[HN Gopher] Germany creates 'super-high-tech ministry' for resea...
___________________________________________________________________
Germany creates 'super-high-tech ministry' for research,
technology, aerospace
Author : pmags
Score : 248 points
Date : 2025-04-11 20:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| johndoe0815 wrote:
| And it will probably be headed by one of the most incompetent and
| corrupt politicians they were able to find. Disgusting.
| pmags wrote:
| Evidence? Citations? Suggested reading?
| bell-cot wrote:
| > The agreement stipulates that the CSU will be in charge of
| the "super-high-tech ministry," as party leader Markus Soder
| called it in a press conference this week. The CSU has not
| proposed a minister yet, but it's widely expected that
| Dorothee Bar, who was in charge of "digital infrastructure"
| in previous governments under former Chancellor Angela
| Merkel, will get the nod.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_B%C3%A4r
|
| Sounds like her only non-political experience is working as a
| journalist.
|
| It's arguable that the "corrupt" part was scrubbed off
| Wikipedia. But her credentials to lead a research /
| technology / aerospace ministry certainly sound
| underwhelming.
| _dain_ wrote:
| _> who was in charge of "digital infrastructure" in
| previous governments_
|
| germany's digital infrastructure is a global laughing
| stock, this doesn't bode well.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| That's more a mistranslation of the role.
|
| Digital infrastructure was part of traffic ministry.
|
| Her role was coordinating the government's mostly
| internal digital strategy. Thus reviewing new bills,
| looking at processes inside the administration etc. most
| of the work outside the public eye.
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| You're claiming this, but average German internet speed
| has but recently surpassed Latvia's, easily beats
| Paraguay and the Philippines and is closing in on
| Montenegro and Barbados.
|
| The recent rapid improvements even diminished Romania's
| lead to less than 250%.
|
| Of course this is only up to the Telekom speedtest
| server, beyond that nearly all of Germany's 50-100Tbps
| get funneled through 362Gbps of interconnections onto the
| open internet.
| johndoe0815 wrote:
| German only, sorry. Both are reputable news outlets (though
| the Spiegel has gone down quite a bit in recent years
| IMHO).
|
| https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-04/baer-csu-
| geh... https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/csu-
| politikerin-d...
|
| She hired her future husband as an employee until
| immediately before their wedding. This position was paid by
| the federal German parliament, i.e. the taxpayer. It's
| illegal to hire a relative in such a position.
| pmags wrote:
| Thanks. Having read the (auto-translated) article in Der
| Spiegel, I agree that Bar's prior behavior suggests
| nepotism.
| chopin wrote:
| It's CSU, of course it is.
|
| Not that other parties are better...
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| I don't think grandparent's characterization matches. Typical
| career oriented "conservative" politician.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_B%C3%A4r
| ndr42 wrote:
| The CSU has a history of putting people in charge that do not
| benefit germany but bavaria (the only part of germany where
| the party CSU is active), e.g. Andreas Scheuer [1][2].
|
| Notable recent examples of corruption are the Maskenaffare
| [4] or Julia Klockner and Nestle ("Julia Klockner and Nestle
| show how the greasy closeness between politics and business
| can go too far" [5]).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Scheuer: "Scheuer's
| ministry is said to have broken budgetary and public
| procurement law when concluding the multi-billion dollar
| contracts with the operators and "deliberately deceived" the
| Bundestag about the real costs of the car toll."
|
| [2] Soder (party leader of CSU) said about Scheuer: "I don't
| know not many ministers that bring so much money to bavaria
| as Andreas Scheuer" [3]
|
| [3] German: "Bei allem, was der ein oder andere kritisiert an
| dem Andi Scheuer: Ich kenne wenige Minister, die so viel Geld
| nach Bayern holen, wie der Andi Scheuer. Auch das muss man
| einfach mal in der Bilanz ehrlicherweise bitte nach draussen
| sagen."
|
| [4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maskenaffare
|
| 5] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/julia-kloeckner-und-nestle-
| ze...
| j-krieger wrote:
| This ministry will not be lead by any of these people.
| Their replacement isn't that much better competency wise,
| but there is no corruption case yet.
|
| Your source 3 is not saying what you think it does. State
| government can apply for federal funding. Soder and his ilk
| have mastered this. There is nothing corrupt here.
| ndr42 wrote:
| I read a commemt in this discussion that Dorothee Bar has
| a case of corruption where she was employing her husband.
|
| ,,Source 3": Well, if you are a minister for
| infrastructure in germany it is not part of our job
| description to bring money to bavaria. Maybe my
| definition of corruption is of but the minister has some
| saying in how to use its funds and if your home state
| benefits more than other parts of germany... I would call
| this a form of corruption
| j-krieger wrote:
| > Dorothee Bar has a case of corruption where she was
| employing her husband
|
| That is an unfortunate case of nepotism that happens in
| the entire political spectrum. I was especially
| disappointed of the Greens setting up cozy positions for
| friends and family at the end of their term. I really
| thought they'd do better..
|
| > Well, if you are a minister for infrastructure in
| germany it is not part of our job description to bring
| money to bavaria
|
| Why not? If you think Bavaria is the largest net
| benefactor of this measure you might as well do so. It's
| one out of many possible strategies.
|
| > Maybe my definition of corruption is of
|
| I think it's something else but I can't think of a word.
| ndr42 wrote:
| I was lumping all these behaviors together (as the abuse
| of entrusted power) but of course its better to be
| precise (thank you for introducing me to "nepotism").
| j-krieger wrote:
| > as the abuse of entrusted power
|
| I must say as a bavarian citizen that this "abuse" has
| lots of benefits for us. Of course I am aware of my bias
| here. I can't find an interview but Soder has said that a
| lot of other states don't even apply to all Fordergelder
| they could possibly get. That always striked me as odd.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nothing surprising about Germany excelling at its strongest
| fields: creating ministries.
|
| Accretive policy is strong there and in their Anglo-Saxon
| descendants.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Excelling at creating paperwork... except now digitally.
| AUTOSAR is may favorite German software innovation. /s
|
| That's the curse in Europe. Every European country has it's own
| ministry of digital innovation who's role is the grift of
| allocating taxpayer money to the right politically connected
| pockets while pretending to do innovation. Case in point,
| German fiber optic infrastructure is still lightyears behind
| Romania despite much higher costs. Means, somebody in Germany
| is making good money form that, even if there's nothing to show
| for.
|
| Meanwhile the actuality innovative companies in Europe get real
| VC money from the US, then get incorporated in the US and
| become American companies, then EU has the audacity to complain
| about lacking tech sovereignty.
| tommica wrote:
| Yep, had a coworker who was looking for financing in a EU
| country, but very few investor options were available, and
| mostly for a low amount of money, only enough for a few
| months. He had to go to UK to find people with deep enough
| pockets.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| You can replace 'Europe' with 'Canada' and everything said
| here will still be true.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| > Case in point, German fiber optic infrastructure is still
| lightyears behind Romania despite much higher costs. Means,
| somebody in Germany is making good money form that, even if
| there's nothing to show for.
|
| Apartment I stayed in while in Germany had annual Kabelgebuhr
| of 100 EUR. It was not related with the ISP internet
| subscription of course. Any negotiations or questions were
| responded with "IT'S KABELGEBUHR YOU HAVE TO PAY IT".
| noworriesnate wrote:
| On the flip side we Anglo-Saxons (and Germany's descendants in
| general) also invented a lot of cool stuff: airplanes, trains,
| cars, tractors, spacecraft, even hot air balloons!
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| The Greeks and Romans probably invented even more useful
| stuff of modern civilization, the problem is past glory
| doesn't pay present day bills, unless you're running a
| museum.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Without a doubt not the only characteristic. Simply a
| characteristic of these cultures today. e.g. obsession with
| environment to the degree of actively harming it (opposing
| nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal; and dense housing) is
| primarily an Anglophone concern specifically UK/US/Aus. And
| those countries are collectively responsible for a lot of
| innovation.
|
| Seems to be a truth: inventiveness moving to moribund navel-
| gazing.
| submeta wrote:
| Many German companies want ,,Digitalisierung", workflow
| automation, process improvements, they want to use AI, LLMs, but
| when it comes to implementing all of that, they are drowning in
| bureaucracy.
|
| What Germans can do is create layers of bureaucracy.
| hobofan wrote:
| Yeah, I'm sure a thousand lovely Horizon 2040 funded research
| projects that result in throwaway academic solutions to hyper-
| specific industry issues where the first MVP is shown after 5
| years will come out of this.
| nextos wrote:
| Not even throwaway. They will result in reports and keynote
| presentations, but nothing truly functional. The EU doesn't
| understand how to structure incentives to make things work
| and avoid rent-seekers and grifters. Source, I've been part
| of some large EU consortia. Never again.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Reminds me of a quote from "Yes minister" in which it says
| one commissioner pays a farmer a lot of money to produce
| and another to remove the surplus, plus a lot of paper
| pushing in the middle.
| twothreeone wrote:
| Yeah, I was always surprised by how many organizations will
| actually jump at the opportunity to "participate" when some
| EU consortia was announcing a new program or funding round.
|
| There's a saying for that in German involving "feeding
| trough" and "pigs".
| thinkindie wrote:
| LOL - I can second that. There are a lot of memes about nothing
| screams more "Digitalisierung!" than having to send papers via
| fax.
|
| Or having to carry cash coz a lot of places don't even give you
| the option to pay by card (even though this seems to come to an
| end, hello 2025!)
| submeta wrote:
| Random German company: You open your intranet, manually
| search through hundreds of (pdf!) application-forms (because
| search is not implemented), downlod the right form, print
| it(!), fill the form, sign it, scan the paper, send it to the
| ticket system. That's what they call ,,Digitalisierung",
| because previously they had to send the printed paper-form to
| the helpdesk team.
| calmoo wrote:
| I recently signed up for a simple prepaid phone plan in
| Germany (I have lived here for 2 years already, fully
| registered etc). I had to go through the full KYC process,
| _after_ waiting over a week for a physical SIM card to be
| sent by post to me. After this, I wanted an eSIM (this was
| my original goal but this was not possible on initial
| signup).
|
| I had to contact customer support to send me one... by
| post. They only activate and send eSIMs by mail. This will
| take another week.
| bcye wrote:
| How recently? Nowadays there are a bunch of "app eSIM"
| companies competing in Germany that offer to get you an
| eSIM by just installing an app, KYC and credit card in 5
| min
| calmoo wrote:
| A few days ago - I had some strict requirements of
| extremely low monthly cost (I only need it for sending
| and receiving SMS and for signing up for certain german
| services that require a German number) - so I want with
| O2 Prepaid. There are a lot of instant sign up eSIMs that
| are data only, which is not what I'm looking for.
|
| I would be surprised if you're talking about an eSIM
| service that give you a phone number.
| bcye wrote:
| Absolutely, the data-only ones don't count :D Fraenk [1]
| is one example, there are a few competitors all in about
| the same price range
|
| [1]: https://fraenk.de/esim
| thinkindie wrote:
| luckily I haven't been working with such companies, I have
| had enough of my dose of Digitalisierung by interacting
| with public offices. But at least I can communicate with
| the Finanzamt via email, after signing a document where I
| made clear I understand that emails are not a safe
| communication tool (while random non-certified letters are,
| apparently).
| staunton wrote:
| > while random non-certified letters are, apparently
|
| They kind of are. Somebody would have to go and steal the
| physical letter and then read/scan it to make any use of
| it. That excludes pretty much all attacks on the process
| --- at least such where criminals might hope to make a
| larger profit than most other criminal enterprises
| available to them.
|
| Whether that makes the letters a good idea is a different
| discussion...
| pezezin wrote:
| Sounds like my random Japanese company, except for the fact
| that here all the forms are created in Excel.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Well, that's better, right?
