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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

#181

Post by flanked-evergl »

touwer wrote: post #168
impossiblefork wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? They literally build machines that everybody needs to live. They make everything, all sorts of little of bits you need. If you need a special chemical reactor that resists some weird thing, it's probably from Germany.

Indeed. Zeiss lenses. Medical equipment. Boss. Siemens. The only thing that's really lacking is ict and ai. But that can be fixed

Having a company that makes lenses, even really good ones, is not the same as having a viable economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_crisis_(2022%E...

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

#182

Post by mytailorisrich »

swores wrote: post #175
mytailorisrich wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are valuable and they are also quite profitable (I am excluding "various charities" as that is too broad and fuzzy). The fact that the state may provide the majority of these does not mean that they are not profitable as private ventures. Why are they profitable? Because they are deemed very valuable!

In some countries they are not profitable, because they are publicly owned organisations not for-profit private ones, and they are run purely for the benefit they provide to society. Please re-read the comment you replied to with this context in mind (as their excluding the US was for this reason; though of course the US is not the only country foolish enough to allow profit motives to harm their healthcare, firefigh…

Healthcare is a profitable industry in the EU. Security services are a profitable industry in the EU. There are private firefighting services in the EU. You can easily understand that in general terms all of these services are valuable and profitable to provide (because they are valuable!). The same goes for "military services"... Mercenaries and other "private providers" are a thing.

You are completely missing the point. Whether a type of service has a state monopoly and thus no viable private market is also quite irrelevant to the general point.

The general point is that people (i.e. "the market") are willing to pay for things they find valuable but not for things that they do not. That includes paying through taxes though because the payment is indirect it is more likely to not perfectly align with "value".

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

#183

Post by __d »

jamiedumont wrote: post #55
Propelloni wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the OP, but Scheinselbstständigkeit is one of the scarecrows of freelancers and their clients in Germany. It is actually not very difficult, but in certain cases it is very limiting. If you can read German, here is a handy reference sheet, which is distributed by virtually all tax advisors [1]. [1] https://www.sup-kanzlei.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Scheinselbs...

And if you can't read German, it's very similar to the IR35 [0] rules that we have here in the UK. Effectively... "Don't work as a freelancer for a company if they are your only client. That's employment." [0]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-workin...

Same in Australia.

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

#184

Post by nottorp »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #76
nwellnhof wrote: post #56

The mythical German "Mittelstand" again. This word is absolutely meaningless. It has been used to describe small businesses, but also companies like Robert Bosch GmbH which has 400,000 employees. "Mittelstand" is nothing but a vague idea Germans cling to, so they feel special.

I am sure that there are a large number of small business in the field, anayway. It's not a "either or" proposition, either. The article comes across as naive and idealistic. This was especially odd: " The average German—apart from those who’ve left the country and morphed into “tech bros”—isn’t particularly moved by shareholder value, especially when the Basic Law of Germany begins with “Human dignity shall be invio…

> you should be able to start a business without risks or hard work

Not everyone thinks they should ruin their health and have no personal life for a 0.01% chance that those stock options are worth something.

> I would also think that someone who lives and work in Germany ought to be speaking German

Newsflash: there's an European Union with the right to work and live anywhere inside its borders. They speak a couple different languages in there already. What's one more?

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

#185

Post by swores »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #182
swores wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries they are not profitable, because they are publicly owned organisations not for-profit private ones, and they are run purely for the benefit they provide to society. Please re-read the comment you replied to with this context in mind (as their excluding the US was for this reason; though of course the US is not the only country foolish enough to allow profit motives to harm their healthcare, firefigh…

Healthcare is a profitable industry in the EU. Security services are a profitable industry in the EU. There are private firefighting services in the EU. You can easily understand that in general terms all of these services are valuable and profitable to provide (because they are valuable!). The same goes for "military services"... Mercenaries and other "private providers" are a thing. You are completely missing the p…

I personally think it's you missing the point, though I suppose if I were missing the point I might not realise it!

The fact that some healthcare in some EU countries involves profit is irrelevant to my point & the point of the original comment you replied to. Neither of us were saying that the EU is a shining example of profit being out of healthcare (and in fact I was clear to state that the US is not a solo example on that side of things).

The claim we are disagreeing with is that profit = value and therefore lack of profit = lack of value.

