Joie De Vivre: The Europeans Are Out To Lunch
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It takes huge balls to look at the US right now -- banks in collapse, citizens teetering on the edge of bankruptcy -- and claim that we're a model for the right way of doing things. The French may not work 60-hour weeks, but at least they have the good sense to make the most of the time they've been granted on the planet. What do most Americans live for? Buying cheap crap at WalMart? Buying better crap than the guy next door?
I could care less that the "best" web2.0 companies are based in the US, when those companies are laying people off right now. Their former employees will have to enter the worst job market in nearly 30 years, without health care to protect them if they get sick, or basic social programs to keep their children from going hungry. I think that's an awful, brutal, unfair system, and I'd gladly trade a little bit of "competitiveness" for a bit more compassion.
... a little bit later ...
I wrote something about it myself, as it's a topic that's quite important to me:
http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/12/13/startups-and-work-euro...
Build a smart energy grid during boom, and it will spawn a great deal of innovation during bust.
For example, welfare should provide spartan clothing, housing, nutritious food, and that's it. No food stamps, no cash disbursal, but a safe and humane environment that can help people to get back on their feet. For those who don't want to get up and work, that's fine too, but comforts like being able to get coffee at Starbucks, or a big-screen TV, or a nice bottle of wine, aren't going to be provided by the government. If you want luxury, work for it.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedingungsloses_Grundeinkommen (there are translations)
Personal opinion: I like it.
France is the number one country in the world for antidepressant drugs consumption...
Interestingly (well, in a grim sort of way), according to this, the suicide rate is pretty high in France, one of the highest in western Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...
That's surprising to me, I would have thought France would show up somewhere between places like Italy and Spain (which have low rates despite being relatively a bit poorer), and more northerly, gray places like Germany. Belgium is quite high up there too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_suici...
As I see in your profile that one of your goal is to live outside the US, let me tell you that I'll gladly trade my French passport for your US passport. In France, you'll have as much compassion, fairness, equality and socialism as you want (and probably even more!)
edit: to be honest, you are on the right track to experience this brilliant social system in the US...
The actual fact, in hindsight, is that life in the Soviet Union was pretty grim for the average person. It was only good for the guys who ran everything. And that is pretty much the case in France, though on a smaller scale.
Once you leave the big tourist areas, France is pretty grubby. The median French citizen does not live some kind of charmed, stylish life in his ample free time. Nor is he so high-minded that he is above buying cheap crap. Everyday life in France for the average person is much like it is for the average person in the US, just a little poorer.
Even in Germany they have very different attitudes toward work and social services than we do, yet still support an industrial and entrepreneurial culture (and still make fun of the French for being lazy). Framing this as a choice between US capitalism and French socialism (or Soviet communism) is a false dichotomy.
Are you suggesting that France is richer than the rest of the European nations (after cost-adjustment), but that it's still pretty grubby? If so, then all I can say is that I've been outside the tourist areas of a few different European nations, and they never looked that awful to me -- certainly no worse than rural America. The people didn't seem unhappy.
That said, I think this discussion is a distraction from my primary argument, which is that it's possible to guarantee a higher standard of living for people, without sliding down the slippery slope from corporat-ism to communism. There's a middle ground -- if our internet companies are 5% less successful, but we have universal health care, I think that's a reasonable trade-off.
That being said, they have much better and much cheaper health care. That saves each person the equivalent of thousands of USD per year. And coupled with other social insurance programs makes the gap not as high as it appears otherwise.
I seriously doubt that the French plan is significantly better and cheaper than the boring Kaiser+dental+eyes plan that costs around $350/month for folks in their 50s.
That is not my experience in Italy. To take an example near and dear to that country, the average Italian eats much better than the average American. Indeed, the basic, raw ingredients you find in supermarkets are far better than what you get in the US.
But it's not just that... I find that the relationships between people are genuinely a bit better in Italy than in the US. Perhaps one of the effects of all that "stasis" (jobs for life, people less willing to move around for jobs) is that people really get to know one another. I have several friends in Italy I've known for 13 years, but barely anyone in the US I've known for that long. I've heard some people say this is also true of small towns in the US, but I've never lived in one so I don't know how to compare it to Italy.
