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Comment by lmf4lol | Hacker News Reader

I really do like the idea and the thinking behind it. I wpuld even argue that modern Europeans are already embracing and practicing much if it. Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally. Need to get kids from school earlier? no prob… Need to spontanously (!) to go the dentist? no prob. (Honest disclaimer: I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble, no idea about blue collar to be honest. Not much contact with people from that field unfortunately)

So we surely made progress here in the direction of being more idle (though one could question wether you are truly “idle” if you fill your free time with staring at your phones screen, consuming the latest societal rage bait. But i’d say in the spirit of the essay, yes, we are much more idle thanks to tech).

BUT! Is this a survival strategy? While we Europeans are super idle, Chinese arose to be a super power. The US dominates tech and the future technologies. Russia is banging on our front door and we dont have the military means and will to put an end to it. So while idle ness is a great mode for Being, is it a great mode for making sure the own civilization survives?

Thats always my problem with those ideas. They sound super nice in theory, but in the harsh world, there will always be a predator who just works a little bit hardwr to get you …

anyway! loved the essay. thanks for sharing

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European who has travelled/lived extensively in China and the US. I don't believe our problem is idleness. It's instead a pernicious belief in peace. There's no sense of geopolitical competition in society at large. We generate a lot of wealth in those 36 hours, but an immense amount of it is syphoned into areas that don't help us get ahead. We are too invested in tides that lift all boats. Being well-rested is not the issue.

Edit: I’ve recently started spending a lot of time in Switzerland and the contrast in mindset (and wealth) with the EU is staggering. There is a healthy amount of communal paranoia. They don’t work any harder either, if anything it’s the contrary.

>I don't believe our problem is idleness. It's instead a pernicious belief in peace. There's no sense of geopolitical competition in society at large.

I disagree entirely. It's because most EU workers(at least in the richer most developed countries) don't get a proportional slice of the fruits of their labor, but only breadcrumbs after taxes. Working harder as an EU employee just means your boss/company gets to be richer and your government gets more of your taxes, while you get nothing more in return, just taking home a few extra bucks at the end of the month, making the juice not worth the squeeze, causing everyone to optimize for doing the bare minimum because why bother.

Especially when the big city CoL rises higher than your salary anyway, what's the point of working harder? You'll be more tired now and still won't be able to buy a nice house, ending up on the same standard of living and housing affordability as someone who optimized his life around extracting the most amount of welfare and benefits from the government while dodging work. So then why wouldn't you do the same?

Same story around entrepreneurship and VC funding or lack thereof. The taxes, risk and responsibilities of being a business owner with employees on your payroll are far higher that in other places on the planet like the US, making it a better deal to just not bother with all that and choose the cushy life of an employee in a old dinosaur company in an ageing and declining industry, rather than the stress of being the employer/innovator.

Geopolitical competition will not fix this because the monetary incentive structure around hard work still remains messed up. You can fix this by changing the tax laws to reward those working harder instead of punishing them with higher taxes and no gains to pay for the lifestyles of those who contribute the least in society.

Simply look at what Poland or Czechia did to become economic powerhouses in a short amount of time, and just do stuff like that. And you'll find out they didn't start off by giving their workers Scandinavian style of income taxes, welfare and benefits, that I can tell you, but more like cutthroat capitalism and the harder you work the more you can earn tax structures.

> Especially when the big city CoL rises higher than your salary anyway, what's the point of working harder?

If anything, big city CoL is the flip side of higher productivity inside the big city. If you're going to have an "idle" lifestyle, you'll be vastly better off moving to a small rural town where prices are a lot lower by default - same if you work fully remote. (Connectivity used to be a key barrier for the latter case, but fast mobile and sat-based connections have changed this quite dramatically.)

>If anything, big city CoL is the flip side of higher productivity inside the big city.

Productivity is only one of the smaller reasons. The other bigger ones are landlord rent seeking, nimbyism, mass migration, interest rates and real estate speculation, all of which aren't connected to your income progress. That's how productivity and employment in a city can stagnate or even decline while real estate prices can keep climbing.

Urbanization is a problem and not enough people acknowledge it.

The urban-rural distinction is one of the oldest ideological divides in human history, and that has built immense and unexamined prejudice. We have words like “urbane” and “polite” on the one hand and “pagan,” “villain” and “heathen” on the other, and nobody stops to think about how this is a one-way street of city-dwellers condemning their rustic relations. A lot of modern political decisions boil down to “everyone should live in cities” when cities are historically demographic sinks (lower birthrate), largely because the people who make political decisions live in cities.

If you somehow imagine our companies in Poland (which are mostly western companies) are somehow giving workers here a bigger slice of pie, you are fed some weird propaganda. Our taxation is even worse if you look at exactly the same salaries.

Our success story is the same as recent India one - we're just much smaller. We have educated population that was underemployed and poor, and western companies jumped at opportunity of replacing entry and mid level positions with cheaper workers, across both factory and office work.

The taxation may be worse, but the cost of living is still uniquely low. So the same market salaries will actually go a lot further on a purchasing power basis.

