Earlier quoted context omitted.
The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments. These services are expensive and require staff to keep things going. Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease since this will cause the public sector to "make do and mend" and end up running more efficiently, rather than having a knock on effect and decr…
>The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments. This is nonsense. Your statement is flatly an ideological talking point in no way backed by actual practical evidence or a reasoned argument of the situation. Government budgets in most european states, (Finland included) have continuously gone up for decades and increase in complexity. A strong ideological focus on claiming "right-win…
How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
891–900 of 1001 posts
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#892Earlier quoted context omitted.
because the bureaucracy also cares that the contract is valid. There are probably all kinds of tricks you could pull by being married for a bit, then declaring the marriage false all along, but not going through the official divorce process.
A contract is between parties. The governments role is to arbitrate in the case of disputes not to help craft the original document and ensure understanding.
Requiring both parties to prove they understand the contract is probably more cost-effective in terms of, well, cost - and time - than it is to actually go on to litigate things.
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#893Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if that makes a significant difference for that purpose. It's not like places where weddings take place are conspicuous enough that you couldn't tell the difference between them and a normal govt agency, and it's not like people don't know it is a very bad idea to sign documents where they do not even understand a single word. The paper trail of a vanilla (let alone international) marriage is already big…
> it's not like people don't know it is a very bad idea to sign documents where they do not even understand a single word The laws are there for people who may feel like they don’t have much choice in the matter. And yes lying to officials that you did in fact have a choice and are totally doing this of your own free will and yes of course you understand the document you’re signing is a big part of it. This is simila…
Oh, neat, I'd ever heard of that before.
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#894Earlier quoted context omitted.
Swiss bureaucracy isn't really better, in my experience. It's not as overloaded but things are still somewhat German-like.
When doing what for instance? I've never founded a company in Switzerland but it didn't seem that hard, talking with people who did. As an individual most of the things I've had to do (residence permit, taxes...) are also quite straightforward.
Individual interactions with the government are also frustratingly bureaucratic. The prevalence of fetch quests is a lowlight. Different departments don't talk to each other, maybe they think email is insecure or something, or maybe because every interaction with the government comes with a 30-90CHF+ fee. So I often find myself manually schlepping rubber-stamped documents from one part of the canton to another and paying for the privilege, something that is much better done by computers. A whole set of processes work like this and must be wide open to fraud.
Sometimes departments even expect you to send memos around to themselves. An example of one recent interaction that typifies the whole experience (loosely translated to English):
Clerk: You're late, you will have to pay a 50 CHF fine.
Me: I'm right on time and have been waiting to be called forward for 15 minutes.
Clerk: You were supposed to come within two weeks of the invitation, which was sent 3.5 weeks ago.
Me: I booked this appointment on the same day I received the invitation, which was also the same day it was sent. And today was the first available appointment slot.
Clerk: It says here on your invitation that if you can't come within two weeks, you have to write us a letter to tell us why not.
Me: Ahhmmm.... to double check I'm not misunderstanding this, you expected me to write you a letter informing you your own calendar is full, a fact you already knew? And now you're fining me for not doing that?
Clerk: Yes. Will that be card or cash?
My wife went through something very similar in the last couple of years where her permit expired during COVID because she couldn't get the bureaucracy to pay any attention. She filled out the forms on time, was told to wait. She phoned them, was told her case was in progress, COVID delays etc and she should wait. Eventually she told me about this, we went to the office in person and was informed there was no record of any such interactions and she wasn't even in the system at all. Clerk acted like this was clearly our fault. I told the clerk to please make a record of the fact we'd been there and tried to resolve the situation in person, "I don't have permission to make notes on her file". OK, maybe that's why there are no records of previous interactions then? "Can't say". After that I decided that from now on every interaction is via registered mail. Make them think we're collecting evidence for a legal dispute. Things were suddenly resolved.
I'd love to say the above were unusual but it's really not. Every interaction with the Swiss government I've had tends to be like this if it isn't already digitized: it will be slow, it will be expensive, and it will contain at least one infuriatingly unreasonable gotcha that makes it even slower and more expensive. If a process is digitized on the other hand then it's going to be much better, Switzerland seems to have pretty competent government IT overall (when it exists).
