaper prices than the US, for example. Between national and state debts, Trump and the Dems electing a zombie, rampant crime, police brutality 10x that of the EU, no work-life balance, average citizens that are the laughing stock of the West education wise, huge inequality, depression and the opioeid epidemic, crumbling infrastructure, the largest incarceration rate per capita in…

> how does your innovation work for you? Well it has produced the top tech companies and (most of the) top research universities in the world. So pretty well.

And what exactly does the average citizen of the US gets out of this, given the above?

Not even the tax money of those "top tech companies". Heck, some of those come to us (e.g. Ireland).

As for their products, we can buy them just fine as well.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#398

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

mattmanser wrote: post #269
bennybob wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until apple and Android made it irrelevant

Talk about moving the goalposts

How is that moving the goalposts?

It is irelevant to the present that Nokia was a big player in the past. The fact that I was a top student in high-scool is irelevant to my current job where I underperform.

Nokia is now a shadow a its former self both in money it brings to the EU economy and in the amount of tech jobs it provides.

That's what's relevant now and there's no pride in this defeat.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#399

Post by j_wtf_all_taken »

okareaman wrote: post #370
berkes wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to put you down, but isn't it weird to feel pride for something you contributed nothing to? Maybe you are very old, and built the infrastructure those successful companies now used, in which case I'm wrong and some pride is warranted. I also cannot understand nationalism for the same reason. Other than a marketing scam or massive delusion, that is.

I can't say if my code is still in use, but it had an impact on a lot of people for awhile

Every person that ever committed a patch to the Linux Kernel probably has more impact. Not because if the code itself but Linux is just so much more important than Apple, Facebook and Google altogether.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#400

Post by j_wtf_all_taken »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #374
j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They couldn’t compete due to structural restrictions on scale. Mhm. Cause a working marked with healthy competition never did anything good. Just one question, how did European car makers then become what they are? Even though its impossible?

> how did European car makers then become what they are? Cars have for a long time been tightly linked to the military. Every major Western car maker up to the last decade at some point built tanks.

So basically you're saying Europe should start another World War to make sure their companies stay competitive?
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