5 ms·

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, o

by lurena 8y ago

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted. There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Not everyone among these 65 million is fit to 'move fast and break things'. Not everyone wants to be flexible, adaptable or able to sell themselves in a world of fast hires and firings. Not everyone is a young and dynamic entrepreneur full of 'innovative' ideas (whatever that means). In short, not everyone is a twenty-to-thirty- something with a moderately high level of education and relative affinity with the tech world. On the other hand, everyone needs a steady job to make a living. Everyone needs the healthcare, retirement plans and other benefits our current labor laws entail with that steady job. In short, everyone is a human being with basic human needs. Startups have one thing in common - they tend to fail. Maybe your average HN reader will be able to endure the typical working conditions with no guarantee of a stable income in the future, but they are the exception, not the rule. It is preposterous to imagine that an entire country's labor laws and regulation should align with the needs of such a narrow demographic so that foreign investors will maybe deign to notice it and shower said demographic with money. Yes, there are many things wrong with our current labor laws. Yes, maybe some regulations are needlessly tight and stifle the growth of blooming startups full of bright people. No, that does not mean the US as a 'startup nation' is an example to follow. And if that means the next Facebook or Instagram won't come from here, so be it. Many of these startups tend to produce services that are superficially useful at best or actively harmful at worst. We don't need them.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
As an American, kudos for appreciating what keeps your country on solid footing, versus a culture that is essentially a lottery with more flash.
- megalomanu 8y ago
  France is a combination between Philippe le Bel, Zinedine Zidane, Louis Renault, Serge Gainsbourg, Marcel Dassault, Jean Jaurès, Auguste Renoir, Blaise Pascal, Napoléon, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles de Gaulle, and so on. Current social rights are not more a part of french culture than anything else and I think most of the current conflicts come from the thinking than progress is acquired and a marxist point of view (which is very valid and important, but not the source of all answers). We tend to forget than France existed before 1945.
jdminhbg 8y ago
> There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- maeln 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States 65 Millions is a bit exaggerated but not too far from the truth.
  - IanCal 8y ago
    I think the "most abject poverty seen in the developed world" needs citing.
    - erikb 8y ago
      Funny how Americans get so shocked about it, while it is quite clear to the rest of the world. Honestly when I was visiting the US the first time, I was shocked how Second World everything was. Most people live in poor areas (of course most well off Americans don't travel to these part of towns so they don't see it). Many non-chain shops are struggling. Food prices are ridiculously high in comparison to the not that much higher pay Americans receive for the same job. Even the electricity system looks somewhat like Vietnam or India.
      - llcoolv 8y ago
        Still million times better than a socialist republic. And no, "Oh, but if you're really good at ass licking, you could beg the government to give you some of your own money back and some are even using it as scam to live off others." doesn't change my mind.
        llcoolv 8y ago
        Great. A whole bunch of downvotes and not a single decent argument :D
gaius 8y ago
move fast and break thing Especially now we are seeing what that really means: fake blood labs and the brakes on cars disabled. Do we want a world where nothing can be trusted because it was all just a fantasy to defraud gullible investors to start with? I think most people don’t want that.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable to reject some vague concept of American style capitalism based on Theranos and Uber any more than it would be to reject "German-style" capitalism based on Dieselgate.
adventured 8y ago
> There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Your claim about American poverty is beligerently false. The US poverty rate is below both the French [1] and Canadian [2] poverty rates. It's also below the rates of poverty in Spain and Italy. France also has a higher rate of homelessness than the US. There are 550,000 homeless in the US, that's a rate of 1.7 per 1,000. France has 140,000 homeless persons, a rate of 2 per 1,000. The French homelessness problem has been increasing dramatically (a 1/2 increase since 2001), while the US rate of homelessness has been persistently declining for decades. The French poverty rate is ~14%.[1] The US rate in 2016 was 12.7%, and will probably hit near or below 12% in 2018 at the rate it has been falling [3]. The rate of US poverty has seen a large improvement over the last 30 or so years (as one example, childhood poverty has been nearly cut in half since the early 1970s). It routinely goes unheralded, however government / welfare programs targeted at reducing poverty have been tremendously successful. [1] https://www.thelocal.fr/20160907/over-14-percent-of-the-french-live-below-poverty-line https://www.thelocal.fr/20160907/over-14-percent-of-the-fren... [2] https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/census-children-make-up-one-quarter-of-4-8m-canadians-living-in-poverty-1.3587472 https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/census-children-make-up-one-qu... [3] https://www.npr.org/2017/09/12/550492811/u-s-census-bureau-records-improvements-in-income-poverty-and-health-coverage https://www.npr.org/2017/09/12/550492811/u-s-census-bureau-r... [3a] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-259.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-25...
- nikanj 8y ago
  The poor in France still have access to education, healthcare, etc. These rates are not comparable.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    Are you denying the existence of public education, Medicaid, etc. in the US?
    - JPLeRouzic 8y ago
briandear 8y ago
And this attitude is precisely why I just moved from France to Silicon Valley. I want to be around people interested in creating the future rather than recycling the past.
- Zealotux 8y ago
  What kind of future, though? Don't take this the wrong way, but to me Silicon Valley seems like the most hypocritical and cynical place in the developed world today. Just take a look at the social issues and inequalities in the area, but I think you're already aware of that. The false dilemma of Silicon Valley being the only possible model to "create the future" sounds like a classic pompous Valley view, maybe the US can afford part of a state to be like that, I don't know if I want that for France. And this is coming from someone who made a startup in France, and is currently working in the industry.
ryanx435 8y ago
" Many of these startups tend to produce services that are superficially useful at best or actively harmful at worst. We don't need them." says the commenter on Hacker news, without a single ounce of irony.
megalomanu 8y ago
As a french I'm accustomed with this point of view, but I think it is too often based on a false vision of what is France and what does french people truly want. France has not always been the country you describe. Even if France never leaded the french revolution and always been more attracted to the philosophical or political side of things, France hosted a lot of technical revolutions and even be part of a "startup culture" in some domains, like automobiles. I invite you to read the bio of Louis Renault or André Citroën. They were true pionners and they share some life events and a mindset very similar to those of a web entrepreneur. Today, we tend to despise all those huge industrial automobile, food, or aviation companies that didn't really innovate anymore, and it's normal because they're symptomatic of the collusions between state and business, but we forget too often that they started like startups, at a time it was possible to make of a small company in a disruptive domain a true unicorn. And many of these companies are the root of the social rights we beneficiate today. If we can't build new big companies anymore, our social system (which I'm fond of by the way) is doomed. I believe France was at this time much more confident with technological progress. Maybe because time was more hopeful, company management more patriarcal, inequalities where less important, and examples of bad conduct from great companies less visible. Anyway. But the roots of innovation are still here, and on the contrary, all the social regulations are not necessarily a true part of what a complex country like France means to be. We must find the balance. (By the way, I have a familial anecdote (really not significant, it's just pretty fun) on was I said about confidence in technological progress : my great grandfather was a blacksmith, as his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on. And what did he do when automobile replaced horses ? He became a car mechanic.)
- woodpanel 8y ago
  We must find the balance. I think so too. Not being French but reducing France to just being France if it keeps it's inefficiencies is what made it take the role of "Europe's sick man" from Germany. As if having a permanent base of 20% unemployed youth (and 10% in general) is a price worth the cost of being a "well-meaning" nation. PS: And no, youth unemployment is not a new thing in France as it stood around 27% in 1997. Pre-Euro and Pre-German-Labor-Reforms.