Calling India a success story feels like a bit of a stretch compared to the better known Chinese case, or indeed Eastern Europe itself. They still have huge scope for further improvement.

My understanding was that the tax situation is not good for salaried work, but Tech workers primarily use limited companies to make it much more comfortable; many of the loopholes that have been closed in e.g. the UK with IR35 are still open.

At least that's the reason I've been given every time I've tried to take a contractor permanent!

But that's how it works in America and China as well. And in Russia. And basically everywhere. Since it's the same in all of these places, it fails to explain the differences.

In China, Russia and America the government doesn't pay you generously in welfare to not contribute to society.

Yeah, they send you to die in dumb wars instead and if you survive then you get your welfare (a military paycheck). So you think dumb wars keep countries great?

I'm reminded of the somewhat derogatory term "carebear" from the EVE Online community, for players who focus on PvE and profit, while avoiding PvP.

Its complacency, at least in Western Europe. Centuries of being the world's leading powers have left an underlying sense of being at the top is just normal and is a position that does not need work to maintain.

Even those who might accept this is no longer true intellectually find it hard to internalise.

Why should we care to be "at the top"? The average person gets no benefit from this; on the contrary, they would do a lot better if underperforming countries in Europe's neighborhood raised their standards of living.

> The average person gets no benefit from this

You are proving the point. The avg. person gets an enormous benefit from it, even in countries like USA, Japan or Korea with far less generous welfare. The gap in standards of living of somebody in the US and somebody in Georgia or Vietnam are ridiculous.

Poverty levels are roughly the same between Vietnam and the US from a quick search. Mean standard of living is a poor way to calculate inequality. If you have a link to a median one it would help to compare.

> Poverty levels

Poverty levels are measured relative to median. Poverty in US and poverty in Bangladesh, Russia or Vietnam are completely different things.

In the US poverty line is about $16k, while in Russia for example it is $2300. Even considering the PPP it's like 4 times the difference in living standards. I guess Vietnam or Bangladesh are far worse.

Upd: downvotes with no counterargument. Orange site is becomming more and more a reddit.

>Poverty levels are roughly the same between Vietnam and the US from a quick search.

How is this an argument? A poor person in the US has a massively better standard of living than a poor person in Vietnam.

Poverty is relative. If you have a small apartment in a city of McMansions, you're poor, but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich.

> Poverty is relative. If you have a small apartment in a city of McMansions, you're poor, but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich.

That worked before globalization. Nowadays, having a small apartment in a city of McMansions means you're upper middle class. Poor people in the west have no apartments and no goats.

I always found it interesting that homeless folks in the US seem to live in tents a lot of the time, but in my country they rarely have more than a piece of cardboard. I don't know if my perception is incorrect, or if I'm ready too much into this, but my conclusion has been basically what you said: at every socio-economic level, the people at that level have higher standards of living in developed countries than in developing countries.

It’s really hard to compare when you get down to it, even if you ignore “homeless” as a category.

Using money as a proxy doesn’t work perfectly because things can be more expensive, and trying to normalize with things like “living sq ft” doesn’t calculate externalities.

The best I’ve found is to track relative migration pressure - where do people want to go?

Excellent points. In my small island country, prices mostly come down to being labor-dominant or material-dominant. The former is cheaper* than the developed world, whereas the latter is more expensive* than the developed world.

*compared using nominal exchange

>The best I’ve found is to track relative migration pressure - where do people want to go?

I like this approach. It's much more holistic and captures stuff that really cannot be quantified with prices and numbers, like freedoms and rights.

> but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich

No, you need more than one goat if you want to be rich, regardless of what other people have. Really, you need a few dozen.

One goat can't do anything but age and die.

Relative poverty is real, but absolute poverty is a whole lot worse.

I choose to live in a richer country where I am relatively a lot poorer, but overall the advantages of a rich country outweigh the disadvantages.

Not sure if up to date anymore, but if you look at some samples like here, at equivalent adjusted income levels, people across the world have similar standards of living regardless of where they live.

https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street

> at equivalent adjusted income levels

What is equivalent adjusted income level? PPP between Russia and USA is around 1.8. Median annual salary in the US is $57 ($1196 per week), median salary in Russia is $13200. Even if you adjust it, it's roughly two times smaller.

As someone who lived in a bunch of countries, some rich and some poor, no, living standards among the avg. Joes of the world are not even remotely the same.

It doesn't say it is. It says at equivalent income. Average in US is still higher/better than the average in Russia.

I agree with you about "at the top" in terms of being a global power. It does people little good.

The problems are security, sovereignty and economic stagnation. Being dependent on super powers and vulnerable to their whims is not good. Weak supply chains are not good. Neither are worsening standards of living.

"The average person gets no benefit from this" this is a very bad take.

In Europe, innovation in the end help everyone. Better healthcare starts with the rich, and ends distributed to everyone. The same is true for everything else.

Ah, the good old "trickle down" theory of Thatcher and Reagan. Remember how much better off we became when we gave more to the wealthy?

Do you have any evidence that new products don't start expensive and become accessible when they mature?

