Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing? • Hacker News Board

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

#671

Post by Rexxar » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

oytis wrote: post #625

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying parties in Europe are interchangeable? We know what happens with Covid due to science, modeling and stuff. But a virus spread is oretty easy to model compared to a society and its economy. So until now it worked really nice, haven't seen a lot of studies saying it won't in the future, rather the opposite. Edit: or do you mean because we're getting older and hace fewer kids? Yeah that'll be a challang…

> So you're saying parties in Europe are interchangeable? No, not at all. But you don't have the same party ruling in U.S. for several decades. That would be legally possible, but that just doesn't happen due to how the system works. > So until now it worked really nice I'm not very well versed with the statistics here. But my impression is that social security is on decline. Welfare benefits sum grows much slower th…

> No, not at all. But you don't have the same party ruling in U.S. for several decades.

Look at state/city level and you will have a different picture of United States.

And for Europe, let's take France as example. Here are the ruling party changes in the last forty years : 81,86,88,93,97,02,12,17

Do you know the average tenure of the current American senators ?

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

#672

Post by imtringued » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #417

sildur wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We prefer to influence global norms/best practices via our democratically elected governments, instead of via corporate behemoths who probably don't have our interests in mind. On the other hand, contrary to the US, in Europe we generally trust in our governments. Since we do not have huge corporations here, it's more difficult to influence government decisions, specially at Europe level.

I just hope it stays that way. I fear that all the cynics blaming everything that's bad on politicians and the EU (instead of the voters putting those politicians in power) will eventually degrade trust in that in itself nicely working system ... and then, what's the point defending that system against the populists and fascists wanting to take over? They can't be that much worse ... :-(( [same with media that does a…

> I fear that all the cynics blaming everything that's bad on politicians and the EU (instead of the voters putting those politicians in power)

Yes. Last year I started playing an browser game about running your own commpany and got interested in economics.

If capitalism can be fun inside a game, how come it isn't fun in real life? After all a game that disenfranchises new players and prevents them from playing the game is going to die over the long term. People would quit the game the same way they quit their job. There must be a fundamental difference in how the game has designed its economy vs how we designed our real economy.

For example, unlike real life it's possible to win a video game. It's possible to have produced everything everyone else could have possibly wanted. At some point there is simply too much stuff and not enough buyers. The game would die from deflation. The game devs have strategically placed market maker NPCs that buy products at an extremely low price that is never worth it unless there is sufficient deflation. It's basically a job guarantee, it's demand side stimulus. Dumping your resources into the MM will cause inflation, which will raise the price of your resources until it makes more sense to sell your resources on the market to other players. Even if there are large players dominating the market and dumping prices to rock bottom rates, it will always be possible to earn some money until those prices are no longer rock bottom.

The point isn't that politicians should implement a job guarantee (it would certainly help though). It's that politicians have the power to design a working economic system. I always was under the impression that these politicians simply didn't understand the economy but that's not the case. They aspire to a certain form of capitalism that is good over the long term but just happens to suck over the short term right now and people willingly vote for them. Things are guaranteed get better once China, Eastern Europe, Africa, South America have caught up with the US and rich part of the EU but how long is that going to take? 40 years?

You just need to break the chain for 8 years, get things back in order over the short term. Biden is doing it. The EU has to follow similar actions but that requires voters to not choose right wing populism or the same old party they voted for 20 years straight, they need to vote for parties that actually want to help them.

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

#673

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:29 PM UTC

tovej wrote: post #658

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US upward social mobility is among the worst in the world This is incorrect. American social mobility is low. But not widely so, and certainly not consistently lowest among rich countries. (It is consistently among the lowest.) If one takes "the extent to which son’s [ sic ] earnings levels reflect those of their fathers," Britain and Italy are worse than America while France is quite close [1]. Similarly, "after a…

So US social mobility is only slightly better (insignificantly) than the two worst countries in Europe. I think that article rather supports my claim. Italy is also rather a troublesome example, because northern and southern Italy are vastly different. Regional differences account for much of the inequality and the persistence of it there. Looking at the mean in Europe vs the US there is no contest. Other metrics in…

> US social mobility is only slightly better (insignificantly) than the two worst countries in Europe. I think that article rather supports my claim.

Compared with the cohort of European countries, America fairs poorly (though not excessively so).

The original claim, however, was that it fares "among the worst in the world." This is incorrect; it's roughly middle of the pack [1][2].

On the measure of the "number of generations it would take...those born to...the bottom 10% of the income distribution...to approach the mean in their society," America ties with Ireland, Portugal, Italy, the U.K., Italy, Austria and Switzerland. It is ahead of France, Germany and Hungary. In summary, America is good at allowing the poor to become middle class. It is less good at letting the middle class become exorbitantly rich, though not terribly so.

[1] https://www.oecd.org/social/broken-elevator-how-to-promote-s...

[2] https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/1-5%20generations.png

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

#674

Post by imtringued » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:29 PM UTC

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #377

eecc wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH megacorps rarely "innovate" from within, they're too bureaucratic and management stakes are too high for fast risk-taking. What they usually do is to buy out smaller entities that have somewhat proven the concept and pretend they're geniuses for having found a truffle.