| pezezin wrote:
| I don't know if you are serious, but I can tell you that
| the way these people abuse Excel is maddening.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| The problem is not the bureaucracy.
|
| Nobody's stopping a local mid-market manufacturer from
| automating workflows. Or hindering a utility company from
| offering a better service process.
|
| The problem is corporate leadership.
|
| German companies tend to be run by people who are inflexible,
| uninspired, and cheap. Maybe it's in the culture. Compare this
| to Austria, where there's a cultural flair for the dramatic
| (and therefore an eagerness to stand out, even if it's weird)
| or Switzerland where enterprises, public or private, are not
| afraid to place big bets.
| calmoo wrote:
| Both can be true, and what you described is, in my opinion,
| one of the primary causes of insane bureaucracy in Germany.
| This inflexible mindset is what causes the _relentless_
| enforcement of bureaucracy and procedures in Germany, there
| is very little leeway here in terms of bending the rules,
| making exceptions, turning a blind eye. This cultural
| inflexibility, traditionalism and risk-aversion all ties
| together into a paperwork and red-tape nigthmare.
| ost-ing wrote:
| Sums it up pretty well
| hyllos wrote:
| I challenge this: How do you measure processing time?
| From first customer interaction? Or from all input data
| are present? I assume in most situations they are not
| present upfront. Therefore it's a tedious back and forth.
| Sure, that compounds with the roundtrip time.
| Digitisation is a trap because it doesn't change the
| paradigm to full-kit upfront necessarily. Digitisation
| can be a nice entry-point to this, but unfortunately
| digitising data does not necessarily introduce the full-
| kit.
|
| The system needs to be designed in a different way: "We
| guarantee processing within x hours (weekdays) from the
| point you've provided us a full-kit."
|
| This, in turn, requires thinking backwards from the
| result through all steps, resulting in a definition of
| what a full-kit entails. Of course this requires a
| different (system) thinking which is contradicted by the
| rigid hierarchy (and no, doing away with the hierarchy
| isn't a solution either).
|
| Work force would not be busy 80% of their time = capacity
| to go back and forth to figure what's missing and switch
| around cases. When starting with full-kit, 80% of their
| wasted time becomes processing time. In turn, their
| throughput was 20%, it goes up to 100%, or x5.
| nicbou wrote:
| This couldn't be more incorrect. I document German
| bureaucracy for a living. The hardest part of my job is
| that every state, city, office and case worker applies the
| rules differently, making it really hard to predict a
| specific outcome. In most cases it plays in people's
| favour, unless the case worker is particularly grumpy and
| you happen to hit one of their pet peeves. I struggle to
| document the variance for Berlin alone.
|
| The biggest issue with German bureaucracy is that it's
| largely paper-based and has little to no automation. In
| many cases, digitalisation when it happens just means
| sending documents digitally instead of delivering them
| during an in-person appointment. This leads to very long
| processing times that are constrained by available labour.
| calmoo wrote:
| I'm familiar with your site and appreciate it a lot, and
| I don't dispute anything you said, but that does not
| contradict anything in my comment. Those people you
| mention who apply the rules differently everywhere are
| _inflexible_ and unwilling to give leeway or look further
| then their own way. This is a cultural issue in my
| opinion and can explain most of excessive bureaucracy
| here. You're also talking specifically about the
| auslanderbehorde, which is one manifestation of
| bureaucracy here, there are many other forms.
| nicbou wrote:
| My experience was a bit different. For example, the
| immigration office accepts almost all applications in the
| end (over 95% according to their stats). They make all
| sorts of exceptions in the applicants' favour. The
| Burgeramt, the Ordnungsamt and the Arbeitsagentur are the
| same. They huff and puff and make an exception "just this
| time", every time. The inflexibility is an act, unless
| you're being difficult (from their point of view). Then
| you get the least charitable interpretation of their
| directives.
|
| Against all expectations, German bureaucracy is very
| "vibes-based", specifically because it's full of humans.
| It's predictably unpredictable. You rarely get the
| downside of digitalisation where "computer says no",
| because a human is deciding your fate and can be
| convinced to give you leeway.
|
| The bigger issue at least for me is speed. The
| uncertainty of human decisions is magnified by the weeks-
| long delays. A missing document is a big issue when
| bureaucracy has a 4-8 week ping. That is of course if the
| case worker doesn't shrug and give you what you want
| anyway.
| interloxia wrote:
| Except they might not even if you have the correct
| documents and are as pleasant and cooperative as can be.
|
| My experience when it mattered was that my rights were
| not recognised by the human in the loop. It was solved by
| going above their heads.
|
| If you aren't willing or able you might just get the
| short end of the stick.
| nicbou wrote:
| I think that German bureaucrats choose the path of least
| resistance. Most of the time it means giving you what you
| ask for.
|
| When you get the short end of the stick, a letter from
| your lawyer can make it abundantly clear that giving you
| what you want (and faster) is the path of least
| resistance.
| danieldk wrote:
| _This inflexible mindset is what causes the relentless
| enforcement of bureaucracy and procedures in Germany, there
| is very little leeway here in terms of bending the rules,
| making exceptions_
|
| This. I have worked in a Germany university and in all the
| supporting administration, nobody wants to make choices or
| take responsibility. E.g. I had some blatant cases of
| plagiarism and when going to the examination office (where
| it should be reported), they would do nothing. And when I
| asked whether there shouldn't be any repercussions, their
| answer was "there ought to be repercussions", the subtext
| being: but I'm not going to be the one enforcing them,
| because if I do and the student files a complaint, I'm
| going to have to defend my choice.
|
| Or sometimes we had to order GPU servers for the
| department. We requested quotes from multiple companies
| (since we knew what we need) and would then send them to
| the financial administration with our preference (good
| price + service options). Rather than saying: LGTM, seems
| you did your work, they would spend four (!) weeks asking
| new quotes and processing them. And then they would happily
| come and say, "we found a cheaper option" and the cheaper
| option would be saving 100 Euro on a machine that cost
| something like 25,000 and was most likely just the natural
| reduction in prices in four weeks. At any rate, it is this
| weird mix of needing to assert themselves, following
| whatever rules to the letter, and not wanting to make
| 'bold' choices etc. Meanwhile a whole research group is
| under compute capacity for a month and the work of the
| financial department certainly cost more than 100 Euro in
| hourly wages.
|
| Also, every process uses paper. Heck, once I got my tax
| number, to my surprise the person from the administration
| pulled my personnel file out of a filing cabinet!
|
| I wish that this was just the university, but from friends
| that went into industry, I hear that a lot of German
| corporations are pretty much the same.
| nicbou wrote:
| I've seen it described as "Germans are not efficient,
| they're methodical". There is a lot of truth to it, but
| Germans are also making all sorts of exceptions either
| for convenience or expediency, making the method
| unpredictable.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| The main problem that I see in leadership is lack of
| understanding and respect for software - "I don't understand
| it so how hard can it be?". Seems to be especially prevalent
| at German car companies where, apparently, mechanical
| engineering is still boss. (I'd be fine with a car with very
| little software, but that is not what they are trying to
| build...)
| Casteil wrote:
| >The problem is not the bureaucracy.
|
| I'm no expert by any means, but have you ever actually worked
| with Germans?
|
| The existence of Betriebsrate (Workers' Councils, as
| implemented in Germany), while not necessarily 'bad', comes
| with a mountain of bureaucracy...
| geff82 wrote:
| ... yeah, never give rights to workers! Back to the middle
| ages again!
|
| Betriebsrate are actually a really sane measure once you
| think about it. And the more intelligent managers take them
| as an asset.
| Casteil wrote:
| Did you completely miss the "while not necessarily 'bad'"
| part of my post?
| mk89 wrote:
| Not the OP, but I don't understand what your original
| comment was trying to convey.
|
| You took in my opinion unfortunately the worst example
| you could. Unions are by definition bureaucratic because
| they need to be...
| valenterry wrote:
| Betriebsrate are not unions though...
| mk89 wrote:
| You're right, technically they are different. However,
| the context is relatively similar - lots of laws to know
| about, etc.
| mhitza wrote:
| > Compare this to Austria, where there's a cultural flair for
| the dramatic (and therefore an eagerness to stand out, even
| if it's weird) or Switzerland where enterprises, public or
| private, are not afraid to place big bets.
|
| Can you call out with some examples for those of us
| unfamiliar with those 'big bets'?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| One very big bet I would say would be the NRLA:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA
|
| Switzerland sits between Germany, Italy, and France, and
| was getting choked by road traffic, so voters have approved
| the largest tunnels in the world to get goods around and
| through Switzerland without using roads.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I trade you anecdata for my anecdata: How about the
| Fehmarn Belt tunnel? Not big enough?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Paid for and owned by Denmark :)
| j-krieger wrote:
| > The problem is not the bureaucracy
|
| The problem is _definitely_ bureaucracy. Any German founder
| will agree with this.
| nisa wrote:
| As a German I would love to contradict this but I tend to
| agree. Bureaucracy isn't such a big deal in my experience -
| might be different depending what area you are working in -
| but the leadership culture regarding software is the cause of
| most of the misery I've seen and I've been involved with.
|
| Cheap as in no investments in people or software quality.
| Salaries are also not competitive in a lot of places.
|
| Disregard for the user and disregard for usability.
|
| Unfortunately most software shops locked in their customers
| and the lack of any technical merit pays well and is
| disconnected from product quality.
|
| Only lots of bankruptcies might help. I have nothing but
| disdain for these people in leadership.
|
| I've surely not seen all but I've seen enough. It's that bad.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Salaries are also not competitive in a lot of places.
|
| This implies there are other companies in the same
| city/region that pay better. I doubt it. From what I have
| seen, most German software devs are paid horribly, come to
| HN complain about it, then proceed to do nothing. The
| solution is to move to a place that pays higher salaries,
| like Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, or another country. Or get
| a 100% remote job.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Or move on from software dev- or not even code a single
| line and jump to ,,architect" or some other bs position
| straight out of university.
| xenospn wrote:
| Skip a step? In Germany? Surely you're joking.
| valenterry wrote:
| > The problem is not the bureaucracy.
|
| It absolutely is. Try to open a company in Germany. Then try
| to do your tax. Then try to close your company.
|
| After that, let's talk again about bureaucracy.
|
| Oh, and the new government just announced plans that non-
| employeed people (freelancers, business owners, ...) are now
| forced to pay into national pension (with few exceptions).
| And don't get me started on that one. Just as an example,
| national pension charges based on your income. But they have
| a different way to calculate income than the tax office.
|
| Let me say it in other words if it's not clear yet: If
| someone is practically unable to do all the above without an
| accountant then the bureaucracy is absolutely out of hands.
| janderson215 wrote:
| Have you also done these things in the US? I have heard
| this sentiment that the German system is far and above the
| more bureaucratic before, but for all I know, Americans
| could just be relatively complacent in comparison to
| Germans and our systems function nearly identically. I'd
| like to hear from someone if they have been through both
| processes first hand who could answer this question.
|
| Americans constantly complain about the tax system and,
| like them or not in practice, a lot of US citizens on both
| sides of the aisle believe in one of the stated goals of
| DOGE (previously named the US Digital Service).
| valenterry wrote:
| > Have you also done these things in the US?
|
| No, and in the context of the thread I care little about
| the US. This thread is about Germany and is specifically
| about "they [the companies] are drowning in bureaucracy"
| and "The problem is not the bureaucracy". And my post was
| a response to that. The US _might_ be worse (I doubt it)
| but it has basically no relevance imo.
| janderson215 wrote:
| It has relevance in establishing the amount of
| bureaucracy relative to the largest government in the
| West.
|
| I quit my last job because of bureaucracy and I'm
| considering moving to Germany, so as individual, it is
| very important to me. Thanks for explaining to me that my
| life and major factors in my decision are irrelevant.
| Very helpful.
| rkachowski wrote:
| I feel that Germany can do better than reach for
| criticism of America whenever challenged on its own
| merits.
