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Comment by redsummer | Hacker News Reader

Where is the modern Vienna?

As in, the place where the ideas and ideologies of tomorrow are born? What we're looking then for is a place where intellectuals and free thinkers go to meet. Certainly SF makes a good case, but it's mostly about business as far as I can tell. NY or London are multicultural enough, but I don't hear much out of either, possibly because the high rent force people away from creative endeavors. Berlin has a lot of art and radical political movements, but the latter seem mostly like the aftershocks of yesterday's battles and the former rarely matter that much. Does anything happen in Paris these days? Beijing/Shenzhen would be somewhat safe bets were it not for the repressiveness of the Chinese political system. India is still worrying about nutrition and toilets, but maybe Mumbai is worth considering?

It's hard to tell, really. These things can only really be seen in hindsight.

I don't disagree, but would add for anyone reading this who's drawn to ponder the question further that a city's artistic/intellectual energies cannot flourish without a cost of living affordable on "creative" salaries. Prague was the cool place for a while because of that.

Still doing great [on the Quality of Life Index].

Online Start-Up wise quite good. There is VC money, grants, tech talent, meetups and the will to try new things.

But los of overall creativity still stifled by bureaucracy, mediocracy and latent rassism.

Also we have something called SVA and "Sozialpartnerschaft" which hurts a lot. The one takes most of young founders money, the other makes sure the curtent old-white-male elite stays in place.

SVA has also an superior service and is not more expensive than other health insurances. Sozialpartnerschaft ensures balanced politics and is a foundation of Austrias post war success.

Franze, it seems you are short sighted. The Sozialparterschaft currently helps to keep the startup cargo cult in check which primarily seeks to create work for three years just to be swallowed by a bigger company, most of the time because the startup was getting a nuisance and not because it created substantual value. The Sozialpartnerschaft also guaranteed many years of slow but steady growth and the culture of belonging and equality many countries in the world search for.

It's because of such short-sighted longings like dooming the Sozialparterschaft why values like equality and solidarity are increasingly falling to peaces, reduced workforce protection, going ill to the job etc.

You are right that one state social security system would probably be enough instead of more than a dozen.

I'm on of those "young founders" here and have zero issues with the SVA. They take at most 20k/y from you for health care and pension, and I'm fine with that. And just because you don't want to pay your potential employees a living wage (which are low in the IT collective bargaining contracts) doesn't mean the Sozialpartnerschaft is bad. On the contrary, it keeps those stary eyed "young founders" from fucking over the people that help build their potential future fortune.

This sort of sentiment explains why socialist Europe will never be able to build successful companies like Google/FB.

Or maybe they're building smaller, useful, and profitable companies and don't need to be the next Google or Facebook?

Can you elaborate more on what "SVA and "Sozialpartnerschaft" is? My cursory English search isn't bearing much fruit. Cheers.

Take it with a grain of salt, but it has been ranked first for six consecutive years in the Mercer Quality of Living Survey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...

What's the grain of salt?

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