12 ms·

How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West

157 points by mastazi 10y ago

rumcajz 10y ago
Not mentioned, bust also: - Ludwig Boltzmann, the father of statistical mechanics. - Richard Reti, the author of hypermodern "Reti Opening" in chess.
- davidwihl 10y ago
  Nor Kurt Gödel
  - mherrmann 10y ago
    This. Most other figures from the article will be remembered in history books. But Gödel's results will be remembered and learned for as long as people do mathematics.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  - Eric Voegelin, austro-american philosopher, one of the greatest of the century. - Otto Maria Carpeaux, austro-brazilian essayist, literature and music critic, one of the few intelligent voices in the second half of the century in Brazil.
- vram22 10y ago
  Also Peter Drucker (at least he was from Vienna originally). A former boss had shared this inspiring article (by Drucker) with our team in a company where I worked: [ My Life as a Knowledge Worker: http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960515/2083.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960515/2083.html "The leading management thinker describes seven personal experiences that taught him how to grow, to change, and to age--without becoming a prisoner of the past." ] Joseph Schumpeter, economist, is also mentioned in that article, in an interesting anecdote or two. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter I've read some of Drucker's books and like them. Very pragmatic.
endriju 10y ago
"Vienna was the heart of an Austro-Hungarian empire of about 53m people that stretched from Innsbruck in the west almost as far as the Black Sea in the east. After 1867 the empire was divided into two: a Magyar-dominated Hungary, ruled from Budapest, and a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic, multilingual other half, ruled from Vienna." In all fairness the Magyar-dominated Hungary could be attributed the same attributes, it was multi-ethnic and multilingual, especially in the suburban areas of the kingdom. Ethnic map from 1910 [1] shows it pretty well (Croatia and Slavonia were left out from the picture). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Hungary#/media/File:Ethnographic_map_of_hungary_1910_by_teleki_carte_rouge.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Hungary#/media/File...
- paganel 10y ago
  The major difference was that the Hungarians implemented a politics of Magyarization which was one of the main reasons for what happened for them at Trianon. From the wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization#Magyarization_in_the_Kingdom_of_Hungary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization#Magyarization_in...): > The policies of Magyarization aimed to have a Hungarian language surname as a requirement for access to basic government services such as local administration, education, and justice. (...) Between 1850 and 1910 the ethnic Hungarian population increased by 106.7%, while the increase of other ethnic groups was far slower: Serbians and Croatians 38.2%, Romanians 31.4% and Slovaks 10.7%.[38]
  - aries1980 10y ago
    This is an oversimplification. Trianon set the borders with neither the interest on ethnicity, nor the wishes of their inhabitants. Cities were cut in half (e.g Komarom and Komarno), families became separated, there are people who had 5 different citizenship without leaving their villages. After the WW1, there were only two census (Balassagyarmat and Sopron, both had to fight for this right, with weapons), both voted to stay in Hungary. For the diversity of the key positions, you can check the list of barons and counts: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_b%C3%A1r%C3%B3i_csal%C3%A1dok_list%C3%A1ja https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_b%C3%A1r%C3%B3i_csal%C3... https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_gr%C3%B3fi_csal%C3%A1dok_list%C3%A1ja https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_gr%C3%B3fi_csal%C3%A1do... List of Jewish nobles: http://mek.oszk.hu/04000/04093/html/szocikk/13568.htm http://mek.oszk.hu/04000/04093/html/szocikk/13568.htm One of the most powerful family was the (possibily Croatian) Grassalkovich which once had the duke title as well. I don't deny there was an ethnic tension which hadn't been resolved. But this was a 100 years after the Ottomans were defeated after 300 years of permanent war that drastically changed the ethnic demographic. Check the Balkans and see how big the issue was.
ihaveahadron 10y ago
I learned my history from Wikipedia, but my understanding is that modern west was shaped by roughly Sigmund Freud who came from Germany/Vienna. I don't care how right wrong I am.
open-source-ux 10y ago
The BBC recently broadcast a three-part series on Vienna for those interested. Unfortunately, it's only available to watch for those in the UK: Vienna: Empire, Dynasty and Dream http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046dkrd http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046dkrd
redsummer 10y ago
Where is the modern Vienna?
- marban 10y ago
  Still doing great [on the Quality of Life Index].
- franze 10y ago
  Online Start-Up wise quite good. There is VC money, grants, tech talent, meetups and the will to try new things. But los of overall creativity still stifled by bureaucracy, mediocracy and latent rassism. Also we have something called SVA and "Sozialpartnerschaft" which hurts a lot. The one takes most of young founders money, the other makes sure the curtent old-white-male elite stays in place.
