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We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

mertbulan.com

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Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#211

Post by FirmwareBurner »

camillomiller wrote: post #210
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Unless they also provide their own secure cloud for storage and sync in that price I don't see the issue. Plenty of quality apps are one-time-purchase to own. To me subscriptions are a scam waiting for the rug-pull to happen(a PE/VC fund buys them and fucks over their existing consumers). My favorite example is Beyond Compare. Pay once for the cross platform app and get free updates for each minor version, then…

Because they have a team of employees that take care of new features, updates, maintenance and all put food on the table?

Other apps have teams that do the same things, with one-time purchases, like in my examples above.

As a SW dev I can empathize with your PoV, but from the perspective of an end consumer, I don't care about the externalities of the manufacturer of the product, I only care about value for my money.

When you need to buy a new t-shirt, do you go and buy the one from the manufacturer that feeds the most families or do you buy the best value one from the nearest Walmart/Target/GAP that fulfills your needs for the best value (most likely made in an Asian sweatshop)? That's how most consumers think, including you.

The costs, risks and dependencies of the manufacturer/vendor are irelevant to the end consumer, that's the cold harted calculated truth of how the free market capitalism works, and how it decides who lives and who dies.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#212

Post by FirmwareBurner »

nottorp wrote: post #200
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they're still labeled Made in Germany. Although what exactly is made in Germany is unknown to me. They might even just do the bare minimum for that compliance , and put together sloppily made Chinese made parts in a cardboard box in some warehouse in Germany and call that Made in Germany in order to get subsides from the German state for maintaining jobs in Germany.

> and put together sloppily made Chinese made parts ... and you can't even blame the Chinese. I've worked a bit for companies having custom hardware manufactured in China. The factory will build exactly what you pay them for. From sloppy stuff thrown into a box and shipped untested to clean work with reliable parts and a burn in test done before it leaves the factory. It's just that every additional step costs extra…

I never blamed the Chinese suppliers, since to me as the end consumer it's irelevant who their suppliers are and what they do, I only blamed the German companies that sold me the product since I gave them the money not to their Chinese suppliers so it's their responsibility to provide me with a quality product.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#213

Post by anothereng »

the article sounds nice but burecreats dont care about making it easier to start companies. They care about making sure they have jobs tomorrow. This is a better pitch for entrepreneurs in 3rd world countries than european governments. Offering a digital product in a 3rd world country allows you to not have to deal with local corruption while accessing a global market.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#214

Post by ginko »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #203
impossiblefork wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're basically that, if GDP is not up, or the companies are not doing well, it doesn't matter that they're actually building genuinely useful stuff without which all sorts of people would be in major trouble? Germany has problems-- immigration, energy etc., and maybe some companies have problems, but the US has put huge efforts into making something even a tiny bit like the German companies that are actually bu…

I'm saying that not even the nicest, rarest lenses in the world are a replacement for a viable economy. And you can't eat lenses either, and people who do grow food also use software, and so do everyone else that makes about 90% of all the other stuff other than food that constitutes the German economy.

Germany is a net exporter of food.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/509215/food-industry-imp...

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#215

Post by FirmwareBurner »

pbmonster wrote: post #53
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Scheinselbständigkeit" (false self-employment, which is a huge issue for start-ups and self-employed people in Germany) Can you provide more details about this? How is this a problem and why does it affect startups?

Germany has really, really strong employee protection. Hard to fire, mandatory vacation, mandatory pensions, mandatory maternity and paternity leave, ect. If you run a society like that, you immediately face a problem: people try to get around the employee protection measures by relying on the gig economy, by hiring freelancers or by starting small companies. So, the German tax agency has the additional authority to…

>Germany has really, really strong employee protection. Hard to fire, mandatory vacation, mandatory pensions, mandatory maternity and paternity leave, ect.

All EU countries have these perks with some variations between them. Only the "hard to fire" part varies more.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#216

Post by Zanfa »

pembrook wrote: post #208
Zanfa wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so we agree that a product being successful has little to do with being better or worse than competitors and more with other externalities?

No, we do not agree. In the short term irrationality can and does prevail in both markets and democracy. In the long term, the best product and ideas always win. This is why both democracy and markets are durable. Paraphrased differently, this is the weak-form of the efficient market hypothesis. All decentralized processes have some level of gravitational pull toward efficiency. They're not perfectly efficient, obvio…

> In the short term irrationality can and does prevail in both markets and democracy. In the long term, the best product and ideas always win. This is why both democracy and markets are durable.

If there’s anything to learn from recent developments it is that democracy is fickle and definitely not the default state. But to me you’re still conflating commercial product success with the product being good or bad. If it was about the product, fundraising or marketing shouldn’t be among the biggest obstacles, since they have nothing to do with product quality or consumer benefits.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#217

Post by ben_w »

fsflover wrote: post #201
pjc50 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The software to kill SaaS and Facebook might be so simple that a couple of people could write it by themselves Today's version of the HN classic "no wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame" (on the launch of the original iPod)

Except Mastodon already exists.

So did the Nomad.

Look, we know that the software to kill Facebook is indeed so simple that a couple of people could write it by themselves… because Facebook itself was written by Zuckerberg and four friends while at university.

The "software" part of this is not hard. It's everything else that is hard.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#218

Post by gizmo »

lesostep wrote: post #202
gizmo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "move fast and break things" versus "WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE." An alternative analogy is "binary search" versus "linear search". With linear search you don't risk overshooting your target, and it's less chaotic, but you also don't progress nearly as quickly.

I wouldn't say that it is a good analogy, since both types of searches in no way change the array they are searching in. While tech products do change lives of their users. Maybe lossless|lossy would be a better analogy?

The state that changes is the location in the search space, in this analogy.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#219

Post by ben_w »

lyu07282 wrote: post #187
abc123abc123 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Sadly europe never realized that low taxes, capitalism and liberty is what drives wealth. Honestly we have moved Europe so far past the post-political that I find it difficult to comprehend peoples politics nowadays. I wonder what people think "socialism" or "left" politics is now that everything has been so thoroughly depoliticized, I genuinely don't know. Is the EU "left"? I guess so? Is the IMF?

By the Overton window of America, I think much of Western Europe is somewhere between "extreme left wing" and blank stares of non-comprehension at the still-present literal Soviet memorials that were never removed when the literal USSR fell.

By the Overton window of Europe, I think the Democrats are "dangerously right wing, look at them being pro-gun". Certainly they are to the right of my personal Overton window, though perhaps I am projecting my own views on my fellow Europeans.

Republicans of faint heart should avoid finding out how Trump gets labelled on newspaper front pages around here.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#220

Post by tonyedgecombe »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #211
camillomiller wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they have a team of employees that take care of new features, updates, maintenance and all put food on the table?

Other apps have teams that do the same things, with one-time purchases, like in my examples above. As a SW dev I can empathize with your PoV, but from the perspective of an end consumer, I don't care about the externalities of the manufacturer of the product, I only care about value for my money. When you need to buy a new t-shirt, do you go and buy the one from the manufacturer that feeds the most families or do you…

>The costs, risks and dependencies of the manufacturer/vendor are irrelevant to the end consumer

As is the desire from the customer for a one off purchase.

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