> Its complacency, at least in Western Europe. Centuries of being the world's leading powers have left an underlying sense of being at the top is just normal and is a position that does not need work to maintain.

I wouldn't say it's a matter of complacency, but rather a convergence of problems. To solve those problems, there need to be radical changes, but radical changes are not popular. Politicians win elections by promising stability, not by disrupting lives. The politicians that rise to the top are the ones that don't have any visions for a better future nor the desire to make a difference, because the system does not reward that.

I think a lot of people would welcome some disruption. This is why there has been a rise in populist parties which appeal because they promise something different.

I don't think that's the current problem. It was up to, perhaps, the Suez crisis or up until decolonisation, but since then I think we've mostly internalised that America (and more recently China) have been the leading powers.

The current complacency, one which we are currently still in the process of unwinding from (it will take years) is that of trade turning violent enemies into mutually beneficial growth opportunities. Russia was the first wake-up call there (but even then for the current situation not for Crimea), and over the last year also the USA. China is, I think, currently mostly seen as opportunity rather than threat.

War is expensive, and not doing it is good when possible. It is bad for everyone that we now feel the need to put 5% or whatever of our GDP into defence when it could have been spent on infrastructure, education, healthcare, or even startup grants.

War is very expensive, but it also creates tons of jobs in supply. In ideal world its a fools errand, in reality if you dont have a mighty force to defend yourself and deter enemy, you can be easily taken over. Even a big well funded military is a paper tiger at best if it never experienced complex combat, maintaining supply lines etc.

Thats the only thing that works for the likes of russia (or anybody really) who is by far the biggest threat to Europe and would love to see it subjugated.

That was also the only reason Switzerland wasnt taken over by nazi Germany like Austria was, they mustered up to 800k voluntees/draftees in a country of 5 million, fortified and made it clear that Germany would bleed hard to gain that territory (they would invade anyway after defeating russia that was clear also from hitler&himmler's writings, top german brass hated Switzerland, what it represented and considered it a mortal enemy to 3rd reich but I am going off topic here).

5% is nothing if there is enough motivation. Overbuilt bureaucracy for nothing juse employing tons of rather useless paper pushers, ineffective social systems that are abused hard by those really not deserving it, bad budget management by politicians, corruption in megaprojects and ao on. Its really nothing.

While Europe internalised that the US was the super power, it did not internationalise that the West was no longer dominant. It has also not understood its diminishing importance to the US in the world in which its economy is proportionately so much smaller, and the rival superpower is in Asia, not Europe.

Spending on defence is expensive, but its a lot cheaper than an actual war - "if you want peace, prepare for war"

> it did not internationalise that the West was no longer dominant

Given "the West" means so many different things (sometimes including Australia), I'm not sure what you're aiming for here? Rise of China? Certainly this has been recognised. If you mean all of Asia, in the same way that the UK is in Europe but not part of the EU, then I agree: I don't think many have fully internalised how important India, let alone Pakistan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, have become.

> It has also not understood its diminishing importance to the US in the world in which its economy is proportionately so much smaller, and the rival superpower is in Asia, not Europe.

The phrase "when America sneezes, the world catches a cold" comes to mind. I'm told that dates to 1929. More recently, my understanding of the Suez crisis was that the US convinced the UK to back down just by threatening to flex one economic muscle; by some measures, that point represents the end of British dominance on the world stage.

But I would say that here, it is America rather than Europe which does not understand its ranking in the world: two of the common ways of measuring economies are nominal-GDP and PPP-GDP, by the former the EU is comparable to China with the US way ahead, by the latter the EU is comparable to the USA with China way ahead. In both cases, the EU knows it's not #1.

That said, during Brexit, there did seem to be a lot of unrealistic exuberance from Leave voters, so perhaps the lack of awareness runs deeper than I perceive…

> We generate a lot of wealth in those 36 hours,

You don't, (Western) Europe is just a rentier-place at this point, living on other people's backs. For example look at Maersk, from the much-beloved and relaxed Denmark, their business would crumble over night if it weren't for the Americans keeping the seas open for them.

The Americans are keeping the seas open for their own self-interest, and this is great. Other countries in the broader West do also chip in with their own military assets. Why should Maersk have a problem with this?

Americans seems to be intent to cause as much damage to everyone including themselves.

USA is the only country that ever triggered article 5 of NATO and got military help out of it. And now acts like victims when others don't rush to help them with absurd badly planned war where they are clear aggressors.

The second real use of NATO was to send armies to greenland to discourage USA to attack it just 2 months ago. So, now is really not the time for America to pretend ever do something that is not primary for itself.

> NATO and got military help out of it

That was token help (the Brits excluded), let's be serious here, we're all grown-up men.

It was not token help, that part is complete lie. It was real help and real European soldiers died. Including the ones from Denmark which was threatened by Trump. Or especially from Denmark, Denmark had the highest loss per capita within the coalition forces.

Lets be serious here.

Bad timing with that example - currently the US is the reason for an important part of the seas being closed :)

> We are too invested in tides that lift all boats.