| svara wrote:
| You make it sound much harder than it is. I've done that
| and am doing that.
|
| It's totally possible that it's easier in other countries,
| I don't know that.
|
| But if you're serious about building a company, this is the
| least of your challenges.
|
| Hire a tax advisor and accountant through a payroll and tax
| service provider and you'll spend 1-2 days a year dealing
| with this stuff.
| valenterry wrote:
| > Hire a tax advisor and accountant through a payroll
|
| And this is exactly how you kill off lots of innovation
| by adding unnecessary hurdles. Tax advisors are Hella
| expensive and hard to contract even. I'm speaking from
| experience.
| svara wrote:
| No offense but if that's what kills your entrepreneurial
| spirit it doesn't sound like it would've carried you very
| far. It's really not that hard if you want it. You'll
| need it sooner or later anyway if you want to be more
| than a one man show.
|
| Like I said, you'll be facing a lot of substantially
| greater challenges.
| valenterry wrote:
| The world isn't black and white like that. Some people
| even want to do those things on the side. And some become
| more than a one man show after some time and without
| having planned that. Not every one has (or has to have)
| the kind of extreme passion that you are referring to.
| mafribe wrote:
| One might decide to act out one's entrepreneurial spirit
| in a different country ...
| svara wrote:
| Sure, but if that's your reason to do that you're not
| being reasonable.
|
| The point is that relative to everything else you need to
| get right to build a successful company in _any_ country,
| taxes, payroll and accounting in Germany frankly don 't
| even register.
|
| Like I said, it's 1-2 days out of a year for me.
|
| If that seems like a big hurdle, it wasn't the reason you
| didn't build a business.
|
| There are challenges with building a business that are
| specific to Germany that actually matter.
|
| By contrast, the concerns about bureaucracy are a tired
| stereotype. There's a grain of truth to them, but if they
| really pose a challenge to you, you didn't want to do
| this in the first place.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| In the examples you mentioned bureaucracy is less of a problem.
| They could do it but this is hard work in a sense which the
| culture does not reward.
|
| The problem with germans in general is that they are unwilling
| or badly trained in ,,thinking things to the end". The will
| start a ,,Digitalisierungsministerium" without a clear goal of
| what they want to achieve let alone how to get there. In the
| end they will waste a lot of money on ipads and businesses lock
| them into their ecosystems so the can't get out. It all goes
| back to the culture and a rigid educational system where
| everyone is supposed to stay where they are.
| KurSix wrote:
| To be fair though, once they do get through all those layers,
| the end result is often incredibly well-structured and precise
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Yes. But also "flexible like a closet", "well, but this is
| how we always did things around here".
| odiroot wrote:
| Waiting eagerly for the first contracts to land at SAP/T-Mobile.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| They will swallow and maul any budget you throw at them.
| Legally and fully documented.
| coolgoose wrote:
| No fax ? :P
| fxtentacle wrote:
| The upside is that this will actually provide lots of research
| funding to small companies. Think of it like the seed round from
| a VC, but instead of investing into new companies, they try to
| strategically invest into existing companies to boost future tax
| revenue.
|
| It'll probably be very German, meaning overly bureaucratic. But
| the basic idea of financing R&D in small companies to grow them
| more competitive seems legit to me.
|
| As an example of what was funded by similar German government
| grants, you can look at voize, which is (by now) also a YC
| company: https://en.voize.de/uber-uns
|
| EDIT: Here's some German info on the 1.98 mio EUR research grant
| from early 2022 (meaning it was awarded shortly before they
| joined the W22 YC batch): https://www.interaktive-
| technologien.de/projekte/pysa
| foobarian wrote:
| Didn't we get MP3s this way? Or is that a slightly different
| pathway
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Fraunhofer is (by now) only financed 30% through tax money
| and 70% comes from the royalties on their past developments
| like MP3 and H264 and H265 and MPEG-H.
|
| Anyway, Fraunhofer gets recurring tax funding. What voize got
| is a one-off research grant to a group of companies:
|
| - voize
|
| - Charite - Universitatsmedizin Berlin (a medical university)
|
| - Deutsches Forschungszentrum fur Kunstliche Intelligenz
| GmbH, Berlin (a government AI research lab)
|
| - Connext Communication GmbH, Paderborn (a tech company)
|
| - Kleeblatt Pflegeheime gGmbH, Ludwigsburg (a retirement
| home, i.e. potential end user)
|
| - Pflegewohnhaus am Waldkrankenhaus gGmbH, Berlin (another
| retirement home)
|
| For this grant type, it's quite common that you pay the
| inventors, some assistant companies, some researchers, and
| some end users a lump sum to force them all to work together
| on commercializing the invention.
| w-m wrote:
| That's not quite right for Fraunhofer: The financing model
| is also heavily dependent on research grants. The base
| funding is indeed around 30%. But another 40% are from
| publicly funded research projects. The last 30% are from
| research contracted by industry. In 2023, license fee
| revenue was EUR157M / EUR2991M, so roughly 5% of total
| contract research volume.
|
| https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/about-fraunhofer/profile-
| struct...
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Thanks! Today I learned... :)
| j-krieger wrote:
| Applying for a grant is normally difficult. In Germany, it's
| outright hellish. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised.
| franze wrote:
| the good thing now with AI you can write all those pages of
| bullshit nobody reads bit you will accountable to if things
| dont work out
| fxtentacle wrote:
| It's boring but otherwise harmless. You skim through 20 pages
| of legalese and fill out the blanks. Your local goverment
| office has an advisor who will check the forms together with
| you before you submit them. (I applied for and received a De-
| Minimis grant.) Plus for the larger grant types, there are
| advisory companies that work on commission.
| timmg wrote:
| Finally: a good use for LLMs ;)
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Not if they ban, errr I mean regulate them ;)
| jsemrau wrote:
| Applying for a grant in the European Commission is a
| labyrinth of different websites each with their own need to
| register. Grant Specs are largely in PDFs or Word Documents
| that are attached to the call. And it takes at least 6-9
| months from open to decision. I have applied to about 20
| grants throughout 2024 and haven't heard anything back from a
| single one yet.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| You should blog about your experience and submit to HN. I
| am sure you can get lots of good advice to improve your
| chances.
| jsemrau wrote:
| This has spawned almost an entire industry. Have a look
| at Zebra Embassy in Berlin as an example. I think it
| would be easier to "digitally transform" the process to
| be more efficient.
| jll29 wrote:
| EC scientific expert here (occasionally judging
| FP7/8/Horizon 2020/Horizon Europe grants in multiple areas
| including AI). I also authored some bigger proposals, one
| rejected (score: 13/15) and one funded.
|
| It is perhaps not a good idea to apply to that many in such
| a short time frame, unless you have nothing else to do: the
| individual efforts need to be really excellent to succeed,
| so focus should be on quality rather than quantity. Why?
| There is a funding threshold, and you can have 5 proposals
| that get 13/15 ("good enough to fund"), but you still don't
| get any of them funded because there enough competing
| grants with 15/15 score, and after they receive their
| funding, the pot of money is already empty (the funding is
| in order of merit).
|
| In my experience, most applications that fail to get the
| perfect score required are incomplete: To get excellent
| scores it is vital to FULLY address ANYTHING mentioned in
| the call. And to squeeze all that into 40 pages is an art.
| (There are folks that provide consulting support, which I
| have not used yet, or you could collaborate with someone
| who has worked on the other side to learn more about what
| is important.)
|
| While getting grant money remains hard, I was pleasantly
| suprised about the judging effort and the EC's personnel
| energy put into the evaluation process and in making it
| fair; for each call, their is a special rapporteur going
| around and documenting that everything that should be done
| gets done the way it should be, and the EC take great pains
| to find experts that are diverse across multiple dimensions
| (gender, country, industry/academia, seniority, field of
| expertise etc.).
|
| edit: typos
| jsemrau wrote:
| Thank you for your insightful reply. I am also registered
| as an Expert to the EC. I fully agree with you that
| completing all requirements in a 40-pager is hard. Which
| I think is exactly my point. It's competitive (that's
| good) and time-consuming. But I also believe grant
| applications are a muscle a startup should have when they
| want to do business with the government. In SpacecTech,
| Defense, and AI (my areas) this is largely unavoidable.
| notahacker wrote:
| The websites certainly have their design quirks, as do the
| application forms (though you can avoid those traps by
| partnering with people who've done it before). But tbh a
| single document and 6 month turnaround for our Pathfinder
| bid was above average for grants we've won, and compares
| very favourably with our equity funding round.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I have applied for a few grants in Germany and also got them.
| It's honestly not that difficult. If you have a large
| consortium with many partners it can become complicated but
| mostly because of the partners and not the government. My
| secret advice: when there is a grant there is also always a
| number you call or an email address, if anything is unclear,
| you can call them and they have always been very helpful.
| hobofan wrote:
| > when there is a grant there is also always a number you
| call or an email address
|
| 100%. That can also sometime save you a ton of work of
| putting together information that they may not care about.
| 47282847 wrote:
| I am based in Germany and have helped a couple of dozen
| individuals and small groups to successfully apply for grants
| and incorporate. It's really not that difficult once you
| overcome the typical psychological barriers which if you look
| closely are a combination of prejudices and negative self
| talk.
|
| On all levels, once you really breathe that there is a human
| person you are directing your inquiry to, and that you can
| help them do their job, they will be happy to direct money
| towards you. That principle applies from local startup funds
| to federal grants to EU level project officers. The
| "bureaucracy" can be annoying in the sense of feeling like a
| waste of time (which, since you should factor in the cost of
| application into your later grant, is simply not true. It is
| actually really well paid boring labor.), but it's really not
| complex or hard. If you believe they are hard for you
| ("hell"), you are engaged in negative self talk.
|
| If you approach these things as highly annoying, and direct
| your annoying energy to the people who are handling your
| application, you will annoy them, which will make you feel
| like they are there to annoy you. The alternative is to
| approach them with the understanding that they're not trying
| to make your life hard but are simply doing their job. They
| know much better than you that some things should be changed
| but it's not up to them to change them, and they are not the
| right target to lobby for change.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Are you working as a consultant on these topics? I'm
| looking for someone to get assistance with incorporating
| and grants this fall.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I'm CTO in a startup in Germany. We've applied for and gotten
| various grants. It's not a big deal. And there are agencies
| that can help with this. I know various people in different
| companies that benefit from this as well. There is money at
| the state level, at the federal level, and the European level
| that can be unlocked via grants.
|
| Germany has got a well deserved reputation for its
| bureaucracy and lack of flexibility. We were dealing with the
| tax office at the same time we were dealing with grants. One
| part of the government trying to give us money, another
| taking it away. We had our first deal with not enough revenue
| to even pay ourselves. That was calculated as "profit". As a
| bootstrapped company, we got very close to emptying our
| accounts a few times. And stuff like this isn't helpful. But
| we survived and we're still around. Partially thanks to these
| grants.
|
| I think this incoming government is saying the right things
| and looks like they are planning to do things that sound like
| they are good ideas. Making the process of founding a company
| easier, incentivizing R&D, etc. There's a lot of potential in
| this country in terms of companies that are very specialized
| and high tech, well educated people, etc. They are definitely
| over dependent on older companies that are a bit past their
| prime, e.g. in automotive.
|
| Germany mainly needs to deal with it's risk averse
| bureaucracy and culture. People that want to take risk here
| need to move more freely and faster. It shouldn't take months
| to found a company. Or thousands of euros to deal with all
| the bureaucracy (which it does if you add it all up).
|
| Germany tends to stifle innovation by bureaucracy,
| restrictive & complex rules, and a finance climate that
| actively discourages investment and taking risk. Especially
| foreign investment. If you look at a lot of big name scale
| ups in Germany, you'll find that they have headquarters in
| places like Dublin, London, or Amsterdam. There's a good
| reason for this: if you want foreign investors to invest, a
| Gmbh is simply a somewhat toxic legal construction. These
| companies are German in all but name. That's about more than
| just taxes.