  - holri 10y ago
    SVA has also an superior service and is not more expensive than other health insurances. Sozialpartnerschaft ensures balanced politics and is a foundation of Austrias post war success.
  - jhoechtl 10y ago
    Franze, it seems you are short sighted. The Sozialparterschaft currently helps to keep the startup cargo cult in check which primarily seeks to create work for three years just to be swallowed by a bigger company, most of the time because the startup was getting a nuisance and not because it created substantual value. The Sozialpartnerschaft also guaranteed many years of slow but steady growth and the culture of belonging and equality many countries in the world search for. It's because of such short-sighted longings like dooming the Sozialparterschaft why values like equality and solidarity are increasingly falling to peaces, reduced workforce protection, going ill to the job etc. You are right that one state social security system would probably be enough instead of more than a dozen.
  - badlogic 10y ago
    I'm on of those "young founders" here and have zero issues with the SVA. They take at most 20k/y from you for health care and pension, and I'm fine with that. And just because you don't want to pay your potential employees a living wage (which are low in the IT collective bargaining contracts) doesn't mean the Sozialpartnerschaft is bad. On the contrary, it keeps those stary eyed "young founders" from fucking over the people that help build their potential future fortune.
walterstucco 10y ago
Vienna ideas didn't shape anything in particular. They were just standing on the shoulders of the giants. The west was shaped by the thousands years of European's history and wars.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  And not only Christian Europe, but also the centuries of work by Muslim scholars all over the Middle East and Asia.
  - inevitable2 10y ago
    Which ORIGINAL inventions or discoveries were made by those Muslim scholars?
  - ahoka 10y ago
    I don't think that statement is true.
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      Muslim scientists contributed to many fields, including philosophy[1], astronomy[2], medicine[3], mathematics[4], and chemistry[5]. It was very common for scholars to make contributions in multiple fields, so you'll see a lot of repetition. One of the key contributions that in my opinion influenced the Renaissance greatly was the work by numerous Muslim translators on the translation of Greek works to Arabic. In the process, many of the works of the great Greek thinkers and philosophers were preserved for future scholars. Also, Muslim scholars were responsible for bringing works from the East (China, India, etc.) back to Baghdad, making them more accessible to the West. Arabic was so widely used that it was the lingua franca for most of science for a period of time (~12th century). European scholars who wanted to learn more about the latest discoveries and inventions had to learn Arabic at one of the large learning centers (Baghdad, Damascus, Granada, among others). Sicily[6] was another place where East and West combined for the sake of learning. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_philosophers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_philosophers [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_astronomers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_astronomers [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_doctors?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_doctors?wprov=s... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam?... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_and_chemistry_in_medieval_Islam?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_and_chemistry_in_medie... [6]: http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197806/muslim.sicily.htm http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197806/muslim.sicily.ht...
swampthinker 10y ago
For those of you that enjoy pre-1800 European History, I highly suggest picking up a copy of Europa Universalis 4 on Steam. Wonderful strategy game that ends up teaching you an awful lot about history from 1444-1821
- Meegul 10y ago
  This may reveal my age/lack thereof, but Europa Universalis 3 is what originally sparked my interest in history and also programming. It's a game that allows you to explore 'what if' scenarios in a fairly historically accurate context. It's by no means a simulator, but it does a great job of making the era feel right. It got me into coding due to my curiosity with exactly those 'what if's. The vast majority of the game data is easily editable, and the dev console is great. Some of my first coding projects were just mods for EU3, which revealed to me that there's really nothing special that goes into making software if 13-year old me could do it. Highly recommended.
- mihaifm 10y ago
  Great suggestion! Of course, if you want to go back even further, you can pick up Crusader Kings 2 with the Charlemagne expansion, and start all the way from the year 769.
holri 10y ago
The article mentions “Red Vienna” in only one sentence. But the last 80 years of progressive politics in Vienna was a huge success. Social housing, public transport, social welfare, security, education etc. and therefore the quality of live are exceptional in that city because of progressive politics. https://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable-city https://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable-city
