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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

#201

Post by fsflover »

pjc50 wrote: post #154
impossiblefork wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that you can replace the entire software industry by Linux, but you can replace Windows with Linux, you can build simple locally run software to replace many of the well-known services, you can put some efforts into creating local clones with greater adaptability to match the biggest SaaS services, etc. Basically, to go after the easy 90%. Then we go from a world with data in the cloud, massive adverti…

> 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.

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

#202

Post by lesostep »

gizmo wrote: post #192
hresvelgr wrote: post #97

I think Mittelstand is perhaps misdirecting away from a more interesting conversation. Reading between the lines, this highlights an inherent bias in the majority of American companies to provide service to extract value as opposed to providing service for public benefit. Simply put, it's "move fast and break things" versus "WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE." If you want to dig deeper, this is a consequence of America begin…

> "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?

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

#203

Post by flanked-evergl »

impossiblefork wrote: post #198
flanked-evergl wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

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

#204

Post by tarsinge »

fsflover wrote: post #194
pjc50 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe you can grow it to 30% of GDP if you start doing a bunch of bad stuff, but if it can be replaced by open source local stuff-- if it's possible to simply kill facebook, Microsoft etc. and replace them with Linux together with a couple of not incredibly expensive software packages developed to provide a substitute, then why should we have a big-software economy? People have been saying this for twenty or thirty…

All this happening in the US due the lack of good anti-monopoly regulations.

Exactly, enshittification is creeping everywhere, EU should not follow a model that is breaking up in front of us.

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

#205

Post by big_paps »

touwer wrote: post #169
pjc50 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US vs. EU building materials is actually locally determined - there's a lot more forest in the vast empty spaces of the US and Canada, hence all the cheap wood. Same for oil. Same for e.g. the UK steel industry. I think people underestimate the extent to which the EU either doesn't have the same level of natural resources, or has used them up. There's a reason the last time that Germany got serious about resource ind…

Wut?

This was quite some times ago… Hitler was trying to get the oulnin the caucasus

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

#206

Post by pembrook »

cjfd wrote: post #150
milesrout wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profitable and valuable are synonymous. If something is more valuable than the inputs used to make it, then it is profitable to make it. Things being clever, or righteous, or "fantastic" (whatever that means) doesn't mean that people actually value them. That isn't what value means. Something is more valuable if you would give up more to have it. It is less valuable if you would give up less to have it. Basically, no…

You are right. My partner and I often provide each other sex for free. We should stop that and both become sex workers in order to be valuable.

Except you do not provide it for free. You provide it under the implicit transaction of your relationship, where you are both giving up value in other to get value.

Try betraying your partners trust and cheating on them - or refuse to take care of your children. They will likely be upset that you aren't holding up your end of the bargain.

Just because you haven't placed a price tag on your relationship and hate the idea of thinking of it that way due to modern cultural ideas of romantic love, doesn't mean relationships are not a transaction (historically in fact they did carry a price tag).

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

#207

Post by pembrook »

touwer wrote: post #171
pembrook wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people would actually be happier with your solution that's simply a marketing problem, which is entirely solvable. But I think more often people delude themselves into thinking their thing is better (since it's their baby) when it actually is not, which no amount of marketing dollars can solve.

I'm sorry but your view on the economy and society is really naive. As if everything could be solved by markets. Monopolies don't exist. Powers other than supply and demand (political, societal, geological, etc) don't matter. It's not that simple. Read some books of (old) economists or philosophers

If you cannot argue your points succinctly here without ad hominem attacks, I presume they aren't strong enough to stand on their own.

A rebuttal of "markets don't work because monopolies might form!" doesn't make sense when the alternative is to make everything a monopoly in the form of top-down government control.

Even the Chinese Communist Party understands that markets are the best way to create value and growth.

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

#208

Post by pembrook »

Zanfa wrote: post #160
pembrook wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment reads like a very rational, risk-averse person convincing themselves why they should never try doing anything new or interesting. Yes, markets are democracies which are messy and complicated and competitive and hard and not as easy as issuing top-down decrees from the elite.

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, obviously. But they trend in that direction on long time scales, unlike the alternative which is being anchored only to the whims of the fickle elite.

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

#209

Post by FirmwareBurner »

amunozo wrote: post #167
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…

Spain is flooded with Argentinians fleeing. Spain, which isn't even that good. Europe is still a much better place to live to the common people than anywhere else in the world.

If you look for one, you can always find a worse place to live on the planet than your own, if you wanna make yourself feel better about where you live, however that's no excuse to be complacent and ignore the real issues your own place is facing. That's called coping.

I want my country every year to be just a little better than it was the year before. If that's not happening and I need to resort to comparisons to failed developing countries to see it in a good light, then something is going wrong with it.

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

#210

Post by camillomiller »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #186
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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