|
| That needs to change. I think people are well aware. Merz
| certainly seems to be. But bureaucracies have a way of
| pushing back and this country is run by bureaucrats,
| politicians, lawyers, notaries, etc. that all benefit
| financially from the system being the way it is. They
| actively resist change and insist how crucial they are to the
| whole thing. Everything they touch tends to get more complex
| and convoluted. My worry is that they'll just end up adding
| to the problem instead of solving it.
| okr wrote:
| I dont want the govt to fund any research funding. As a tax
| payer i did not vote this. I want to decide who i fund or not.
| It just means, my taxes will not go down. :/
| encrypted_bird wrote:
| I suppose then you won't get nearly as much medical research,
| technological research, scientific research. Seriously, you
| may not realize just how _much_ genuine academic research at
| colleges, universities, and technical institutes rely on
| government grants.
|
| At least that's how it is in the US. I'm unsure how
| different, if at all, it is in Germany.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Tip: All highly industrialised, wealthy nations are the
| same. Central govt provides huge sums for academic research
| with the hope that it can be commercialised.
| hobofan wrote:
| In many fields of study, the money that goes into
| academic research is essentially more of high-level-
| talent education expense, so that local companies have
| pools of PhDs to hire from, rather than needing to
| produce a invention that will be commercialized.
|
| E.g. if you look at PhD graduates only one in a few
| hundred (even in STEM fields) will end up on a path that
| commercializes their research, with most of the other
| ones moving into industry and likely not working on a
| directly related subject to their thesis. That's not
| necessarily a bad thing.
| illiac786 wrote:
| That does not scale. We cannot ask every single citizen about
| every single decision. You want to decide on each funding.
| The next will want to decide on every tax law change.
| Government decides, and if majority of population thinks
| they're doing a shit job and someone else can do a less shot
| job they get replaced after a couple of years. Otherwise it's
| micromanagement hell.
| okr wrote:
| I disagree. Lets say i own 100 percent of my money. Just
| that i have to write it down, makes me shiver, what we as
| people accept to happen.
|
| Am i interested in progress? Of course. Am i not smart
| enough to see or think long term, most likely. Give me a
| robo advisor, that helps me distribute my money. Give me
| best practises. I do not need a bloated government and
| their politics and interest groups for a simple decision,
| what i do with MY money that I have earned by working. Govt
| is the middle management that everyone complains about. A
| black hole.
| illiac786 wrote:
| I don't get it. You want everyone to decide what they do
| with their taxes? roads in the middle of nowhere would
| never get maintained for example. Orphan sickness would
| see even less research than they do today. Etc.
| okr wrote:
| Roads in the middle of nowhere are not needed, of course
| i would not want that. I want them there where they are
| needed. Like, connecting two big citied with a lot of
| nowhere in between. I want the robo advisor to make that
| calculation for me.
|
| And the other thing: yeah, people know, what charity is.
| But there is no big charity, if the welfare state already
| takes half of your money. The responsibility to take care
| of people around you is offloaded to an anonymous entity.
| illiac786 wrote:
| Ok, that means you think that everyone should move away
| from countryside and into cities. I think that
| illustrates very well the problem with your approach.
| Minorities have zero chances of being represented.
|
| The argument about charity and tax levels is not
| substantiated by any research as far as I can tell. There
| is however research showing that rich people give LESS to
| charity proportionally, compared to poorer people.
|
| Making charity donations tax deductible, that does help
| though.
| okr wrote:
| When people want to live on isles or in nowhere regions,
| so be it. But i do not want to support this lifestyle
| with my money. It does not mean, that everyone has to
| live on cities. If there are enough people to live
| abroad, then they live with the consequences. It's their
| home. And certainly becomes noticeable financially, when
| you go abroad making holidays to these awesome nowhere
| places.
|
| About charity or tax level and who gives more, that
| question i do not ask. I would not ask anyone, what are
| you are willing to give and how much? Little, more, much,
| welcome. I just would not allow free-riding on things
| others have paid and worked for and their life blood is
| in it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The government has two jobs: 1. Steal your money, 2. Send you
| to die in a war.
|
| Unless your country is a war, that means they can focus
| entirely on stealing your money. You're never going to be
| able to change that. The only thing you can do is protect
| your money outside their reach. Then you can decide freely
| how it is used.
| socketcluster wrote:
| Definition of government funding:
|
| Funding for everyone except you.
| personomas wrote:
| Even worse: only for those who suck up to those who get to
| choose. Which usually means if you give me funding, I'll help
| you back.
| notorandit wrote:
| They need to call Mrs. Merkel back.
| kazinator wrote:
| Cool, scientists persecuted in the USA can now free to Germany.
| Kind of like Einstein & Co, but exact opposite direction.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| > A new ministry for research, technology, and aerospace will be
| formed, and the education portfolio will be taken over by the
| current ministry for family, seniors, women, and youth.
|
| So I guess Germany is one of those countries which reorganize
| their government on a brainstorming board by just throwing up
| concepts. And then it takes years for all the bureaucracy to move
| around and get back to work.
|
| > Germany needs a new alignment of defense policy and research
| policy, but "we do not yet know how to do this,"
|
| I learned in middle school that you were once really good at it.
| There is also a consensus it got quickly out of control and
| destroyed Europe.
|
| All of this sound more like an Onion or Babylon Bee piece...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Black_13 appears to be shadowbanned so I 'm reproducing their
| comment here:_
|
| black_13 11 minutes ago [dead] | parent | context | unvouch |
| favorite | on: Germany creates 'super-high-tech ministry' for
| res...
|
| The cynicism in these comments is telling, but misses crucial
| realities about Germany's capabilities and social achievements.
| Yes, Germany creates bureaucracies. Yes, Dorothee Bar's digital
| infrastructure record isn't impressive. And yes, German
| bureaucracy can be stifling. But this myopic focus on
| administrative inefficiency overlooks Germany's formidable
| strengths.
|
| Germany maintains world-class engineering and manufacturing
| excellence through their Mittelstand network while America has
| hollowed out its industrial base. German research institutions
| like Max Planck and Fraunhofer consistently produce breakthrough
| innovations in renewable energy, advanced materials, and chemical
| engineering. Their aerospace contributions through Airbus and DLR
| deliver real technological advances.
|
| More importantly, Germany excels precisely where America falters.
| Their dual education system creates exceptional technical
| competence without requiring college degrees. Germans enjoy
| comprehensive public transportation infrastructure, universal
| healthcare without administrative bloat, and urban planning that
| prioritizes livability over speculation.
|
| The results speak for themselves: Germans live significantly
| longer (81.1 years vs America's 76.4), face virtually no gun
| violence (2 deaths per million annually vs America's 120), and
| don't suffer from the manufactured scarcity that plagues American
| housing, healthcare, and education markets.
|
| Critically, Germany isn't now teetering on becoming a police
| state. While America expands surveillance powers, militarizes
| police forces, and faces growing authoritarianism, Germany's
| post-war constitutional framework continues to prioritize civil
| liberties, privacy protections, and democratic norms. Their
| painful historical lessons have created institutional guardrails
| against authoritarianism that America increasingly lacks.
|
| Let's be honest about who's posting these dismissive takes -
| primarily privileged tech workers disconnected from the material
| realities faced by average citizens. While you mock German
| bureaucracy from comfortable positions, their social systems
| deliver concrete benefits that many Americans can only dream of.
|
| Germany's approach allows for longer, healthier lives with
| dramatically less precarity than what Americans experience. Their
| new ministry may face bureaucratic challenges, but it builds on
| foundations of technical excellence and social achievement that
| deserve genuine consideration rather than facile mockery.
| Aldipower wrote:
| I really dislike the Germany against America sentiment of this
| post. This is not how you bring arguments to the table. Saying
| this a German.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| There is a large number of people that mistake generic Trump
| Derangement Syndrome prose for insightful analysis.
| calmoo wrote:
| Having no gun violence and having a higher life expectancy than
| America is not something to be proud of and not a useful
| benchmark. This comment is a prime example of Germany's
| inability to take external criticism - it nearly always
| devolves into comparison with America. You know many non-
| americans also criticise the state of Germany currently?
| Zigurd wrote:
| /s?
| calmoo wrote:
| Not sure what could be interpreted as sarcasm in my
| comment. It is pretty direct and on the nose.
| sockaddr wrote:
| > Having no gun violence and having a higher life
| expectancy than America is not something to be proud of
| and not a useful benchmark
|
| /s ?
| calmoo wrote:
| What I mean by this is - is that this is such a low bar -
| of not having rampant gun violence and short life
| expectancy, especially when correlating them with GDP.
| This should not be a point of pride or comparison to beat
| this bar. Most developed countries in the world achieve
| more than America on these metrics, therefore it's a
| useless benchmark.
| slt2021 wrote:
| if America has gun violence, then Germany has car ramming
| into crowds violence, and both problems have similar
| roots
| j-krieger wrote:
| > You know many non-americans also criticise the state of
| Germany currently
|
| Germans are also masters at criticising Germany. You just
| read more defence online than what happens in real life.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I've often wished for /pol/ style flags on HN. I think a
| lot of people get offended when their country is criticized
| online because they feel that the criticism comes from a
| foreigner.
| stratocumulus0 wrote:
| Having lived here for a bit over 5 years, I can say that
| Germans too often like to speak from the moral high ground.
| There are things that are sacred and indisputable, like
| opposition to nuclear energy. Try to complain about a strike
| in public services causing you inconvenience, and you will
| invariably get lectured on solidarity. I've seen people
| interrupting speakers at public events to "provide important
| context" that was nothing more than self-flattery from the
| interrupting person. I do believe in this country and think
| that it has way more upsides than downsides, but the people
| here could sure use a bit of humility.
| seertaak wrote:
| Interesting comment, but Germany's much-vaunted Mittelstand is
| in its initial death throes. Key industries and IP are being
| auctioned off to the highest bidder, not the least, for lack of
| heirs. It isn't universally acknowledged, but the same
| processes that caused the US's manufacturing decay have been
| occurring in Germany; at roughly the same speed, but with a 30
| year lag (since Agenda 2010) viz-a-vis the US.
| ernst_klim wrote:
| > comprehensive public transportation infrastructure, universal
| healthcare without administrative bloat, and urban planning
| that prioritizes livability over speculation.
|
| This can't be further from the truth. This is probably written
| by an American, and US is a very car-centric, but German
| infrastructure is a shitshow.
|
| Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy. I have a
| friend who is a cardiologist. He says that exactly half of his
| work time is paperwork. And not just paperwork, but German
| paperwork, where you manually type PDF fields one by one, then
| print, then sign, then scan and so on.
| j-krieger wrote:
| > This can't be further from the truth. This is probably
| written by an American, and US is a very car-centric, but
| German infrastructure is a shitshow.
|
| I just _know_ that this is a comment from a German person who
| has little experience with public transport in any non-top-
| class country. Yeah, it could be better, but it could also be
| _so much worse_.
|
| > Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy
|
| This I agree with.
| ernst_klim wrote:
| I lived in Russia, Georgia, few European countries. Even in
| Georgia trains are way more punctual, than in Germany.
| Moscow metro works like a Swiss-clock compared to
| U-Bahn/S-Bahn.
|
| Maybe what you are talking about is true for some very pour
| Asian/African countries, but many middle-income countries
| have more reliable public transportation, than Berlin. Not
| to mention developed ones and China.
| j-krieger wrote:
| > I lived in Russia, Georgia, few European countries
|
| I've been to Central America, Egypt, Istanbul, Sicily,
| Spain and many more candidates that take a more lax
| attitude to daily life. Their public transport could
| certainly be better.
|
| > but many middle-income countries have more reliable
| public transportation, than Berlin
|
| Berlin is not Germany. Berlin is badly run, constantly
| out of money (especially for infrastructure) and very
| different than the rest. Still, inner city public
| transport is generally reliable, if dirty and sometimes
| full of questionable people.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| What do you consider a non-top-class country? Is your
| statement just tautologically true, because any country
| with better public transit then germany would be considered
| top-class?
