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Comment by testfrequency | Hacker News Reader

Very interesting. This is the first I’m hearing Berlin described as dysfunctional. I had a friend mention while I was visiting how bad the government support was “during Covid” for people who lost their jobs and wages, but didn’t want to pry.

Do berliners feel forgotten by their leaders? Maybe that’s preferred and allows for more individualism (better or worse)?

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I think Berlin is a dysfunctional city but it’s not just the government. It’s baked into the DNA of the city. So you find wild dysfunction in the civil service, and resistance to making anything more efficient. The story of how the repeatedly delayed airport is a good example. The dysfunction was all the way down to the contractors.

If you move district you may need to change your tax number because each district has its own tax office.

If you want the tax office to communicate by email rather than letter you must send them the form to request this by mail. And then they still won’t really do it.

Berliners are obsessed with organic produce, but there seems to be no demand to ban smoking in bars.

Berliners don’t want shops to open on Sundays so workers can have the day off. But they do want restaurants to be open so they can go there with their own families.

I could on and on.

> Berliners don’t want shops to open on Sundays so workers can have the day off. But they do want restaurants to be open so they can go there with their own families.

That's pretty much any culturally christian country. UK and Poland for example. Thank god for migrant workers, to let us have our cake and eat it too.

Poland is unique here in the matter that it has banned Sunday shopping only recently to pander to the religious voter base. Germany has modified their labor laws to give the states freedom to regulate opening hours on 6 days of the week, but never extended this to Sundays (as Sunday is a constitutionally protected day of rest).

> banned Sunday shopping only recently to pander to the religious voter base

More like to the Catholic Church corporation, to ensure that before next elections, church goers will receive proper instructions during Sunday masses, on how to vote.

But the shops do open on Sundays in the UK. And in most European countries now.

Was it still the case 15 years ago? I recall tesco and sainsbury being closed on Sundays and other religious holidays, and the only place you could count to be open was the corner shop.

The change came 30 years ago in the UK.

That's not a Berlin thing, same thing in Austria which is completely different country.

I'd say 20th century Berlin always was an island of craziness. In the roaring twenties, it became both a poorhouse (hyperinflation) and the city with the wildest parties and openly queer communities. After WW2 the story is that the Allies made sure that Berlin would be barely governable. In times of the iron curtain many many left-wing Germans who didn't want to serve in the military escaped to West-Berlin which was known as a safe harbor. And in the 90s from what I can see, it looked like a big techno party.

So all in all, I think Berliners old and young are pretty fine with craziness and some kind of "governed anarchy". Only recently (to me at least and from what I heard for other people as well), it became really annoying because the government seems completely overwhelmed by pretty much everything. Berlin is btw still said to be the "capital of unemployment" and recently the housing problems and gentrification reached another absurd level.

> capital of unemployment" and recently the housing problems and gentrification

These are sort of mutually exclusive. Berlin used to be poor, but as of 2019 it’s richer than the German average. This is admittedly unimpressive for a city-state, but still: Berlin is no country for poor men. It was, but no longer.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GRP_p...

“Average” GDP per capita doesn’t tell you how “rich” the individuals are.

You should look at the median income per capita. Berlin ranks lower there than other federal states and cities.

Look for example here where it ranks 318 out of 400. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Landkreise/Kreise_...

Dysfunctional isn't quite the word - well as far as the usual level of government goes. Chaotic is maybe a better term.

Chaotic maybe pre-covid. But with the pandemic, the skyrocketing energy prices, the housing problems and the numerous Ukrainian refugees things got really bad for the local government. The latest low was that they weren’t able to held democratic elections by western standards. Some bright minds of the public authorities thought it would be wise to held a combination of local and national elections, 1-2 plebiscites together with having Berlin Marathon at the same day while they didn’t print out enough paper ballots and estimated every voter to only take (afair) 2min in the voting cabin. Court ruling decided to repeat that election for Berlin.

Berlin was always "special" that way. If it would suddenly be a functioning city, people wouldn't know what to complain about, and then what would they do all day? ;)

Take away funding via equalization payments ("Länderfinanzausgleich") provided by the financially responsible states of Germany, and the city would probably collapse in the future due to indeptments, as it is a net transfer recipient:

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/germany-without-fiscal-transf...

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