In short, in economic terms, you're correct, but the broader picture is more complex, and doesn't favor the US 100%. That's not to say that one is necessarily better... after many years of both, I guess I have a more nuanced view. I wouldn't hesitate to say the US is better for founding startups, but if you're just Joe Schmoe, life can be nice in Europe, too, even if you don't have an SUV and a fancy television set like your American equivalent.
Is your living in the US experience comparable to your living in Italy experience?
Lots of folks in the US don't move for jobs, etc,
Also, it seems somewhat odd to compare Italy to the parts of the US that it isn't much like. The US isn't the coasts/urban areas any more than Italy is Europe. Italy is, perhaps, like Minnesota (except smaller and warmer).
Also maybe in terms of owning things for example maybe it is easier to own a house with garden in the US, making people rich in terms of owning a house and garden. But french people living in an interesting cultural environment in a small flat might feel richer than somebody living in their own house at some crossroad in the middle of nowhere.
Overall I guess the average french factory worker doesn't really take 4 hour lunch breaks all the time, either...
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
US Per capita GDP is $42,000 per year. France's per capita GDP is $32,000 per year. The US average tax burden is something like 35%, compared to nearly 50% in France. Even considering France's flatter wealth distribution and more generous social services, the average American is richer than the average French person.
These aren't the best measurements if you're interested in studying this sort of thing closely -- I'm using these because they were easy to find. Comparing the relative wealth of nations while controlling for cultural and regional differences is hard, and will probably never be solved now that political actors have an incentive to refute answers they don't like. Still, it's my understanding that there's a strong consensus for Americans having between 25% and 30% more money to spend on average -- the bone of contention being how much GDP numbers actually matter to promoting the welfare of citizens.
So I don't think its all like the Soviet comparison - in the soviet case it was deliberate mis-information to try and destabilise the west, controlled deliberately by soviet organisations.
I'm an American living in Switzerland, for example, and here it is simply the law that you must have insurance. And since the government is guaranteeing income for insurance companies there are controls on how much money the insurance companies are allowed to make (from time to time they even have to send checks to their customers because they made to much money!). Since their profits are capped there is no incentive for shady practices like telling every person who claims "no" knowing full well that around 50% wont know enough to push it further as you see done in the US, South Africa, etc.
Europeans had about four days of gloating while we stumbled. Then the gloating stopped because it turned out that many of their banks were even more leveraged than ours, despite their supposedly-superior regulation regime, and their bill came due too. For all that you hear people bitching about the US, in relative terms it's actually not doing so bad. (I'd prefer that we'd all be growing in absolute terms, but the whole "Europe is better than the US argument" is intrinsically relative, so I'm just agreeing to your terms and following through.)
You want to talk about how much better the European system is, then explain why this is happening there and not here: http://www.oxfordpress.com/hp/content/shared/news/world/stor... And notice the scale! This is not an isolated riot in one block of Paris. Nor is this the first time.
The European-style social system is unsustainable, and to their credit they are beginning to recognize this and beginning the hard task of scaling back their promises, but they face challenges from all those who were promised and do not want to give it up. I have found it highly ironic (and very sad) that as Europe wakes up to the failures of, for instance, socialized healthcare, the US seems primed to go charging into that pit of despair more than ever.
1) It's early. If we keep up with the immigrant-baiting in this country, we'll get there. Just last year, we had huge protests in the major cities because of the way that we treat immigrants. Did you not notice?
2) We've been doing the violent social protest thing for quite a while: the Watts riots in 65, the LA riots in 1992, looting after Hurricane Katrina, the Benton Harbor riots in 2003...and many, many others. Here's a nice list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots#1990s_-_2000 (for fun, count how many times France appears in the list, relative to the US!) We have a long, illustrious history of making minority groups so angry that they erupt into violence, so if anything, France is late to the party.
