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Comment by dav_Oz | Hacker News Reader

For those unfamiliar with the region (Saxony, Dresden):

A registered association (e.V. in German) bluntly named "Silicon Saxony e.V." (est. in 2000) with over 450 members headquartered in Dresden pretty much sums up the infrastructure and ambition.[0][1]

As pointed out the process TSMC’s 28/22 nanometer planar CMOS and 16/12 nanometer FinFET process technology (fabrication will begin in 2027) is not "cutting edge" but set to satisfy the (local) demand [2] mostly for the automotive industry. I guess a good conservative foothold given the current economic/geopolitical environment, but it's not like an innovation/investing boom or something.

However from a perspective of a young student, Saxony/Dresden - as for now - is pretty inexpensive as compared to Berlin, Hamburg or Munich and has ample opportunities (TU Dresden, Fraunhofer, MPI, Helmholtz Zentrum ...).

[From personal experience I find the people in Saxony (Leipzig, Dresden) have a more deep-rooted skepticism towards the federal government (or any centralized entity ruling over them) which can lead to a good thing - interesting perspectives/lively discussions or depending on your position less good - leaning more to the political (far) right.]

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony

[1]https://silicon-saxony.de/

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932023_global_chi...

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Having lived there for a decade, I must point out that you are painting a very one sided picture of the region. It's also a hot spot for Germany's populist right.

I've witnessed visiting Indian colleagues of mine being threatened on the street for having dark skin and racist demonstrations are a weekly occurrence. I eventually moved away (among other reasons) because I didn't want my kids to grow up in this environment.

It was quite difficult to hire international talent there for the same reasons.

The city itself and university are super nice though.

Still living here I must point out that you are pointing an equally one sided picture.

While all of what you say is true and problematic, there are people from all over the world living in Dresden and some parts (especially Neustadt) are politically rather left leaning.

"there are people from all over the world living in Dresden and some parts (especially Neustadt) are politically rather left leaning."

Nu, nu. But do you talk with them about their experiences?

And sure, you will be fine with a dark skin in the Neustadt and Hechtviertel and co.

But move out of that bubble and you have to be prepared to face a different culture.

That's not how it works. There can be a lot of good people, but all you need is one in-your-face racist encounter to ruin your decade. It's like how even a rumor of a shark will keep you firmly on the beach.

Indeed. One single racist encounter of mine ruined my past 2 decades. I can’t help but think about it all the time till this day. It’s honestly wondrous how a simple insult of 2 words could destabilize my mental health and even pushed me over the tide to harming myself seriously once, thankfully I was rushed to the hospital fast. I’m still getting nightmares every other day, the blurry face of that stranger waking me up in cold sweats (I couldn’t properly see her because it was night). I even got recently diagnosed with terminal cancer due to chronic stress, and my obesity didn’t get any better since the incident. All because some random stranger shouted me 2 random words at some random hour of the night on some random street.

Edit: The very act of writing this comment traumatized me so much that I died of a heart attack. Fortunately the graveyard is near a cell tower, I can get LTE signal.

Do an s/racist/homophobic/ and you have a justification for being a jerk to muslim immigrants.

I'm a little confused -- how do we get from "it takes one homophobic reaction to deeply affect someone", to "if someone is deeply affected by one homophobic reaction from a population, we should be a jerk to the entire population?"

that is exactly the point being made about saxony...

I think the point wasn't that Saxony and Saxons were terrible people in general, but rather that if you're non-white you might get smashed in the face or murdered on the street if you're unlucky, and the odds of this happening being higher than in other parts of Germany. Which seems fair to me given recent history.

> and the odds of this happening being higher than in other parts of Germany

Police data for battery/assault 2019:

https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...

Homicides 2020:

https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...

Its not keyed up for race-based crimes, but less crime means also less space for race-based crimes.

Wherever this narrative came from, its dishonest. Its in every thread about Silicon Saxony.

You seem to be on some mission on this thread, maybe you should take a step back and reflect the discussion and arguments.

1. Hate crimes are hugely different from battery/assault, so I'm not sure how your reference adds anything 2. Police data is not a trustworthy source, as police is biased too. Just check some news articles about police refusing to even take in a report about hate crime, where this is more likely to happen, and consider what this means for the stats you're quoting

1. Hate crimes don't exist in Germany. It cant be measured like in the US because its not a thing.

2. You distrust police data and then tell me to refer to journalists instead. Same people who need to exaggerate their findings to generate income.

What am i doing here. You should be the one bringing up numbers on how Saxony is worse.

