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Comment by sumedh | Hacker News Reader

I have an interesting anecdote to share, couple of years back I was working in an Indian branch of an MNC. The water from the tap on a wash basin had low pressure and it was frustrating to wash your hands but I guess we never complained because in India you just accept such minor inconvenience.

One day the VP from the American HQ came to the Indian office and yes he was German, during the intro meeting he talked about the low pressure from the tap. The tap was changed the next day.

I still remember that story because it taught me how Indians look at their surroundings and how a German looks at the same surroundings.

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I have a similar anecdote except the German in my story fixed the tap himself! I was squarely impressed with the skills an average German has.

A lot of things are common sense. OK, "this part must go here because it looks like it does X." We just need a little motivation.

Granted, doesn't mean you should rewire your house using YouTube videos

Watch enough YouTube videos and I hear you can build a whole house.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/13/us/mother-house-youtube-build-...

I am pretty sure that wiring your house is (rightly) illegal in many countries unless you are a licensed electrician, because of the fire Hazard and all.

At least in the US, if you apply for the permit and have a licensed electrician sign off on the job when it's done, you can perform the work yourself.

This is so German actually.

I've been living in Australia the past year (which has a lot of Germans) and twice I helped someone change a flat tyre. Both times a German also came to assist, and both times it was an American who didnt know how to change a flat (there arent that many of them in Aus).

As an American with some German ancestry, I find this to be very embarrassing. (The Swedes in my family can all change a tire as well, including my sister, but the German side is embarrassed.)

Americans have become complacent and lazy, with no sense of "know how" or "make do." Hell, kids don't even know how to clean and cook a rabbit, let alone how to catch one with a snare. If the zombie apocalypse ever happened for real, The Walking Dead wouldn't last a full season. Everyone would starve to death.

Would you risk eating a "zombie rabbit"? :)

The main thing is to check the liver for spots. If it has spots, don't eat the meat.

I assure you 99.99999% of Germans don't know how to clean and cook a rabbit.

You're saying that there are only 8 Germans alive who can do it. Between 90 and 99% sounds more reasonable.

You're saying that there are only 8 Germans alive who can do it.

and 6 of them have a 99.9% chance of dying within 10 years, given that they are 82+ years old. :)

On a serious note: A lot of immigrants make a lot of money (relatively speaking) right away since they are jack of all trades and are willing /have to learn. Things that a locksmith would charge you $150 and a plumber $200 and an electrician $xxx an immigrant can do all within an afternoon, all for living rent free as superintendent. Probably some rules and codes are bent but who's watching...

The owner, who is German himself.

I meant government rules and codes .

I know, but that's kinda the point: Germans tend to obey the rules even if the government isn't watching at the moment.

Germans want rules to be obeyed and things to work. Which may very well be related to the original subject.

Germany might not have as much of a hunting culture as the US or Norway, but still a lot more so than Netherland. I would expect more Germans to know how to clean and cook a rabbit.

Saying Americans have become complacent and lazy because they don't know how to catch, clean, and cook a rabbit is like saying that Americans have become complacent and lazy because they don't know how to steer a covered wagon across the plains.

Yeah except being able to catch, clean and cook your food is still a valuable skill. However I would say there are more Americans who can do that than Germans... It's hard as hell to get a hunting license in Germany.

I suppose it's useful if you're really into wild camping. Realistically how often would the average person, even someone living in a rural state, need to catch, clean and cook their own food? How many decades has it been since a significant portion of the population has needed that skill? Probably several generations at least. I bet less than a fraction of a percent of the population lives in a situation such that they don't procure most of their food through purchases of the products of agriculture or animal husbandry. A town has to get very small and very remote before periodic trips to the grocery store become so onerous that it's actually more efficient to set snares or sit in a tree for days on end waiting for a deer to wander by.

I suspect that any scenario in which hunting/trapping becomes a valuable skill for a significant portion of the population is also a situation where knowing how to operate an animal drawn vehicle is also a useful skill.

The moment it really matters- every day you walk away from and the day after.

Agreed. This whole "you might need it to survive" stuff is such a total fantasy, it's as realistic as "you might need to learn klingon to survive on a bird of prey some day".