Why is that a problem? Yes, it means less "amazing individuals who own N% of the economy", but it also means that none of my neighbors are starving or can't afford healthcare, definitively a tradeoff I (and most people I'm proud to call friends) are willing to make, even if it makes our own lives a small percentage less comfortable.

I'd say that why I personally prefer the (European) country over other places I've lived in the world, or could live. I don't want to live in a place where people don't help lifting all the boats, but instead are just interested in lifting their own boat, or want to lift a small amount of boats.

>>but it also means that none of my neighbors are starving or can't afford healthcare

And that's amazing, and as an European I would never want to get rid of that. It's a cornerstone of our societies, a core belief if you want to call it that.

But I do think that there is a pervasive feeling of people being "ostracized" for wanting to do better than their neighbours. Like when someone says they are going to run a company the reaction is usually "why, isn't a normal job good enough for you?". Obviously this isn't universal, EU is far too big and diverse for this to be true everywhere. But I've met with this kind of attitude a lot personally, where people have directly asked me if I think I'm better than them by trying to do something good for myself and grow. So now I just don't tell people, or just say I work in software or something, there's no point. It's not even that tide lifts all boats, it's that "we're all in the same boat"(and don't you dare leave it) is a thing that exists.

That's definitively true in some parts of Europe, more so in some parts than others. Growing up in Sweden, I for sure felt the effects of that, it's very much "Sit down in the boat and do your part" with any sentiments outside of that being relatively uncommon, unless you happen to live in one of the bubbles of the metropolitan areas. But essentially any rural area I've visited either in my mother country or any other country in Europe had that mindset or hints of it.

But to be fair, I haven't really experienced that so much in other larger countries like Spain, France or Italy, at least not to that extent. Still I'd say it's different than the typical American Individual Exceptionalism, but probably a good difference, we don't to make the same mistake.

Probably a balance between the two is the right approach, you don't want to completely lack either sides, but also not be too dogmatic about it. But it's also hard for politicians to get votes on "You know, both sides have good points, lets figure out a balance", strong emotions sell votes and so on...

> We are too invested in tides that lift all boats.

These boats may contain Tesla, Ramanujam, Röntgen and other talent people with poor circumstances.

Good social security is also investment in potential talent that could contribute to economy.

For a long time I haven't thought of Switzerland anything more than "expensive mountain Germany", until a couple years ago I've reconnected with an university friend who happens to live there. I've got to know a bit more about CH and lately I see it quite often mentioned here on HN, though that's probably more of my frequency illusion.

From all what I've seen, it feels like Switzerland is a country that pretty much made no serious mistakes in any field. Maybe not perfect, but certainly nothing is clearly wrong.

Thus your comment was also of interest to me. What do you mean by communal paranoia? As in they're (as a whole nation) afraid of falling from their mountain of success and do strive to remain successful? Perhaps not by hard work - it is hard to motivate oneself to apply really hard if everything's good - but by smart and meaningful work?

Or it is everyone's personal paranoia of falling behind the average of the CH society, which is not very keen on social support, as far as I understand, so every person is not complacent?

Also, by tides that lift all boats - you mean social support or some global-scale investiments?

Thanks!

Paranoia as in fear of losing sovereignty. The average Swiss is not a cleverer or more productive person than the average European. However like you said they make outstanding communal decisions because they at their core believe Switzerland must stay strong to stay independent. To the point of paranoia. No one does bunkers like the Swiss. EU does not do bunkers. Or much of anything material for itself these days.

Building bunkers doesn't help well-being, and you did state that wealth difference is also staggering, Albania did a ton of bunkers in their time, didn't really help them much. I'm personally more interested in Swiss economic and social decisions and how they manage to, at least seemingly, do correct decisions on a long timescale wihtout blunders.

A couple months ago in a some post here on HN on, IIRC, something like using personal solar panels to provide power to the grid, I've seen a comment stating that in Switzerland, the bueracracy doesn't churn out regulations and laws, everything is very thoroughly reviewed, thought out, and-re-reviewed again if any objections arise. There was a response to that comment that was along the lines "As, that's the case when the more bueracracy, the better! While they're busy with paperwork, we do practical stuff under the radar."

And, as far as I understand from what I've heard or read about CH, that's not the case here. In US, the opposing parties can fight over issue endlessly to not let an inch of ground to opponent and to gain more for themselves. In Germany, discussions could be deadlocked by rules. In Russia, both things happen, more of former when there is political will from above, more of latter if it's some issue not cared for from above. But in Switzerland, they do actually converge on the real result because that's what they focus on, and the arguing between different viewpoints is not for the sake of itself, but a means to distill the optimal or at least compromise solution. What you've said explains their motivation, that everyone understands that they can't play tug of war endlessly, they have to do real thing. And perhaps that does say that average Swiss may be more clever than average European. Or at least in a more productive state of mind. Or that the Swiss decision-makers are smarter than others - so they are somehow better selected.

However, that's not all, besides motivation, there's also quality of decisions. USSR was also very motivated for independence, but did not decide well. Though average Soviet citizen wasn't really worried about losing independence indeed.