- sebastianconcpt 10y ago
  As long as you have an influx of other people's money to spend, progressive policies do "exceptional". What the progressive narrative fails to recognise (and actually cares to hide) is that it was a previous huge free market period that allowed to build the pre-conditions that they used.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    The "pre-condition" for Austria was being on the loosing side of WW2, after that the economy was only 60% of it's pre-war size.
  - Avshalom 10y ago
    free markets also require huge amounts of other people's money while they waste resources in competition before a solution is found.
    - hueving 10y ago
      And centrally planned systems don't find a solution to many problems at all (e.g. new low cost innovations). Without competition, there is no incentive to improve the efficiency of anything that meets the bare minimum requirements.
      - sebastianconcpt 10y ago
        Planned systems are doomed by design. They destroy the information that prices carry and end in self-destruction/collapse. Even communist China knows better than that.
empath75 10y ago
Related: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771 1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place
leoc 10y ago
Obligatory Karl Kraus describing Vienna as an "experimental station for world destruction".
jmeister 10y ago
No discussion related to Europe on HN is complete without philistines bashing it for not being like SF/US. There is more to life than "growth" and "productivity" and "economy". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13114941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13114941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13102263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13102263
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  I dislike this imposition of one's own views on others without their consent posturing as moral superiority. Sure you may believe there's more to life but that's no reason to force others to turn over their hard-earned money to collectivist purposes. And branding anyone opposed to your views as philistine just mark you as an uneducated bigot.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. The GP should not have been snarkily dismissive but at least was still talking about Vienna specifically. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284536 and marked it off-topic.
  - mSparks 10y ago
    please take your life somewhere else.
kodfodrasz 10y ago
It is true that the muslims brought Indian numeric system to the west, and had a role in preserving some knowledge, but have you heard about the Library of Alexandria? "The library may have finally been destroyed during the Muslim conquest of Egypt in (or after) AD 642." (wikipedia) Muslim translators are the influencers behind renaissance, not the people who actually did it? Then why didn't it occur in the muslim world? I've heard this muslims preserved shill many times. Ok, they did. What did they invent? Not inventions by ancients or far-eastern people, but as a genuinely muslim invention. Kebab? I'm truly interested!
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  > have you heard about the Library of Alexandria? Yes, of course. What a huge loss. Your source says "may", so it looks like the exact time the library was destroyed is up for debate. Even if the Muslims did destroy it, keep in mind that no civilization is perfect in hindsight. Racial segregation was still common less than a century ago in the US. Have you heard of the library of Baghdad? The Mongols threw so many books into the Tigris (or Euphrates?) that it turned black. Arguably the greatest loss of knowledge ever. > Muslim translators are the influencers behind renaissance, not the people who actually did it? Then why didn't it occur in the muslim world? No idea. The Golden Age of Islam was due to a wide variety of factors including, good leadership, stability and strong economy, and the availability of nobles willing to support scientists in their learning. Why the Renaissance took place in Europe and not in the Middle East, I don't know. One reason could be that Europe at the time was waking up from the Dark Ages, while the Islamic Empire was declining because leaders and citizens started to get a bit too comfortable with their achievements. I'm no historian though. > I've heard this muslims preserved shill many times. Ok, they did. What did they invent? Not inventions by ancients or far-eastern people, but as a genuinely muslim invention. Kebab? I'm on mobile, so I can't type much. Plus your tone isn't very respectful, so I'm not going to waste my time. Look up Al Zahrawi. Some of the surgical instruments he invented are still in use to this day. You can find many more such examples through Google. More importantly, scientific progress isn't measured solely through inventions. Inventions are built on knowledge, and knowledge is built on learning and research. Even if Muslim scholars never invented anything (they did), the amount of knowledge they acquired made the work of their successors much easier.
UhUhUhUh 10y ago
Let humanity fester and "sperm is in the air" (Zweig). I'd move to the next one in a heart-beat.

