dachworker

What strikes me is how much of these current geopolitical events are driven by singular individuals whose current inclinations were shaped by their very arbitrary past encounters. For example, if you take the current US administration's hostility towards Europe. That might just be the result of the Vice President being at Yale and encountering a few snobby children of European old money, and they might have been a bit too mean to him, and that might be the sole reason he has so much antipathy towards the whole of Europe.

I think people are being a bit too negative and maybe that is because they are not used to pg's style of slogans in baby talk. I think the gist of what pg is saying is that you should have some agency and initiative and not spend your whole life being the side character in other people's stories. This serves two purposes. First of all, it maximizes your chances of gaining wealth, power and influence. And secondly if you care to make the world a better place, it also increases your chances of having an impact.

The novelty is important, because, tautologically, if your are just copying others, you are still a side character in their story. However, I do not think this should be read as, "create the next unicorn startup". I think it is rather a principle to live by. Like for example, if you have three job offers, go for the one that allows you to build something new, rather than the one where your task is to manage a legacy product. Or for example, let's say you move to a new city and you are a bit disappointed with the activities that are available for your kids. You can either try to convince your kids to attend the available activities or you can try to organize a new after school club.

There is a weird attitude among European elites where on the one hand, they point out how European countries have always been in a subservient position within the American sphere of influence, but then, instead of cheering that this era is ending, they seem to be all upset about it and want their collar to be put back on. Help me understand this. To me it seems that maybe the interests of EU elites differ from the interests of the EU common classes. The EU elites seem to have considered themselves as basically equivalent to American citizens in all but name, and were quite happy selling out their native countries in return for access to America.

Bankruptcy law is a big one. Another big one is the reputation hit that you are going to incur if your startup fails. Europe does not believe in learning through failure. It is puzzling to a European, that there could be serial entrepreneurs with a history of 3 failed startups who still get funding for their fourth attempt.

I don't think there is any connection between lack of VC capital and whatever "social democracy" you have in mind. I think it is actually just culture. Europeans are risk averse, pessimistic and cynical. And society is still more elitist than in the new world. Because of these reasons a startup culture cannot flourish.

The move from home grown solutions to Google/Microsoft cloud services happened under the VVD government some 10 to 15 years ago. The "pro-business", somehow always end up being the "pro giving a big contract to the most compelling lobbyist from the US".

Isn't this a bit of fetishization of the white man? Pretty sure all European countries have competent health agencies and AFAIK, the nordic countries do not score particularly well in health care metrics.

I am also European and your way of thinking is completely alien to me.

Please do tell how lobbying without bribery is supposed to operate.

Going from PhD, not even PostDoc with zero industry experience, to being Head of Department at SAP without connections is unlikely.

Nah, chances are the guy was born rich. These kind of management positions in Germany are reserved for rich people. In fact according to his bio it appears that he went from doing a PhD in IT to being head of a department at SAP and then a few years later he is CTO. That's connections and nepotism, and you don't get those connections without being already rich.

I come from a rather traditional background and when I first read that book, the womanizing parts really put me off and I actually never finished reading the book. But it seems to me, looking at the core of western culture from its outskirts, that being a womanizer is something that is sort of celebrated, no?

If that's the case would you not expect there to me more European H-1Bs, the reasoning being that if these VISAs are not merit based but gaming the system, then why aren't Europeans taking advantage of this opportunity to get a 2x/3x salary bump, and loads more growth opportunities? What am I missing?

A lot of the employee protections in practice make is just super hard to hire employees and super hard to fire low performers. It's good for seniors and bad for juniors and let me tell you, in the EU we do so much for old farts already. I have no appetite for more policies targeted towards them. That's another problem that I neglected to mention.

The EU is just as capitalist. When von den Leyen gets lobbied in Brussels, it's not from worker parties or unions. If you want a spectrum I would say that the EU is more paternalistic. Less freedom, lower salaries and higher taxes and in return a slightly better social safety net. But this is pure consolation for anyone who wants growth and opportunity. And it is not sustainable anyway. Austerity will soon start eating away at that social safety net.

As somebody who criticizes the EU a lot on HN, I want to say that European business culture is just as backwards. It's not just a couple of clowns in Brussels. The whole continent has been coasting on past glory for the past three decades and now the road to catch up to the US and China is long and steep and full of perils.

I have worked at both private and public research institutions and in both cases I witnessed a lot of waste of funding and nothing much of value being produced. I don't know what you could blame this on. I personally like to say it's bad leadership at all levels. I guess, maybe the system is so bureaucratic that the type of leadership you get is the kind that is all talk and no substance.

I have also witnessed a lot of mismanaged oversight: cases where the people overseeing the expenditure of funds were completely unfit to estimate the value of work being produced. Related to this, often time I witnessed instances where people were dealing with bureaucratic procedures so unfit with respect to the task at hand, that they would just sign on the paper, what is effectively a lie. So it's not even that there is a lot of bureaucracy. It's also that a lot of bureaucracy is lies on paper. It does not actually produce any value, track any metric or keep any people in line.