Returning back to bunkers vs economic well-being - perhaps, economic strive to be strong can't exist without strive for political resilience, one needs specific state of mind to be focused on economical sovereignity, that state of mind goes with political and militaty sovereignity as well. Also exacerbated by that Switzerland is a small country and absolutely not an autarky, so they have to stay significantly ahead in what makes them irreplaceable for the other countries, otherwise they would be prone to external coercion.

Europe is not behind because Europeans are working less and taking more vacations. This message that is being loudly broadcasted hides the real problem.

Europe is behind because we do not have good leadership. The decisions taken by leadership, no matter what level you look at - local, company, national, supranational - are rarely in the best interest of Europeans. Our markets - housing, rental, labor, capital, pension - are broken and therefore the population does not find opportunities to express their talent completely and the more motivated migrate. Europeans lack well-paying jobs and pay is low because pay is not transparent.

Issues like raising funds easily or faster bankruptcy processing are not something an ordinary European citizen can solve. These are leadership issues. The proliferation of consultants means that management talent is never developed. Avoiding accountability is rewarded.

Consistently what could become common wealth in form of company is sold to private equity or sold to US. Friction in movement of information is sheer incompetence at leadership level.

For years blue-collar jobs were being moved to China, while white-collar jobs were being moved to US. And now the workers are being blamed for not working hard enough. It is never asked - is there work?

The best way to understand European policy is that at a high level they want to establish a quota system both within Europe and globally.

The problem with creating a quota system is that you have to be able to punish countries who cheat on the quota. Europe doesn't have the capacity to do this except internally. The regulatory superpower idea only really makes sense with the physical power to compel obedience and extract taxes.

In the US we solved these issues like the bankruptcy code with federal law because the federal government is the supreme physical power on the continent that all the states obey for reasons of self-preservation and because they are bribed to obey. US federal transfers to individual states are also much, much larger than the largest EU transfers to member stats and the EU is not a central military or police power either.

This is why the EU member states (and the UK member states as well) should become US territories so that they can benefit from federal law without necessarily destabilizing domestic US politics. They are already dependent on US military power but they do not receive the full benefits of becoming member territories.

Why are you arguing for EU member states to become US territories instead of EU states just federalizing?

> This is why the EU member states (and the UK member states as well) should become US territories so that they can benefit from federal law without necessarily destabilizing domestic US politics

This is a very strange suggestion. The US federal government is not a beacon of best governance. And especially now with Trump, there won't be any takers for this.

It's certainly an untenable idea, and while I'd agree that the US isn't the best beacon of governance today, I'd also argue that the EU as a whole has not been either and most of the problems are obscured from English-speaking Americans because we don't have the time or language capacity to understand all of the nuance and problems for each member state. It's hard to understand.

On the other hand, the US is big time. We're always on the front page, and so Europeans of course begin to believe they know a lot about American politics and thoughts because they read about it all the time. That leads to outlandish understandings and expectations of the US and so even when you want to start looking at governance comparisons it's hard to have conversations because "defenders" of American systems don't know enough about the EU and European "defenders" of the EU think they know quite a bit about American politics. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings, unfortunately.

The reality is that both systems have pros and cons, and how good each system is really depends on individual circumstances, and even then those circumstances and pros/cons change over time.

To keep the fun part of the conversation going, I actually think the United States and the rest of the Anglosphere should join together in one bloc. Sometimes I fantasize about how different and perhaps better history would have turned out had the American Revolution not happened.

Federalism is a strength not a weakness. This desire for control at highest levels is what made WW2 horrors acceptable.

Our problem is incoherence and slow reaction to reality. We either often not experiment or avoid replicating a success. We lack agility in our rule making.

AI was already better than this in 2020 when your account was created. You must be human, you've failed a turing test.

G7 nations aspiring to be Puerto Rico - lol.

Re leadership: none of my smart friends wants to be politician. Maybe that’s the root cause.

You are right. European civil society does not reward initiative and so its political class chooses to mislead than bring clarity. Work is not rewarded.

From recent events, I like giving example of Deutschland Ticket. The German transport minister during 2020/2021 took a huge political risk of challenging existing system, made life much more easier for normal person. What happened to his political career? The guy is nowhere to be seen.

European societies are the most truly democratic states there have ever been. You have educated populaces making decisions with full information (comparatively more than anywhere else in the world, ever) to choose your leaders. All your policy decisions - generous state pensions and benefits, redistributive taxes, extreme bureaucracy around hiring and firing, stifling operational and capital markets regulations - are chosen by your societies at the ballot box.

look at the massive popular protests when Macron tried to do pension reform. These are completely legitimate choices to make, they're your countries, but i do not think it's your leaders letting you down.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken

The sad thing about democratic societies it is difficult to form a consensus on anything. So elections are won on either emotions or the minimally contentious manifesto. Each successive win on such a manifesto further lowers what will achieve consensus.

People will mesmerizing oratory skills are extremely rare. That such individuals choose politics as their career and then come up with appealing messaging at the right time is almost like solving 3-body problem.