This fiction about civilization collapsing, but then surviving on your wits and hunting skill, is the stuff of YA novels.

Is being able to catch, clean, and cook a wild animal really a valuable skill for most people in the western world? If you enjoy it, fine, but for most of us, the skills that earn us money are going to be much more valuable.

Not everything is about money. Hunting is a character-building expetience. I.E. I was taught to do it with certain respects paid to safety, the animal, and nature--so it teaches responsibility, respect, and other valuable qualities. It is also fun, stress-reducing, and especially if you like meat, very satisfying. Plus, you get good quality (free range, wild caught, organic I suppose) food.

Finally, if we experience some type of catastrophoc event: total war, nuclear winter, natural disaster, I will still be eating.

I assure you if it became profitable to do so, many of us would quickly master the art of rabbit catching. Many wouldn't, and that's fine.

This certainly makes me think. I'm Dutch, and when I was a kid, I knew how to repair my bike. Today, I tend to hire others to fix everything. I wouldn't know how to replace a car tire (other than to try the obvious).

Please just remember to loosen the lug nuts while the wheel is on the ground (and tighten them fully in the same state).

Everyone knowing how to skin a rabbit doesn't help if there aren't enough rabbits. A population of 320m Americans catching rabbits? A billion rabbits a week?

(The US currently consumes 8 billion chickens a year)

There are lots and lots of wild rabbits. They breed ... like rabbits, lol.

Coming back to this late. I guess my point about rabbits is that when I was a kid in the 60s in a rural place, it was a very common skill that kids were taught -- along with a bunch of other practical stuff. My generation generally did a poor job of passing along those skills. (My daughter can clean a fish, not a rabbit, but she's a vegan now haha.)

People go too far with generalizations. I teach my kids not to judge people by nationality, gender or race. My German wife doesn't know how to change tire. These are nice anecdotes though.

I'm a German, I spend a lot of time in the US. My US friends here seem to analyze what I do often based on my nationality ('Oh you cook, must be a German thing'). Analyzing/Interpreting people's behavior based on nationality must be an American thing.

"Dang Americans and their stereotypin'."

Most cars (from my experience) in Germany have separate tyres for winter, so changing them is something you need to do twice a year. Back in New Zealand I drove for about 12 years and never had to change a tyre.

Most people do it in autoshop

Ah ok, just based on my so far limited experience here, people have done it on their own.

No need to change a tire in Germany (or elsewhere) either. There are plenty of shops that will happily do it for you. It's an easy thing to plan for.

Besides, the northern US has more extreme winter weather than Germany, so based on this, Americans should be better at changing their tires than Germans.

Or put differently: culture is a major driver. The culturally similar Austria and Switzerland, and to a certain extent the Scandinavian countries, have similar strengths.

Sure there are some contributing factors (eurozone monetary policy, labour laws), but thats really the core. I feel like the education system, world class science institutes (Fraunhofer, Max Planck and Helmholtz) and pragmatic vocational training are really just a result of that.

This jives with my experience.

One time in an expensive hotel in Asia, there were a few times when things were simply wrong, even though we had a named person assigned to our group as a manager to call on.

I met with the German general manager and suggested that his systems for ensuring a quality experience were not correctly set up.

He sat up straight in his chair and told me that he would deal with all the issues we had. From then on we had no more problems with the account manager...

Probably why there aren't much German software companies to write home about. Current software tradition is nothing but broken faucets.

But the few ones that still exist are producing highest quality software.

Your car and the airplane you boarded last week probably both run German code.

The audio software industry is quite big. Most of the poplar DAWs are from Germany: Live, Cubase, Logic (at least before Apple bought it), Studio One, Samplitude and Bitwig. Many popular VST Plugins also come from German companies like Native Instruments, Celemony or U-He.

Some other famous software companies: Avira, Crytek, SAP, Suse and Nero.

Umpteen years ago, a woman of my acquaintance said that her bathtub had a very poor supply of hot water. I glanced behind it--it was freestanding--turned a knob till it stopped, and the hot water ran a lot better. To be sure, my last name reflects German ancestry, but so did hers.

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