Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#741

Post by estaseuropano » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #334

satellite2 wrote: post #319

This article is truly bizarre. The main point it makes is that the top 500 US companies grew faster than the top 500 European ones in the last decade or so. But then it quickly mention, without any further analysis, that both their GDP actually grew at a similar pace. So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. So all else being equals it means that the smaller US…

> the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.) > supposedly more investment in R&D Not supposedly, factually. The article explicitly states this. It’s the Economist; if you…

R&I expenditure numbers are extremely slanted if you count private expenditure as that's mostly tax categories. E.g. hiring a developer doesn't mean that you are doing R&I, its often just the cost of business. But in the statistics especially the big companies will mark anything that isn't sales, support or logistics as R&I as that brings tax benefits.

I would argue the big molochs are bad for economy and society. Apple and Google are proportionally not more innovative than a random small German or French software house, they just have more scale to market/sell/push their products.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#742

Post by marvin » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #699

marvin wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving two written warnings two weeks apart for one of the five objective reasons that are grounds for firing, then firing with a three month notice period is by definition harder than saying "you're fired, please leave the building immediately".

I don't know what country you are talking about but if it was about Germany then what you just said is a lot of bullshit. What you can do in Germany is the following: "you're fired, please leave in x weeks" (x depends on the employment contract, usually two weeks). Those two weeks are just a matter of dignity. To give both the business and the employer time to part.

This was an approximation of Norway's rules and was not a load of bullshit. Briefly, firing someone is only allowed if their position is no longer necessary and no alternative position exists, the company needs to reduce its headcount or if the employee has significantly derelicted their duties. There are significant judicial details that usually count in the employee's favor.

Standard terms in employment agreements is three months' notice, although as little as one month may be agreed upon when employment starts. The agreed notice period can only rarely be deviated from without mutual agreement.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#743

Post by simonbarker87 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

Nimitz14 wrote: post #439

kpmah wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NHS is one of the most efficient health systems in the world.

The NHS is probably the worst health care system in the developed world.

Hahahahahaha! It really really isn’t, it’s a national treasure and it’s amazing how well it runs given how numerous governments have underfunded it. Every study on international healthcare shows the NHS is near the top in every category and once you factor in the cost per person it’s the top in the world.

If you have a life threatening issue you will be seen and treated as well on the NHS as anywhere in the US, EXCEPT it won’t matter if you’re rich or poor, you’ll get the same treatment and it will work out at a literal fraction of the cost to the tax payer - insurance based and tax payer based are basically the same (cost is distributed over everyone contributing) except the government don’t arbitrarily say pay xxx thousand and the stress of “how to pay for this” is removed meaning people can focus on recovery and not on making ends meet.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#744

Post by mikro2nd » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

contriban wrote: post #132

devoutsalsa wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of frictionless employment labor movement… In the USA I once called in sick on a Monday & was retroactively fired the previous Friday.

It depends, were you hired the previous Thursday?

So what if they were? If you're ill, you're ill and should not have to go in to work. Sometimes ill-timed shit happens. Only in the US you can get fired for it. My mind boggles at the concept of "retroactive" firing... wtf is that even?

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#745

Post by whiddershins » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #695

whiddershins wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t understand what the mass shootings are and who does them.

Yeah but the people writing the articles I read do.

Really? I could have sworn you mentioned school shootings. Which are rare, which is why they make the headlines.

In Chicago there are mass shootings every weekend that get no press coverage. The inner city gang warfare and similar makes up the vast majority of mass shootings in the U.S.

Mass shootings have basically nothing to do with small town and rural NRA members.

Did you already know all that?

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#746

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

ponow wrote: post #701

concordDance wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ability to google things has provided immense, incalculable value, even if it's not value showing up in gdp figures.

There are "personal values" and there is "exchange value". The latter shows up in GDP. Isn't the problem with search also similar to education? Its effect is indirect on the both the consumer of education and within that consumer's society: when education is "useful", it enables all kinds of increased trade, not necessarily in education proper. To do a proper experiment, I suppose we'd need to compare otherwise ident…

I'm old enough to have programmed a couple decades ago when you mostly had to rely on experimentation and manuals to figure things out. The experience today is much more streamlined. What might have taken me an entire afternoon to figure out in olden times can now take a single minute Google search. My productivity is substantially better now with the likes of Google, Stack Overflow, and all the other similar resources.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#747

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #564

sudosysgen wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, on the balance, I don't think any of the examples you mentioned would do that much to my general happiness. I care about the other things in life so much more than about processor performance. If Google Maps hadn't come someone else would do it. They didn't invent digital maps. I don't think society in general would be very different. If we lost basic things like safety, food, and so on, then yes that matte…

> Honestly, on the balance, I don't think any of the examples you mentioned would do that much to my general happiness. I care about the other things in life so much more than about processor performance. Current essential advances in civilisation that I'm sure you enjoy, such as healthcare, are fundamentally reliant on processor technology developed in the US after the war. If we'd left it to European countries our…

Please, the microprocessor was being pursued by multiple countries. The US first, but again that doesn't mean only the US could do it.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#748

Post by swiley » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #733

withinboredom wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot buy hardware like it anywhere else, at any price. Strange, I bought a PC with 2x the specs at the same price as a maxed out Mac…

You’re sidestepping GP’s point. Does your PC have an equivalent to Apple’s Secure Enclave, for example?

Most PCs do at this point, also that secure enclave is very rarely both effective and something empowering the user so it's often ignored outside of very closed systems like Macs and phones.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#749

Post by ABCLAW » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #527

thow-01187 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho, what was happening in the Silicon Valley economy looks much more like displacement of value rather than creation of value (1). Google/Facebook have displaced other ad formats, redirecting money to themselves. AWS have displaced IT technicians in other corporations, redirecting money to themselves. Apple is selling overpriced commodity hardware, redirecting money to themselves. Uber is displacing taxis, redirect…

> Uber is displacing taxis, redirecting money to themselves. I lived in San Francisco 2013-2018, before Uber I very rarely used taxis -- to/from the airport maybe. Having moved back to Denmark, I again very rarely use taxis. But when I lived in the US, I used Uber many times each week. Sometimes to/from work. But taxis in Denmark is easily 5x as expensive, and generally unavailable on-demand. So now I was forced to b…

I think the point is that you used the service when VC money was being used to subsidize your ride. This is zero sum. Obviously the market for rides increases once the cost is artificially depressed.

From the UX perspective, Uber combines payment processing and ride ordering in an app. Obviously an improvement over calling a Taxi dispatcher and telling them when/where to pick you up. But is that billions of dollars in value? Or is the majority of that value just being scooped up from previous incumbents?

The economics of the industry haven't changed dramatically - it's expensive to pay people to be your chauffeur.

Re: Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?

#750

Post by iso1210 » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

wreath wrote: post #737

iso1210 wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps was developed by Where 2 Technologies in Sydney. Google bought it in late 2004, same sort of time OSM started (in the UK) Microsoft AutoRoute predated that by a decade - NextBase (A UK company) built it in 1988, I think Microsoft had bought it by the mid 90s. The US is great at taking other peoples inventions, buying them, marketing them, and claiming them for itself. The rest of the world innovates, the…

But also those US companies brought this tech they bought to the masses. To say they were built by others anyway reduced the role big tech played here same way a naive developer thinks a company’s success is just because of code he wrote.

America really wins in marketing and consumerism - especially when appealing to the American consumer