157 points by mastazi 10y ago

Not mentioned, bust also: - Ludwig Boltzmann, the father of statistical mechanics. - Richard Reti, the author of hypermodern "Reti Opening" in chess.

davidwihl 10y ago
Nor Kurt Gödel
- mherrmann 10y ago
  This. Most other figures from the article will be remembered in history books. But Gödel's results will be remembered and learned for as long as people do mathematics.
fiatjaf 10y ago
- Eric Voegelin, austro-american philosopher, one of the greatest of the century. - Otto Maria Carpeaux, austro-brazilian essayist, literature and music critic, one of the few intelligent voices in the second half of the century in Brazil.
vram22 10y ago
Also Peter Drucker (at least he was from Vienna originally). A former boss had shared this inspiring article (by Drucker) with our team in a company where I worked: [ My Life as a Knowledge Worker: http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960515/2083.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960515/2083.html "The leading management thinker describes seven personal experiences that taught him how to grow, to change, and to age--without becoming a prisoner of the past." ] Joseph Schumpeter, economist, is also mentioned in that article, in an interesting anecdote or two. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter I've read some of Drucker's books and like them. Very pragmatic.

endriju 10y ago

"Vienna was the heart of an Austro-Hungarian empire of about 53m people that stretched from Innsbruck in the west almost as far as the Black Sea in the east. After 1867 the empire was divided into two: a Magyar-dominated Hungary, ruled from Budapest, and a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic, multilingual other half, ruled from Vienna." In all fairness the Magyar-dominated Hungary could be attributed the same attributes, it was multi-ethnic and multilingual, especially in the suburban areas of the kingdom. Ethnic map from 1910 [1] shows it pretty well (Croatia and Slavonia were left out from the picture). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Hungary#/media/File:Ethnographic_map_of_hungary_1910_by_teleki_carte_rouge.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Hungary#/media/File...

paganel 10y ago
The major difference was that the Hungarians implemented a politics of Magyarization which was one of the main reasons for what happened for them at Trianon. From the wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization#Magyarization_in_the_Kingdom_of_Hungary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization#Magyarization_in...): > The policies of Magyarization aimed to have a Hungarian language surname as a requirement for access to basic government services such as local administration, education, and justice. (...) Between 1850 and 1910 the ethnic Hungarian population increased by 106.7%, while the increase of other ethnic groups was far slower: Serbians and Croatians 38.2%, Romanians 31.4% and Slovaks 10.7%.[38]
- aries1980 10y ago
  This is an oversimplification. Trianon set the borders with neither the interest on ethnicity, nor the wishes of their inhabitants. Cities were cut in half (e.g Komarom and Komarno), families became separated, there are people who had 5 different citizenship without leaving their villages. After the WW1, there were only two census (Balassagyarmat and Sopron, both had to fight for this right, with weapons), both voted to stay in Hungary. For the diversity of the key positions, you can check the list of barons and counts: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_b%C3%A1r%C3%B3i_csal%C3%A1dok_list%C3%A1ja https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_b%C3%A1r%C3%B3i_csal%C3... https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_gr%C3%B3fi_csal%C3%A1dok_list%C3%A1ja https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_gr%C3%B3fi_csal%C3%A1do... List of Jewish nobles: http://mek.oszk.hu/04000/04093/html/szocikk/13568.htm http://mek.oszk.hu/04000/04093/html/szocikk/13568.htm One of the most powerful family was the (possibily Croatian) Grassalkovich which once had the duke title as well. I don't deny there was an ethnic tension which hadn't been resolved. But this was a 100 years after the Ottomans were defeated after 300 years of permanent war that drastically changed the ethnic demographic. Check the Balkans and see how big the issue was.

ihaveahadron 10y ago

I learned my history from Wikipedia, but my understanding is that modern west was shaped by roughly Sigmund Freud who came from Germany/Vienna. I don't care how right wrong I am.

open-source-ux 10y ago

The BBC recently broadcast a three-part series on Vienna for those interested. Unfortunately, it's only available to watch for those in the UK: Vienna: Empire, Dynasty and Dream http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046dkrd http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046dkrd

redsummer 10y ago

Where is the modern Vienna?