by lurena 8y ago

toomuchtodo 8y ago

As an American, kudos for appreciating what keeps your country on solid footing, versus a culture that is essentially a lottery with more flash.

megalomanu 8y ago
France is a combination between Philippe le Bel, Zinedine Zidane, Louis Renault, Serge Gainsbourg, Marcel Dassault, Jean Jaurès, Auguste Renoir, Blaise Pascal, Napoléon, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles de Gaulle, and so on. Current social rights are not more a part of french culture than anything else and I think most of the current conflicts come from the thinking than progress is acquired and a marxist point of view (which is very valid and important, but not the source of all answers). We tend to forget than France existed before 1945.

jdminhbg 8y ago

maeln 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States 65 Millions is a bit exaggerated but not too far from the truth.
- IanCal 8y ago
  I think the "most abject poverty seen in the developed world" needs citing.
  - erikb 8y ago
    Funny how Americans get so shocked about it, while it is quite clear to the rest of the world. Honestly when I was visiting the US the first time, I was shocked how Second World everything was. Most people live in poor areas (of course most well off Americans don't travel to these part of towns so they don't see it). Many non-chain shops are struggling. Food prices are ridiculously high in comparison to the not that much higher pay Americans receive for the same job. Even the electricity system looks somewhat like Vietnam or India.
    - llcoolv 8y ago
      Still million times better than a socialist republic. And no, "Oh, but if you're really good at ass licking, you could beg the government to give you some of your own money back and some are even using it as scam to live off others." doesn't change my mind.
      - llcoolv 8y ago
        Great. A whole bunch of downvotes and not a single decent argument :D

gaius 8y ago

move fast and break thing Especially now we are seeing what that really means: fake blood labs and the brakes on cars disabled. Do we want a world where nothing can be trusted because it was all just a fantasy to defraud gullible investors to start with? I think most people don’t want that.

