Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The German Mittelstand

kieranvelasquez.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 71 posts

Re: The German Mittelstand

#51

Post by gyulai »

RandomLensman wrote: post #40
gyulai wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people were dead set against things like Meisterzwang in some areas it would not exist I'll give you an example: When I went to a copy shop in Austria to have my thesis bound, the attendant said they were only allowed to do it up to 200 pages. Since my thesis had 210 pages it didn't fall under some exemption, and I had to go to a master bookbinder. The result is: Disgruntled consumer forced by law to pay more. Y…

Can't speak to your issue in Austria with over 200 pages. Never encountered that in Germany. Germany has removed Meisterzwang for some areas - so there is that. If people want to regulate certain things they can, even if you don't like it - welcome to society. When you look at some old craft products (like an old cathedral, for example) do you think it wrong to admire the craft, skill, and learning that went into it?…

> If people want to regulate certain things they can, even if you don't like it - welcome to society.

...that could be a response to anyone taking a political stance in favour of changing anything and, besides being rude, adds nothing of substance.

Re: The German Mittelstand

#52

Post by jcarrano »

avhception wrote: post #22
clarionbell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seriously needs to be repeated again and again. It's not that Mittelstand got greedy. Neither did most other small and medium companies in Europe and US. They gradually became less competitive by overregulation, high input costs, and complete lack of state support. The last sometimes bordering on hostility.

Anecdote time re: Over-regulation: We had a side-hustle, automatic sorting machines. Mostly nuts and bolts, but other stuff, too. About 10 employees. By some miracle, it managed to survive the loss of it's biggest customer (the aforementioned electroplating company). But we had to move shop. After we got a place, the city terminated the operating permit for the building. Why? Because, you see, the company that operat…

What I don't get in these cases is why they do this if they are not looking for a bribe? Just for sport?

Re: The German Mittelstand

#53

Post by RandomLensman »

gyulai wrote: post #51
RandomLensman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak to your issue in Austria with over 200 pages. Never encountered that in Germany. Germany has removed Meisterzwang for some areas - so there is that. If people want to regulate certain things they can, even if you don't like it - welcome to society. When you look at some old craft products (like an old cathedral, for example) do you think it wrong to admire the craft, skill, and learning that went into it?…

> If people want to regulate certain things they can, even if you don't like it - welcome to society. ...that could be a response to anyone taking a political stance in favour of changing anything and, besides being rude, adds nothing of substance.

Sorry, wasn't meant to be rude - maybe I missed it, but how are you pursuing that political stance actively rather than here writing about what you dislike about it?

For example, are you active in a political party or business association pushing your agenda? Have you spoken or written to your representatives? Some local political activities unrelated to party politics? Other activities such as helping people draft new policies?

Re: The German Mittelstand

#54

Post by OroPla »

vrganj wrote: post #24
izacus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow MBAs, our champions of capitalism, completely forgot that capitalism only really works for society when free market competition takes place. This is what's attractive about the "Mittlestand" - having a wide variety of companies competing in the same market so they push each other to improve services. 21st century consolidation is a direct opposite of that.

But consolidation is the inherent end game of capitalism. It's almost as if it was full of contradictions that will always result in crises and a bad way to organize a society...

It's worth repeating, since so many people have different ideas about what capitalism is, but it's only having the means of production (factories, tools, employees, etc.) in private hand (as opposed to being owned by the government - a monopoly) with the purpose of making a profit (so you do not have to live paycheck to paycheck).

None of that has consolidation (might as well call it monopoly) at the end game. But then again, we can't really have free market capitalism while also having state granted monopolies (IP laws). When you have a monopoly you can set the price, but in a free market supply and demand sets the price.

Re: The German Mittelstand

#55

Post by close04 »

luke5441 wrote: post #43
close04 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly even eliminating all bureaucracy isn't the Holy Grail of saving the local workshop. The company has to pay German level taxes, the workers have to pay German cost of living, and most business owners also want to enjoy the fruit of their labor and that fruit in Germany usually wears a Porsche badge. These are the obvious and "easy" ones but probably not the most important ones. The difficult problems are the ent…

Germany has such a supply chain for some sectors (e.g. cars, chemicals). The question is do we want to protect it to some extent or let the free market do its thing?

Almost 50% of the energy consumption of the German chemical industry is natural gas. Its competitiveness is at the mercy of countries with no duty to Germany and they're the root of the supply chain.