marban 10y ago
Still doing great [on the Quality of Life Index].
franze 10y ago
Online Start-Up wise quite good. There is VC money, grants, tech talent, meetups and the will to try new things. But los of overall creativity still stifled by bureaucracy, mediocracy and latent rassism. Also we have something called SVA and "Sozialpartnerschaft" which hurts a lot. The one takes most of young founders money, the other makes sure the curtent old-white-male elite stays in place.
- holri 10y ago
  SVA has also an superior service and is not more expensive than other health insurances. Sozialpartnerschaft ensures balanced politics and is a foundation of Austrias post war success.
- jhoechtl 10y ago
  Franze, it seems you are short sighted. The Sozialparterschaft currently helps to keep the startup cargo cult in check which primarily seeks to create work for three years just to be swallowed by a bigger company, most of the time because the startup was getting a nuisance and not because it created substantual value. The Sozialpartnerschaft also guaranteed many years of slow but steady growth and the culture of belonging and equality many countries in the world search for. It's because of such short-sighted longings like dooming the Sozialparterschaft why values like equality and solidarity are increasingly falling to peaces, reduced workforce protection, going ill to the job etc. You are right that one state social security system would probably be enough instead of more than a dozen.
- badlogic 10y ago
  I'm on of those "young founders" here and have zero issues with the SVA. They take at most 20k/y from you for health care and pension, and I'm fine with that. And just because you don't want to pay your potential employees a living wage (which are low in the IT collective bargaining contracts) doesn't mean the Sozialpartnerschaft is bad. On the contrary, it keeps those stary eyed "young founders" from fucking over the people that help build their potential future fortune.

walterstucco 10y ago

Vienna ideas didn't shape anything in particular. They were just standing on the shoulders of the giants. The west was shaped by the thousands years of European's history and wars.

Cyph0n 10y ago
And not only Christian Europe, but also the centuries of work by Muslim scholars all over the Middle East and Asia.
- inevitable2 10y ago
  Which ORIGINAL inventions or discoveries were made by those Muslim scholars?
- ahoka 10y ago
  I don't think that statement is true.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    Muslim scientists contributed to many fields, including philosophy[1], astronomy[2], medicine[3], mathematics[4], and chemistry[5]. It was very common for scholars to make contributions in multiple fields, so you'll see a lot of repetition. One of the key contributions that in my opinion influenced the Renaissance greatly was the work by numerous Muslim translators on the translation of Greek works to Arabic. In the process, many of the works of the great Greek thinkers and philosophers were preserved for future scholars. Also, Muslim scholars were responsible for bringing works from the East (China, India, etc.) back to Baghdad, making them more accessible to the West. Arabic was so widely used that it was the lingua franca for most of science for a period of time (~12th century). European scholars who wanted to learn more about the latest discoveries and inventions had to learn Arabic at one of the large learning centers (Baghdad, Damascus, Granada, among others). Sicily[6] was another place where East and West combined for the sake of learning. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_philosophers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_philosophers [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_astronomers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_astronomers [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_doctors?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_doctors?wprov=s... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam?... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_and_chemistry_in_medieval_Islam?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_and_chemistry_in_medie... [6]: http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197806/muslim.sicily.htm http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197806/muslim.sicily.ht...

swampthinker 10y ago

For those of you that enjoy pre-1800 European History, I highly suggest picking up a copy of Europa Universalis 4 on Steam. Wonderful strategy game that ends up teaching you an awful lot about history from 1444-1821

Meegul 10y ago
This may reveal my age/lack thereof, but Europa Universalis 3 is what originally sparked my interest in history and also programming. It's a game that allows you to explore 'what if' scenarios in a fairly historically accurate context. It's by no means a simulator, but it does a great job of making the era feel right. It got me into coding due to my curiosity with exactly those 'what if's. The vast majority of the game data is easily editable, and the dev console is great. Some of my first coding projects were just mods for EU3, which revealed to me that there's really nothing special that goes into making software if 13-year old me could do it. Highly recommended.
mihaifm 10y ago
Great suggestion! Of course, if you want to go back even further, you can pick up Crusader Kings 2 with the Charlemagne expansion, and start all the way from the year 769.