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#895I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to life in the country. Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark. I cannot overstate how terribl…
I am familiar with both German and Finnish bureaucracy. German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique identifier (more and more weakened recently) and need to present documentation for everything. If you have no paper birth certificate you are not born... Finland has had much higher digitalization for decades. You have a person number and authorities store everythin…
actually that's not true: people in Germany have MANY unique IDs: they have not one but TWO tax identifiers ("Steuernummer" and "Steuer ID"), social security number ("Sozialversicherungsnummer"), national ID number ("Personalausweisnummer"), passport number ("Reisepaßnummer") and health insurance ID ("Krankenversicherungsnumer"), among others.
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#896Earlier quoted context omitted.
IT in general is stuck in blind valley and doesn't make anything easier anymore with its aggressive outsourcing and profit extraction. The only systems which go quickly and efficiently are those against the interests of an average citizen - e.g. the covid certification apps determining and limiting basic citizen rights. Oftentimes I prefer to show up in person with ID and fetch a printout with confirmation, than to i…
Biggest problem: Germans don't understand digitization. They often try to recreate the paper process with IT, instead of making a complete new setup. Example: Previously, you had to go to the City Hall or whatever in your pace of birth to get a birth certificate. Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail. How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth…
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#897Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (to the point most of western europe now has gov spending at 40%+ of gdp) Perhaps that's fundamentally barking up the wrong tree. West-European governments in the post WW2 era have had higher relative spendings then that, without every financial expert and their dog declaiming that doomsday is near and services need to be cut. We've been able to finance better healthcare before, we've able to finance better educati…
>So which costs have risen out of proportion to the point that none of that is possible today. It's not the costs that have rise sharply, it's the revenue and taxes that have declined since WW2 due to increased competition from globalization and the offshoring of jobs abroad, plus tax heavens aiding big corporation avoid paying taxes locally in western european countries, meaning governments today are missing out on…
But taking job offshoring, as an example. It could be fairly straightforward to determine how much tax revenue a car produced in, say, Germany, contributes to the economy, vs the same car imported from abroad. But where it gets complicated is that, German unemployment being low, the worker that lost his or her job to offshoring didn't turn out jobless, and by his or her work is still contributing to tax incomes. So what is the loss?
A lot of money is lost to tax havens, but the hourly productivity has also increased drastically, meaning that governments might still get more income per worker, per working hour. Governments are loosing in absolute terms, but have they lost income in relative terms?
The general feeling I have, is that a lot more money is lost to greed. As an example, we could take healthcare. It is undeniable that the average quality of healthcare has increased (for instance, looking at cancer suitability), but the cost of basic healthcare items have also, in some cases, increased disproportionately. (For instance looking at the cost of insulin in the US, or a dose of COVID vaccine, etc). So the general impression is that we are paying a lot more than before for only a slight increase in health and well-being.
And how does that apply to other trades? Construction costs have exploded, but we are not getting much better houses for it.
And therefore the general question was more: which parts of society are profiteering from forms of greed and price-gouging, how can we quantify that, and what can be done about it so that we, as a society can continue to improve on the care and the services we offer to our citizens, as opposed to accepting regression as the inevitable way forward.
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#898I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to life in the country. Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark. I cannot overstate how terribl…
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#899Earlier quoted context omitted.
A country that is incredibly rich in historical significance (both good and bad), cultural traditions, art (historical and modern), regional variety and nature. Cities are walkable, public transport is mostly decent (it's perfectly fine to live without a car if you're in the city), crime is low, poverty is low, the economy has been tanking a bit recently, but has traditionally been doing well. In terms of mentality,…
Don't forget bread. Whenever I travel to the US I'm appalled by what is considered good bread there. Not throwing shade here, it's just what it is. On the flipside, buying Avocados here in Germany is akin to a crime against humanity.
Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
#900Earlier quoted context omitted.
A contract is between parties. The governments role is to arbitrate in the case of disputes not to help craft the original document and ensure understanding.
Isn't this a case of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Requiring both parties to prove they understand the contract is probably more cost-effective in terms of, well, cost - and time - than it is to actually go on to litigate things.