Also they have no reason to innovate if they got a monopoly. Sometimes they buy that small innovative company and then that nice idea somehow just dies ... maybe cause it'd hurt their business model?

Solar city was basically a series of acquisitions. It ended up being bailed out through the Tesla acquisition but once Musk bailed out his own Solar city stock/bonds he gutted the Tesla Energy (Solar City rebrand) branch and basically pretended that it never existed in the first place. The solar roof was just some hyped up product to get the acquisition through.

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

#675

Post by iso1210 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #304

ativzzz wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very US mindset. I live in the US and I completely disagree with your outlook on life. Great food with friends, or a vacation with family provides so much more satisfaction to me than anything a job could provide. The only thing a job provides that those things can't is money. I'm not so egotistical to think that I'm special and not easily replaceable. I'm no Steve Jobs or Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. I'm just…

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…

In the 60s and 70s, the US population was promised 15-30 hour work weeks by now

Reality is 60-80 hour work weeks, and for what? Work til you drop then die.

> Technology is opening a new world of leisure time. One government report projects that by the year 2000, the United States will have a 30-hour work week and month-long vacations as the rule.

> Those who hunger for time off from work may take heart from the forecast of political scientist Sebastian de Grazia that the average work week, by the year 2000, will average 31 hours, and perhaps as few as 21. Twenty years later, on-the-job hours may have dwindled to 26, or even 16.

> “The work week and the work day will be drastically reduced,” said Gillis. “The majority of the people will be working less than 30 hours a week.” He didn’t predict just how the populace will adjust to the increased free time.

> So tell your children not to be surprised if the year 2000 finds 35 or even a 20-hour work week fixed by law.

The American worker is 400% more productive than in the 1950s, but works longer than ever, hasn't seen the fruits of that productivity. A high school graduate can't raise a family in a single income household on a 10 hour week, which given the productivity increase should have been possible.

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

#676

Post by mxschumacher » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

fifilura wrote: post #336

berkes wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Just Eat Takaway. Booking.com are from the Netherlands too. Spotify is Swedish. As is Klarna and Mojang. SoundCloud is German. Mixcloud British. Several of the covid vaccines were develeoped in europe (albeit under the umbrella of US companies such as J&J). Volkwagen and Volvo are beating Tesla in sales numbers and in getting self driving to market hands down. There is lots of high tech in Europe. Just Because th…

It is not possible to argue that Volvo is European anymore unfortunately. It was sold by the american company Ford to the chinese company Geely.

Volvo cars was sold, volvo trucks and heavy machinery for construction are still independent

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

#677

Post by RGamma » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

Or maybe we all drop the act and focus on improving the human condition out of empathy and the old adage that you reap what you sow, not this vapid race to infinity that only strokes the egos of the overly powerful, pitting us against ourselves.

Do we want to continue the endless cycle of power games and conflict or do we want to build on the hard-won knowledge, peace and prosperity to finally gain a stable outlook for everyone?

Economists answer: mAxImIzE fInAnCiAlS. I don't see the point.

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

#678

Post by iso1210 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:39 PM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #392

sudosysgen wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

Google maps was developed by Where 2 Technologies in Sydney. Google bought it in late 2004, same sort of time OSM started (in the UK)

Microsoft AutoRoute predated that by a decade - NextBase (A UK company) built it in 1988, I think Microsoft had bought it by the mid 90s.

The US is great at taking other peoples inventions, buying them, marketing them, and claiming them for itself. The rest of the world innovates, the US pumps it out in bulk.

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

#679

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:39 PM UTC

oytis wrote: post #607

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by 2020 half of them has found a job, which is way higher unemployment rate than is average in Germany though Half of immigrants being unemployed after half a decade is bad, especially compared with America, where immigrants are more likely to find themselves employed than the native born [1]. > if they don't find jobs themselves, at the very least they have children Sure. But I'd hate to do the math on how much ea…

Half of refugees, not half of immigrants. Most immigrants are employed of course, that's how you normally get in Europe. And it's not like refugees were allowed to look for jobs immediately, getting work permit for a refugee takes awfully long in Germany. Cost of their children is pretty much the same as for German children. And it's a necessary expenditure, otherwise the said taxpayers are going to have a pretty rou…

> Cost of their children is pretty much the same as for German children

If the principal benefit of a refugee couple is their children, the the cost of accepting and maintaining that couple is part of the cost of that child.

I believe there is a moral responsibility, on the part of rich countries, to accept some refugees. But we have to be honest that it is usually charitable work. Framing it as economically beneficial can be misleading and lead to a backlash when the promised gains don't pan out.

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

#680

Post by mxschumacher » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 12:39 PM UTC

To balance financial returns with quality of life I've come up with a one line recommendation:

"Live in Europe, invest in America"

E.g. get rich owning shares in oligopolies like Comcast and charter and be a client of one of the many telecoms who have competed themselves into the ground. Looks at the share prices, it's clear where consumers are getting the better deal.