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy. I
| have a friend who is a cardiologist. He says that exactly
| half of his work time is paperwork. And not just paperwork,
| but German paperwork, where you manually type PDF fields one
| by one, then print, then sign, then scan and so on.
|
| Wait. That's exactly how paperwork has always worked for me
| in America. What am I missing?
| calmoo wrote:
| The difference is in Germany you print that PDF out from
| the institution's website, and then send it to them by
| mail.
| twothreeone wrote:
| Or you scan the printed form (which you filled out
| electronically), and send it by fax.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| As someone who lived in multiple rich countries in Europe,
| let me tell you that the German healthcare system is awesome.
| It has a lot of problems, but it's head and shoulders above
| many-many other countries. You can actually get care by a
| qualified doctor, while this is absolutely not self-evident
| even in rich countries like the United Kingdom, and let's not
| talk about CEE countries.
| calmoo wrote:
| I would disagree. German doctors regularly prescribe
| homeopathic medicine, misdiagnose patients and tell people
| they just need to drink tea, and also will not supply
| medicine when it is really needed. This is well researched.
|
| Saying you can not get care by a qualified doctor in the UK
| is a completely false statement.
| valenterry wrote:
| How many years ago?
| spit2wind wrote:
| This reads as FUD. I'm an American who's lived in Germany
| recently. On every measure, my experience was been better
| than the US.
|
| I can walk to the grocery. Or ride a bike. Or take the bus.
| Or take the train into the city. There are options in
| transport and in the stores. Never, ever had those options in
| the States.
|
| Yes, I've had some doctors I didn't care for. So I found
| another one and they've been great. Same thing happens in the
| States. You must advocate for yourself. Nothing different.
|
| The big difference is the complete lack of fear going in
| because you know you won't have to pay an arm and a leg. And
| yes, it's not "free". It comes out of your paycheck. 110%
| better. Never had to wait an excessive time, even for
| specialists. No more than in the States; you schedule it out.
| Yet, I can go to the emergency room when there's a concern
| and be greeted with compassion and receive care. So much
| better, it's hard to convey and hard for Americans to
| believe. I didn't until I lived there.
|
| As for "digitalization", yeah, it'd be nice to submit some
| forms online rather than through paper. But it's not a big
| deal. Howwver, it's super nice to talk to human beings on the
| phone! Haven't run into too many "your call is very important
| to us. Please listen as our menu may have changed" and then
| have to deal with a 1kbsp mega compressed audio line. Also,
| while I've had bad experiences with clerks, many more have
| been very patient and gracious. Again, contrast that to the
| DMV. Not much difference.
|
| Doctors in the US also deal with tons of paper work...has
| your friend also worked in the States?
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >Germans live significantly longer (81.1 years vs America's
| 76.4)
|
| Got to point out a nuance here.
|
| Americans living shorter are partly the result of America's
| success. An aggressive big pharma and a health care system that
| over medicates the population and give them bad advise ( eg
| nutrition) is one reason why they live less. Often more
| technology/business is not necessarily good. Germany's overall
| better outcome with result to life expectancy can be attributed
| to their incompetence/bureaucracy but certainly not a conscious
| decision to be better.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >Black_13 appears to be shadowbanned so I'm reproducing their
| comment here:
|
| Pity this happens, I was looking at his posts, and most of them
| seem to have a higher degree of original thought than most
| other HN posters.
| sva_ wrote:
| > Their dual education system creates exceptional technical
| competence without requiring college degrees.
|
| Unless you do your Ausbildung in a job where you can learn
| mostly all the skills within a couple months, after which
| you'll just be shamelessly exploited by your employer for the
| remaining duration of it.
|
| > Germans enjoy comprehensive public transportation
| infrastructure,
|
| Yeah, our train systems are pretty cool (can reach most
| places.) But if your expectation is anything more than
| 'hopefully arrive by the end of day', you'll regularly be
| disappointed.
|
| > and don't suffer from the manufactured scarcity that plagues
| American housing
|
| Have you tried renting in any bigger city in the past 10 or so
| years?
|
| > Critically, Germany isn't now teetering on becoming a police
| state. While America expands surveillance powers, militarizes
| police forces, and faces growing authoritarianism, Germany's
| post-war constitutional framework continues to prioritize civil
| liberties, privacy protections, and democratic norms.
|
| I disagree with the claim that Germany is currently on a path
| strictly "prioritiz[ing] civil liberties, privacy protections,
| and democratic norms."
|
| Not only did German politicians in 2021 broaden the scope of
| SS188 StGB to include insults against politicians, even at the
| local level[1], the new coalition contract also has some pretty
| dystopian views on how to approach opinions/statements they
| categorize as 'disinformation'[2] (ministry of truth anyone? -
| ah nevermind, they sidestep that by letting NGOs do the dirty
| work for them.)
|
| Pair that with the fact that they plan to (again) try to
| introduce data retention laws without cause[3], I do not
| personally believe that claiming we strictly prioritize civil
| liberties etc is a correct assessment of the overall situation
| here in Germany.
|
| Overall I suspect the post has been written with the aid of
| LLM, I wonder who/why would do such a thing though. There's
| just something off about the tone.
|
| 1. https://www.buzer.de/gesetz/6165/al144303-0.htm
|
| 2. https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-
| gesellschaft/kampf-g...
|
| 3. http://golem.de/news/koalitionsvertrag-
| bundesdigitalminister...
| j-krieger wrote:
| > Have you tried renting in any bigger city in the past 10 or
| so years?
|
| I am German myself and I get where you're coming from, but
| there are worlds between German rent prices and American or
| even London, Amsterdam or Dublin rent prices.
| sva_ wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. 2 bedroom apartment in Munich for
| ~1500 euro on maybe a 75k eur salary vs ~4000 usd in SF on
| a 180k usd salary. They're pretty similar numbers,
| relatively.
| valenterry wrote:
| > Germans enjoy comprehensive public transportation
| infrastructure, universal healthcare without administrative
| bloat
|
| Tell me you have never lived in Germany without telling me...
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have lived in Germany twice, the first time around
| 2005-2006 and the second time around 2016-2018, mostly in
| Bavaria and other southern parts.
|
| The first time the public transportation infrastructure was
| very decent, certainly better than in most countries, even if
| not comparable with something like Japan.
|
| The second time, 10 years later, there was a visible
| degradation in their railways, because the trains were almost
| never on time. I have lost a flight and a very large number
| of train changes because of train delays. However when going
| by car on their freeways I have not noticed anything worse
| and with a good car one could travel easily with a speed much
| above 200 km/h for a long time without problems, though there
| were also some congested segments.
|
| I have never been ill, so I cannot comment about the state of
| healthcare.
|
| I have never been in USA, but all the descriptions of the
| transportation system that I have seen, even of the
| infrastructure for cars, appear inferior to even the last
| version from Germany, which was degraded in comparison with
| the older one.
| torginus wrote:
| I don't even know who pushes this German exceptionalism
| propaganda - is it themselves or do they have 'German-weeaboos'
| who think everything German is better?
|
| > Germany maintains world-class engineering and manufacturing
| excellence through their Mittelstand network - small companies
| are not unique to Germany. But you'll be surprised how many
| German industrial automation companies (a domain I know
| something about), basically haven't changed their product
| portfolio in the past 10-15 years. Research institutions aren't
| unique to Germany. The fact you're banking on the clout of
| having invented MP3 40 years ago is weakness masquerading as
| strength.
|
| > Their dual education system creates exceptional technical
| competence without requiring college degrees. - they do have
| excellent training for skilled technicians, I do give them
| that.
|
| > Germans live significantly longer - the 28th longest life
| expectancy in Europe
|
| > Germany isn't now teetering on becoming a police state. - no
| comment on this, because I don't want to turn this into
| political mudslinging, but needless to day, this isn't an
| uncontroversial take. It'd be more accurate to say Germany
| isn't becoming a kleptocracy/plutocracy like the US.
| pasabagi wrote:
| I actually think Germany would be really good at digital
| infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer.
| Germany is immensely proud of its history of creating standards -
| there's literally a place in berlin called DIN Platz. Germany is
| also very proud, and rightly so, in its history of mathematical
| innovation.
|
| Everything that isn't dross in the computer world is either a
| well designed standard, or a well designed algorithm. If the
| German government adopted a sensible standard for government
| documents, for example, and mandated that all documents must be
| saved in it, that would already make a huge difference.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| We actually have a rather recent government agency called
| "DigitalHub" for that, too, which has been quite successful at
| pushing open standards and open source. Then there's
| https://zendis.de/#produkte whose sole purpose is to replace
| non-EU closed-source software, for example by replacing Windows
| + Office with Linux and the custom desktop software suite
| https://opendesk.eu/
| ZeWaka wrote:
| openSUSE!
| fabianholzer wrote:
| Yes, and zendis in its very German ways only hires folks who
| commute to Bochum at least three times a week. Home office?
| Da konnte ja jeder kommen...
| j-krieger wrote:
| > I actually think Germany would be really good at digital
| infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer.
|
| They still have the automotive / electrical engineering mindset
| on computers and software. Software in Germany is built to
| achieve a means to an end. It is never the end goal itself.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Software in Germany is built to achieve a means to an end.
| It is never the end goal itself.
|
| Well, that's how it should be, I don't write software to
| worship any software deities, I use it to get a job done. If
| you don't you end up with that 700 dollar useless gadget that
| was basically a python API wrapper in a box that everyone
| rightfully made fun of.
|
| We can do a lot of things better in software in Germany but
| treating it as an engineering discipline is a good thing, I
| think even the US is probably past the peak of the zero
| interest free money toy product phase and people are focusing
| more on real industry again.
| whilo wrote:
| As a German coming from Mannheim, and now living on the
| Canadian West coast, I have to say that this is exactly the
| mindset that makes it so difficult to innovate in Germany.
| While people have a top education and know everything they
| need to, they don't have a "digital mindset". I think of
| myself now as computing process, and see myself as a
| cyberneticist in the German philosophical tradition of
| Hegel, Marx, Hilbert, Godel and Bloch, but even I more
| often than necessary mistrust innovations.
|
| Almost all the science fiction and cybernetic work of the
| last 75 years came either out of the Eastern block, or out
| of the US. There is basically no German sci fi vision, and
| there is extreme reluctance to speculative, big picture
| thinking as it is pursued in Silicon Valley. Software
| companies grow quickly and need a very different approach.
| Silicon Valley mostly understands this scaling aspect and
| winner take all markets really well. German investors are
| cheap and extremely risk averse, I tried to build a
| software company in Germany and it is hard.
|
| While a lot of the current AI work was also done in
| Germany, e.g. by Schmidhuber, Germans are stuck in their
| business model. I recommend Munchau's book "Kaput" (or one
| of his podcast interviews) on how poorly Germans have
| adapted to the non-industrial aspects of a modern economy
| (read: "services"). I really hope that more tech founder
| thinking like Benz, Bosch or Siemens returns to Germany in
| a modern form. But I don't see it yet, and Germans are
| still super reactive and conservative to larger changes.
| The Greens tried to think a bit out of the box, and were
| heavily punished for it. In general there is basically no
| political representation for building a new successful
| economy. At best there is this nice little narrative about
| the long established "Mittelstand", which has produce
| almost zero software companies. The first step right now
| would be to own the idea of the EU, and wanting to win
| instead of complaining.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Hmmm, does Jurgen Schmidhuber live in Germany? I'd think
| primarily Ticino where he spent the majority of his
| career if I understand correctly.