perl4ever 8y ago
I don't think it's reasonable to reject some vague concept of American style capitalism based on Theranos and Uber any more than it would be to reject "German-style" capitalism based on Dieselgate.

adventured 8y ago

> There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Your claim about American poverty is beligerently false. The US poverty rate is below both the French [1] and Canadian [2] poverty rates. It's also below the rates of poverty in Spain and Italy. France also has a higher rate of homelessness than the US. There are 550,000 homeless in the US, that's a rate of 1.7 per 1,000. France has 140,000 homeless persons, a rate of 2 per 1,000. The French homelessness problem has been increasing dramatically (a 1/2 increase since 2001), while the US rate of homelessness has been persistently declining for decades. The French poverty rate is ~14%.[1] The US rate in 2016 was 12.7%, and will probably hit near or below 12% in 2018 at the rate it has been falling [3]. The rate of US poverty has seen a large improvement over the last 30 or so years (as one example, childhood poverty has been nearly cut in half since the early 1970s). It routinely goes unheralded, however government / welfare programs targeted at reducing poverty have been tremendously successful. [1] https://www.thelocal.fr/20160907/over-14-percent-of-the-french-live-below-poverty-line https://www.thelocal.fr/20160907/over-14-percent-of-the-fren... [2] https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/census-children-make-up-one-quarter-of-4-8m-canadians-living-in-poverty-1.3587472 https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/census-children-make-up-one-qu... [3] https://www.npr.org/2017/09/12/550492811/u-s-census-bureau-records-improvements-in-income-poverty-and-health-coverage https://www.npr.org/2017/09/12/550492811/u-s-census-bureau-r... [3a] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-259.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-25...

nikanj 8y ago
The poor in France still have access to education, healthcare, etc. These rates are not comparable.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  Are you denying the existence of public education, Medicaid, etc. in the US?
  - JPLeRouzic 8y ago

briandear 8y ago

And this attitude is precisely why I just moved from France to Silicon Valley. I want to be around people interested in creating the future rather than recycling the past.

Zealotux 8y ago
What kind of future, though? Don't take this the wrong way, but to me Silicon Valley seems like the most hypocritical and cynical place in the developed world today. Just take a look at the social issues and inequalities in the area, but I think you're already aware of that. The false dilemma of Silicon Valley being the only possible model to "create the future" sounds like a classic pompous Valley view, maybe the US can afford part of a state to be like that, I don't know if I want that for France. And this is coming from someone who made a startup in France, and is currently working in the industry.

ryanx435 8y ago

" Many of these startups tend to produce services that are superficially useful at best or actively harmful at worst. We don't need them." says the commenter on Hacker news, without a single ounce of irony.

megalomanu 8y ago

As a french I'm accustomed with this point of view, but I think it is too often based on a false vision of what is France and what does french people truly want. France has not always been the country you describe. Even if France never leaded the french revolution and always been more attracted to the philosophical or political side of things, France hosted a lot of technical revolutions and even be part of a "startup culture" in some domains, like automobiles. I invite you to read the bio of Louis Renault or André Citroën. They were true pionners and they share some life events and a mindset very similar to those of a web entrepreneur. Today, we tend to despise all those huge industrial automobile, food, or aviation companies that didn't really innovate anymore, and it's normal because they're symptomatic of the collusions between state and business, but we forget too often that they started like startups, at a time it was possible to make of a small company in a disruptive domain a true unicorn. And many of these companies are the root of the social rights we beneficiate today. If we can't build new big companies anymore, our social system (which I'm fond of by the way) is doomed. I believe France was at this time much more confident with technological progress. Maybe because time was more hopeful, company management more patriarcal, inequalities where less important, and examples of bad conduct from great companies less visible. Anyway. But the roots of innovation are still here, and on the contrary, all the social regulations are not necessarily a true part of what a complex country like France means to be. We must find the balance. (By the way, I have a familial anecdote (really not significant, it's just pretty fun) on was I said about confidence in technological progress : my great grandfather was a blacksmith, as his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on. And what did he do when automobile replaced horses ? He became a car mechanic.)

woodpanel 8y ago
We must find the balance. I think so too. Not being French but reducing France to just being France if it keeps it's inefficiencies is what made it take the role of "Europe's sick man" from Germany. As if having a permanent base of 20% unemployed youth (and 10% in general) is a price worth the cost of being a "well-meaning" nation. PS: And no, youth unemployment is not a new thing in France as it stood around 27% in 1997. Pre-Euro and Pre-German-Labor-Reforms.