For start Germany needs better internet connectivity. Getting 1gbps symmetric fiber or 5G coverage is a scifi! Even Romania has better infrastructure!
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We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
111–120 of 244 posts
Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2. Simplify Bureaucracy and Regulations => Who doesn't want that? European leadership and a fair chunk of the population. They're the ones who bought it in, if they didn't think it was worth the trade off they wouldn't have instituted it. It seems like just yesterday we had people lining up to praise their bureaucratic takeover of iPhone charger design, for example. If the EU bureaucracy has time for that, what mat…
The charger situation is much better than GDPR or CE marking, in that it clearly mandates what should be done. The other two get bogged down because it's so unclear what has to be done to be compliant while actually shipping a service or product.
The typical formula is: if you aren't confident that you are complying with the law, maybe don't operate a business that way. Welcome to compliance!
That is the thing with bureaucracy; it isn't there to help people run just-acceptable privacy violating businesses. It is there to squelch the ones that are unacceptable. If you want the EU to write an acceptable business plan it'd be "don't start this business, it might violate privacy". And there does seem to be support for the EU regulating in that manner. I haven't met many people who are pro-privacy-violations.
Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#113The authors examples of “Digital Mittelstand” companies are not businesses at all but tiny “creator economy” side projects. These do not scale to 30% of GDP in the same way high value B2B industrial equipment does (in manufacturing you happily pay $100,000 for a piece of machinery because it can turn inputs into more valuable outputs at scale). Instead of coming up with incorrect ideas about what the government shoul…
Europe is dying. It is an old socialist relic, with a completely outdated model of reality. The successes of the extreme left and right shows that the political nobility are done. Sadly europe never realized that low taxes, capitalism and liberty is what drives wealth. I wonder if, in a generation, when the best brains moved to the US, asia and argentina, the continent will finally awake from its socialist slumber? H…
Things are a lot easier if you are basically controlling a river delta (of a river with an absolutely huge hinterland).
Same for the Dutch, btw.
Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, if you employ self-employed people in your company and after a while you or they get audited and it turns out that you are their only customer, the will be classified as employees of your company. As a result you may have to pay social insurance, pension fees, etc. for the all time they have been working for you, which can be a hefty sum and may break your neck as a small company. Oh another problem that I had…
As someone who was CEO at a German company with more than 10 people: this absolutely overblown. Some people just want to larp US-style at-will firing power fantasies. It's actually surprisingly easy to still fire people, you just have to have valid reasons: employee didn't come to work, employee works badly ( Schlechtleistung ), employee yells at customer, lack of work to do at the company etc. You just have to creat…
> What you definitely can't do is discriminate against employees, e.g. fire pregnant women because they are pregrant, fire migrants because they are migrants and so on. You have to have an actual, factual cause.
In reality you just cant say that is the reason. If you fire the pregnant woman within the first 6 months you conveniently don't have to say anything.
You also get the inversion, we have to fire the migrants within 6 months.
I think the argument was that if someone worked for you for a few years as a freelancer and they suddenly become your employee you might be stuck with each other. Firing them will be much more suspicious. What to do with the other clients now that you are employed?
What is also kinda lame about the uncertainty is that freelancing may require much more dedication and working strange hours that might not even be legal as an employee.
I don't know what the solution is. Perhaps we need to merge the different formulas and adjust the salary.
Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#115Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#116Europe is the world's sick man. Merz is talking as if he is going to spite the US by having Germany fund their own defence, but in reality, whether Germany will be able to fund anything at all is very much in question as its economy is in full collapse and there is no way Merz will pull it together, he will just put pedal to the metal in a car that has already gone over the cliff. Germany needs to stop reinventing th…
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Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If Europeans can’t figure out new valuable things to contribute to the world, than their system isn’t as clever or morally righteous or fantastic as they think it is. Most Europeans have access to some kind of comprehensive public health offering, food that isn't killing us quite as quickly as American food does, etc. It is a system which requires thought and design that markets can't offer, since they're innately…
> The idea that the market can be described as regular people deciding things is, by the way, fairly funny. We don't get to choose what gets made, and have to select from a buffet of often pretty poor options served up to us by people who are by and large not interested in anyone's wellbeing but their own. Is Europe more communist than I thought? You do realize if you aren't happy with the options on offer in the mar…
That’s a bit naive. There are a lot of markets that are effectively impossible to enter without massive amounts of capital and current players are selling below cost.
Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#118This is a great read and exactly where I think the global economy is going - instead of large companies you'll have millions of medium sized businesses run by small teams still making a bit of a dent in their own niche universe. I do disagree with the work-life balance part, I struggle to see how you can build something (and maintain it at such a high level) without intense focus and commitment.
The global economy is going towards winners and dinosaurs. Just watch the semiconductor industry. Eat or be eaten. There were much more smaller companies providing different parts 2 decades ago. NEC, Hitachi, Altium were eaten by Renesas. Intel history of acquisitions is very long. Every current major corporation has a massive list of acquisitions.
Basically the same story with food corporations. Dozen companies provide food for whole western world. Cars? Toyota, Stellantis and Volkswagen with their sub-brands provide cars.
Economy of scale is the thing. And it will kill Mittelstand. It’s already happening. Large purchasing power gives another price during negotiations. Same sales people will sell dozens of products instead of mittelstand’s speciality. You only need accounting once. As well as HR. The Mittelstand must be very highly specialized to be untouched by global mega corporations. There is also no life-work balance in the process when working with mega corporation. It will squeeze the resources out of Mittelstand just by the size difference. The Mittelstand I work for is already lost with all the EU paperwork providing reach, rohs, sustainability and battery Verordnung documents to the customers.
Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#119Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand
#120The authors examples of “Digital Mittelstand” companies are not businesses at all but tiny “creator economy” side projects. These do not scale to 30% of GDP in the same way high value B2B industrial equipment does (in manufacturing you happily pay $100,000 for a piece of machinery because it can turn inputs into more valuable outputs at scale). Instead of coming up with incorrect ideas about what the government shoul…
> If Europeans can’t figure out new valuable things to contribute to the world, than their system isn’t as clever or morally righteous or fantastic as they think it is. Most Europeans have access to some kind of comprehensive public health offering, food that isn't killing us quite as quickly as American food does, etc. It is a system which requires thought and design that markets can't offer, since they're innately…
It makes as much sense as regulating nuclear weapons when you have none.