| pmags wrote:
| I'm not German and have only made a couple of short
| visits to Germany, so I have no basis on which to judge
| your statement that Germans don't have a digital mindset.
|
| But if that is indeed true, I find it equally interesting
| the Germany has been an important center for the
| development of electronic music. Berlin in particular is
| "arguably the world capital of underground electronic
| music"
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/arts/music/women-djs-
| berl...)
| flipgimble wrote:
| What he means is that Germans are less susceptible to the
| SV bullshit artists that are hyping up their bubble
| unicorns for VC money, inflating companies with workers
| just to sell them at peak of the hype before cutting all
| those "positions" and then en-shittifying the product.
|
| Technology coasted for a few decades gaining public's trust
| as an unquestionable improvement over the past. That
| reputation is wearing out faster than I'd like to admit.
|
| I hear from friends and family that SV big tech are
| increasingly equated with surveilence, credit card leaks,
| and destructive games of billionaires detached from
| reality. I had a long potluck talk with a stranger that was
| convinced ChatGPT is analogous to another crypto scam. It
| blew my mind and opened my eyes that could be a popular
| opinion.
| janderson215 wrote:
| Popular opinion and fact can be very different.
|
| I agree Germans are less susceptible to SV bullshit
| artists, but they also miss out on the upside for game
| changing ideas. Whether this is a net negative or net
| positive is yet to be determined. Up to this point, it
| has been Germany's financial loss to over index on the
| engineeriness. Maybe it is America's loss to over index
| on the financial outcomes and the truly world changing
| ideas and those very same ideas can be a net negative. I
| would have said 2 months ago that you would be hard
| pressed to find people on this message board who would
| agree with the latter, but I think that may have changed
| significantly recently.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Software in Germany is built to achieve a means to an end.
| It is never the end goal itself.
|
| How do explain the explosion of non-embedded software
| companies in Berlin in the last 20 years? On the continent,
| it is hard to beat the Berlin tech scene for start-ups.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| zero interest money and consumer demand of knock-off
| products that SV made a decade before and proved the market
| is successful
| shermantanktop wrote:
| > Everything that isn't dross in the computer world is either a
| well designed standard, or a well designed algorithm
|
| You must be hanging out in a different part of the computer
| world.
|
| What I see is that most standards reflect evolved systems, and
| those standards usually have many amendments. Most algorithms
| are generation descendants of broken predecessors. I love
| hearing about a singular talent coming up with something new
| and getting the world to listen, but the story is usually way
| messier than that.
| pasabagi wrote:
| So, I agree that good standards and (to a lesser extent)
| algorithms come out of practice.
|
| However, the basic point about a standard is not that it's
| perfect: it's a coordination mechanism. Companies go bust all
| the time, technology changes all the time, but if you have
| standard components, large parts of complex systems can be
| maintained indefinitely. Like, I have a rolling press that
| was made in 1840, and I can still replace the bolts for it,
| because the standard thread gauge has not changed.
|
| I guess the nice thing about both algorithms and standards
| are they are the two places where the software world is not
| just burning people's lives on relentlessly reinventing the
| wheel. If you contribute even a fraction to the study of an
| algorithm, your work will be part of software in a thousand
| years. If you contribute to a standard, you are producing the
| conditions for a thousand other programs. Both of these
| things are basically common goods, and they help everyone. I
| think a culture of programming where it's less about founding
| the next over-capitalized unicorn, and more about creating a
| mutually supportive ecosystem, would produce very good
| software.
| DataDaoDe wrote:
| Germany has tons of potential, but Germany is one of the most
| risk averse countries on the planet (see Uncertainty Avoidance
| Cultures)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_avoidance].
| This makes it amazing at building high quality industrial
| products, taking innovation done elsewhere and refining and
| polishing it, slowly over many years - building standards as
| you say. However, it doesn't help much in the innovation
| department. Also as probably the world leader in data privacy
| and protection that's another vector working against
| innovation. And then there is the robust legislation and
| bureaucracy (in a controlling sense) around all financial
| products (not to mention in general), which gives Germany
| advantages in certain industries but is also a distinct
| disadvantage for innovation in many sectors. There is also a
| massive union culture, which provides Germans with a great
| quality of life, but again, that's something probably
| negatively correlated to innovation.
|
| I'd like to see more innovation in general and if this leads to
| that its good. But I don't personally think that innovation
| needs to happen in Germany, so long as it happens somewhere and
| Germans can do what they do best with it.
| andrepd wrote:
| > Also as probably the world leader in data privacy and
| protection that's another vector working against innovation
|
| Extremely thick irony here
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| How does the Germany of today reconcile itself with the
| iconoclasts of its past from mathematicians, physicists,
| chemists, explorers, filmmakers, and industrialists who set
| the stage for modern life during the late 19th and early 20th
| centuries?
| Tainnor wrote:
| It has something to do with an episode of German history
| that took place between 1933 and 1945.
| rkachowski wrote:
| In my experience it generally generally doesn't, and
| instead revels in the prestige of past successes. Titles
| and self mythology seem to be more valued than achievement
| and performance.
|
| It's a sad frustration, as there is so much potential here.
| svara wrote:
| There were way more young people back then. Germany as a
| country has the mentality of a retiree, because that's who
| lives there.
|
| I say that as a German doing a startup in Germany. There's
| upsides as well but it's true.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Uncertainty Avoidance Cultures
|
| How do you explain all of the groundbreaking technologies and
| processes that have come from Japan and Korea? Both are at
| the extreme end of uncertainty avoidance.
| chme wrote:
| > There is also a massive union culture, which provides
| Germans with a great quality of life, but again, that's
| something probably negatively correlated to innovation.
|
| Hmm... So if people struggle in life and have live from hand
| to mouth in multiple jobs to support their family and loved
| ones, they are more innovative?
| xenospn wrote:
| A quick trip to sub-Saharan Africa will prove this is both
| true and untrue.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| It engrains the idea into people early on, that they should
| work to upskill themselves or build their own jobs, instead
| of coasting on the idea the government will always be there
| for them to provide jobs and security.
|
| Also, plenty of people in Germany live hand to mouth now.
| Poverty has been on the increase due to CoL.
| fhd2 wrote:
| So, your hypothesis is that greed fuels innovation? Those
| innovating are rarely the ones benefiting financially. I
| think it rather fuels hustling. The end game of hustling
| are monopolies, which have little to no interest in
| innovation.
|
| From what examples I can think of right now, innovation
| actually appears to require a certain level of coziness.
| I'd say great ideas come from curiosity, and if you're
| struggling to eat, that's usually limited. The trick is,
| perhaps, to be cozy, but not so cozy that lifting a
| finger seems pointless.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| There are two common standards for documents: PDF and HTML. The
| german government mostly uses PDFs and should move to HTML.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| The point of PDF is document representation. It looks the
| same. This allows the government to assume an act of forgery
| when a non-governmental org attempts presenting documents
| looking like government documents. You can't do that with
| HTML. PDF with text source sounds perfect.
| torginus wrote:
| Most of German standardization boils down to creating
| artificial competitive moats to their existing companies, while
| propping up an incredible lucrative 'standardization industry'.
|
| This allows most Germans to sleep soundly at night knowing some
| company won't show up at the door selling the same product they
| do, but better and cheaper.
|
| This is a well know playbook, and is appealing to bureaucrats
| who conflate a stack paperwork with actual quality, and is not
| exclusive to Germans (why does FDA approved medicine cost 100x
| of chemically indentical stuff sold in other countries etc.)/
| slt2021 wrote:
| Germany has no national idea, they have no reason why an average
| burger should work his/her ass off competing with
| Chinese/American/Indian scientists and working 80 hr/week on
| cutting edge research.
|
| Germans are smart and capable, but the German lifestyle is not
| for "super high tech" industry
| tene80i wrote:
| What's your proposal? Give up?
| j-krieger wrote:
| We should stop treating any kind of patriotism and German
| culture like it is from the devil.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Sounds like you kinda just want an excuse to vote AfD
| without pointing to an element of their policy platform you
| think the rest of us should support too.
| j-krieger wrote:
| Q.E.D
|
| (Just for the record I don't vote AfD. I do like being
| German and I like what little culture we have left. You
| can be patriotic and at the same time left leaning.)
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Gruss aus Frankfurt, you really couldn't have proven his
| point any better if you tried.
|
| Some countries are approximately 50% national flag by
| surface area, fist pumping and chanting the country's
| name at every opportunity despite being run by people
| making Nazi salutes, but "it's okay to like your
| country's culture" is instantly equated with Nazism? Come
| on man...
| j-krieger wrote:
| I agree with your comment. It's also funny and sad to see
| the political and mental disconnect in this topic. Now
| that we need more military, people are surprised that
| there is no one who wants to defend a country that's just
| an arbitrary collection of people with no shared
| identity.
| slt2021 wrote:
| people like you are the reason for the downfall of
| Germany as a nation
| slt2021 wrote:
| I would say Germany needs to redefine what patriotism is.
| It currently has too many dual passport holders, and people
| with dual loyalties who do not put the long-term interests
| of Germany first, but rather consider Germany only as a
| source of welfare to extract and transfer elsewhere
| j-krieger wrote:
| The erosion of a shared German culture for decades leaves
| us with the result of having no national identity. Make
| no mistake, I'm not alluding to purism of the natives one
| bit. On the contrary, I would love for immigrants to be
| proud to be part of Germany.
|
| In the US, immigrants make a point of showing their
| patriotism by immersing themselves into American culture.
| We don't have a similar cultural phenomenon in Germany.
|
| > consider Germany only as a source of welfare to extract
| and transfer elsewhere
|
| You would be surprised how many natives share this
| viewpoint. This can only work for so long before
| something collapses...
| ernst_klim wrote:
| Germany is actively killing innovation. I propose to stop for
| starters.
|
| Tho when the median voter is 55 and national motto is "that's
| how it was always done" and "Pensions are secure" - I don't
| put much hope. I still remember the outcry when the digital
| health cards were introduced.
| mk89 wrote:
| Not sure how Germany is actively killing innovation to be
| honest.
|
| Your other points are more or less true, I just like to
| think that people complain a lot and media obviously makes
| it worse.
|
| Digital health cards, online tax declaration, etc. These
| things did happen. People complained, but these decisions
| were not reverted. That's the most important.
| ernst_klim wrote:
| > Not sure how Germany is actively killing innovation to
| be honest
|
| By many things at once: Datenschutz, (over- and
| premature) regulations, bureaucracy, laws favoring old
| ways (e.g. broadcasting licenses for streamers), active
| sabotage from workers who don't want to learn things (and
| can't be fired) etc.
|
| But all stems from risk averseness and active
| unwillingness to learn new ways.
|
| As you say, (some) things did happened, but way too slow
| and way too little. Compared to its peers or especially
| developing countries German Digitalisierung is a joke, a
| not so funny one.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I hope this works out (even if it's a net negative for the US).
| I have worked with German engineers, and have been quite
| impressed.
|
| I sincerely wish Germany luck. They'd better do a good job of
| securing their IP, though...
| bcye wrote:
| What is the national idea of the other listed countries in
| comparison? Also: a "national idea" isn't the only reason
| people do cutting edge research.
| slt2021 wrote:
| you need an idea in order to mobilize the energy of the
| population.
|
| German passionary patriotism has been artificially subverted
| and shut down, and the nation instead has been flooded with
| non-Germanic elements, thus completely destroying the very
| definition of German.
|
| Ask any German on the street, and nobody will be able to
| answer: What defines being a German, who are the Germans,
| what is their history, and what awaits German people in the
| future.
|
| Complete void of any ideology, national idea, any energy that
| could propel the nation in the great leap forward.
| bcye wrote:
| > German passionary patriotism has been artificially
| subverted and shut down, and the nation instead has been
| flooded with non-Germanic elements, thus completely
| destroying the very definition of German.