> about democratic societies

You imply representative democracy, where political parties are forced to be formed not to solve issues, but to win a popular vote. To win the vote, you have to dilute your policy enough to encompass the masses by providing many common denominators. There, consensus is impossible by design, we no longer live in a Greek metropolis, where the dimensionality of problems is low. Todays societies are complex and have many dimensions, yet the representative democracies group all of the similar and dissimilar issues under 2-3-4-5 different parties.

I see exactly two (one) solutions:

- people go beyond party boundaries and cooperate on issues they feel important (doesn't work, it's already possible on paper, but in the best case this ability is traded for negotiational power)

- direct voting on issues, parties only serve a directional and educational role

> Macron tried to do pension reform > they're your countries, but i do not think it's your leaders letting you down.

What fanfic am I reading here? The protests had no impact on the course of the pension reform.

they did not manage to stop the law. what i am saying is that the leaders were trying to pass a necessary law and the population was against it, so you can't pass off blame for the dysfunction on them

I see. Agreed.

> Europe is behind because we do not have good leadership. The decisions taken by leadership, no matter what level you look at - local, company, national, supranational - are rarely in the best interest of Europeans. Our markets - housing, rental, labor, capital, pension - are broken and therefore the population does not find opportunities to express their talent completely and the more motivated migrate. Europeans lack well-paying jobs and pay is low because pay is not transparent.

Sounds like Europe is behind because Europeans are working less and taking more vacations. You just point to poor leadership as the cause.

Seems you came with a preconceived opinion. Know that working harder does not pay in Europe. So people do not. The incentives are not aligned. Leaders design incentives, not normal people.

I don't think the issue is the lack of good leadership.

Europe, and particularly the EU, is effectively governed by people who think like administrators. In politics, in business, and in the actual administration. On some level, this is a good thing. The core republican principle is that leaders should be disposable servants, because actual leaders never have the public's best interests in mind. Except maybe temporarily or by accident.

The problem is that administrators tend to propose administrative solutions to the issues they have identified. Because they think like administrators. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. Most successes and failures of the EU can be traced back to this tendency to enact administrative solutions. There would be more successes and fewer failures if the administrators could somehow learn to predict when an administrative solution is not the right tool.

Housing markets, labor markets, and pension systems are regional, and the situation in each region is different. Capital markets are also regional to some extent, but perhaps they shouldn't be. Pay is a matter of perspective. You can say that Europeans lack well-paying jobs, or you can say that American middle class wages are low (relative to the wealth of the society), because their upper middle class wages are high.

> The decisions taken by leadership ... are rarely in the best interest of Europeans

...and you offer America as a counterpoint? A nation predicated on fucking its people over? A hellscape of vulture capitalists, wreckers with MBAs, capricious firings, regulatory capture, poisoned water, political graft, televangelists with rolexes, police killing citizens for sport, judges getting kickbacks from prisons? And, right at the top, Mr Zero Sum himself, a man who destroyed as many public institutions as quickly as he could but somehow increased the national debt by 25% in two years.

That America? Makes decisions for the benefit of Americans, you think?

You have a point about government roadblocks - I could tell you stories about petty officialdom in rural Spain. But, unlike you, I've been to the American deep south. No, you do not have prospects there. Fucking Latvia is more advanced than most American states. Go to Lubbock and tell me europe is "behind". You've fallen for the American myth.

America has many merits, and would have become a regional power even without the fall of European empires, but please be informed: America's place in the world today comes from being the last one standing after two wars.

It's not that Europeans embracing being idle. It's that they realized typical white collar workers hardly produce any value (unlike Americans who still pretend they do) so it makes no difference for them to work less than 40 hours per week.

Junior doctors across Europe reported working an average of 57 ± 17 hours per week (216 ± 61 hours per month)[0].

[0]: https://www.juniordoctors.eu/assets/rest-report-DeLrwvob.pdf

Junior doctors slave away for senior doctors so that they can one day become senior doctors with 10x the pay and have junior doctors do most of their work. That’s not going to happen for the average white collar worker.

lol it's the same here in Canada, I'm guessing the US too is not too different

My biggest issue with Europe is not that we work less. I lived in the US for a while, and I can confirm they stay longer in the office but get the same amount done.

My biggest issue is that we have focused for too long on managing (regulating) and redistributing wealth instead of creating new sources of wealth.

We are obsessed with slicing and controlling the pie instead of creating new ones for everybody.

That mindset might cost us the future of our children.

Is there a point where enough (per capita) wealth has been created? Where there is enough pie to go around for everyone, and we have no need to create more pies?

I am sure we can all argue about where that point is, but I wonder if we agree that there is such a point? Or do we have to keep increasing our wealth forever?

The issue is that the world is changing and we have no means to stop that. If you don't create new pies, people come and eat your existing pies...

Look at the auto industry for example.

If Chinese decide to invest into EVs etc. we can't stand on the side lines and so, no we want the world / our wealth to stay like it is.

But that's how we operate. We operate as if we have decided it's enough, now everybody please stop.