This is only my perception and my experience. But yeah, bad leadership and bad cultural practices that need to be replaced. Unfortunately the people who are to blame are the ones in charge of fixing the problem so nothing will change anytime soon. Maybe this is another problem: bad leadership never gets replaced.

Euroskeptics used to say that the EU is Germany-first and France/Benelux second and everyone else last. The EU establishment used to deny this. To actually now go out and create an inner union is to validate exactly the euroskeptic claim.

Bit late to the party. Just today on a Germany political podcast (Phoenix Runde) I was hearing the "experts", the crop of people who are largely responsible for the current economical and political under performance of the union, ... musing on what the solution could be to make Europe great again.

Their solution? Create an inner union of the EU countries that really matter (Germany, France, Beneleux ...etc). No I'm not making this up. It's not even the first time this idea was floated around. So to me it seems that the EU as a single block is almost finished.

Very interesting question. I can only look at the local history of the place I grew up in, but in our case the accessibility of computers post '95 created the computer geek to a large extent. People wouldn't have locked themselves up in their bedrooms for their whole teenage years otherwise. Although there were many geeky/nerdy alternative hobbies, consider that as an alternative we might have just got out of the bedroom and spent more time socializing and doing other more normal and less geeky hobbies.

But to answer you question: if I didn't have internet, specifically, I'd be spending more time at the local library. Besides that, electronics, cars/motorcycles/engines, carpentry, model aircraft, gardening and animal husbandry are things I could see myself dabbling in but probably not with the same intensity and single focus so not directly comparably to the time I spend tapping on a keyboard.

As I said in the other comment, I just don't think it would be a good experience when one is a foreigner. Maybe if you consider it as just an adventure. I personally think I would get bored and lonely very fast.

I know that Warsaw is a great city, but I don't want to be a foreigner in Poland. I think there's a host of aspects that would impact the standard of living, when one is a foreigner in another country, that you aren't fully considering. NYC is great because it's a city of foreigners. Warsaw isn't.

NYC is a much more attractive location than Warsaw, not just because of the salary, so I fully expect the open roles in NYC to be filled very quickly.

I always wondered why American companies have offices in such unattractive locations. Last time I saw a company whose only European office was in Belgrade. Who are you going to convince to move to Belgrade to work for your company, lol? This is not like the US were all states speak English and have broadly shared cultures.

I don't think the far-right is fueled by economic stagnation, but I do think that, were we living in an economic golden age, people would be able to ignore and excuse the increased prevalence of foreigners on "their" streets.

Yep, and crucially, getting a first job from which you can build a career is relatively (to the US) hard in places like Germany because companies are super risk averse.

Germany suffers from bad leadership in industry and government above all else. The lack of investment is downstream of that. And I guess upstream is their conservative mindset on how and who to appoint as leaders. Lots of nepotism and corruption and not a lot of competence.

Where does this notion come from? Many Europeans cannot even afford proper AC in summer and heating in winter.

Judging by these comments we should all just go back to riding on the backs on donkeys, except even that was at one point only a privilege for the clergy.

From my European perspective, VC capital increases social mobility for the "engineering class" and the builders of society. Those who have talent but no access to capital. The alternative is, that there is no VC capital and only people who are already wealthy are allowed to undertake entrepreneurial ventures. Is that somehow better?

So I think VC firms reduce wealth inequality over all.

I don't doubt that a big chunk of Ukraine wanted to join up with the West. After all, we are more prosperous. The question is to what extent that is possible when one considers geopolitical constraints. I think what some people are saying is, Ukrainians would probably not have been for the current situation if they had known in advance. I don't think they would have been for war with Russia, to break away from them. I don't think that's what maidan was about. I think what some people are also saying is that the US knew this would lead to war and pushed Ukraine into it, anyway. And that is also the reason why France and Germany were more reluctant on the matter, because this is not good for us here in Europe.

I personally don't know what to think. I think the US framing of the situation is childish: "the Ukrainians wanted to leave and Russia doesn't want them to". As if they wouldn't do exactly the same thing, where they in that situation. Seems to me that you cannot ignore the geopolitics. At the same time, a people have sovereignty over their land and a right to do with it what they please, but that is only an ideal and not true in practice. Well, there is nobody enforcing such ideals so you need to go to war...

Even way back before Ukraine, people question why Russia has been kept as an enemy after the fall of the Soviet Union. Because they don't submit to the US hegemony? But they could be allies. India doesn't submit either, for that matter, but they are semi-allies. But not Russia. Because? We wouldn't be in the current situation if Russia wasn't antagonized so hard way back then.

I think it is very hard to parse objectively what is happening because there is so much propaganda and heated opinions on the topic. And not everyone has the same objectives, and people can always contort themselves to blame everything on those they despise.

This all reads quite basic. I find, breaking the ice is the hardest part. But even before that, the social norm that dedicates that ones should not bother strangers is the hardest to overcome.