|
| > Ask any German on the street, and nobody will be able to
| answer: What defines being a German, who are the Germans,
| what is their history, and what awaits German people in the
| future.
|
| I don't think so, you will meet plently people that will be
| able to tell you about Germany's history, or at least
| recent history. And what defines being German, you might
| get different answers, but is that so bad, and where
| wouldn't you? Hasn't multiculturalism just become a big
| part of Germany's identity, and not destroyed it as you
| claim? Doner just as the simplest example.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Are you seriously claiming that Doner is a German
| culture???? Not schnitzel, not bratwurts, but doner??
|
| Your post highlights all the problems with modern Germany
| staunton wrote:
| > the great leap forward
|
| ... doesn't sound very desirable, with how things by that
| name have gone historically.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| The people I know that do cutting-edge research mostly do it
| because it's fun. That might be hard to imagine, but if you
| have great (government-funded) local hackerspaces where you can
| meet others, talk to them and built stuff together, it becomes
| a viable free-time activity. For example, I can schedule a
| Prusa (FDM) / Form (SLA) / Fuse (SLS) print job remotely and
| then quickly walk there to pick it up. If I need custom sheet
| metal or wood, I'll bring a USB stick with the DXF and then
| walk. That kind of infrastructure massively cuts down on
| iteration times. Plus it's great to get feedback in-person by
| other tinkerers when you pick things up.
| ernst_klim wrote:
| That's all good and well, but the very time you would try to
| start selling your tinkering, or, God forbid, hire somebody -
| that's where the hell begins.
|
| Being a self-employed is a living hell in Germany, as well as
| receiving any money outside of employment. Esp. if money are
| small (but > than hobby money, 500 euro iirc) and don't
| justify the hurdle of dealing with Finanzamt, tax pre-
| payment, possible regulations with upfront Formulars etc.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| You mean as opposed to the American national idea of "work or
| starve, bitch"?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| If you ever visited America, it would immediately strike you
| that no Americans, rich or poor, black or white, are
| starving. Frankly, we could all use a little more starving.
| pmags wrote:
| The actual data about food insecurity from the USDA tells
| quite a different story:
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-
| details?pubid=1098...
|
| _In 2023...13.5 percent (18.0 million households) were
| food insecure. Food-insecure households (those with low and
| very low food security) had difficulty at some time during
| the year providing enough food for all their members
| because of a lack of resources...5.1 percent of U.S.
| households (6.8 million households) had very low food
| security..._
|
| Coincidentally, the collection of such detailed and useful
| data is at risk from the indiscriminate USDA firings.
| marcusverus wrote:
| So it's a totally subjective metric which measures
| whether anyone claims to have "had difficulty" buying
| food at least once during a calendar year. Not that they
| didn't get enough food--just that they had to exert
| effort to get it.
|
| This is not evidence that people are going hungry, though
| it is clearly designed to give that impression.
| pmags wrote:
| Talk about a bad faith response. No counter data
| presented. Just deny and distract.
|
| Here's collaborating trends for the same calendar year:
|
| https://www.feedingamerica.org/research/charitable-food-
| assi...
|
| _Feeding America estimates more than 50 million people
| received charitable food assistance sometime in 2023_
|
| I'm guessing you'll respond that charities that feed
| people have a vested interest and are not to be
| trusted... (yes, I'm aware of cases of charities
| committing fraud; no there is no evidence that is the
| norm). Probably again without presenting data to support
| your assertion that there are no Americans who go hungry.
|
| I'm curious what actually obtainable data you would
| accept as a counterfactual to your statement/belief?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Receiving charitable food assistance doesn't mean that
| you're starving, or even that you would be starving
| without that assistance. What sort of data would you
| accept to prove that americans are not starving?
| pmags wrote:
| Above I've _already_ pointed to TWO types of data that
| bear on food insecurity in the US, and provided
| citations:
|
| 1. USDA data on food insecurity
|
| 2. Food bank usage data
|
| If you wanted to understand the extremes of food
| insecurity, than data on malnutrition related deaths in
| the US would also apply:
|
| * Mostafa, N., Sayed, A., Rashad, O. et al. Malnutrition-
| related mortality trends in older adults in the United
| States from 1999 to 2020. BMC Med 21, 421 (2023).
| https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-023-03143-8
|
| From the paper above -- _" Despite some initial
| decrements in malnutrition mortality among older adults
| in the U.S., the uptrend from 2013 to 2020 nullified all
| established progress. The end result is that malnutrition
| mortality rates represent a historical high...Effective
| interventions are strongly needed. Such interventions
| should aim to ensure food security and early detection
| and remedy of malnutrition among older adults..."_
|
| If you wanted to explore malnutrition related deaths for
| other groups / time periods you could query the CDC
| Wonder data base using ICD-10 Codes E40 - E46 (as was
| done in the paper cited above; see also
| https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/E00-E89/E40-E46).
|
| * https://wonder.cdc.gov/ -- Search CDC Wonder for
| underlying cause of death
|
| I did the query for 2023 and found were >22,000
| malnutrition related deaths recorded by the CDC.
|
| If this number went down significantly I would see that
| as evidence of a decrease in malnutrition in the US. If
| this number was near zero I would accept your assertion
| that no/few Americans are starving.
|
| Given the preponderance of data, the notion that one
| could argue with a straight face that food insecurity in
| the US is of no concern seems shocking to me.
| ericyd wrote:
| What's with the mis-matched hyphens/dashes?
| guywithahat wrote:
| The more I read about this, the more it feels like a VW bailout.
| If you want innovation, make it easier to start up and shut down
| research companies, you don't need a new ministry to hand out
| taxpayer money to companies.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Is that just based on the quote from the Volkswagen Foundation?
| But that foundation is entirely independent of VW and doesn't
| get any taxpayer money in any case.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| And the win goes to China, as always. Well played.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Surprised to see the negativity in the comments - if executed
| well, this is exactly the sort of thing governments should be
| aiming to do: solving social coordination problems and funding
| with long-term horizons.
| franze wrote:
| *executed well*
|
| but first regulated to death
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think the EU is increasingly aware of its faults,
| especially in Germany & France. Happy to watch them cook and
| I say that as an American who has watched on with pain at
| what the EU has done to itself over the last decade+.
| analog31 wrote:
| Are their people worse off?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| In my view, yes - especially when you subset to native
| born populations. Many europeans are a proud people
| though so I understand this is contentious, regardless of
| what the numbers say.
| vondur wrote:
| According to this article, the answer is yes:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/world/europeans-poorer-inflation-
| economy...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It depends on what you are looking at.
|
| For example there is increasing consensus that Merkel's
| "black-zero" budget requirements set the stage for
| today's collapsing German infrastructure and lack of
| productivity growth due to decreased public investment.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Think it has much more to do with traditional EU
| regulator attitudes around the dual of labor & capital
| markets. Both are very dysfunctional in Europe, with
| labor probably slightly edging out in terms of
| dysfunction.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| thats also not helping, but it's not exactly a secret
| that German public infrastructure from roads to rails to
| electricity and whatnot are also all crumbling.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| it's hard to build infrastructure when you have
| dysfunctional labor markets & your tax base is declining
| in real terms.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _" You eventually run out of other peoples' money"_
|
| And wait till the EU starts paying it's own defense bills
| without the US, which is what it wants to do. But with
| money from where? Education? Healthcare? Welfare?
| daedrdev wrote:
| The black zero literally means that in real terms they
| have been decreasing government investment for years now.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm thinking about things like life expectancy, infant
| mortality, maternal mortality, health care, violent
| crime, suicide, incarceration, traffic safety...
| DataDaoDe wrote:
| I can't speak for France, but for Germany, unfortunately,
| by most metrics that matter (affordable housing,
| infrastructure, subjective well-being, energy costs,
| labor markets, etc.) compared to 20 years ago, yes.
| However, compared to most other countries, Germany is
| still doing quite well. So it all depends on the context
| for how you interpret the data.
|
| [1]
| https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2024/03/27/germanys-
| rea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_
| crisis_%282022...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I have an alternative theory about tech and growth in Europe
| - the rich are too greedy here and are not optimistic enough
| about growth. They:
|
| a) don't fund risky things
|
| b) don't believe Europe can create unicorns so it becomes a
| self fulfilling prophecy for their investments
|
| c) try to cash out too quickly from potentially huge
| businesses
|
| d) valuations are half the investment for double the equity,
| so of course the companies have half the runway and half the
| upside.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| No comment except that 'the rich are too greedy here' is an
| extremely european explanation for EU economic
| underperformance.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| You're completely misinterpreting and taking out of
| context the whole point I'm trying to make for a cheap
| swipe at Europe. Do you actually disagree with what I
| said or are you trying to win Internet points with
| semantics? Do you even disagree with the bulk of my
| complaint about investment in Europe?
|
| Do you even disagree that investors try to take a larger
| equity position in companies in the EU than in the US?
| cavisne wrote:
| Europe is mostly "old money" so this makes sense. They
| didn't earn that money they are custodians of it.
| mhitza wrote:
| > don't believe Europe can create unicorns so it becomes a
| self fulfilling prophecy for their investments
|
| There sure would like though. What I've followed in the
| Horizon program was a fixation of chasing "last years"
| technology.
|
| Problem was , that for all those funding programmes they
| had quite stingent company requirements which stopped
| startups and small companies from having a go at it. Larger
| companies had no issue navigating this process and chewing
| the cash without actually delivering good or innovative
| products.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Can you tell me which regulations are stopping them? The
| UK for example bent over backwards to make acquiring a
| banking licence part of a clear process. I think this is
| harder at the EU level but for me laws like GDPR are
| actually very reasonable (having implemented a system for
| container shipping crew, including lots of personal
| information like passport images).
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| You say that like Germany as a country isn't doing well. I
| swear, people just stop thinking when it comes to things like
| this.
| twothreeone wrote:
| The money never goes to actually relevant or innovative
| projects, because there is a whole industry devoted to
| "proposal writing". Companies will literally bring dedicated
| teams together to sit in a room and think how they could
| possibly grift EU money, because they cannot meaningfully
| compete on the open market and need to fund 25-50% of their
| personnel costs through such programs.
|
| Think Siemens, Orange S.A., Technikon, Philips N.V., T-Systems,
| but also (!) IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, McKinsey.
| jq-r wrote:
| There is a whole industry in Croatia specializing in EU money
| extraction. Hundreds of agencies writing proposals to get
| grants for their clients and taking their cut. Tons of those
| are grifts with money directly landing into people's pockets,
| seaside villas being bought, hotels being made. It's so
| blatant that politicians accuse each other for not extracting
| as much money as they've could. After decades of blatant
| stealing EPPO (European Public Prosecutors Office) got
| involved. When they go for small fish that's fine, but when
| they start investigating government politicians they
| (government) take the case from them and those guys get a
| slap on the wrist. There are just so many cases that EPPO can
| do only a fraction of them. Terrible situation, and I don't
| think it'll change because EU doesn't give too much of a care
| about a small country like that. And it's not their money in
| a sense, so they care even less.
| valenterry wrote:
| If governments would (always) execute well then we could just
| let them do everything and it would be great. But they don't
| because there is no competition.
| franze wrote:
| yeah, who still remembers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero
| the German-French initiative against Google. A European search
| engine.
|
| In the end Technicolor / Thomson, Exalead, SAP, France Telecom
| (Orange) got most of the funding if I remember right. Other than
| a few university, museum digitalisation projects nothing consumer
| facing ever so the light of day.
| ulrischa wrote:
| This will not work. Germany is totally driven by lawyers. No room
| for new ideas. Everybody is doing ass covering instead of working
| together building something great
| nixass wrote:
| > also plans to woo scientists from abroad
|
| but also god forbid you arrive to Germany with <C1 German. ABH
| office is waiting with guns fully loaded
| onecommentman wrote:
| The phrase "super-high-tech ministry" doesn't sound like the
| correctly nuanced translation of _Super-Hightech-Ministeriums_.
| In English, it begs the question whether they are really serious
| -- why isn't it "super-duper-high-tech" or "ultra-high-tech" or
| "hyper-high-tech"? Calling something "super-X" in English sounds
| a little marketingspeak-clumsy and opens you up to these jibes.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| I need an LLM in my fax machine.
| holowoodman wrote:
| > "Our goal is that the world's first fusion reactor should be
| realized in Germany,"
|
| This will never happen. At some point they will notice that
| fusion is something with "nuclear" and "atoms" and they will
| immediately jump to "scary", "dangerous" and "verboten".
| Ridius wrote:
| Germany is home to one of the most promising Fusion projects -
| "Wendelstein 7-X "
| holowoodman wrote:
| Germany also was home to some of the most cutting edge
| fission research. Otto Hahn (the ship, not the guy),
| THTR-300, EPR, SNR-300, ...
|
| All gone now.
| j-krieger wrote:
| Of course, there is more fusion research now.
| j-krieger wrote:
| They are also a large supporter of ITER.
| arghandugh wrote:
| This is a militarization effort to counter Mad King Trump who has
| overthrown the USA and is threatening the global order for his
| own sick pleasure.
