Hacker News Reader

Comment by VMG | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, why should it be the responsibility of tech companies to solve social problems? They are in the business of solving tech problems.

View on HN

If you actually would like to stay in a place, perhaps it would be good if that place actually functioned? Berlin with its brilliant handling of its airport (delayed), public transport (broken), water supply (to be bought back) and famously brilliant decision making in all things concerning finance[1], pretty much doesn't. Berlin is the state with the second highest debt of all German states, just behind the notoriously broke Bremen. Another reason is Soziale Marktwirtschaft, which, actually thinks that exactly that is one of the functions of economic wealth[2].

[1]: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/bundeslaender-rank... (2011 data)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy

public transport isn't that broken, I get around quite well. The water supply things seems to be mainly a battle of ideologies, again my water supply works fine atm. Presumably the tech companies will at least pay taxes and alleviate the debt. I am no specialist on that subject, but I suspect it also comes from the unique history of Berlin, not (just) financial incompetence. Problem for a long time has been that Berlin is very big, yet has no big industries.

Actually I often wonder what all the people here do for a living. I guess the main employer is the government now.

> I am no specialist on that subject, but I suspect it also comes from the unique history of Berlin, not (just) financial incompetence.

Financial incompetence and bad planning are a strong factor. West Berlin used to be subsidized before the wall fell and since nobody ever questioned the amount of money flowing here they could basically do what they wanted. After the reunion Berlins administration expected the population to grow to 5 million by the year 2000 but that growth never materialized. Still, they kept spending money like they used to.

> Problem for a long time has been that Berlin is very big, yet has no big industries.

It actually used to be the core of the german tech industry. There's whole quarters named after companies: Siemensstadt, Borsigwerke, ... and whole blocks in the city that used to be factories - Oberbaum city that used to be the Osram Lamp factories, Varta, ... A lot are now converted to office space.

> Actually I often wonder what all the people here do for a living. I guess the main employer is the government now.

Government is a strong factor. A lot of media companies moved to Berlin and a lot of service and support, especially for companies which trade a lot with eastern europe. The BASF has their whole eastern european business support in Berlin - that big tower at Warschauer Strasse. Berlin is fairly strong with biotech startups as well. No industry to speak of, though.

I'll reply to you regarding public transport, but this goes for all of the other replies, as well. The repeated failures every winter and overall frailty of the network seem to be a consequence of years of mismanagement and increasingly aggressive under-funding/cost-saving/corner-cutting by the Deutsche Bahn. While this certainly does not result in immidiate widespread collapse, it is just one sign of the degradation of the underlying infrastructure. So while "broken" might be somewhat harsh, I do think that this is directly the direction we are heading.

The water supplies do work fine, the problem however is, that, much like Dresden's sale of its city-owned flats to the Gagfah (an investor), selling core infrastructure to investors risks long-term sustainability in favour of short-term profit. You might be right though that this is somewhat down to ideology.

Berlin's public transport system is probably better than 90% of systems all around the world.

London and Paris are comparable (and worse)

Cost cutting by DB? So the problems are in the S-Bahn rather than the subway/BVG?

Edit: ok I read some answers, I'll add that DB is rebuilding the bridges on Yorkstraße

The public transport certainly has its problems, but overall it works rather well and is far from being broken.

wait for winter and watch the s-bahn. Actually, it's not the BVG (City owned) that has major problems but the S-Bahn which belongs to the Deutsche Bahn. There was a major collapse in summer 2009(?) when the authorities realized the the S-Bahn had been saving money and cutting corners on maintenance for trains and basically compelled them to take 2/3 of their trains out of service for emergency maintenance. They still have not recovered fully, some lines are still serviced with under length trains or on a schedule that's half as often than actually planned. Whole lines getting shut down due to lack of personal or trains. Berlins public transport used to be outstanding, now it's sub-par.

I always wonder what basis for comparison people have when they complain about Berlin's public transport. Because, as somebody who's witnessed first-hand how it works in nearly every major metropolitan area in North America, and many across Europe and Australia, I can say without doubt that the situation in Berlin is phenomenal. A few slow or cancelled S-bahns in the dead of winter do not make a system sub-par.

It's not 'a few slow or cancelled S-Bahn'. Last winter season the system was so strained that the S-Bahn to the airport was running only every 20 minutes and was pretty much guaranteed to be either late or cancelled. So to get in time for your flight you had to leave like an hour earlier than planned. It's slowly getting better, but the last couple of winters you pretty much could not rely on the S-Bahn if you wanted to be anywhere on a specific time.

Compare it to Munich, where it's a minor scandal if one S-Bahn is like 5 minutes late. That's outstanding.

"Every 20 minutes" for an S-bahn is totally fine! Especially compared to cities like New York, where every 20 minutes for some U-bahn equivalents would be considered good.

Every 20 minutes on one of the main lines is not fine. Even if it were fine, it's only fine if you can actually rely on the schedule, but not if you need to take into account a high chance that it's '1 hour wait and then three trains in direct succession.' Slow, but reliable service is ok. Slow and unreliable is not.

how is public transport broken in berlin? it's one of the best i've ever seen (availability wise)

Before 2009, it was much better, especially S-Bahn, which used to have much shorter intervals. But no, S-Bahn decided to be cheap on maintenance, which ended catastrophically in 2009, and they still have to recover from that. They're still trying to get back to the old schedule, but lack the train cars resp. the people to maintain them (which they had fired).

Nobody is pleading tech companies to do anything.

People are just discussing whether substantial investment to attract tech companies is wise if the hope is that tech companies will contribute towards fixing social problems or even contribute substantially to the local economy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com