Believe it or not, hate crimes do exist in Germany. Maybe not as a legal term, but that's a legal thing and a political decision. You cannot forbid the term to be applied single handedly. And if a political decision was made to not count something, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

However, based on your cliché populist statement of distrusting any media because it's biased, I don't see a point in continuing.

You are rejecting my statement based on people you associate it with (populists), not because you have a factual counter.

How does this comment fly on HN? This person is basically calling all Muslim immigrants homophobes, which is so far from the truth.

I was paralleling parents argument with an populist trope, to make it easier to understand that its not a good thing to say.

Be careful not to read more into my sayings than what i wrote. Its not an agreement, its an accusation.

Ethnic Germans are just as much a threat to LGBT people than fanatic Muslims are, and it's not just the former GDR where reactionary and fascist attitudes bloom.

I had to spend half a year in the ass cracks of Niederbayern... not something I'd like to repeat. People openly talking "something like that (i.e. LGBT) wouldn't have been a thing under Hitler" over their beers or someone shouting Sieg and the full pub responding Heil ("Sieg Heil" was the verbal Nazi salute) is common there.

And then, these very same people have the audacity to complain that "the gays" lure their children away to the cities... no you moron, you shouting Nazi salutes in a pub does.

sure, bavaria is as bad as egypt or saudi arabia for gay people, suuure

god this place has gone down the shitter

The person I replied to was talking about Muslim immigrants to Germany, which our far-right blames for being anti-LGBT.

No, i was giving a hint that parent was fearmongering, which i consider to be some bad thing. So i paralleled it with the fearmongering of the AfD because i think everyone agrees that this is bad.

And you backed them up with even more fearmongering. Why is a self-proclaimed antifascist using fascist methods? "Its justified when *I* do it" my ass. The AfD is problem enough, don't add to it. Bring your points across without fearmongering against groups of people.

> And you backed them up with even more fearmongering.

What fearmongering?! FFS. Just look at the election results of the 2021 elections, it's not by chance that the AfD is stronger in the rural areas - they were 2nd in Straubing, which is the area where I lived.

[1] https://www.bundestagswahl2021.bayern.de/ergebnis_regierungs...

This is my problem with you, your focus is entirely on the baddies, and not whether your behavior makes you one of them. Be better.

I know better that this is not true since i experience first-hand that wehrabooism and homosexuality (including mine) are living by each other with no issues. What you are doing is scaremongering against some group.

Neustadt is marketed as some left leaning paradise to outside investors of Saxony's liberalism. But as Indian guy in Germany around 2 years back, that was exactly my experience in Saxony. I have lived across all of Germany over the past few years, and nowhere did I face any hostility compared to Saxony and East Germany in general.

Left leaning and racist aren't mutually exclusive.

While your statement, put that generally, is certainly true, i wonder if you're familiar with leftism in Germany or in Europe in general (honest question). Antiracism and Antifascism are almost part of the core DNA of many of these circles or at least their self-perception. Doesn't mean that they necessarily live up it, of course. However, the term "left" means something quite different in Europe than compared to the popular usage of that term in the US where, i believe, a large chunk of the audience here is based.

For real, plenty of authoritarian leftists in the world who think the only path to socialism is through an autocracy with a heavy sprinkle of ethnic nationalism. But I think the commenter meant the more lib-left in europe, the kind who would be friends with anarchists.

I was literally pointing out another aspect on top of what GP said of that region and ended with saying that the city is "super nice". I love visiting and still have many friends there.

Sorry to hear that. I wasn't trying to downplay the issue, I was just recounting from own experiences just visiting the cities (Leipzig, Dresden) multiple times.

>The city itself and university are super nice though.

Then, I hope this will get more widespread :)

I wasn't implying you downplayed anything, just wanted to add nuance to your insightful comment.

I only ever see crying about racism in Dresden in the Media and on HN.

Is this an actual thing or just something pushed up because victimhood is idolized too much? The blue collar workers here are diverse af.

Very mature way of saying it: "crying"...

Good flame-bait.

Propose a better wording

Isn't this a rampant problem across Europe thought?

I went on a beach vacation with some French friends and was sort of stunned/apalled at the sort of non-stop "it is all the muslim/immigrants" fault talk.

What is this comment down voted? I think that the post makes a valid point. Not speaking about France, but I am always stunned when people think that they can make obviously Islamophobic comments in front of me. I always try to push back, but they regularly push back harder. I'm tired of it. It is bizarre, anti-social behaviour in 2023. I guess that during the 1930s in some of parts of Europe were similar for Jews/Romani. "Normal" daily discrimination was a way of life.