As an American living in Europe, I don't think the well-balanced European way of life is the cause of Europe "falling behind". Instead I think it's a combination of the following intertwined factors: bad policies, a stunningly incompetent array of bad leaders, and bad deployment of capital (by both private investors and the state).

Agreed otherwise, the essay is great.

There is also one big thing, Europe even though it tries with the EU, is still a group of countries, not a single country.

It’s a lot easier for a business in one US state to expand to another one, but cross border business expansion in EU is still difficult.

People speak different languages, bureaucracy is different and often in a different language as well etc.

On top of that businesses are a lot more regulated than in the US.

While I agree that having a well-balanced life isn't necessarily the cause of Europe "falling behind", I'd like to point out that the US also shares some of those issues:

bad policies: massive tariffs, extreme spend of the military-industrial complex at the cost of education and healthcare, a completely pointless War on Drugs that just increases violence (to be fair, many states have more or less legalized cannabis at this point), war in foreign countries (if all the money spent of Afghanistan had just been distributed back to American taxpayers in the form of either tax cuts of stimulus checks, how might that have affected the economy?)

bad leaders: I think most historians would agree that president Trump is not exactly Mount Rushmore material

bad deployment of capital: at the state level, this would mirror 'bad policies', ie I don't think war the Afghanistan/war on drugs was a net gain for the US taxpayer. On the private side, the boom/bust nature of tech investments - how many were buying Pets.com stock in 1998? How many people bought trendy NFTs in 2019? How many completely unviable businesses get funded today just because "our product has AI"?

so there might be other factors.

I agree the US has many problems, and I really don't want to make this a EU vs USA thread. I also wouldn't say the US is "successful", whereas the EU is not. I just think the EU has amazing potential and isn't living up to it.

Also I think any success the US does enjoy over the EU is in spite of the things you mentioned, and a large part of that is the US simply has a much larger economy, much more money, and much deeper and well developed capital markets. Which just goes to show how much more the EU could aspire to, being a much larger bloc of countries with a larger population and all.

> a stunningly incompetent array of bad leaders

I am honestly curious who you are pointing at (in particular if you exclude British leaders)

Partly because I am actually curious, I don't doubt there are bad leaders.

But partly also because, without any details, this is a very general trope, that I don't really think is very healthy at the moment. Since it is food for right wing extremists (you probably know yourself where some politicians in USA originate from).

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to engage in tropes, I'll be more specific.

Emmanuel Macron is so unpopular that he has to forestall elections until 2029 to remain in power. In the meantime, his unpopularity means France cannot form a government or pass a budget, while the political center erodes under his leadership, giving way to the far left and far right.

Angela Merkel presided over a disastrous energy policy (outsource the coal mines to Poland, close all nuclear reactors, rely on cheap energy from Russia) which made German industry, and Europe by extension, precariously dependent on outside partners which are proving to be very unreliable. This has resulted in reduced economic performance, increased consumer costs, leading to popular discontent. This coupled with a poorly thought out immigration policy are hallmarks of her time in power, the fallout of which Germany is still dealing with today.

Ursula von Der Leyen is a direct descendant of Merkel, but with much less to show. She was complicit in all of Merkel's poor policies, and has not been able to address any of their negative consequences effectively. She has failed to rearm Europe, she has failed to revive economic growth (indeed, just the opposite, embracing at times a de-growth agenda which might on paper be noble, it incompatible with our current economic systems), she has done nothing to reassert Europe's sovereignty in matters of defense and energy, she has presided over the worst excesses of the European Council, which counter-productively rob individual countries of their sovereignty through a combination of bad lawmaking and policy (see the Draghi report), and poor executive decisions (see EU forcing Poland and Romania to buy $2 billion of vaccines they don't need and didn't ask for last week).

I won't even get into Donald Tusk, Viktor Orban, Karol Nawrocki, Hollande, Sarkozy, and all the pre-2020 Italian prime ministers (special shout out to Berlusconi lol).

Finally, I respect that it might be bad to engage in tropes, but I think it's also frame any criticism as playing to the far-right. Indeed a big problem in Europe is centrist politicians have suffocated any criticism by labeling it as "far-right". Over time, as their incompetence leads to more criticism, they label more people as far-right. This has had the reactionary effect of pushing otherwise normal centrist people into the far-right camp, which explains the rise of Le Penn and AfD, to the point that about 25% of voters in France/Germany are unfortunately voting for these far-right options.

Any healthy society must allow for debate and criticism, without labeling everyone who disagrees as extremists.

So the politicians made mistakes then (apart from Macron then whose only crime is being unpopular).

Who are you comparing to?

There has to be at least one ideal politician, otherwise I'd say the job is just inherently difficult. And hindsight is 20/20.

Ideally you would want someone like Charles De Gaulle.

The job is inherently difficult, and I think a big problem is institutional decay/drift leading to a bad pipeline of leaders, which is why you have so many poor, weak, and ineffectual leaders serving back to back. The UK is a prime example of this, but I think all of Western societies are struggling with this to one degree or another.

