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Comment by WanderPanda | Hacker News Reader

I like to also view this as an opportunity for a more efficient resource allocation in the long run. In my view you are trading off short term stability vs. long term efficiency. To be more clear: In Germany we have a vast amount of people who think the government should guarantee most parts of their life, especially their job. Most people will stay at the same employer for their whole life, also because it is relatively hard and costly to lay people off. This leads to very static structures and wrong incentives. People even believe they are trading their time for money and not their productivity for money. I believe it can be healthy letting a shock through to that system from time to time so that a more optimal allocation can be attained. Trying to micromanage to soften a shock only introduces bias to the system reducing its natural variance, leading to a less efficient allocation.

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Most people will stay at the same employer for their whole life, also because it is relatively hard and costly to lay people off. This leads to very static structures and wrong incentives.

The US certainly manages to allow (some) employers to organize their operations for their maximum convenience, with the conditions of the workers essentially the workers' problem.

This indeed allows efficiency - but only in the short term. In the long term, this effectively generates an ethos that some portion of people are disposable and this destroys society. Which is literally what can be seen in America today, the debt coming due in a multitude of ways.

That part caught me too... Do people really work with the same employer for 5+ years - multiple decades?

Not judging the practice, it’s just such a very different concept to think about since a lot of my US friends are switching jobs like every 1.5-2yrs on average to play the game of “corporate ladders maze” as they say. I think if I challenged one of my friends to stay at an employer for 10 years, they would have a very hard time doing that without feeling like they are missing out on more money.

It is quite common where I live (France).

Personally, I've been working for ~9 years now, I worked for my first employer for a bit more than 5 years, my current job being the second job in my professional life. And I have a few friends still working for my first employer and who started there at roughly the same time as me. IIRC, my team leader actually started working for this company the same years I was born.

In my current job, I think I'm the only one in my team without the "5 years reward trophy".

At the same time, I've seen a few friends switching jobs every 2 to 3 years, but it tends to be more an early career thing and they settle after 2 or 3 jobs.

You have people who are jumping from job to job, but it's not the majority (at least for profession like Engineering, fields like Retail or Logistic is another matter).

You are free to leave the country if that so upsets you.

Meanwhile, I'm glad I'm a citizen of a place that values people's lives over "the economy" or a "more optimal allocation".

There is a good case to make that you’re analysis is a false dichotomy.

If the government paid you to dig a hole and fill it back up, all day everyday, for absolutely no purpose, would you feel happy and fulfilled?

What about if 50 years ago the government paid you to create typewriters, and because there is no change and everything is static, they are still paying you to make typewriters? Except now they go straight into the trash.

The march of progress is important. Jobs need to be destroyed if they are no longer necessary. Paying people with tax dollars to continue to do the same thing for life is absurd.

Downsize government?

This is half of the reason everyone's in so much trouble with this pandemic in the first place. When government is being downsized, disaster preparedness programs, emergency stockpiles and various buffers are some of the first things to go.

Perhaps the government would not need to be downsized by reducing disaster preparedness programs and emergency stockpiles if it had not already been bloated by high salaries for bureaucrats.

People always come first. And it's not like the "march of progress" somehow has skipped Germany, so that's a rather flimsy argument.

Neither is Germany "paying people with tax dollars to continue doing the same thing for life".

Can we move on from the empty talking points? Can we talk about how the social security measures in Europe ensured that, as opposed to the US, we won't see 50+ million people suffering hunger later this year? Can we talk about the oh-so-beautiful paragon of capitalism has gleefully murdered 10s of thousand of people for the sake of the economy? When that "economy" really is only propping up Wall Street?

You've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly lately (e.g. this comment, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372779, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372391, among others). Would you please stop using HN for ideological and political flamewar? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. That does no good and helps no one, regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, on the underlying issues.

I realize that nearly everywhere else on the internet is burning with these flames, but that makes it more important, not less, to prevent HN from destroying itself in this way. The idea here is to have at least one place on the internet that's organized around intellectual curiosity. We can't do that and also be a political flamewar site, for the same reason that you can't have a tank battle in a park or a museum, or a good hike in a forest fire.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

> The march of progress is important. Jobs need to be destroyed if they are no longer necessary. Paying people with tax dollars to continue to do the same thing for life is absurd.

That makes sense as an overall trajectory in normal times. Much less in the middle of a pandemic, where every country decided to pause their economies to save lives. Jobs are put on life support, because otherwise they'd all die and would have to be recreated from grounds up. We're not talking about keeping people doing the same thing for life, just paying them so that they can go back to doing the same thing few months from now.

More optimal allocation is exactly what makes people happy. You are free to pursue your interests instead of growing potatoes in a village somewhere.

Someone that's happy to grow potatoes somewhere can now trade their labor for yours via money.

Yeah, Germany is really busy growing potatoes.

Well, someone's got to fill those Kartoffelkanone

More optimal allocation is exactly what makes people happy.

Only if the resources are allocated to a person. If alternative is homelessness or being part of one or another inefficient enterprises, most people would inefficiency.

Inefficiency has its own problems but we have acknowledge that just efficiency by itself isn't going to create universal happiness.

You do realize that all those things that improve people’s lives are paid for with taxes that come from the economy right?

No economy? No social safety net.

What disgusting rhetoric. If something about your democratic and free country upsets you, you are at liberty to talk about it, criticise it, or vote to change it, not just 'get out, then'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fZZqDJXOVg

How is this poster’s rhetoric “disgusting”? Or are you just usung that to emphasise your strong disagreement?

That way of saying "you are free to leave" serves only to suppress dissent, discouraging honest discussion (possibly leading to ballots) about how things should work. I think it's fair to call that a "disgusting" motivation.

It's basically suggesting that 'if you don't like the status quo, you should leave the country'. Firstly it's ridiculous - you are entitled to live in the country of which you are a citizen and not love everything about it. It's still your home.

It's anti-democratic because it's suggesting dissenting or minority views should be pushed out and not have a voice.

It's nationalistic because it's sugsesting there is one political view which is associated with belonging to the country, and anyone who doesn't agree with it is not part of that national identity and doesn't belong there.

I admit my penchant for democracy might have coloured my language when I called it 'disgusting', though. I wasn't engaging in any way with the substance of their comment.

I like this idea. Voting is just one way, and leaving should definitely not be taken off the table, nor does mentioning that it's always an option imply that you're encouraging people not to vote. You're making up way too much stuff about what the poster actually meant. In particular as they said "if that so upsets you" so obviously not just as a first step but if they literally can't stomach it - you definitely can live in the country if you don't love anything about it, but you also can leave if it's too much. "Voting with your feet." Or are you saying the Jews were absolutely wrong to leave pre-Nazi Germany (while it was still a democracy) because they should have stayed and voted their way out of the problems?

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