To be fair, the social and economic divisions between white French natives and immigrants is large. There is a excellent article in Financial Times about it: <<French riots show how entrenched inequalities have become / The gulf between immigrants and those born in the country is larger than in almost any other developed nation>>: https://www.ft.com/content/25eda9f0-8bd3-41e1-948c-89cc7c0ec...

The solution is to keep talking about it, and continue studying the issue.

> I guess that during the 1930s in some of parts of Europe were similar for Jews/Romani. "Normal" daily discrimination was a way of life.

1930s? How about 2023 :)

Oh, come on. Are you trolling me? Do you really think that Jews and Romani are facing "normal" daily discrimination _in the same way_ as the 1930s? I beg to differ.

In Europe it's the muslims, in the US it's the mexicans, in $place it's $group.

French people are known to be rather nationalist though (In the same way US Americans are), but a rampant problem? I have to disagree, it's just like the rest of the world, people need their scapegoat.

What are countries less racist than the United States or Germany? I've found Canada to be incredibly racist against French Canadians. Casually mocked in the streets. If we did that in the USA you'd lose your job

Woah, I never heard about this before. Can you share more examples about discrimination against French Canadians? I assume you are speaking from outside Quebec province. Also, can any F/Cs comment from their own perspective? If true, it is a bit disappointing. Canadians that I meet are, on the whole, more balanced and reasonable that Americans. (Yeah, I'll probably get -5000 for that comment. Strictly personal experience.)

> I've witnessed visiting Indian colleagues of mine being threatened on the street for having dark skin and racist demonstrations are a weekly occurrence.

So, like the US?

I've lived in Texas for 30 years and I've haven't seen anything like what you see in Europe in terms of racist demonstrations and blatantly racist political organizations. The few weeks of my life I spent in Germany felt far more discriminatory. There is nothing like the AfD in the US. The funny thing is while Racist Xenophobia is a huge issue, there is a ton of Xenophobia against various eastern europeans as well.

> There is nothing like the AfD in the US

Because white nationalism is more and more becoming part of the mainstream. GOP is perfectly capable of hosting moderates and quazi-nazis at the same time.

I don't believe this at all - the GOP is getting more and more diverse and there is no explicitly racist GOP policy. This is untrue for European ethno-nationalist parties. Sure there maybe a couple of closet ethno nationalist in the GOP but they would be thrown out if they said the stuff their Euro counterparts say in the open. There's also the fundamental reality that because of the 2 party system and the demographics of this country that the GOP could never become an ethnonationalist party. Maybe unless PoC become white supremacists themselves like the Chapelle show skit :D.

The US is a very homogeneous country. I live in a very liberal part of it.

There are probably places with similar problems although I can't name any. Can you?

I've heard Harrison, Arkansas as an example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison,_Arkansas

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltmlvk9GAto

Question: does that mean there are no indian restaurants in Dresden?

There are. Why wouldn't there be?

There are a lot of minorities in Germany, which (sadly have to) accept daily racism.

Thankfully, at this point violence against minorities (~800 right extremists violent crimes in 2022 in whole Germany) is not as high such that people consider moving away.

And if you get a job there and this is your ticket into immigration, probably a lot of people will accept this to get German citizenship. Finally, this will open you access to all the working places in Europe.

My hope (as a West German) is that investments like this, will increase East-Germany's economy such that they are finally equal in terms of economic wealth, which is a large factor for racism/extremism.

Same with opposing climate change laws.

>There are. Why wouldn't there be?

Because he said Indians are attacked on the street in Dresden.

If that's the case why would you move and open a restaurant there if you're Indian?

Or was he exaggerating the issue?

There were 13,000 Jews in Leipzig in 1933. Surely antisemitism wasn’t a problem because so many of them chose to live there.

(In 1989 the city’s Jewish population was 30.)

"If that's the case why would you move and open a restaurant there if you're Indian?"

Because some things do not show immediately and officially all is fine in Dresden. Also the racism that was hiding for some time now shows itself very openly.

> My hope (as a West German) is that investments like this, will increase East-Germany's economy such that they are finally equal in terms of economic wealth

Is this a bad joke? Is it possible that you actually don't comprehend the ramifications of eternal human labor trafficking?

He's referring to the difference in wealth between East and West Germany which is arguably the cause of many political and social issues in Germany. The influx of money into the region could reduce the disparity.

My guess is that you are referring to the difference in wealth between India and Germany. I'm not sure that the pearl clutching was helpful. It would have been better to clarify your assumptions or If indeed you were talking about Germany internal issues then clarify how labor trafficking is a factor here. We'll all be better for it.

