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?

#831

Post by rsj_hn » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #287

andruby wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life Does the US have a higher quality of life than Germany, France or the Netherlands? I agree that innovation is important and societies should promote it, but -imho- not at the cost of consumer & employee protection.

I would like to see US answers to this but in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich and then it degrades fast: in NL it is good to great for all. So I can pick bleeding hard work in a lottery to maybe be someone or I can do whatever I like and have most of those same perks. Where is the choice here?

The US suffers from de-industrialization as a result of the free trade agreements. That is 100% the cause of the excessive poverty we have vis-a-vis Europe. What's odd is this belief that consumer protection laws are somehow what is keeping Europe from having the same problems. And I don't really see Europe as being on a different development path. Rather, the EU managed to buy time with Eastern Europe coming into the fold creating a source of cheap labor nearby that delayed the migration of industry to China and the resulting mass de-industrialization and growing pockets of poverty that result. But the rot is already there with the industrial decline of Southern Europe and firms migrating production out of Europe, just at a slower rate. You can view Europe as lagging the U.S. in this area also.

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

#832

Post by thatfrenchguy » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #527

thow-01187 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho, what was happening in the Silicon Valley economy looks much more like displacement of value rather than creation of value (1). Google/Facebook have displaced other ad formats, redirecting money to themselves. AWS have displaced IT technicians in other corporations, redirecting money to themselves. Apple is selling overpriced commodity hardware, redirecting money to themselves. Uber is displacing taxis, redirect…

> 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…

They made upper middle class folks not buy a car, and cannibalized public transportation miles, which increased dramatically the total number of vehicle miles travelled. Not really a good trade off.

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

#833

Post by sdoering » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #387

sdoering wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the overall cost of living associated with the respective salary. Amd of people proposing a free market, why is it a problem that suddenly the same job is paid more for in a more competitive job market? As others pointed out, CoL is also way lower in most parts were there are relevant jobs to be had. I am working a job that would pay at least double in SF. I can afford to pay the mortgage on a 130 square mete…

> I can afford to pay the mortgage on a 130 square meter house with 500+ square meters of garden and relax by growing my own food as a hobby with 40 hours per week How is that possible? When I look at typical wages in Germany (50k - 80k Euros) vs cost of houses that size in Germany's four biggest cities (800k to over 1 Million Euros), something does not add up. Either your pay is way above market rates or you got you…

Bought a property for 210k in 2011. Invested 160k and a lot of manual labor for renovation. Current value is around 500k. Not sure were you have your numbers. But sure. I can get a similar property for 900k or more in some other parts of Hamburg. I could probably pay more than a million in the most prestigious parts. Living in a middle class area surrounded by greenery is more luxurious in my book, though.

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

#834

Post by ahartmetz » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

relativ575 wrote: post #769

ahartmetz wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine was AFAIK developed entirely in Germany by BioNTech. Pfizer helped with regulatory affairs, logistics and mass production. It is also interesting that three key people at BioNTech (founders and an original developer of mRNA medicine) are immigrants. That is an interesting similarity to SV. Soundcloud was also started by two Swedes in Berlin. That one is probably entirely due to the cultura…

mRNA vaccine was originated in the US in the 1980s [1]. BioNTech got in the mRNA game thanks to Katalin Kariko, who was a professor at UPenn [2]. Moderna started working at mRNA based approach in the similar timeframe, and get similar results. Also what does it tell you that Moderna can do trial and manufacturing on its own, as opposed to BioNTech who has to rely on Pfizer? Trial was absolutely vital in order to brin…

Katalin Kariko is the third key person at BioNTech that I mentioned ;)

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

#835

Post by oytis » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #540

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the topic of this thread was corporate and tech related so what do you expect? You can't always bring the lifestyle of minimum wage employees into every single discussion just as an joker card to argue that Europe is better than the US. Yes, minimum wage immigrants have it better in Europe and skilled immigrants have better opportunities in the US.

> Well the topic of this thread was corporate and tech related so what do you expect? I expected exactly this - that people that benefit from those giant companies fail to see the downsides. > You can't always bring the lifestyle of minimum wage employees into every single discussion just as an joker card to argue that Europe is better than the US. Why not, if it works? Are you not just confirming that the US works f…

> Why not, if it works?

Because it might be irrelevant? Yes, US and EU have historically different social policies, but it might not necessarily be the reason for difference in economic performance.

For me it's not "high tech companies vs working class", rather "high tech companies vs inefficient and intrusive government and old money". The obvious difference between FAANG on one side and BMW Daimler, etc. on the other side is the time when these companies have been founded.

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

#836

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

Delk wrote: post #696

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #653

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> But "about to be ruled by a fascist"? That was wrong, but just slightly. It wasn't fascism,but nazism. «Evidence in Trump supporter’s trial suggests he espoused Nazi ideals» https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/brendan-hun... > And "getting shot at school/street" is pretty much just a cheap shot. It's an enormous social and political problem, caused by the way people live in US and the incentive system…

> It wasn't fascism,but nazism. That's not really the point, and I'm not sure the semantics matter. I'm also not doubting that Trump would take up any "ideal" that supports his ego and power. Or that, among Trump supporters, there are people who would in fact be ready to go so far as fascism or nazism. I just think that, in a thread about the quality of life in different economic cultures, "about to be ruled by a fas…

> If you wanted to argue that getting shot at is a major quality of life concern in the U.S., you would need to show that it actually is a major concern for a large proportion of Americans that affects their quality of life, not just that the ratio of occurrences compared to Europe is large.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx

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

#837

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #674

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The solar roof was just some hyped up product ...

Musk style. Still not sure if all the hype is worth the results.

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

#838

Post by joelbluminator » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #829

joelbluminator wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ameri…

You are right. The one big difference though is even a French person living in poverty will get the best cancer treatment the country can give as far as I know. In the U.S he will be left to die if he is not insured.

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

#839

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #628

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because its obviously not about what makes sense ... you don't seem to know but your friends just don't fit our awesome western culture. I really hate the term "culture" by now.

No, it's just the fact that some part (not all of it) of the economy has become zero sum, primarily low skill labor. When people get screwed in a zero sum game they want someone else to get screwed instead. It's not surprising. It's completely obvious.

The thing is, in Germany the people voting for the far-right party are actually doing fine economically and so are their friends.

I do agree that parts of the economy are not working properly. And still we can't seem to get ourselves to vote for different politicians that might do something about it. Yeah that means stuff changes and change and new things are scary, but not fixing those things would be worse.

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

#840

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

throwaway210222 wrote: post #682

ido wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not against immigration but I think Europe should be seriously reconsidering non-western immigration as it will simply clash. I don't get why you want to filter them by "non-western"? I have arab, african, indian & east-asian friends here in Berlin that I am sure are net-postives for society. Why not set the filters to something more directly related to what you want to achieve? Such as education level, having a…

> Why not set the filters to something more directly related to what you want to achieve? Fine I'll bite: draw cartoons of you-know-who, see if they still integrate so seamlessly. Its the elephant in the room.

There's assholes everywhere, in any group, so also there's immigrant assholes. Not letting immigrants in doesn't help with the assholes problem.