Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

Outrageous. Really, it is - as an American, I'm ashamed to read stuff like this.

However: does it really belong on HN? It's not germane to the stated topics of the site. And it is not "gratifying one's intellectual curiosity" - quite the opposite, it's a story that makes you mad without really telling you anything you didn't know already.

View on HN

Well, it's an extreme form of what many of us go through on a regular basis when trying to travel to the US, hence I'd say it's relevant. By allowing these people to reign freely, the US is sabotaging itself in the long run, but in the short run it's just incredibly annoying, threatening, and expensive.

I'm also in favor of keeping these stories coming, this should not ever be seen as normal or inevitable.

> I'm also in favor of keeping these stories coming, this should not ever be seen as normal or inevitable.

Perhaps people could post them elsewhere. This site does not need to be the be-all and end-all of one's online news consumption, you know?

I don't disagree. It's just that I can see why it's relevant with people who by necessity of their jobs travel a lot. All in all there are unworthier subject matters on HN.

I don't think the site should be flooded with these types of stories but there are also few places on the web to get intelligent conversation on such topics.

Do you think that the discussion for this article is interesting and intelligent?

The top voted comment at the moment ends with "Fuck the Police", so it's about at the hn par for this topic.

Yes.

But in the spirit of hackers what's America without attracting the best and brightest of the world? Eventually it will eat away at the talent pool that feeds silicone valley.

These border issues affect America as a business environment which is highly relevant to the startup scene (check the stats on how many startups are founded by immigrants, not to mention the effect on the large number of migrant tech workers).

Civil rights also tend to find a captive audience among hackers, I guess because it is (lately more so than ever) tied into freedom of speech and by extension, freedom of information.

America sucks as a business environment:

* Crappy immigration. I can get around the EU (Schengen) and across borders without breaking stride. In the US, it's 3 hours minimum, and that's assuming you get in.

* Crappy legislation and tax. Your tax codes suck. Starting a business sucks. In the UK, fill in a single bit of paper, and pay your corporation tax when it's due. Flat percentage of income, two rates, one for most businesses, one for huge businesses. Don't get me started on the strength of behemoth corporate interests lobbies.

* Crappy businesses. The American way seems to be to hold a gun to your "partners'" heads, and use lawyers to enact your will. In Europe, people actually tend to trust one another.

* Crappy security. By this I mean not "THERE SHOULD BE MORE POLICE", but rather "I don't know if I can run a business in the US without the state meddling, and/or simply taking it away from me, and/or the state collapsing leaving mayhem both for a business and for anyone stuck out there when the brown stuff hits the whirly thing.".

I just don't understand why anyone would want to either start a business in the US, or do business with the US. We used to, but pulled out, as the EU is a plenty big enough market, and far more... humane.

Come to Europe, it's nice here, and there are paid holidays.... and a government.

> I just don't understand why anyone would want to either start a business in the US, or do business with the US.

Here are some companies you could ask:

Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Google, HP, Facebook, Cisco.

Here are some others:

http://yclist.com/

It could well be - I would even suspect it myself - that the US is an imperfect country. And yet it seems to have a few companies who are able to do business there notwithstanding the harsh conditions.

Europeans are always upset that the first country to market with new products is the US, but if they spent even half the time they spend complaining about America to actually build something useful they would be much better off.

Ah, American exceptionalism. You're right. Everything but the US is some kind of barren desert which only exists in cartoons.

Have you ever left your home city? State?

This comment from another site is appropriate:

>The deep rooted anti-American theme of the EU does not take long to emerge. This undertone is rarely flaunted, but is intuitively detected. Few seem to understand that it is one of the bases of the United Kingdom’s deep unease with the EU, because UK people simply do not understand or share that objective.

The UK's "unease" is artificial, constructed by nationalistic media. It certainly has nothing to do with the EU's stance towards the US. Had it, there would be no euroscepticism. The US is deeply unpopular, even in the UK.

But American exceptionalism is a real thing. Well atleast today I don't think it stands for "Well, America is awesome" but more on the lines of "Where in the world will I find 300 million people having roughly similar culture, and for whom I don't need to translate my product into a dozen languages (bonus if it's English since we program by default in English), and who're more probably willing to spend money."

Bam, America. I'm not supporting anything, but looking at it from a business point of view this is pretty tempting.

China and/or Russia.

For English, Western Europe.

It could be that those are the exact corporations of which I speak who control the legislature, thus creating a better environment for themselves at the expense of others.

Stick your head out of your shell, and you'll realise there's a world out there, beyond America. I know it's hard to believe, but it does exist.

> Stick your head out of your shell, and you'll realise there's a world out there, beyond America. I know it's hard to believe, but it does exist.

Actually, I live in Italy, where some of your "in Europe" lines do not hold true at all.

Fair enough - and agreed. Berlusconi has done an admirable job of adopting American political mores, in terms of bribery, "special interests", and all the rest. It's going to take years for his chaos to be unwrought.

Frankly, things aren't that much better in the UK, but I stand by the fact that it's a damned sight more straightforward to operate a business here than in the US. I have done both, and have lived in UK, US, HK, ZH, DE, FR, BE, SA, so have a fairly broad (but of course still limited) gamut of experience.

Sure it does. You know, technology can be used to solve more problems than just sharing cat photos with your friends. I do believe this is a problem technology could solve.

To me it lands squarely on HN.

I asked yesterday on Reddit to what country a programmer should move, but wrote that I don't want US because the TSA

Reply on news.ycombinator.com