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| European research and innovation funding is absurdly gamed and
| just money wasted.
| teleforce wrote:
| Citation needed [1]:
|
| [1] Wikipedian Protester:
|
| https://xkcd.com/285/
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| I personally know people who received funding from EU
| innovation funds, thought more than 10 years ago. It was
| graded by bureaucrats that had no idea about anything and
| graded it based on keyword matching (basically like tech
| recruiting works). It was absurd.
| piombisallow wrote:
| Just one more ministry bro, I beg you, just one more ministry and
| we solve European growth, a couple more bureaucrats, c'mon
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| The plan is foolproof.
| pjio wrote:
| The title is strange: In german news there was nothing that
| sounded like "super hightech ministry" not even a "superhigh tech
| ministry". But the ministry for "education and research" got
| split, assigning education to the ministry for family, leaving
| more room for the research part which got an additional focus on
| technology.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > In a section titled "scientific freedom," the document seems to
| refer at least obliquely to developments in the United States,
| where scientists working on topics such as gender, global health,
| and climate change have seen their funding slashed and important
| data sets have been scrubbed from the websites of federal
| agencies. "Funding decisions will be based on science-driven
| criteria," the document states. "It seems like that should be a
| no-brainer, but we have seen how quickly it can change," says Eva
| Winkler, an oncologist and medical ethicist at Heidelberg
| University and a member of the German Ethics Council.
|
| If this obliquely refers to anything, then to a scandal under the
| last german government, where the minister of science and
| education had demanded to know whether any signatory to an open
| letter received funding from the ministry[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.forschung-und-lehre.de/politik/foerdermittel-
| aff...
| xxmarkuski wrote:
| I agree that merging the technology division from the ministry of
| economic affairs (BMWK) to the new research ministry is a good
| step as both ministries have been large providers of funding. The
| BMBF funds DFG, as well as the large science organizations in
| Germany (Fhg, Mpg, ...), the BMWK has funded research which is
| closer to applications, of course looking to enable economic
| activity. I'm unsure why the ministry gets a special focus on
| aerospace, this topic is being worked on by the DLR, funded by
| BMBF. I'm also not yet sure what to think about splitting
| education and research. It goes against the Humboldtian Ideal,
| especially in the universitys both topics are connected. On the
| other hand, it might enable the ministries to be more focused and
| do reforms that don't depend on each other to be performed more
| quickly. The research ministry will go to CSU, the bavarian
| sister party of CDU. While it may not be very popular amongst
| many Germans, because CSU is seen as conservative and individual
| CSU politicians are not famous science policymakers, Bavaria is a
| successful science hub. Munich is home to international leading
| institutions (TUM, MPG, FhG). Bavaria is also a hub for aerospace
| with Aibus and MTU and startups like Isar Aerospace and Rocket
| Factory Augsburg. Maybe repeating what bavarian policymakers have
| done regionally to the whole of Germany will be good.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > I'm also not yet sure what to think about splitting education
| and research. It goes against the Humboldtian Ideal, especially
| in the universitys both topics are connected.
|
| According to the German constitution (Grundgesetz), schools and
| universities are (mainly) the responsibility of the individual
| German states, not the federal government.[1] (A hybrid is the
| Karlsruhe Institute of Technology that has a university branch
| under the supervision of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg and a
| research centre branch under federal supervision.) The
| educational tasks of the federal government therefore basically
| relate to extracurricular and non-university education, such as
| early childhood education or adult further education.
|
| At the level of the individual states, higher education and
| research are generally combined in one ministry and school
| education in another.
|
| [1] Actually the Grundgesetz states in Art. 30: "The exercise
| of state powers and the performance of state duties shall be a
| matter for the individual states (Lander), unless otherwise
| provided for or permitted by this Basic Law." The authority of
| the federal government in education policy is therefore derived
| from what is explicitly mentioned in various places in the
| Basic Law. A short overview what that involves can be found
| here:
| https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/416682/db04b405a48dbe...
| (PDF, 2009, in German).
| xxmarkuski wrote:
| Thank you for the background explanation and the link. KIT is
| actually my Alma Mater (cs). You are right the overlap is not
| that large. I was thinking about the WissZeitVG,
| Exzellenzstrategie, Tenure-Track-Program. As for the Lander,
| I personally think the transition between the Abitur and
| university could benefit from stronger collaboration between
| the involved ministries. For example by better aligning the
| educational goals of high school to the demands of
| universities and by integrating education research into
| schools. By this I mean the continuous application of the
| results of educational research to schools and the constant
| monitoring of schools.
| KurSix wrote:
| But the real test will be follow-through. Big promises like
| "world's first fusion reactor" and wooing global talent sound
| great, but without a clear budget or streamlined bureaucracy, it
| risks becoming just another shiny headline
| timka wrote:
| Looks like a last-ditch effort to salvage its crumbling
| technological sovereignty amid the EU's systemic crisis. Even if
| they invent something, production will happen in China or the US.
|
| Germany wants to preserve Airbus and stay relevant in European
| space programs, but without cheap energy and raw materials this
| is a pipe dream. Quantum computing/hydrogen is theoretically
| promising, but they're already behind China and the US. Trying to
| catch up to Russia in drones and EW, but without energy
| independence or microelectronics it won't work.
|
| Without Russian gas or nuclear power, high-tech manufacturing is
| unprofitable. Germany's best engineers are already in Shanghai
| and Silicon Valley. Russia/China/the US are sprinting ahead in
| hypersonics, AI, and 6G, while Germany is just forming a
| ministry.
|
| Germany's move isn't a breakthrough, it's desperation. They're
| trying to save face, but they lack energy for advanced tech w/o
| Russia, have no military shield w/o the US, can't manufacture at
| scale w/o China.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Lets be honest for once -germany is deeply risk averse and
| conservative. Its leaders can try to cast that "we wamt that
| california culture" spell a million times and out hops another
| wirecard. You can not graft innovation cultures to conservation
| cultures . You would need to change the conservation culture at
| thr upbringing roots, by highlighting how pure conservation gets
| you into wars and other problems. By rewarding characters that
| want to go on a adventure .You can not tell the guy who wants to
| jump a mammoth with a pointy stick, that this is "toxic
| masculinity" and "the outstanding nail gets hammered" in
| kindergarden and open a ministry for elephant steak.
| justlikereddit wrote:
| And what super high tech background will the ministers have?
|
| >Friend of The Merkler
|
| >Protested nuclear energy
|
| >Invited a million illiterates to an all-inclusive life in
| Germany, none who ever had an encounter with the technology of
| literacy
|
| And so forth.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Ministries cannot keep up with the velocity of free market /
| startup culture like SV. So I wouldn't exactly be bullish on
| this.
| shafyy wrote:
| What kind of comparison is this? A government ministry is not a
| private enterprise, it has different goals and structures.
|
| It's like saying a cargo ship can't keep up with a speed boat.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Well let me put it this way:
|
| What is the point of the ministry, and why does the current
| global leader of super-high-tech (USA) not seem to be in need
| of such?
| jcarrano wrote:
| I worked on a project funded by the BMBF. I can tell you, those
| people had no idea of what they were funding. And the people
| running the project had also no idea for what they were being
| funded.
| mkarliner wrote:
| ..?mmjnnm mmmmmm
| malthaus wrote:
| i'm swiss living in berlin currently (leaving soon)
|
| germany is a country on the rapid decline. the recently decided
| investment effort and the new government are a step in the right
| direction but wont halt or revert that decline. the country needs
| a BIG shock and be rebuilt from the ground up. the new ministry
| is just pandering / virtue signalling and won't have any effect.
|
| some examples:
|
| 1) legacy financial holes like the pension scheme, no bandaid
| will save this
|
| 2) public workers safety & pension "beamtentum" - wrong
| incentives, wrong people, wrong mindset
|
| 3) workers rights are too strong (betriebsrat, unflexible hiring
| & firing)
|
| 4) taxes are ridiculously high, there's zero incentive for global
| talent to come here
|
| 5) bureaucracy is absolutely insane, a country run by risk averse
| lawyers stuck in the 1980s
|
| 6) immigration was botched so bad, they wont recover from this
| for another generation
|
| 7) the rise of the far right afd was handled so terribly, the
| trauma from ww2 is still too big to deal with it rationally,
| rather than calling the strongest party in the country
| "antidemocratic" (which ironically IS antidemocratic in itself).
| if they dont get a grip on this, afd will lead the country in 4
| years.
|
| 8) no common identity / goal except for wanting to show being the
| "good guys", see misincentived sustainability initiatives,
| handling of israel / palestina, etc
|
| 9) weak leaders / politicians. they are all bureaucrats
|
| 10) regulation first, innovation never. see AI
| HellDunkel wrote:
| 1) dont be stupid about AI, nobody is stopping you from putting
| AI to good use but don't expect loads of stupid german cash
|
| 2) don't ask for "strong" leaders -> look at the mess going on
| in america, don't spill the baby with the bath
|
| 3) afd is the stupid people party. no one knows how to get a
| grip on the those idiots, don't loose your cool.
|
| subtract your 10 points with mine and we are in agreement.
| malthaus wrote:
| thanks for further supporting my points on why germany is
| lost and the public debate in this country is so broken
|
| you disagree and so implied both i and the biggest voter
| block in germany are "idiots". that's not discourse.
| mk89 wrote:
| I like to believe that 16 years of Merkel left people with the
| inability of understanding politics and democracy in general.
|
| Handling AfD by inviting them to a talk show where the
| audience/presenters were mostly people with Greens/Left
| background is emblematic of how this country has been
| delegating the ability to think democratically to someone else.
| No wonder we have extreme parties on the rise. (Both Left and
| AfD are extremes, no matter what)
|
| Instead of listening, they made fun or criticized a party of
| monkeys that should have never reached 22%. Because that's all
| they could do. Make fun, minimize, claiming you're racist, etc.
|
| Burning Tesla factories, breaking their cars while they are
| parked, ... letting protesters glue themselves on the streets
| blocking you from reaching whichever place you planned to (be
| it an office or a hospital). This is daily life in Germany in
| the last 3-4 years. Wtf!
|
| I am personally sad that all the good things will change
| because the last 20 years I think Germany really became a great
| country, unlike all the criticism that people like to throw at
| it. All just because people couldn't confront the facts. And
| yes, this means making hard decisions where needed.
| Woodi wrote:
| That news just confirms EU is not a country-like and any
| federation is not ready.
|
| Funny that outsiders like US and Russia and probably others
| behave as it is one country :) It is kind of some "body" but not
| a well functioning one: fusion ? Unser! Spy satelites ? Notre!
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