Indeed hindsight is 20/20, and I won't pretend to have all the answers. I just personally think we have a particularly rotten batch of leaders which can't only be explained by the leaders themselves, but also by the institutions and policies which spawned those leaders.

> Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally.

In DE I would argue that this is due to punitive taxes and I wouldn't call it progress.

Poor people work their asses 40+ hours and up to overwork since it's always paid here. White collars work less time and often switch to 4 days because at this tax progression working your ass is not worth it. Time is more valuable, indifference curve is screwed.

It also have negative effect on women's careers in combo with 3/5 tax classes thing. And it hurts EU economies very hard since the most productive ones are disincentivized to work more.

I think it’s more that at a certain income, you kind of plateau. You can afford all the little pleasures you want, but you couldn’t meaningfully improve your life without doubling your income. It would not get you a nicer apartment, would not make a house more affordable, and would not give you more time to enjoy travelling.

It seems to me like in Germany, the rock bottom is high but the glass ceiling is low. I am very happy with this, but if you are nearer to the ceiling, it can feel cramped.

> I am very happy with this

I'm not. If you are european and will inherit something it's fine, but if not you'll barely be able to afford a house and a tiny investment portfolio. And at the face of the immense collapse of a pension system it's pretty grim.

It’s a mixed blessing. I am Canadian, and I prefer my quiet life and small flat to always being at work or mowing the lawn. I am always stunned to see how much people back home work. My friends in Germany have much more balanced lives.

If it makes you feel better, the pension system is collapsing everywhere. The scarier part is how we will find the workforce to care for us, but I digress.

This is all about how the housing market is structured, not the amount worked. If people worked even more, house prices would rise further to cancel it.

The housing market is heavily location dependent, if you want to avoid rising prices you should just move out.

Is this actually a problem? We all know the average white collar worker doesn't actually work for 40 hours despite being at the office. The average - everywhere - is more like the equivalent of 20 hours of solid focused work per week day.

Does more white collar work beyond a threshold produce more value, anyway? Sometimes yes but often no.

> We all know the average white collar worker doesn't actually work for 40 hours despite being at the office.

Yes bc now this worker works same 3-4 hours but 4 days instead of 5.

From an employers perspective it would make sense to have people working five six hour days rather than four seven and a half hour days.

I saw this when I worked in Germany. They might not have worked as many hours but they worked hard during those hours.

UK workplaces where much more relaxed in comparison so even though people put in more hours the results were similar.

20 “usable” hours a week may be realistic, but 20 hours of work per weekday is startup class heh.

I meant per week, of course.

There is also a general mindset of worklife balance and enjoyment from life.

as someone who spends a lot of time in Spain but lives in the US, the Spanish prioritize social interaction much more than the US (sweeping statement I know) - you go to many towns and cities in Spain and locals are socializing multiple nights per week in vibrant bars and cafes an having so much fun. London has a bit of this with pub culture but less family friendly.

The US on the other hand, the focus is on work and friends rarely get together and we study why people are socializing less (bowling alone etc. ).

It's not strictly necessary to be a super power.

I don't think idleness is what's preventing it anyway. It's more about capital ownership. I'm not deploying high speed rail because I expect it would be impossible to get the land rights, not because I wouldn't work enough hours.

Actually I myself would be a terrible entrepreneur in any field, but I feel that I produce good value at a good rate at the actual work that I do. I don't think there's a shortage of entrepreneurship even though I happen to have none. I do think it's not being deployed on things that make the country more powerful.

interesting. want to say most people i know, same countries, works more than 40 hrs a week. It really depends on your circles i guess, this perception.

I do see more people with higher wages chose more for time off than more money, and work 4 days for example..But the majority of the population does not fit that category i think. (i dont have the exact numbers, but most jobs are not high income in general)

Your most important point:

> (Honest disclaimer: I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble, no idea about blue collar to be honest. Not much contact with people from that field unfortunately)

Even ignoring your "BUT! Is this a survival strategy? While [...]" point - try talking to the farmers and blue collar workers upon whom your day-to-day life is critically dependent.

>Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week.

You mean 36h in a full time employment contract or by self reported work hours or is it part time work?

> I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble

Well from where I am in the EU and across other people I know in EU, for white collar jobs 40h contract is the norm in most places for most people I know. 36h is kind of an exception in select few fields in certain high-welfare countries with strong unions(German IG-metal for example in Germany, Airbus in France, etc), so you could simply be biased by a privileged bubble that isn't the norm in all of Europe.

It’s interesting that the countries with the weakest economies in Europe work the longest hours.

During the financial crises Greeks were getting a lot of criticism from Northern Europeans for being lazy but the reality was they did far more hours.

I'm guessing he means actual time physically working, not the theoretical time in the contract.

It really depends on your bubble but a lot of people have "full time" contracts (meaning 40-ish hours) but real hours vary. You can come later, leave earlier, go do something else in the day, and don't have to report it to anyone. Just make sure you're not missing a meeting and deliver what's needed on time. So in practice you end up working fewer hours on average, as long as you can produce enough on average (which honestly isn't hard in many large organisations, and hard to measure).

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