> let the free market do its thing

The problem with the free market is that there's no such thing. Every market is regulated to some degree, the state has its finger on the scales somewhere. It needs to for things that are are strategically important or for the welfare of the citizens. It can be subsidies for fuel, tariffs for some import, market abuse regulation, there's always a mechanism in place to keep things on a specific track. As much as the 4 year democratic cycle allows in specifying that track.

The free market suffers from the same weakness communism does. It relies on deeply flawed humans. The more flawed, the more likely they'll be the ones pulling the strings. And they'll tear apart the fabric of society to make more money.

Re: The German Mittelstand

#56

Post by pjmlp »

close04 wrote: post #46
pjmlp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, however there are only two ways to handle this, race to the bottom and then everyone has Chinese working conditions and salaries, or it is about time that we build our walls and kind of, no kidding, make each country great again, which is why right wing parties are going up all over the place. I still remember how it was in most European companies before we started offshoring everything, textil, shoes, TVs, m…

> race to the bottom and then everyone has Chinese working conditions and salaries I think it’s doable to be competitive even under Western conditions assuming you have the rest of the ultra optimized supply chains because you can find ways to support them even with just a nudge here and there, compared to when the only German part if the business is the one who says “designed un Germany”. > or it is about time that…

They didn't of course, however when they happen to have such an easy speech to sell about who is to blame about factories closing down, queues increasing sizes at the job center, no longer able to afford the same supermarket basket size even when employeed,....

It is no accident that in a way we are reliving the same uptake they had during the big depression, and there doesn't seem to be any way to counter that.

Re: The German Mittelstand

#57

Post by vrganj »

OroPla wrote: post #54
vrganj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But consolidation is the inherent end game of capitalism. It's almost as if it was full of contradictions that will always result in crises and a bad way to organize a society...

It's worth repeating, since so many people have different ideas about what capitalism is, but it's only having the means of production (factories, tools, employees, etc.) in private hand (as opposed to being owned by the government - a monopoly) with the purpose of making a profit (so you do not have to live paycheck to paycheck). None of that has consolidation (might as well call it monopoly) at the end game. But th…

If the means of production are in private hand and private individuals acquire profit, they will inevitably use said profits to acquire more means of production, which will beget more profits, more means of production, etc etc.

They will use those riches to buy out competitors, to bribe (or "lobby" in polite parlance) legislators to tilt the rules in their favor, until they have reached near-monopoly.

The free market always means monopolization, this is precisely the core contradiction of capitalism.

The perfect free market with fair competition only exists in ideological fantasy.

To say what we have now isn't capitalism is nothing but a no true Scotsman fallacy. This is actually existing capitalism.

Re: The German Mittelstand

#58

Post by jazzprogramming »

camillomiller wrote: post #10

I was enjoying this until this signature sentence by Claude: >>Slowly but surely, it did, once again becoming a world-renowned brand, now separate from that of Thonet. The same town, the same factory, the same people—just a different name The moment I see this, the piece loses all of its credibility. I cannot take any of the factual informations I was enjoying as implicitly correct now, I just can’t. Authors should e…

Sometimes I'm taken aback by the visceral reaction some people have when their spider sense detects LLM impurities in the writing.

I read that same sentence (and the whole article, which I loved) and it didn't trigger anything in me.

It reminds me a bit of the OMG GMOs! craze people used to have a while back (and might still have?).

Re: The German Mittelstand

#59

Post by ahartmetz »

vrganj wrote: post #50
ahartmetz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these contradictions can be fixed well enough by government intervention to make capitalism the best known system. It used to work pretty well for several decades.

Several decades being 1.8 decades since the last major crisis?

I mean something like 1930-1975 in the US and 1950-1990 in Germany.

Re: The German Mittelstand

#60

Post by modo_mario »

RandomLensman wrote: post #26
gyulai wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people could move to places with higher wages (e.g., cities), no? ...well, often times, when you have a family and real estate in a region, it might be inopportune to do that, and my contention is that some employers capitalize on that immobility by offering worse terms. > Being in a place where you could help shape local politics seems like a good move, no? Sure. If you want to buy a forest, have your buddy the ma…

Not wanting to move might have costs. Yes, local integration has value, but also means you had to stick around to get there - comes with a cost. And local people show plenty ability to protect things/stop building etc. The regulations on Handwerk are so old, not sure how you could put that on the Mittelstand.

>Not wanting to move might have costs.

Sure and extreme liberty to move opens us up to the lowest common denominator dictating the opportunities.

Post reply on HN