holri 10y ago

The article mentions “Red Vienna” in only one sentence. But the last 80 years of progressive politics in Vienna was a huge success. Social housing, public transport, social welfare, security, education etc. and therefore the quality of live are exceptional in that city because of progressive politics. https://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable-city https://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable-city

sebastianconcpt 10y ago
As long as you have an influx of other people's money to spend, progressive policies do "exceptional". What the progressive narrative fails to recognise (and actually cares to hide) is that it was a previous huge free market period that allowed to build the pre-conditions that they used.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  The "pre-condition" for Austria was being on the loosing side of WW2, after that the economy was only 60% of it's pre-war size.
- Avshalom 10y ago
  free markets also require huge amounts of other people's money while they waste resources in competition before a solution is found.
  - hueving 10y ago
    And centrally planned systems don't find a solution to many problems at all (e.g. new low cost innovations). Without competition, there is no incentive to improve the efficiency of anything that meets the bare minimum requirements.
    - sebastianconcpt 10y ago
      Planned systems are doomed by design. They destroy the information that prices carry and end in self-destruction/collapse. Even communist China knows better than that.

empath75 10y ago

Related: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771 1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place

leoc 10y ago

Obligatory Karl Kraus describing Vienna as an "experimental station for world destruction".

jmeister 10y ago

No discussion related to Europe on HN is complete without philistines bashing it for not being like SF/US. There is more to life than "growth" and "productivity" and "economy". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13114941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13114941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13102263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13102263

maverick_iceman 10y ago
I dislike this imposition of one's own views on others without their consent posturing as moral superiority. Sure you may believe there's more to life but that's no reason to force others to turn over their hard-earned money to collectivist purposes. And branding anyone opposed to your views as philistine just mark you as an uneducated bigot.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dang 10y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. The GP should not have been snarkily dismissive but at least was still talking about Vienna specifically. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284536 and marked it off-topic.
- mSparks 10y ago
  please take your life somewhere else.

kodfodrasz 10y ago

It is true that the muslims brought Indian numeric system to the west, and had a role in preserving some knowledge, but have you heard about the Library of Alexandria? "The library may have finally been destroyed during the Muslim conquest of Egypt in (or after) AD 642." (wikipedia) Muslim translators are the influencers behind renaissance, not the people who actually did it? Then why didn't it occur in the muslim world? I've heard this muslims preserved shill many times. Ok, they did. What did they invent? Not inventions by ancients or far-eastern people, but as a genuinely muslim invention. Kebab? I'm truly interested!

Cyph0n 10y ago
> have you heard about the Library of Alexandria? Yes, of course. What a huge loss. Your source says "may", so it looks like the exact time the library was destroyed is up for debate. Even if the Muslims did destroy it, keep in mind that no civilization is perfect in hindsight. Racial segregation was still common less than a century ago in the US. Have you heard of the library of Baghdad? The Mongols threw so many books into the Tigris (or Euphrates?) that it turned black. Arguably the greatest loss of knowledge ever. > Muslim translators are the influencers behind renaissance, not the people who actually did it? Then why didn't it occur in the muslim world? No idea. The Golden Age of Islam was due to a wide variety of factors including, good leadership, stability and strong economy, and the availability of nobles willing to support scientists in their learning. Why the Renaissance took place in Europe and not in the Middle East, I don't know. One reason could be that Europe at the time was waking up from the Dark Ages, while the Islamic Empire was declining because leaders and citizens started to get a bit too comfortable with their achievements. I'm no historian though. > I've heard this muslims preserved shill many times. Ok, they did. What did they invent? Not inventions by ancients or far-eastern people, but as a genuinely muslim invention. Kebab? I'm on mobile, so I can't type much. Plus your tone isn't very respectful, so I'm not going to waste my time. Look up Al Zahrawi. Some of the surgical instruments he invented are still in use to this day. You can find many more such examples through Google. More importantly, scientific progress isn't measured solely through inventions. Inventions are built on knowledge, and knowledge is built on learning and research. Even if Muslim scholars never invented anything (they did), the amount of knowledge they acquired made the work of their successors much easier.

UhUhUhUh 10y ago

Let humanity fester and "sperm is in the air" (Zweig). I'd move to the next one in a heart-beat.