> The influx of money into the region could reduce the disparity.

Money in the region would help but I don't see it happening since Poland is just a few km away and a more lucrative target for attracting investments from west Germany due to having less red tape, and lower taxes and regulations.

East Germany can't compete with that so it seems it be forever be this "desert" in between west Germany and Poland where nobody wants to live and invest.

I see this as a fault of the German gov for not making east Germany an attractive place for investors.

This post is literally about building a "large" factory for highly specialized workers in East Germany. The influx will be there, whether that's enough to solve the issue it's a different topic. Anyway, I was referring to the original commenter's intention, not my personal opinion.

>The influx will be there, whether that's enough to solve the issue it's a different topic.

It's not. I've seen this play out before in my poor home town that become a hotspot for tech investments in the span of 10 years.

All those new jobs in the semi industry will require some skills and education, and people who have that kind of skills and education, are (usually) not racists to attack people on the streets based on their color and go to racist protests, but the contrary, tend to be well spoken and liberal.

It will simply increase the inequality between the uneducated racist locals and the well educated foreigners who come for those well paying jobs and raise rent prices and cost of living, throwing more fuel on the racist fire, and pointing the target on the foreigners for being to blame for making life more expensive for the locals.

This issue is solved through education and career re-orientation opportunities, not by bringing some high end jobs that are out of reach for those locals anyway.

Bavaria is right next to the Czech Republic and should have the same problems, yet isn't exactly a 'desert' as you call it.

Large scale outsourcing (and investments) to Poland, the Czech Republic and the rest of Eastern Europe had already happened during the 90s, after that it was China. Everything that can be outsourced in Germany has already been outsourced during the last 30 years, yet the sky hasn't fallen so far.

> Is it possible that you actually don't comprehend the ramifications of eternal human labor trafficking?

Probably not. I don't even know what it means/you mean.

When rich nations destabilize poor nations and incentivize cheap labor to migrate to the rich nation.

Poor nations are exceptionally good at destabilising themselves - as a person from one of them. The idea that they are getting mistreated would be music to the ears of our ruling elites - perhaps hinting that they might get their "virtual slaves" back from Europe.

You might get more traction calling it "brain drain", since that's the more common term in at least the US.

Is it "brain drain" when it's "cheap labor" that's moving, as claimed by the parent comment?

Regardless, doesn't matter, since their entire point is based on a very flawed and naive idea of economic development.

> eternal human labor trafficking

What does this mean? Are there people being trafficked in eastern Germany?

Yes, and it's nothing new.

Apart from just your statement this is the first time I hear about this. I mean there is trafficking everywhere but you statement makes it sound like it’s on a much grander scale. Care to provide more info?

There are, but why is that related? You mean because they all did not burn down yet, proofs the racism is not so bad?

Oh there are. When you want a really good one, just go to the one on the Alaun Park.

In How Asia Works[0], they contrast how Malaysia tried to modernize by jumping straight to high-tech steel factoris with how South Korea modernized by starting small – basically by making shitty cars – then scaled their way up. Turns out the latter simply works much better.

My take, if you want to have a bleeding edge semiconductor industry in your country, first start by trying to build a boring, vanilla, outdated semiconductor industry. If you can do that, then try incrementally making it competitive with global markets. (Yes, this requires tariffs initially to bootstrap the process, otherwise nobody will by your shitty overpriced semiconductors.)

[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-how-asia-w...

The car industry in Germany already makes a huge number of chips for cars -- they just aren't as sophisticated or as small as the ones made in Taiwan suitable for personal computers so by your own logic they have followed the South Korean model already.

I think the analogy might not fit here too well. While Germany hasn't had a current node fab in country for a while, they have in the recent past (AMD/Global Foundries Dresden comes to mind). I don't think it's at all like they're building an industry from scratch.

How do they know the latter works out better vs South Korea just executed better?

Like what if SK & Malaysia took the opposite approaches? How do we know that SK wouldn't still have been the successful one, and we'd be saying everyone should take the opposite approach because that's what SK did and it worked?

You do the cheap manufacturing to get from low-income to medium-income. Once at that level you need skilled workers to get to high-income. If you don't have these, low-cost jobs will move to other countries affected you are trapped. Germany already had a highly educated workforce and is high-income. No need to go back to square one.

Source: Invisible China by Scott Rozelle which does a great job explaining economic development and comparing different countries.

