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?

#821

Post by brainless » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

tagfowufe wrote: post #806

brainless wrote: post #95

I am from India and for the first 8-10 years of my post-college life I drank all the "glory" reporting of the American style of doing business. I tried doing it myself. I fell apart, suffered silently for years. Moved to Germany, went through counseling at the end of that period. Learnt that life is a lot more than silly startup games. No matter what anyone tells me, I have seen it myself first hand - I want a happie…

My first comment ever here is for thanking you for posting these words. I find them truly educational and eerily reassuring. I'm starting my career in this whole world after two years at a really innovative community college, and I've always resonated with your attitude, albeit I don't see it verbalized often enough on the Net.

I feel honored. I do not think I have done anything to get this though. I have gone through a very rough period where I felt an imposter, a loser and that I would never amount to anything. I was in mild-depression for years, the peer-pressure created by this constant chase is so horrible, yet founders still feel ashamed to talk about it. So I am simply sharing it openly.

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

#822

Post by cman1444 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

midasuni wrote: post #531

break_the_bank wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Huawei or someone else was building a better mobile experience people would be buying that over Apple. What is an innovative phone? The iPhone 12 looks marvellous, runs great, is secure, gets constant updates unlike android and tries to preserve privacy. Apple Pay is awesome, makes me spend more cause of how fluid it is but still is an amazing experience. The software with the hardware makes apple great.

Apple Pay didn’t come out until 2014, the rest of the world was paying with contactless on phones for years before that - Japan from 2004 onwards. America’s strength is taking what other people do, slapping a flag on it for the lucrative US market, and marketing it globally.

This feels like a straw man argument. It is pretty widely recognized that innovation in the US is ahead of the vast majority of the rest of the world, even Europe. Only China is now challenging the US in that regard. I think that the late adoption of contactless payments by Apple is the exception, not the rule.

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

#823

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #550

nicoburns wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of well paid tech jobs in Europe. The ridiculous levels of pay you can get in the US are really creating more inequality rather than addressing it.

I wouldn't seek "ridiculous levels of pay" if I could maintain a decent quality of life. Fact is, my rent at a one bedroom flat is more expensive than my parents mortgage for a full house. Of course people are looking for ways to get ahead.

But isn't the concentration of high-income tech workers in certain areas the reason for those high rents, together with little regulation of the rental market? So isn't that kind of self-inflicted?

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

#824

Post by jopsen » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #749

jopsen wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber is displacing taxis, redirecting money to themselves. I lived in San Francisco 2013-2018, before Uber I very rarely used taxis -- to/from the airport maybe. Having moved back to Denmark, I again very rarely use taxis. But when I lived in the US, I used Uber many times each week. Sometimes to/from work. But taxis in Denmark is easily 5x as expensive, and generally unavailable on-demand. So now I was forced to b…

I think the point is that you used the service when VC money was being used to subsidize your ride. This is zero sum. Obviously the market for rides increases once the cost is artificially depressed. From the UX perspective, Uber combines payment processing and ride ordering in an app. Obviously an improvement over calling a Taxi dispatcher and telling them when/where to pick you up. But is that billions of dollars i…

Actually, I think I used Uber after it got slightly more expensive too. But, sure, it's hard to know how much of it is VC money -- are you sure they subsidize much beyond software development?

> The economics of the industry haven't changed dramatically - it's expensive to pay people to be your chauffeur.

True, and if we allowed more free competition on the market Danish chauffeurs would be out of a job real quick. Replaced by immigrants.

But the size of the market did change. And that was my point :)

I think there is more people making a living driving Uber, than there was driving taxis [citation needed] ;)

You could argue that Danish chauffeurs would loose their jobs.. but part of me thinks: so what? We have low unemployment, why not have them work more productive jobs?

> Or is the majority of that value just being scooped up from previous incumbents?

So you think the majority of riders used taxis regularly before?

I certainly didn't, and I still don't -- but ride-sharing services I would use it available.