3) For the most part, the European banks were not more leveraged than US banks, with certain critical exceptions. That said, most of the world's banks make significant investments in US debt-backed assets, so it's pretty hard for an economic downturn in this country to avoid affecting other industrialized nations. The bank argument is a straw man.
"Illegal" immigrants. And the way we treat them is: Despicable pandering. And when that became slightly threatened, they went into a violent tizzy. No surprise.
These are discontended immigrant groups. The riots in L.A. in '92 were regular American citizens. The Parisian suburbs have got nothing on the ghettos of L.A., New York, and Washington. Murders are actually rare in European cities.
That doesn't describe any Americans I know. On what do you base this claim? How do you know what most Americans live for?
Can someone please define the common European properties that form the basis of this discussion?
The one comment about 'Americans need to appreciate life and Europeans need to work better' is the best argument in the entire video and it was looked over. Arrington is blind to say the Americans had the best stage presence. Le Meur was the most reasonable I think through the whole thing and he was cast aside. Why? Because he's french.
Seems to me the American panelists (Feldman aside) only see the world how they want to. There are great people everywhere, and the mentality they exhibited-focusing purely on winning and being efficient-shows their lack of comprehension into what matters most, both in life and business.
No matter how efficient you are or how much you want to win, it's important to have a level head to be able to step back and appreciate the things around you. Shoving your face in your work 12+ hours a day will make you miss half your life. I don't know about most of you guys, but I learn the most living life as compared to reading blogs and business articles.
There's also going to be a lot of pain and suffering, but there's also a lot of people who start businesses from the ashes of their lost jobs.
"Bundling all europeans into one category has never been a sign of smart to me. "
Broadband wasn't even popular in the UK until 2002-2003, after a whole growth and boom cycle had gone round in the US. Internet usage in France was incredibly low until a couple of years ago, and progressive tech-friendly countries like Denmark, Finland and Estonia had too small populations to have a significant effect.
To be fair, the French were doing with Minitel what most people use the Internet for decades earlier.
There are some very big differences between europe and the US:
1) Funding - it's trivial to get funding in the valley compared to europe, more former founders, more vc
2) Market Size - the US market is just bigger, of course the combined EU market is even bigger but you need 20 marketing teams to try to work with it
3) Culture - Yes there is no start up culture comparable to the US, but that's not that bad. The work/life balance thing is true in general, but i've never met a european startup founder who doesn't work the weekends.
4) Failing - Failing is not that acceptable, and that's a big obstacle, especially since you have to get more parts of your funding from banks.
5) Cluster There are only very few technology clusters and none comparable to the valley
6) ...
On the occasions when I've been in Europe for business, a relaxing lunch and dinner were what made me perfectly willing to work 10-12-hour days six days a week. In the states, with just a quick sandwich or a burrito for lunch, I'm itching to go home by 5 p.m. to clear my head and get a decent meal. And now that I'm back in school, I find a leisurely break in the middle of the day puts a few more productive hours in me when I get back to the lab.
The UK has excellent: sweets, ice lollies, bread, bacon, sausages, chips, pies, pasties, chocolate etc
The US has excellent: shakes, smoothies, cookies, burgers, pizza
To have a Silicon Valley, you've got to attract a disproportionate share of talented and ambitious people. You need a critical mass. That's much easier to attain in a culturally semi-homogenous country full of nomads than in the EU, which has its people segregated into over 20 different nations. This is also why the US has better universities. If the same linguistic and cultural barriers existed between Montana and Massachusetts (which are culturally very similar places, on the European scale) as do between Russia and Great Britain, we probably wouldn't have a Silicon Valley.
By the way, European investment bankers work the same egregiously long hours as American bankers do, and middle-of-the-road Americans would gladly take the lives of average Europeans. There isn't a huge difference in the distributions of drive; what differs is the level of effort expected from the rank-and-file. Arguably, however, Americans get less from them, and the rank-and-file are so unproductive (compared to startup founders) that this difference is inconsequential at the big-picture level.