Ahistoric nonsense. Its just that south-Korea is at a empire gradient. One empire borders another empire. Which either means you gets you eternal proxy wars - or you get propped up, by the competition of the empires and can milk that sweet soft-power gradient for benefits. You get preferable trade-agreements, even if you use protectionism. You get other sweet deals. Look at all the countries who made it, dwelling along the fault lines of the past and the present. Germany. Turkey. Austria. Italy.Hungary. Greece. Japan. China. South-Korea. Soon Ukraine. The list goes on and the reason has little todo with strategy. You cant plan for location.

No comparison between the excellent economic growth of South Korea and that of Greece, Hungary, Austria, or Italy going back to either cold war or post cold war days, despite this hypothesis of "empire gradient". If you google "World Bank GDP growth <countryname>" you can find charts back to 1961.

South Korea exports consumer goods to the large US market, this has been a massive fuel for their growth. They followed in Japan's footsteps (and China, for a time at least, followed in theirs). I can't think of a single manufactured product out of Greece, Hungary, Austria and few from Italy to the US.

Being on an "empire gradient" is just an arbitrary way to look at a country.

You know who else is on an empire gradient? North Korea. Afghanistan. Belarus. You're not even specifying which side of the empire gradient. Maybe being on the authoritarian, communist side did not work out so well for many countries?

I think what matters for South Korea is moving steadily toward more democratic governance, embracing capitalism, and proximity and historic ties with Japan (not always pleasant, obviously, but ties nonetheless) at a time when Japan was developing robust trade with the US and when Japan's own consumer sector was booming, providing another market for Korean firms.

Korea has absolutely followed the pattern of moving steadily up the value chain, for example in consumer electronics, in autos.

Your post was very good. I take issue with one part:

    I can't think of a single manufactured product out of Greece, Hungary, Austria and few from Italy to the US.

I would strongly disagree with Austria, and modestly disagree with Italy. Austria is a low population manufacturing powerhouse. They are not making consumer goods. They are making "widgets" that other manufactures use to create finished products. B2B vs B2C, if you like. The northern half of Italy is similar, but less extreme. I also struggle to name more than a few consumer or high value products from Austria, but I recommend to look at their median income or GDP per capita and you will say "Wow, that is a rich country".

That’s interesting about Austria, thanks for that! I may have underestimated them. (I did check their growth rate and for whatever reason not as strong as S Korea…)

About growth rates: The higher your median income, the harder it is to have high growth rates. Think about it from the perspective of economic competition: You need to find new markets (hard at this point) or outcompete existing competitors in other countries to grow. It is crazy hard to grow once you are fully developed and rich, like Austria. It does not surprise me that Korea has a higher growth rate than Austria -- they are less developed.

Edit: To be clear: Please do not read this post as bashing Korea. I think they are doing an amazing job in the last 50 years growing themselves out of poverty. It is a crazy and amazing story.

Dresden actually has a history with making chips:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron

minor nitpick: "e.V." in Germany is "eingetragener Verein", "registered association" and is a form of association that's extremely common and use for all kinds of things, e.g. local sports groups, interest groups, etc, so "e.V." in and of itself doesn't have anything to do with industry, though as in the above case it can be used that way!

The Max-Planck-Society [0][1] is also an e.V. and they have a yearly budget in the order of 2.5B€ or so. e.V.s can be very diverse in their nature.

[0] (de) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

[1] (en) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society

Wow, I didn't know that that many people were working in this industry there:

"Silicon Saxony is a registered industry association of nearly 300 companies in the microelectronics and related sectors in Saxony, Germany, with around 40,000 employees. Many, but not all, of those firms are situated in the north of Dresden. [...]

[T]he area and the union — in many aspects — represent the only meaningful European center of microelectronics.", excerpt from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Saxony

The region was an excellent choice for me to get my education. It was easy to get a research assistant position throughout my studies at the various academic institutions and then advance to my career from there. Cost of living is still quite cheap compared to other metropolitan areas. Only thing that is missing is more bold risk-taking on new startups. Also the horrendous bureaucracy makes things slow-moving.

Otherwise they have everything they would need for a great hub. Smart and well educated students. A great university and cultural scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s

As always its a little more then that..

I guess we are the redundancy to taiwan soon...

Not really. The factory will not produce CPUs GPUs or other high end chips.

One of the redundancies, and not a very high end one

Not high end, but literally 1,000% the volume of high end. It will be automotive / embedded, you know, the chips that are in everything that's not a laptop or gaming rig.

And just looking at it from a strategic point of view, those are the chips you want. Your industry runs on them, the vast majority of your industrie's products runs on it. Even more important: your military runs on those chips.

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