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

#825

Post by brainless » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

dogman144 wrote: post #754

brainless wrote: post #95

I am from India and for the first 8-10 years of my post-college life I drank all the "glory" reporting of the American style of doing business. I tried doing it myself. I fell apart, suffered silently for years. Moved to Germany, went through counseling at the end of that period. Learnt that life is a lot more than silly startup games. No matter what anyone tells me, I have seen it myself first hand - I want a happie…

> sell them like they are saving humanity. It is just sales all the way down. Yeah this is the core of it. Most American devs realize this way too late , and as a result I think it powers the activism at US companies. Later in the game, they realize it’s all some form of adtech/sales/so on all the way down, so want to inject new meaning into their employment narrative. I don’t have an answer for you other than agreei…

I agree with the two approaches. I have never worked with FAANG, but I have worked in adtech and I felt suffocated. Open source (or source available to keep big vultures away) can surely work as a sustainable business model, just that this takes longer to develop.

If I chose to not have lock-in in my products, to encourage people to self-host and own their platform/data, of course it will not allow me to scale to unicorn status. But that is not my target. I would rather see people use my product, pay a fee voluntarily, and not be locked-in.

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

#826

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

tester756 wrote: post #734

oytis wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is racist, and apart from that you definitely didn't try to get a job as a doctor being an immigrant in Europe (academia is less regulated, but is not a thriving job market by itself)

he says he doesn't want people who don't contribute how is this racist?

probably because he's implying immigrants (except some) wouldn't want to contribute?

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

#827

Post by draw_down » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

MperorM wrote: post #284

If you remove the bay from the equation, the US starts looking much more like the rest of the world. I now live in Copenhagen Denmark but still maintain a decent network in the bay. The difference of culture is astounding. More than anything else the bay created a culture of innovation and excellence that cannot be found anywhere in Europe. That it happened to be the bay area that became this hub and not eg. Copenhag…

If you take that time I murdered a guy out of the equation, I start looking like any other non-murderer.

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

#828

Post by jopsen » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

kawsper wrote: post #598

jopsen wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber is displacing taxis, redirecting money to themselves. I lived in San Francisco 2013-2018, before Uber I very rarely used taxis -- to/from the airport maybe. Having moved back to Denmark, I again very rarely use taxis. But when I lived in the US, I used Uber many times each week. Sometimes to/from work. But taxis in Denmark is easily 5x as expensive, and generally unavailable on-demand. So now I was forced to b…

Have you tried using Moove? It's the same on-demand concept of Uber, but it's Dantaxi that are behind it with certified taxi drivers: https://moove.taxi

I'll give it a shot :)

Pick up time 8 minutes in Aarhus as of writing. If I go to Ikast it's 24 minutes.

And a 10min ride is 25 USD. A hour ride is about 200 USD.

Might try it if I ever need a taxis, but it's still a bit pricey.

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

#829

Post by rsj_hn » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

joelbluminator wrote: post #445

rsj_hn wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the demographics. Algerians in France or Turks in Germany don't have such a great quality of life, but neither do El Salvadorans in the US. The U.S. is 60% Europe, 25% Latin America, 10% Africa, 5% Asia, and has pretty good quality of life for these demographics. As demographics in Europe change, the EU will see more of the issues it likes to criticize the US for, but the demographic-adjusted quality of li…

A lot of white Europeans in the U.S have a horrible quality of life, Trump would probably not have been elected otherwise.

A lot of French, Italians, Spaniards, and Greeks have horrible quality of life as well. You can go out to some of the more remote parts and be shocked at the living standards in Europe. But they are still higher than the world average, and this also true for the U.S. as well. I think perhaps part of this is the lack of pop-culture coming out of Europe, since scenes from movies/tv showing terrible US ghettos and american countryside decaying towns are watched around the world, but Europe isn't producing entertainment showing czech Roma living in mountains of trash or bored teenagers wandering around French slums or toothless grandmothers in rotting Italian villages. But it's all still there.

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

#830

Post by throw0101a » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #683

throw0101a wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Due to that, statistically, Europe does worse than the US wealth inequality […] Do you have a source for the statistic that show this? Another comment mentioned Gini. Piketty uses the share of the top percentile (1%) or decile (10%): * https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequal... * https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/03/pikettys-new-... The US isn't the worst in the world, but it is certa…

Both of those citations appear to be looking at income inequality measures rather than wealth inequality measures.

There are several chapters on wealth inequality in Piketty's book:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

Wealth is harder to measure because it's not as reported in most countries. You get an 'income slip' for tax purposes (e.g., US Form W-2), but there's no official 'wealth slip'.

That's one of the things that Piketty suggests: declaring of credits and debts in an official way, which could then be used for a (net) wealth tax. Starting as little 0.1% if you're just over (e.g.) $US 10M, and having a top rate of (e.g.) 2% for those that are worth more than (say) US$ 1B.