Take UK firefighting services as an example. They are publicly owned and funded by taxes, and as such they are not designed to extract profit, just to be funded enough to provide the services needed. Does this mean they have no value? And in a hypothetical world where every country decided to shut down all private fire fighting companies and to fund publicly-owned ones, would that mean there is no value in any firefighting worldwide?

In my experience, people who argue against this model and in favour of for-profit businesses providing these services say that the profit motive leads to better efficiency, competition etc. (which I personally agree with, but that's a separate conversation). I don't think I've ever before seen anyone argue that lack of profit means they have no value.

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

#186

Post by FirmwareBurner »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #146
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was curious until I saw it's subscription based! Seriously? For a writing app? They can politely gtfo with that, I already got burned before by subscription-ware before. I want to own my purchases thank you very much.

I doubt those sort of apps would be viable as a one off purchase.

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 you get a discount if you want to pay again to upgrade to the next major version. Or Plex Premium.

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

#187

Post by lyu07282 »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #99
pembrook wrote: post #74

The 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…

> 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?

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

#188

Post by mytailorisrich »

swores wrote: post #185
mytailorisrich wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare is a profitable industry in the EU. Security services are a profitable industry in the EU. There are private firefighting services in the EU. You can easily understand that in general terms all of these services are valuable and profitable to provide (because they are valuable!). The same goes for "military services"... Mercenaries and other "private providers" are a thing. You are completely missing the p…

I personally think it's you missing the point, though I suppose if I were missing the point I might not realise it! The fact that some healthcare in some EU countries involves profit is irrelevant to my point & the point of the original comment you replied to. Neither of us were saying that the EU is a shining example of profit being out of healthcare (and in fact I was clear to state that the US is not a solo exampl…

There are profits made in the UK firefighting services. The fact they are (mostly?) funded by taxes is not key.

People are willing to pay for those services (and they do through their taxes as a result). People are paid salaries to provide those services (that's a basic form of profit). There are many commercial companies that provide equipments and even services to tax-funded firefighting services. So there is indeed "profit" everywhere. That is the big picture.

> I don't think I've ever before seen anyone argue that lack of profit means they have no value.

That's odd because it is a really basic concept.

In general socialised services (education, healthcare, firegighting, etc) are so not because they aren't valuable or profitable but because we think that they are so important that everyone should have access to them, even those who can't afford them.

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

#189

Post by FirmwareBurner »

pbmonster wrote: post #40
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> However, if you’ve ever used a product marked “Made in Germany,” you’ll understand what German culture truly values: mastery of a craft and uncompromising quality. What is OP smoking? I have a Bosch oven, Gigaset DECT phone set and a Fujitsu Siemens laptop, all made in Germany and their quality is complete bottom of the barrel crap, totally the opposite of "craftsmanship and uncompromising quality". Chinese compan…

All of those are the opposite of Mittelstand. Those are old German megacorps, trying to do everything.

Where did I talk about the Mittelstand? I only addressed the issue of the modern "Made in Germany" consumer goods which tends to be an overhyped outdated trope that delivers overpriced and poor quality goods by today's standards.

It's oblivious most consumer goods are gonna come from very large companies since only those have the economies of scale to manufacture, sell and market internationally consumer goods at a profit.

Mittlestands mostly cater to niche products or local markets where there's less downward pressure for cost or upward pressure for innovation by international competition.

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

#190

Post by nottorp »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #16
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

I didn’t find this article credible. It is arguing for small and medium businesses instead of startups, and offers steps to see the vision it paints. But startups are where some of the biggest game changing ideas come from. Large enterprises can sometimes do that too. I feel like the mid sized companies are often stagnant. The product areas it suggests for businesses are very hard to survive in. These other lines sor…

>> However, if you’ve ever used a product marked “Made in Germany,” you’ll understand what German culture truly values: mastery of a craft and uncompromising quality. What is OP smoking? I have a Bosch oven, Gigaset DECT phone set and a Fujitsu Siemens laptop, all made in Germany and their quality is complete bottom of the barrel crap, totally the opposite of "craftsmanship and uncompromising quality". Chinese compan…

Are those actually still made in Germany? Siemens got sold looong ago, or at least their consumer facing parts, as far as i know.

Except maybe the Bosch oven is made in germany. But tbh I wouldn't buy a Bosch oven, in my corner of the world outside Germany they're known for good tools not kitchen appliances. My Bosch electric screwdriver is great :)

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